The Bone Hunter, page 6
The steps stopped short of her position behind her. Mark said, “Allison?”
She lifted her head and turned causing the chair to creak under her.
Mark stood back clutching his rifle pointed diagonally across his chest and up toward the sky. His eyes were wide and his brow was furrowed. He had the look like he was facing down a wild animal. He saw the monster in her too and feared being cut down in some sort of startled attack.
Allison imagined how she must look sitting in the middle of an acre of sand saturated with blood and covered in severed body parts. She sat in the middle of it next to a decapitated body, with her back to them, in a blood-stained folding chair.
The hammer won’t come clean, Daddy, she thought.
Despite the situation, a smile crept up on her face thinking about the horror movie scene look she must have given as they ascended the hill. Her turning and smiling at them couldn’t be helping much either.
She stood and turned to face them as the men spread out in front of her. Brood Kultha, Corporal John Lance, and Mposi Diallo with dark smudges and sweat around his eyes all stood beside Mark Friday.
Allison shrugged. “You guys look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Mark swallowed, and said, “We tried to radio again, but you didn’t answer.”
“Their generator ran out.” Allison pointed back a finger over her shoulder.
“Looks like a lot of things ran out,” Mposi said.
“Like their luck,” John said.
Brood Kultha licked his teeth and looked around at the bodies on the ground between them and Allison. “And most of their blood too.”
Allison nodded and looked away at the bloodless circles. “It’s good to see you alive, Ranger Diallo. I thought for sure you had ended up like these men in that explosion.”
“I’m faster than I look,” Mposi said, “but thank you for your concern.”
John patted Mposi’s shoulder. “And you’re getting lots of practice escaping fire.”
Mposi shook his head. “Don’t remind me.”
“Was this an explosion?” Mark waved around at the ground as if everyone had somehow forgotten it. “You mentioned smoke.”
“No, these men were cut apart,” Allison said.
“Obviously,” Brood said.
“Was this somehow related to the Masai camp we found?” Mposi asked.
“And that rhino?” Brood said.
Mposi turned his attention from Allison across to Brood. “What are you saying? The butchered rhino and these two slaughtered camps are related? Who is left to have done all this? The Hadazabe?”
Brood kept his eyes on Allison. “Specialist Tread is not telling us everything she knows. She’s been keeping something back all day, and she’s keeping back more now.”
“What is he talking about?” Mark asked.
“I saw some things yesterday during the conflicts. Things I’m having a hard time explaining without sounding like I’m mental,” she said staring at the body on the ground beside the chair instead of her men, because it was easier.
“What kind of things? What do you mean?” Mposi asked.
“Let her speak,” Brood said.
“It was just shapes and shadows … flashes of motion.” She looked toward the circles again. “But today there was some kind of creature. Something enormous that took down those trees on the path you followed to get here. And cut that man down you found.”
“The one you then shot?” Mposi asked.
“And blew up with a grenade?” Mark added.
“The grenade he did to himself.” Allison nodded. “But the creature did all of this. That dead poacher hit the creature with a grenade, and the wound just closed right back up. Just like it closed the ground behind it as it dug back down once it was finished here.”
“What kind of creature?” John asked. “Like a large cat?”
“No, nothing like that. Bigger. Not a mammal.”
“A crocodile?” Mark shook his head.
“No, bigger and not like any animal I’ve ever seen before.”
“What did it look like?” Brood said. “Describe it, if you can’t name it.”
“It was long and red, more of a rust color. It had spines like bones sticking out on every side. They were sharp like blades and hooked on the end like … the blade on a fishing knife.”
Brood pointed down at the bodies. “So that it tears as it cuts.”
Allison nodded and looked at Brood as she spoke, “It turned like a drill and cut through everything in its path. Once it went under, it burrowed into the ground cutting through dirt, rock, or anything else it touched.”
Brood’s jaw muscle clenched before he spoke. “It made those cuts in the rock as it climbed up when its path continued over the rock face?”
Allison nodded. “That’s right.”
Mposi turned around and took a few steps away.
Mark looked around at the men at his side and back at Allison. “Some bladed monster did everything we have seen today, and then vanished back into the ground. That is what you are saying?”
“Do you have a better explanation?” Brood said.
“Are you sure about what you saw?” Mark asked.
John slapped Mark’s shoulder. “You think she’s making it up? What the hell, Mark?”
“Or hallucinating?” Allison asked.
“We need to go down to the Hadazabe village,” Mposi said without looking back at them.
“Why do we need to do that?” Mark turned from Allison to Mposi’s back.
“Because,” Mposi said, “Allison just described the god the Hadazabe told me the Masai think they summoned.”
“Why wouldn’t we go talk to the Masai?” John asked.
Brood shook his head. “Because they are dead and if they weren’t, then they would cut us into small pieces.”
Mposi turned back toward them. “And the Hadazabe believe they summoned it too.”
