Adventures (7 page)

“Do one of you gentlemen have a map of the area?” I asked, pouring them each another drink.

Holmes pulled a map out of his vest pocket and unfolded it. “Here you are, Reverend Jones,” he said.

I found the Lado Enclave right quick, and estimated it to be a day-and-a-half march to the north and west. Then I picked a pencil out of my pocket and handed it to Thorpe.

“I wonder, Brother Thorpe,” I said, “if you could mark the areas of the Enclave I'll most want to avoid?”

“You mean places with...”

I nodded and gulped in terror. “Right. With elephants.”

He looked at the map, then drew seven or eight circles at various parts of the Enclave. “Okay, Reverend Jones,” he said at last. “These represent the greatest concentrations of the herds. If you just walk around these areas you should be okay. You may run into a stray elephant now and then, but you'll avoid most of them.”

“I don't know how to thank you, brothers,” I said, folding up the map and sticking it inside my shirt. “You can't begin to know what a service you've done for the Lord this day.”

“Always happy to help a man of the cloth,” said Thorpe. “As for thanking us, it's not necessary—though if you run across any ivory poachers, you might report them to us on your next swing through here.”

“I certainly will,” I said, “though I can't understand why anyone would kill elephants.”

“I would have thought you'd approve,” said Holmes.

“For vengeance, yes,” I said. “But for profit? That's breaking the Second and Ninth Commandments.”

I took my leave of them then, and wandered off to meet Herbie.

“What have you been doing?” he demanded when I got there.

“Securing our fortune,” I said, throwing the map down in front of him. “I supply the brainpower, you supply the marksmanship, and we split the take.”

“Fifty-fifty?” he asked.

“One-third, one-third, one-third,” I corrected him.

“Come again?” said Herbie.

“One-third for you, one-third for me, and one-third for the Lord.”

He kept insisting that this was really a two-to-one split for me, so after some further haggling we finally decided on fifty-five percent of the first ten thousand pounds for me, forty-five percent for Herbie, and the Lord had an option on the next three thousand pounds.

We decided that we'd better be up and on the trail bright and early the next morning, so we turned in almost immediately. During the middle of the night I felt a sharp pain in the side of my neck, and, figuring it was some small lizard or beetle, I tried to flick it off with my hand, and wound up poking Herbie in the eye.

“Goddamnit!” he screamed, rubbing his eye vigorously. “What did you want to go and do that for, Lucifer?”

“Why don't you tell me just what you were doing bending over my neck?” I snapped.

“It's personal,” moaned Herbie, still holding his hand over his eye.

“It's more than personal,” I said. “It's perverted! Kissing a man's neck when he's sleeping!”

“I wasn't kissing you, Lucifer,” he whined. “Honest I wasn't.”

“Just see that it don't happen again,” I said, and lay back down on my blanket.

And not ten minutes later I felt this pain in my neck again.

“Herbie!” I yelled, and he must have jumped five feet into the air. “What the hell is going on?”

“Well, Lucifer,” he sighed, “you might as well know the truth.”

“That you're some kind of moral degenerate?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“I'm a vampire,” he said.

“You mean like goes around sucking blood and such?” I said.

He nodded sadly. “I wish I wasn't. I mean, you have no idea the strain it puts me under, but I am and that's all there is to it.”

“How long have you been a vampire?”

“Oh, about ten years now. Maybe eleven. You know, Lucifer, I don't think there's any group anywhere in the world that's more misunderstood than us vampires. I mean, I hope you don't think I
like
nabbing people in the neck and drinking their blood.” He shuddered. “It's disgusting!”

“Then why do you do it?”

“I'm compelled to, just like you're compelled to drink water,” he answered. “It's not a matter of choice.”

“But I've seen you in the sunlight,” I said. “I thought vampires couldn't do that.”

“European vampires can't,” said Herbie. “It's like a whole different union.”

“I've seen you eat meat,” I said.

“I've seen you eat meat, too,” he shot back. “Doesn't stop you from needing water, does it?”

“Is this why you were kicked out of the army?” I asked.

He nodded.

