Hunting Daylight (9781101619032) (2 page)

On Campbell’s fifteenth night in the bush, he heard the rushing sound of the Nyanga River. He stepped into a narrow clearing. The moon glowed through tangled limbs, and far below, luminous ripples cut across the black water. He heard a scrabbling sound and raised the lantern. Light spilled over the bank, past rustling weeds and darting shadows.

Nothing was out there. Nothing he couldn’t handle.

The guide loaded equipment into a small boat, then waded around to the bow and held it steady while Campbell climbed aboard. He heard a loud splash and hoisted the lantern. A sixteen-foot crocodile punched through the water, and its jaws crunched down on the guide’s shoulder. The man screamed, the kind of sound dogs make when they get hit by a truck. Blood jetted across the front of Campbell’s shirt. He felt disoriented as he breathed in the coppery tang.

The croc threw itself onto the starboard bow, and the stern jerked out of the water. Campbell skidded down the port side, his lantern swinging in his fist, bright arcs cutting over the flailing guide.

Screw this
, Campbell thought. He hadn’t come to Africa to get bitten by a handbag. He clambered backward, moving aft, his boots ringing against the boat’s metal bottom. The croc wiggled off the bow and hung in the air for a moment, then pulled the wailing guide under the water. The stern clapped back down against the surface, and the boat rocked violently. The lantern flew from Campbell’s grasp. He jumped out of the boat,
landed on the dark, weedy bank, and crouched for a moment, gulping the muddy air. He’d avoided death for a second time, death by crocodile, and nothing would destroy his ass.

But where there was one crocodile, there were more. He scrambled to his feet and raced along the tree line. He didn’t see crocodiles or hippos, just bones; some looked human. The air had a dank, weighted feel, like the crypts in a New Orleans graveyard, but he kept running.

Three klicks past the waterfalls, he saw lights at the edge of a grassy
bai
. The wide clearing should have been filled with hulking shapes of antelopes and forest elephants, but it was empty. By the time Campbell got to the camp, he had a bad feeling, nothing he could pinpoint, just a crawly sensation on his spine. He moved past tents, spotlights, and a roaring generator. Off in the shadows, he saw a man sucking a guide’s neck. Near the back of the camp, he found the supervisor’s tent. A redheaded man came out, zipping his trousers. He was short and wiry, built like a boy. His name was stitched over his shirt pocket: D
R
. G. O’D
ONNELL
.

“I’m looking for Kaskov,” Campbell said. “Or is this the latrine?”

“You could say that.” O’Donnell’s gaze swept over Campbell’s bloody shirt, and then he pointed at the tent. “Kaskov’s in there. Good luck.”

Campbell walked through the flap. Inside, halogen lanterns hung from wire hooks, spilling light over a cot, a dartboard, and a satcom on a tripod. A blond-haired woman sat behind a metal desk. The surface was astringently
neat, except for an ashtray, where smoke curled up from a cigar. A wooden plaque read T
ATIANA
K
ASKOV
.

He clamped his lips together, trying not to smile. This pretty little gal was Kaskov? Her hair was cut just below her chin, and her bangs were shot through with platinum highlights.

She reached for the cigar and looked up. Her eyes were an electric blue, and something flickered behind them as she stared at Campbell. “Are you the bat expert?” she asked.

“Actually the term is
chiropterologist
.” He glanced at her pale, toned arms. She had a tattoo above her left wrist, a green snake curling around a black infinity sign.

How long has she been a vampire?
he wondered. She appeared to be in her early thirties. Not a girly-girl, but damn cute. Just his kind of babe.

She rose from her chair and sat on the edge of the desk, puffing the cigar. Her khakis were tight, showing the outline of her thighs. “We expected you two days ago,” she said. “Did you stop for coffee?”

Campbell sighed. Okay, maybe he wasn’t her type, but she didn’t have to hassle him. “I’ve been in the jungle two weeks,” he said. “My socks are wet. I’ve got blisters.”

“News flash,” she said. “You’re not in a resort. You’re in an African rain forest.”

“You don’t have to be condescending.” He plucked at his shirt. “See this blood? A crocodile killed my guide.”

“That’s a relief. I thought you ate him. The guide, I mean.” Her voice was cold, but her eyebrows moved in a teasing arch.

Maybe she does like me
, he thought. First, he needed to
change clothes and find some blood. Then he’d put the moves on her.

She swept her bangs to the side. “Is this your first trip to the Gabonese Republic?”

“Yeah. I’ve never been out of the U.S.”