6
Gods of Bone and Blood
Mposi took the lead as they finally left the mountains and forest behind, and approached the village on the shore of Lake Eyasi. It took much of the day to complete the journey as they seemed to have lost every vehicle for miles during the battles.
Smoke rose white from holes in the roofs of the huts around the edges of the town. Stone chimneys in brick buildings closer to the center of the village did the same. What was missing was all the activity. No boats were out on the lake, and no one was out on the street.
As they entered the village in silence, Allison began looking around for breaks in the ground or blood on the streets. She saw neither.
“What am I missing here?” John asked.
An old man staggered out of one of the buildings. Allison thought he was injured and started to reach for him, but then he brought up a long bladed machete in one shaking hand. Allison and the team backed away to the opposite side of the street.
The man started shouting and ranting faster than Allison could follow. She spoke a little Swahili, but he was speaking faster than was typical for the language. Before she could process one set of syllables, they had already blended into the next, and she could bring out no meaning.
Mposi held up his hands and made three false starts to try to calm the man and reassure him. He never got through his opening line any of those times. The old man brought up his blade and swiped it through the air with enough force to make it whistle. The team moved sideways up the road, but the man followed with his blade out and his endless rant continuing.
Brood brought up his rifle and thumbed off the safety.
Mposi held out his hand beside him in front of Brood. “Don’t.”
“Tell him to stop swinging his blade at us,” Brood said.
“I’m trying,” Mposi said. “Don’t make it worse.”
Doors opened on both sides of the street, and more men and women stepped out around the team. Some of them carried shorter knives out by their sides and behind their legs. When someone approached while hiding a blade, there was trouble, Allison knew. They intended harm instead of just show.
She brought the bore of her rifle up and the rest of the team followed suit, forming a tight circle back to back. Mposi stood off from the team on his own by a few feet’s distance.
Brood said, “I think it is already worse, ranger.”
Mposi raised his hands and shouted out for calm and peace without bothering with complete sentences any longer. The crowd responded by shouting back over the top of one another.
She noticed that there were no children with the crowd out on the street, which was also a bad sign. The men and women held strands of red beads that reminded Allison of a rosary. They had no crosses, and the beads were different sizes—irregular shapes. Shards of bone and teeth were strung and tied in between the red beads.
The strands returned behind the backs of the villagers in the crowd, and the blades came out. Some of the small knives still had juices coating the sides of the metal from earlier cooking and previous meals.
“We’re going to have to shoot them,” Brood said.
“No, don’t,” Mposi shouted.
“They’re going to cut us up like they did the poachers and Masai, if we don’t figure something out,” Mark said.
Allison took a deep breath. Mark didn’t believe she saw the monster. It didn’t help that the humans apparently came with their own sharp spines too.
A man and a woman stepped in front of the others and shouted the villagers back. The woman pushed Mposi’s chest—sending him back into Allison’s group.
Allison grabbed the ranger and put him between herself and John. She kept Brood on her other side and her weapon out.
The knives went down and the crowd slowly filtered back into doorways.
Allison took a deep breath feeling dizzy. She had forgotten to breathe for the previous few seconds. “Thank you.”
Mposi held out his hands. “Juma Kimaro … Hawa Hemel, thank you for turning that madness away. What is happening here?”
The woman slapped Mposi’s hands aside, and then shoved Allison in her chest. Brood brought his gun around and trained it on the woman. She squared on him despite his weapon, and shouted in English, “Go back to Egypt, or I’ll set them back loose upon your cursed hide.”
Brood lifted his gun aside. “Why am I cursed?”
“What is happening here?” Mposi said. “We need answers.”
The shouting began like before with Mposi, Juma, and Hawa talking over one another. Faces rose up in doorways again.
Allison whispered, “We need to extract ourselves.”
“Ready when you are,” Mark said.
Hands crackled the strange beads and bones. Smoke swirled from low fires in the darkness around the faces. The scene reminded Allison more of rituals than cooking. There was also no need for warmth in the broiling heat.
Mposi held up his hands again. “Wait. Wait. What? Mambaya? Wawindaji mtupa? I don’t understand. Speak plainly. What is this?”
The man clenched his fists and advanced on Mposi, but the woman put her hands on his chest and shoved him back. He turned his back and walked away a few feet snapping out curses to himself hard enough to shake his whole frame.
The woman said, “Giza, Mposi, giza mambaya.”
“What?” Mposi shook his head. “Giza? What darkness, Juma? Is this about the Masai attack? We are your friends. We are not a part of them.”
Mark spoke low, “We have someone else approaching by our retreat route, Allison.”
Allison glanced over her shoulder and saw a woman in a long dress with her dark hair tied back tight behind her head. She looked like another of the village wives or mothers, but with all that was happening, Allison wouldn’t be surprised to see a broadsword pull out of her dress.
She turned her attention back on the woman arguing with Mposi and the eyes watching from dark, smoky doorways.
“Mposi, no,” Juma said, “wawindaji mfupa hasira.”