“And why the Ankole had you staked out?”

“Yes,” he said. “Believe me, Lucifer, I'm a better person for being able to talk about it. I'm not like this all the time, really I'm not. Most of the time I'm just as normal as you are. It's just that sometimes I ... well, I get this
craving
.”

“Do you have it now?” I asked.

He stared long and hard at my neck. “No,” he said with a relieved sigh. “I think it's gone now.” He paused for a moment, then nodded vigorously. “Yes, I'm sure it's gone.”

“Good,” I said, walking over and tying him to a tree. “I'll let you loose in the morning.” I went back to my blanket and lay down. “I think I'll probably be tying you up every night. Nothing personal, you understand.”

“I understand. You've no idea how comforting it is to be able to talk about this with someone,” he said, just as I was drifting off to sleep. “You know, some missionaries have set up a hospital over in Masindi, and they probably have a fair supply of blood there. I don't suppose we could—”

“No, we couldn't!” I said, and fell asleep.

We spent the next day foot-slogging, and by mid-morning of the second day we had reached the outskirts of the Lado Enclave. We made camp early and fell to studying Captain Michael Holmes’ map, trying to figure out the quickest way to get to the nearest of the herds. Finally we bedded down, and were up about an hour before sunrise.

We began finding piles of fresh elephant dung about noon, and within about two hours had snuck to within a quarter mile of a herd of maybe two hundred of the beasts. Herbie lay down on his belly, tested the wind with a handful of dry dirt, and began inching forward. I looked at him for a minute, then did the same.

Since I was bigger than Herbie I began getting a little ahead of him, and I stopped when we were about eighty yards away from a huge bull with enormous tusks. Then, just as I was about to suggest that we were close enough for a shot, Herbie sank his teeth into the side of my neck.

I let out a yell, and all hell broke loose. The elephants stood in a circle, trunks extended, trying to figure out where the noise had come from, and then three or four of them started running straight at us.

I jumped up, more mad at Herbie than scared of the elephants, and pointed down at the little vampire, who was nibbling on my Achilles tendon.

“He's the one!” I screamed at the oncoming elephants. “Just run right by me and flatten that little bloodsucker!”

The elephants wheeled around like quarter horses and raced off in the other direction the second they saw and heard me, and a moment later there wasn't an animal to be seen anywhere, except for the one who was slowly getting up next to me.

“I don't know what happened, Lucifer,” he said. “I've never done that in the daytime before.”

“You damned fool!” I screamed. “You could have gotten us both killed!”

He just hung his head and looked so sad that all the anger evaporated right out of me.

“All right,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “Just try to give me a little warning next time we're sneaking up on a herd of elephants, okay?”

Well, the next time didn't come for almost a week, during which time Herbie tried marching to his different drummer more and more often, especially if I would nick myself while shaving. But finally one morning we found about a dozen young males and one real old one with huge tusks lolling in a small wooded glen.

This time I made sure Herbie went ahead of me, and when he got within about forty yards of them he cut loose with a couple of shots and dropped the old tusker. I ran up to look at the corpse, and discovered that Herbie was nowhere to be seen.

“Herbie!” I called.

“Up here, Lucifer,” he replied, and I looked up and found him perched in a tree about twenty-five feet above the ground.

“What are you doing up there?” I said.

“There's always a chance that one of the others will come back,” he said, “and you've got all the rest of the bullets.”

“That shows a lot of foresight,” I said.

“Thank you, Lucifer.”

“What am
I
supposed to do if one of them comes back?”

He paused thoughtfully, then asked, “How good are you at climbing trees?”

“Not very,” I said.

“Oh,” he said. “Well, do you know any real fast prayers?”

“Knock off the comedy and come down here,” I said.

“That wasn't a rhetorical question, Lucifer,” he said. “There's an elephant about fifty feet behind you, and he looks very unhappy.”

Which was how I found out that I could climb trees after all.

We stayed on our branches for an hour or two after the elephant had left, then climbed cautiously down and examined our ivory.

“Looks like about one hundred and thirty pounds a tusk,” I said.