“Urban rules don’t apply in the bush, Dr. Campbell. Abandon all ye know.” She puffed her cigar, smoke curling around her ears. “Did the Al-Dîn rep explain the situation with the bats?”

“Not really.” Campbell shrugged. “I’m supposed to observe them.”

She blew a smoke ring. “These bats have an eight-foot wingspan. Our last chiropterologist thought they were an unclassified vampire species.”

The last chiropterologist? How many have they had? Campbell cleared his throat. “Vampire bats aren’t indigenous to this continent. Well, except for false vampire bats, but they’re small. A three-inch wingspan, max. The bats you’re referencing are probably flying foxes. Better known as fruit bats.”

Tatiana pointed to a red welt on her forearm. “See this? Some kind of lizard bit me. The little bastard had wings. It’s an undiscovered species. No family or genus. Why can’t a vampire bat exist in Gabon?”

He clasped his hands behind his back. Was she a nut job? The kind who believed in UFOs and Sasquatch? You couldn’t reason with those types, but he wanted to try.

“If they’re as big as you say, why hasn’t anybody noticed them by now?” he asked.

“Oh, we’ve got a specimen. Mr. Al-Dîn shot one a month ago.”

Campbell felt a prickle of excitement. “Did you preserve it?”

“The remains went back to South Africa with Mr. Al-Dîn. But not before he touched the disgusting thing. He came down with Marburg Virus.”

Campbell’s mouth went dry. He stepped back, tucking his arms closer to his body. Fruit bats were vectors for hemorrhagic fevers. Marburg had a six percent mortality rate in vampires. Not that risky, but still. His gaze swept over Tatiana. Her eyes were clear. No jaundice or bleeding.

“Don’t panic. Mr. Al-Dîn was the only one who got sick, and he recovered. Somewhat.” She stubbed out the cigar. “Let’s find your tent. When dawn hits, it isn’t pretty.”

She grabbed a halogen lantern and walked out of the tent. Her light swept over the ground, where driver ants ripped apart a millipede. The redheaded man walked by and gave her a thumbs-up, then he waded into the grassy field.

“You’ll meet Greg O’Donnell later,” she said. “He’s our smartass biochemist. We have a latrine, but he likes to piss in the wild. He’s bunking with me tonight, so you can have his tent.”

A whirring noise made Campbell glance at the clearing. A dark cloud raced across the brightening sky. The cloud broke apart into hundreds of black smudges, and then the smudges spun off into dots. A breeze rushed by him, carrying faint echolocation clicks.

Bats. Hundreds of them.

“Move!” Tatiana pushed him toward a tent. “Get under a cot and stay there.”

“Are you kidding? I’m gonna watch.”

“You’d better find a gun.”

Campbell frowned. A gun? Was she kidding? “These are bats,” he said.

“I know.” She sprinted over to a group of Congolese mercenaries. Above her, slate-colored blotches whizzed through the camp, knocking over spotlights. Campbell felt confused. Bats were superb navigators, but these creatures were crashing into everything.

At the other end of the camp, shouts rose up, followed by the
tat-tat-tat
of an AK-47. Campbell’s scalp tightened—a bullet would cause a real death. He dove into a tent, zipped the flap, and crawled on his belly to the small mesh window. His legs trembled as he inched up. The air had begun to pale, and he saw obsidian slabs plunge through the camp. What the hell were they? Further out, in the
bai
, he heard a scream. It was coming from O’Donnell. The little guy raced across the field, punching his fists at the bats. Right before he reached the edge of the camp, amorphous shapes engulfed him. He shrieked, twisting from side to side. Then he was lifted into the air and carried toward the cliffs.

Campbell pissed himself. He sank to the tent floor and put his hands over his head.
Bats had picked up a man?
O’Donnell was a small fellow, but still. A Martial Eagle had a 2.6-meter wingspan, but it didn’t carry prey into the trees, didn’t hunt in groups, and didn’t live in rain forests.

For the next twelve hours, Campbell huddled in the tent, trapped by daylight. Fatigue and nerves pulled him under, and when he awoke, the sun had just gone down. He stepped out of the tent. Spotlights were broken, and the mess pavilion lay in a heap. Tatiana stood in the clearing, organizing a team. She grouped Campbell with two other scientists: Dr. Nick Parnell, a blond entomologist who gave off a 1960s surfer vibe, and Dr. Emmett Walpole, a middle-aged, round-faced British virologist who kept babbling about hemorrhagic fevers.

Campbell walked up to Tatiana. “We need more guns,” he said.

She skewered him with a glance. “Why?”

“To rescue Dr. O’Donnell.”

She shrugged. “He’s dead.”

