The Child's Elephant (29 page)

He removed her gun and tossed it to Gulu. It was the first time the boy had been trusted with one since his failed escape. The army was reclaiming him. It was accepting him back as one of it’s own. Gulu caught it. He clutched it. For a moment it felt like the hand of an old friend. And that was the moment he made his decision: not because he was thinking he had anything to gain from the future, nor because he was hoping he could recapture some long since lost past, but because suddenly he knew that he could not bear the present any longer. He turned. His eyes sought out Bat’s and found them already waiting. Muka was standing stock still, a short way off. The boys caught the white flash of her glance amid the confusion. The other soldiers were milling about, bewildered, not sure what had happened. The child leaders had moved forward to remove the girl’s body, as they had been trained.

For a split second the three children stood poised, bound together in a moment of horror; then, letting her gun fall, Muka sprang forward and seized Bat’s
outstretched hand in her own. His own gun also falling, he grabbed out for Gulu, already waiting, and, swept forward by a surge of shared courage, shared purpose, shared panic, the three of them plunged into the surrounding bush.

For a few precious moments it was only La who saw them. He watched them running away without speaking a word. Then the cry went up. It was the Thief who spotted them and Kwet who lifted his automatic. Spinning on his hips, he sent round after round juddering into the thickets. They ripped through the leaves and tore hunks of wood from the trunks. The spent cartridges sprayed up around him. Their shells gleamed in the dark. He paused to snap in a new magazine. When he looked up again, all he could see was the black. The escapees had vanished like divers into a deep pool. The surface was settling. Nobody knew if they would ever come up.

The three children dashed like panicked bush pigs, crashing through thickets and dodging round trunks. They heard the hard rattling stutter of the gun right behind them. Bullets sang in their ears like a swarm of disturbed wasps. They could see their glowing traces. At any moment they expected to feel that last fatal sting . . . they expected to fall . . . but until then they would keep running. Their fear lent them a new strength.

If the soldiers caught them, Gulu thought as he charged through the undergrowth, they would tear them limb from limb like a pack of wild dogs. He hurled himself onward, pushing blindly forward, slowing only slightly from time to time to check that his two friends were still following. Further and further into the darkness they fled, tripping and stumbling
and picking themselves back up again, bruising bones against rocks and ripping gashes in flesh, until slowly the hooing and yapping of their pursuers began to fade; until they could hear nothing but the breaking of branches, the rustling of leaves as they parted and then swished shut behind them, the rasping of breath as it tore from their throats.

They were deep in the forest. The light of a rising moon silvered the high foliage, but down amid the dry undergrowth all was a shapeless black. Bat, Muka and Gulu kept floundering on, clambering over fallen tree-trunks and blundering through bushes, skidding and skewing their way down a breakneck slope until finally, almost at the bottom, they found themselves halting. They were standing upon a rocky brink. Below them they could hear water. A stream was flowing. Bat could see the thin thread of sparkling which laced round shadowy rocks.

One last downward scramble and the three children were beside it, splashing their burning faces and slaking their parched throats. Only then, when their stomachs were filled almost to bursting, did Bat turn to Muka. Only then did they seek out each other’s feverish faces. They had managed . . . they had finally managed. They were free. For a few moments Bat crouched there looking at his two companions. He felt giddy with elation. They had escaped the army! Their lives had been set loose. They could go anywhere they wanted. They could go back home!

But how? Even as those first wild hopes of freedom eddied madly about, Bat felt the slow drag of a deadly
undertow. How would they find their way back to Jambula?

‘Move! We must keep moving!’ It was Gulu who was urging. Despite his wounded foot, he was taking the lead. ‘Hurry. We have to keep walking while we have the strength,’ he was encouraging. He had lived as a rebel on the run for too long to think he would ever be safe.

By the time the faint light of dawn was beginning to leak through the foliage, shrinking the shadows and outlining dim shapes, the children had scrambled up another craggy slope and were picking a slow path through the forests ahead. The trees loomed up around them like a vast living fortress. Their steps were beginning to slow. Bat dragged himself wearily over a fallen trunk and waited for Muka. Ahead, Gulu was no more than a flickering shadow. What would they do without him as a guide? Bat wondered. He watched the shape of the boy dissolving into the gloom. Gripped with a sudden fear that the painfully thin Muka might not have the same strength, he urged the already faltering girl to keep up.

‘What’s that?’

They heard something moving in the half-light ahead of them and sank to their heels in an instant, like trained soldiers, their stares fixed ahead. Gulu raised his gun. His grip on the stock was steady. But it was only a bushbuck, its pelt dark with dew. With a bark of alarm it slipped back into the brush.

On and on they walked, crawling, scrambling and tearing their way through the undercover. As the sun
climbed through the sky, the heat grew heavy as a blanket. The sweat prickled their skin. Flies buzzed round their faces, clinging to their eyelids and crawling around their lips. At first the children would blow and slap to get rid of them, but after a while, too weary to bother, they just let them sit. They were famished. When Gulu dug some white grubs from the pulp of a palm, they swallowed the damp morsels without even chewing, but still their bellies ached.

‘Keep marching!’ commanded Gulu every time they faltered; and so they did, following the contours of a mountain, walking and walking until the sun had fallen from its height. In the late afternoon they found a pool where they drank. It was stagnant. The water tasted oily and thick, but they lapped at it thirstily. Then, racked by terrible stomach cramps, they bent double with pain. Scuffing a shallow scrape for themselves under the bushes, they rested again for a bit. But the newfound freedom that just a few hours ago had filled them with elation was beginning to feel more like a trap. How would they ever get out of these forests? How would they ever discover in which direction their home lay? Bat held Muka’s hand tight in his own as he lay in the underbrush. The evening darkness gathered rapidly about. Crawling things scuttled over him, but he was too tired to care.