“At least,” said Herbie. Then, “Lucifer, I've got a question.”

“What is it, Herbie?”

“How are we going to get the tusks off the elephant?”

It was a right smart question at that. We spent the better part of the afternoon hunting up long sharp stones, and all of the next day chopping away at the tusks. Herbie got thirsty in his unique way toward late morning, and I damned near flattened his head with my stone, after which he was well behaved for the rest of the day. By nightfall we had managed to chop off the tusks, and not a moment too soon, since our elephant wasn't turning into any nosegay and the vultures were getting dangerously low in the sky.

“Now what?” asked Herbie.

“Now we carry them back to camp,” I said.

“I don't know about you, Lucifer,” said Herbie, “but I don't think I can lift my tusk.”

“Of course you can,” I said.

“I only weigh about a hundred and ten pounds,” said Herbie.

“Try dragging it,” I said.

So he tried. He got it about forty feet away from the carcass and collapsed.

“Okay,” I said. “I'll tell you what we'll do. Grab the front end of my tusk, I'll take the rear end, and we'll cart it to camp like that and then come back for the other one.”

He agreed, and we started off through the bush. It was two hours later when we staggered into camp, and we decided not to go back for the other tusk until the next morning. Poor Herbie was so exhausted that he didn't even try to nab me in the neck that night before I tied him up, and I literally had to kick him awake the next morning. Then, stiff and sore and aching in every muscle, we set out for our other tusk.

We never did find it. All them bushes and trees and rivers and trails got to looking alike, and after about seven or eight hours we had to admit we were as lost as two people were ever likely to get.

We wandered for another day or two and couldn't even find our original camp. Finally, on our third day of searching, we came to a Wanderobo village, where we were given a red-carpet treatment and feted like visiting ambassadors.

The chief was a nice old boy called Nmumba, and he had picked up a smattering of English from various hunters and traders over the years. He sat us by his campfire, surrounded us with his naked daughters, and served us a native brew that was even more potent than Kitunga's. Every now and then he'd make a joke. The way we knew this was he'd goose one of his daughters and she'd shriek like all get-out, and this was our signal to laugh.

I was wondering what to do with Herbie, because it was getting near bedtime, and it somehow didn't seem proper to truss him up while we were in Nmumba's village. I mentioned this to him, and he looked downright serious as he answered me.

“l really think you'd better tie me up tonight, Lucifer “, he said. “I've been getting the craving real bad. I suppose it's all them naked necks.”

If you say so,” I said. “Also, I have a feeling that he'd be something less than a gentleman if he didn't offer us a couple of his daughters for the night.

“I'll never be able to make it!” said Herbie. “I'm getting thirsty just thinking about them!”

I made our excuses and took Herbie off to a hut where I tied him up to one of the support poles.

“If he offers us his daughters, I'll accept both of them just as a matter of good manners,” I said as I was securing the knots. “But don't you worry none, Brother Herbie: It's my Christian duty to keep them away from you.”

Which it was, and which I did.

When I got up in the morning Nmumba decided to show me around the village, being careful to explain that it was only a temporary dwelling place since the Wanderobo are basically nomads, but that it was ours as long as his tribe remained there. Finally we walked over to a huge hut that had to be holding a good ten tons of ivory.

“That's a mighty impressive-looking collection, Brother Nmumba,” I said, figuring out its worth down to the nearest shilling.

He looked pleased as punch. “The Wanderobo are mighty hunters,” he said.

“No question about that,” I replied. “Did you kill them all with spears?”

“Yes,” said Nmumba proudly.

“So tell me, Brother Nmumba,” I said, “if the hunting is so good here, why are you moving your people out of the Enclave?”

“Need new
juju
man.”

“You mean a witch doctor?”

He nodded. “Our
juju
man died four moons ago, and we fear for our children's health.”

“They all looked pretty healthy to me,” I said.

“Our last
juju
man made strong
juju
,” said Nmumba. “But soon it will wear off, and we must find another before my people sicken and die.”

“It's nothing catching, is it?” I asked, backing off a bit just out of good manners.