“You can’t be sure. He’s a vampire.”

“He’s history. I’ll find another biochemist.”

Campbell stiffened. They weren’t going after O’Donnell? “Then what are we fixing to do?”

“It’s a good time to hunt bats,” she said. “They’ve just fed.”

“Wait, no.” He licked his lips. “It wasn’t bats that took O’Donnell.”

“Get back in line, you dumb fuck.” She shoved past Campbell and turned into the clearing. Five Congolese mercenaries followed her.

Campbell fell back with the others and aimed his flashlight over the tall grass. The beam picked out white chunks. Femurs and rib cages. That’s why there were no animals in the
bai
, he thought. It was a killing field.

Dr. Walpole veered into the shadowy clearing. “No,
it wasn’t Ebola,” he muttered. “Possibly could be a strain of Marburg. Or a new filovirus.”

Tatiana glanced over her shoulder and nodded at the blond entomologist. “Nick, take care of your buddy.”

Nick Parnell pulled the older man back in line. “Pipe down, Emmett,” he said. “You’ve cracked. Too many days in the bush will do that.”

“It isn’t the bush, Nick. It’s
her
.”

“Come on, dude,” Parnell said. “Be quiet or she’ll hear you.”

Emmett put two fingers to his lips and turned them back and forth, as if using a key.

An hour later, the team reached the cliffs. Campbell followed the stink of guano to a shelf of rock. From this height, the moon shone down on a split in the rain forest, where the Ngounie waterfalls poured into a black ravine.
Someone should post a danger sign by those falls
, Campbell thought. They were a demarcation point, a place where life morphed into death.

The team filed through an arched opening into the cave and held up their lanterns. As the halogen beams washed over Stone Age drawings, the images seemed to lunge out of the rocks. Campbell saw disjointed pictures of fanged men; skeletons; a baby in a cage. He dragged his light over a rock table. Pottery shards lay on the ground.

“What’s that for?” he asked Tatiana. “A ritual of some kind?”

“Who cares?” She pulled out a Glock and led the team into a twisty passage. Their lights shimmered on the blood-streaked walls. The stench of decomposing tissue
waved over Campbell. One of the Congolese mercenaries vomited. Another soldier broke away from the group and ran toward the cave opening.

Tatiana shoved her way around the scientists. She aimed her Glock and fired. The soldier’s head jerked. Red sludge hit the wall in front of him and ran down.

“Anyone else?” she asked.

The other mercenaries backed against the passage wall. Campbell’s ears rang, and he smelled gunpowder.
What the hell. This is insane.

Tatiana began to pace, her pants riding low on her hips.

“They’ll run the first chance they get,” Nick Parnell told her.

Tatiana nodded. “Seize their weapons.”

She aimed the Glock at the mercenaries, waiting for Parnell to collect their rifles. Tatiana turned back to Campbell. “Why are you still here?” she shouted. “Bring me a specimen.”

Get it yourself
, Campbell thought, and folded his arms. The Al-Dîn Corporation wasn’t paying him enough. But Dr. Walpole had already started down the passage, muttering about RNA replication and incubation periods.

Parnell set the guns next to Tatiana, then nudged Campbell’s arm. “Get moving.”

They walked into a chamber. A fetid smell rushed up Campbell’s nose, and he pinched his nostrils. Gunfire blasted from the chamber they’d just left, followed by muffled yells. Dr. Walpole darted back into the corridor, his boots scraping over gravel. Campbell repressed an urge to follow him. He glanced at Parnell. “Should we go back?”

“Nope. Tatiana wants a specimen. Let’s push on.”

Campbell shuffled into the gloom. His boots made a sticky swish as he waded through guano. His light picked out a bundle of rags. Then he saw a human hand, the fingers chewed at the edges. Dear God, he’d found O’Donnell. A stain oozed from the body, and bats had gathered around the edges to drink. They resembled bald, toothed ravens.

Parnell backed up. “These things looked bigger at the camp. How did they lift O’Donnell?”

Campbell’s heartbeat pushed against his eardrums. “These are pups,” he said. “Just babies.”

He angled his light toward the roof of the cave. It was arched like the interior of a cathedral. Rows of silhouettes hung upside-down between the stalactites, and far above them, a colossal mass began to stir.

Parnell spun around and bolted into the corridor. Campbell ran after him. His boots skidded in guano, and he lost his balance. His flashlight sprang out of his hand and clattered to the ground several feet away. As he waded through the muck, a dank breeze stirred his hair. Above him, rhythmic clicks sped up, so loud that they seemed part of the air, part of the rocks, part of him. He stretched his hand for the halogen.