‘From now on we move only at night,’ Gulu ordered. ‘That way we’re less likely to be spotted – by the government army or the rebel soldiers . . . and they’re both just as dangerous to us right now.’ He looked at Bat and Muka. It was up to him to take command now, he knew;
up to him to keep them safe. For a moment his mind flashed back to the times when he had stood at the head of some posse of abducted children, led them stumbling through the forests, too confused to do anything but obey. Then he had been delivering them back to his own commanders. Now he had to take the responsibility for himself. He shouldered his gun. At least he had that to help him, he thought. He wished the others had not cast theirs away.

They faltered on through a dark formlessness sprinkled faintly with moonlight, eating nothing but some figs which they shared with a colony of bats. Crashing like a tempest into the foliage, the flying creatures feasted among the high branches while the children had to make do with the fallen and half-rotted fruits. Their fingers groped at the pulp. However much they ran, they could not escape the feeling that someone was after them. It haunted their every step. At the creak of a tree in the wind they wheeled round in their tracks. Even the flicker of a moon shadow set their hearts thumping. Gulu, the seasoned soldier, constantly looked right and left. His watchfulness was unsettling. It made Muka feel more frightened than safe.

And then, suddenly, the trees stopped. They were at the edge of a wide track. A full moon glittered down on an unmade road that cut through the forest cover, raw as a new scar.

‘It might lead us somewhere,’ Bat murmured.

‘Too dangerous,’ Gulu answered.

‘But it might lead to a village,’ pleaded Muka.

Gulu shook his head. ‘We’re at risk in the open. Besides, it’s just a logger’s trail.’

Muka gazed at him helplessly. She didn’t know how much strength she had left any more.

Gulu’s brow furrowed. He glanced indecisively to his left and right. It was still dark. And at least they would travel faster without undergrowth to battle. At least if they followed the trail upwards they might cross more easily over the next hill. Maybe it would be all right for a bit, he thought. Just until the dawn. ‘If you hear a sound, dive for cover,’ he warned them and, eyes flickering warily, he took the first step out.

Just up the track a duiker froze for a second and then disappeared with a long stretching bound.

The children headed up the slope. They were travelling easily now. They felt their hopes quickening with the increase of their pace. The road cut sharp swags round the contours of a mountain. Sometimes they almost ran as it descended into a slight dip.

It can’t have been many hours before dawn when they came to a fork.

‘Which way?’ asked Muka.

None of them knew.

‘That one, maybe,’ Bat suggested, glancing up at the stars where they floated in a thin strip of sky. ‘It leads southwards and I think southwards may be the way back.’

Gulu wasn’t so sure. ‘That one slopes downwards and the plains are not safe.’

For a few moments longer they hovered indecisively, helplessly craning out into the black for a clue.

They had their backs turned to the three silent figures who were stealing towards them. And by the time they turned it was already too late.

‘Run!’ Gulu screamed.

They wheeled, bolting headlong downhill. A gun cracked behind them, but they were rounding a corner. They were swerving out of reach. They ran and they ran, their breath ripping from their throats. The rutted dirt cut their feet; the moonlight cast treacherous shadows that tripped them; but they raced blindly on.

An engine revved into life. A vehicle was coming. It wouldn’t take long to catch up. They glanced right and left at the dense walls of trees. ‘Round the next bend and then into the bush!’ Gulu gasped.

They tore round a twist and found themselves entering a clearing. A logger’s cabin stood ahead of them. Their pursuers would be arriving any moment, they thought as their eyes scudded frantically about. They could already see the headlights flashing through the leaves, but in a sudden swerve of brightness, Gulu spotted a gap under the hut’s wooden floor and, grabbing Bat and Muka, he dragged them stumbling towards it. They dived headlong in.

From where they were lying, bellies flat to the ground, the children couldn’t see the jeep as it drew into the clearing, but they watched the beams of its headlights as they swept across the dry brush. The engine cut; the doors opened. They heard the passengers jump out. Something knocked against metal. It was a gun, Gulu thought. Every nerve, every muscle, every sinew was locked. He looked no more alive than a bundle of old sticks. Footsteps trod purposefully towards the cabin.

‘They’re in there. Start looking,’ a voice barked.

The children felt their hearts jolt. They all knew it. It was the Leopard who was speaking. Face down in the earth, Bat could smell his own dread. He screwed his eyes tight but he couldn’t escape the terror. He could see the scarred frown on that face.

‘Find them!’ came the order.

‘Yes, sir.’

Bat recognized the second voice too. It belonged to the ranger: to the man from the elephant hunt. This was the person who took money to kill animals. He would think nothing of shooting children either, the boy thought. And now he was coming towards the cabin. The light of a torch bobbed about as he walked. Its beam swept its long, slow arcs across the clearing, casting about like a predator, nose to the ground for a scent. For a second it seemed to be shining straight into the cranny in which the children were hiding. Their breath turned solid in their throats; but they didn’t dare swallow. Any sound at this point might have betrayed their hiding place. Muka watched a baboon spider scuttle out in front of her. It hunkered down on its haunches, silhouetted by the light. She let her eyelids fall shut. The earth smelled dry and musty. The dead leaves would crackle if she so much as flinched. The spider stretched out one leg and prodded tentatively at her cheek.