“I don’t understand,” Mposi said. “We came here for answers. Do you know what is attacking people outside the village, Juma?”
“Leave,” she said. She waved a hand motioning behind the group. “Fatma, take your Christians back to your god and leave us alone.”
The woman in the dress said, “Very well, Juma. Come with me, please, friends.”
Mposi turned and waved at Allison and her team. “Just go. Go.”
John raised his gun and turned around. “I drink more than anyone I know. Who’s she calling a Christian?”
Mposi said, “Mother, are you Fatma?”
“Fatma Manero. Yes. You picked a bad day to visit, friends. Come with me before they change their minds about letting you go.”
They followed out along the road toward the edge of the village closer to the lake.
“John,” Brood Kultha said, “in this part of the world religious identity is tribal and cultural. It is assigned by your birth. You are born Christian, Hebrew, or Muslim. If you are white in Tanzania, they assume you are Christian.”
“That’s just racist,” John said.
Brood shook his head. “Yes, it’s a hell of a world.”
As they passed near one isolated building, Fatma motioned over. “Toward the church. You can shelter there until everyone settles back in.”
The boxy wood and brick structure was larger than some of the others, but nothing like churches in the States. It could have been any other storage building from the outside. As they approached, Allison saw that swirls and shapes had been drawn on the outside in mud and reddish clay. She couldn’t decipher any of the pictures or symbols.
Her attention fell on a pit to her left that suddenly belched up smoke and ash. She whipped her gun around ready to engage whatever hellish creature lurched up to attack. A group of young men gathered around the inside of the smoldering pit. They were barefoot and nearly naked. Their feet were marred by black soot and hot, gray ash. The rest of their skin over their legs, arms, chest, and faces was slathered with red clay. Long, thin finger lines were clawed through the clay like finger painted slashes. It made her think of the bodies of the poachers cut open in the forest and on the bloody sand.
The young men stared up from the pit down along the barrel of her gun.
The coals in the center of their pit next to and under their feet sparked and glowed. Bones lay among the coals and ash pointing out in a spiral set up out from the center. Allison thought about the bar-b-que pit she had seen in the poachers’ camp and she wondered.
The boys held up their strands of uneven, red beads and bones. As she aimed her gun and they presented their beads, she wondered who was offering the greater threat. She could not tell if they were warding her off or casting a curse.
One of them peeled his lips back from his teeth cracking the clay painted on his cheeks. He whispered words that had the cadence of Bantu Swahili, but that she had not heard before. In the midst of his hissing curse, Allison picked out the phrase “… wawindaji mfupa hasira …”
She kept watching, but as they reached the church, the boys disappeared over the edge of the pit and their words cut off as well.
Fatma opened the door, and Allison entered the single, dark room of the sanctuary. Light came from open, glassless windows along the tops of the walls. Benches without backs lined the floor facing a rough, wooden podium. Behind it, Allison could make out the faded shape of a cross in the plaster, but the actual wooden piece that had preserved the original brightness of the plaster where it had once hung and covered the wall was now missing.
The walls, both plaster and brick, were coated in dark graffiti. Some of it was in the complex swirls and marks that Allison recognized as Arabic. Other words were in English letters spelling out phonetic Bantu Swahili. Around it all, were drawn skulls with far too many teeth. Sometimes the skeletal smiles twisted off the faces and snaked out into swirls on the walls. Other skulls were drawn broken with what looked like millipedes with thousands of spikey, hooked legs, and a body painted with the reddish clay. From what she had seen that day, Allison suspected they weren’t drawing a common millipede.
“Thank you for your help, Fatma Manero,” Mposi said as Fatma closed the door making the desecrated church darker.
“I’m sorry you find our people in such a state,” Fatma said. “I used to be Pastor Fatma, but our congregation cowers in fear returning to the ways of animism—worshipping the dark, false gods of animal spirits.”
Allison licked her lips and pointed to one of the twisted millipede bodies on the church wall. “I have seen some things today that lead me to believe this particular god is not false.”
Fatma shook her head. “Just because a monster exists does not make it a god and does not make it worthy of worship.”
Mark rubbed at his eyes, and then held out his hands. “Wait. So you are saying this spined, drilling, giant, red, monster thing is a real, living creature? This is something your people know about?”
“I do not have to see something with my own eyes to have faith that it might be real.” Pastor Fatma motioned to Allison. “But we have witnesses that we trust who can testify to what they have seen.”
Mark looked toward Allison and then away.
“Did your people summon it like the Masai believe?” Brood asked.
Allison thought about the fire pit outside the church and the similar circle in the bloody camp. She wiped sweat off her top lip with the back of her hand.
“They think they have,” Fatma said. “They believe it is an ancient power that has returned to consume other people, other gods, and then the entire world until the Hadazabe is the only tribe left in existence. They should know that demons summoned and unleashed are no one’s servant. If the monster can disobey God, it can turn upon foolish boys playing with bones in fiery pits.”
