Honeymooners

In a quiet moment their guide suddenly stopped. “Elephant”, whispered Doug. “We’ll try and get a little closer.” Now they all heard the distant cracking and splintering of wood. Kicking at the dust with his boot, he took a judgement on the direction of the breeze and silently conferred with Nixon through hand signals and nods on the best route to follow to get a chance to spy their quarry.

Terry and Celia followed in close single file behind the safari guide and escort scout, adrenalin keening their senses now. Terry stepped on a twig and the crack made Celia start in surprise. “Careful, city boy”, she hissed.

Doug turned to them and pointed towards a bush thick with leaves and white flowers. “We’ll make our way behind the jasmine and wait for Nixon to do a recky.”

He glanced over to Nixon, who nodded and soundlessly disappeared round the corner in the path ahead.

Behind the pleasantly scented bush the four passed the next few minutes in quiet anticipation. Doug studied the tourists, assessing them again. “The girl looks pretty damned sexy,” he considered, “I wonder what she sees in him though.” Terry was breathing a little heavily now. The sun was higher and tiny beads of perspiration shone on his pale forehead. Doug looked back down the path to prevent the momentary flicker of resentment revealing itself in his stance or eyes. “Money”, he thought, “always bloody money.”

Nixon appeared from nowhere and beckoned to Doug. “Stay here with Clemence, for a sec,” he told the couple and joined the scout a few metres down the path. They conversed briefly in a mixture of Bemba and English. “We’re above him and upwind, we’ll just be careful”, concluded Doug and the two of them returned to the waiting couple and their tea-bearer.

“It’s a lone bachelor elephant”, whispered the guide. “Nixon says he’s out on a clearing just down the path here.” He paused, indicating the almost invisible track from which the Zambian scout had materialised. “There’s a slight problem though. Nixon says he looks bad tempered. He’s probably in musst.” Terry looked blank but Celia smiled.

“It’s when elephants get horny,” she murmured to her husband, “I saw it on television.”

“That’s right, Celia,” the guide continued. “For us it is a bit of a problem because they also get unpredictable. We could just leave him in peace.”

“No way”, retorted Terry, a little too loud. “I want a video of this. It’ll be a great story to tell my mates back home. Horny beast on the prowl, love it!”

The party followed after Nixon, ducking under overhanging branches and getting scratched by thorns as little by little they made their way to the clearing where the elephant stood. Doug soon raised his hand in a gesture to halt his guests and pointed through a small gap between the trees. “He’s over there on the other side of the dambo. Can you see him?”

“I can’t get a decent shot,” whispered Terry studying the display on his digital video camera. “Let’s go closer.”

The safari guide scrutinised the clearing. About forty metres away, a scrubby bush stood directly between them and the elephant. The animal was a good sixty metres beyond that, standing completely still, head down and trunk swaying from side to side. “That’s odd”, murmured Doug studying the elephants posture, “he looks in pain.” Through his binoculars the soaking dark stain from the elephant’s temple glands was clearly evident. “Poor guy is pouring out hormones… I know how you feel bro”, he accidentally continued out loud.

“Come on, let’s get closer”, urged Terry. Doug looked to Celia who nodded her assent, eyes bright with the thrill of the hunt.

“We’ll make our way to that bush over there. Stay down.” Doug and Nixon stepped out from the tree line and led the honeymooners at a crouch to the isolated cover in the centre of the clearing.

“This is real”, whispered Terry as they squatted behind the bush. He cautiously rose to height where he could get a clear shot with his camera. The elephant remained silent and motionless except for his swaying trunk, apparently oblivious his observers. Terry’s wife gingerly stood behind her lover and together they watched the animal in awestruck hush, only the quiet whirring of the little camera disturbing the still air.

Without warning the elephant turned towards them trunk up and ears flared wide. The bachelor trumpeted loudly, momentarily stunning his observers. Then, with an angry snort, the massive beast began hurtling towards them across the clearing bringing his head down and trunk back in against his chest. Nixon broke cover and fired a shot in the air. The explosion of gunfire was incredibly loud but the furious elephant was deaf to it and only accelerated his thunderous progress towards the petrified group.

In a split second, Terry swung round and shoved his wife headlong into the rock-strewn grass beside the bush. Heedless of anything but his own survival, he ran back to the trees dropping his expensive toy in the process. Seeing her fall heavily on the ground behind them, Clemence and Doug each grabbed an arm of the terrified Celia and dragged her stumbling across the uneven ground to safety.

Between them and the elephant Nixon lowered his aim and fired first one, then two and finally three bone splintering shots into the brow and face of the enormous animal before it crumpled forward in the mass and energy of its own momentum and collapsed with a final agonised bellow, the huge tusks driving through the bush that had just been their safe position.

Doug attended to the sobbing Celia. He took the pack from Clemence and, being clinical and confident for her sake, tenderly checked her for wounds and bruises. Then he commanded her to sip some water both to calm her and prevent shock coming on. Clemence, meanwhile, went off in search of Terry and found him some way away cowering behind a fallen tree dazed and confused about what had happened. The old Zambian squatted beside the tourist smiling and nodding at the incoherent gibberish that spilled from Englishman’s panicked lips.

When she had recovered enough to speak, Celia, between gasping, heart-rending sobs, looked imploringly into the safari guide’s eyes and asked. “Why? Why? Why did he do that to me, Doug?”

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