The Greystoke Legacy
Read The Greystoke Legacy Online
Authors: Andy Briggs
Dad, I know you're going to love this one . . .
1
T
he snap of a branch underfoot sounded like a gunshot in Samson's ears. He froze, partly concerned that shifting his bodyweight might break another rotting branch, partly because he didn't want to alarm his prey.
He held his breath. The humid rainforest air formed beads of perspiration that rolled down his dark brow, stinging his eyes. He wiped them away with a muddy sweatband wrapped on the wrist of the same hand with which he gripped the razor-sharp machete.
The discordant caws of African gray parrots, the mindless chitter from flocks of Sharpe's starlings, and the blood pumping in his ears filled his senses. Behind, his two companions had frozen too. They stared at him with a mixture of tension and anger at his loud clumsy steps. One was Jean-Paul, his face heavily pockmarked from birth, who was weighed down by the large hemp-net strung across his back. The other, Nicolas, gripped a shotgunâhis clothes, like those of the others, were dirty and stained with dried sweat and blood, but his weapon was meticulously maintained. They looked the part with their bandannas, cropped hair, and crooked teeth. There was never any humor in their faces; theirs were lives spent in the dark corruption of human misery. Here, in the untouched verdant jungle, they were unwelcome intruders.
For them the rainforest held no wonder. The velvet mist hugging the mountainside was an irritant, thorny plants and infernal insects a problem they would prefer to burn away. But this was where their quarry lived.
A loud crack made Samson narrow his eyes to sharpen his vision against the shafts of sunlight that pierced the canopy. Another snap confirmed something was moving. Something big. He scanned the dense foliage until he spotted movement. Through the gaps in the branches he saw a huge black shape slowly cross.
Samson ducked, thankful they had approached downwind and their presence remained undetected. For a moment, he lost track of the beastâthen a huge black hand, twice the size of his own, but equally dexterous, reached out and effortlessly snapped a slender bamboo stem. The cleared vegetation gave Samson a full view of the 260-pound mountain gorilla.
Shaggy black fur covered the ape but its hand was hairless, picking at the stems with exquisite care. Samson wasn't interested in its remarkable similarity to a human handâa pair of gorilla hands brought $200 on the black market, bought by the superstitious to bring good luck and fertility. They could sell the bushmeat to local towns for a pretty profit. If they could capture a baby alive, then that could bring a payday from $5,000 upward. Poaching endangered species was a lucrative sideline for Samson, away from his rebel activities for the notorious Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda.
Long white canine teeth, in better condition than Samson's own, stripped the bamboo. Intelligent brown eyes peered from under the gorilla's low brow.
Samson only saw the creatures as a means to a financial end. He had no love for them. Nor was he concerned that there were less than a thousand mountain gorillas left in the wild. By the end of the day, there would be fewer by his hand.
The female reached for another stem and the undergrowth moved as more of her band emerged. Samson could make out another two females and three juveniles no bigger than two-year-old humans. The youngsters were chasing one another up trunks and then hanging precariously from branches before cannonballing into the ferns.
With one hand, Samson indicated to his colleagues to crouch low. He quietly pushed his machete into the soft earth, the hilt angled toward him so he could snatch it up at a moment's notice. Then he drew his revolver from his waistband. It would take one shot through the female's skull to kill her, but that was a desperate move. The head was worth more intact. He hoped two shots to the heart would suffice. If he missed, there was a chance she would chargeâthen it would have to be a headshot.
Samson felt the thrill of adrenalin he always experienced during a hunt, no matter how one-sided it was. In fact, he only ever hunted when the risk of danger was minimal. He quickly checked if his companions had followed his lead.
Jean-Paul had vanished.
During the two-day hike he had been constantly complaining about the weight of the net so it was unlikely, now they had reached their goal, that he would just turn tail and run from the beasts.
Nicolas looked equally baffled by his friend's disappearance, which he silently communicated through a series of frowns and shrugs.
Then a bark echoed across the jungle. Samson was certain they had made no noise, but the band had seen them and were scattering for cover. The female glared at him, incisors bared as she grunted a warning. He was more than aware of the rippling power beneath the fur. He'd heard tales of poachers mauled to death, limbs torn from sockets.
Samson fired a shot. His hand was shaking uncontrollably and the bore of the gun made the shot fall very wide, splintering a trunk ten feet away. The loud report galvanized the female and she pelted into the undergrowth.
Samson knew there was no point in being subtle now; his paycheck was getting away.
“Jean-Paul, move your stinking butt!” he yelled, his accent tinged French. He turned to Nicolas and what he saw chilled him to the coreâ
His companion seemed to have been hoisted vertically into the boughs of the tree. Samson witnessed Nicolas's shotgun still falling from the man's grasp as the legs silently disappeared into the branches. It happened so fast that Samson briefly thought it was an optical illusion, if it were not for the discarded weapon on the ground. Nicolas must have leapt into the tree for some reason. One thing was for sureâSamson was alone and he had no wish to pursue the startled gorillas without backup.
“Nicolas?” he hissed. “Jean-Paul?”
Only the fleeing gorillas' grunts answered him. Swearing, Samson retrieved his machete and jogged back down the incline to where he had last seen Jean-Paul.
“You pair of idiots! They're runnin' away!” Were his companions hiding from him? Playing some kind of practical joke? “It'll take another day before we find 'em again! Is that what you fools want?”
He reached the fallen shotgun and glanced up. Nicolas's legs dangled in the canopy twenty feet above.
“What ya doin' . . .” his voice trailed off. It was clear Nicolas hadn't ascended the tree by choice. Branches obscured his torso. He wasn't moving; his hands hung limp by his side.
Fear gripped Samson. Had his friend triggered another poacher's trap? Competition for rare game was fierce, often ending in bloodshed.
He moved for a better view. Now he could see the vines around the man's throat. His face was swollen, his eyes lifeless.
“Jean-Paul . . . where are you?” shouted Samson, his voice quivering with fear. He knew in his gut that a similar fate had struck his other companion. Anger suddenly flushed the fear away. A profitable trip had unraveled and left him standing alone in the middle of the deadly jungle.
Sudden movement in the canopy above shifted the anger back into icy fear. The killer was still there.
Something big hurtled through the treetops at great speed. Samson fought rising panic. If it had been another poacher he would have shot Samson already. His superstitious imagination ran wild and he wondered if the gorillas had come back lured by the scent of blood.
Then a howl echoed through the trees. It was inhuman, savage, like nothing he had ever heard before.
Dropping his machete he grabbed the shotgun and blindly fired two shots into the branches. He was sure he hadn't hit anything, but the din stopped.
Nothing stirred.
The hairs on the back of Samson's neck rose in a primeval response to danger. He sensed eyes watching him. He weighed up his options: He could run, but Nicolas and Jean-Paul had carried all the equipment while he had scouted ahead. Without food, water, and a map he wouldn't be able to find his way back to the encampment. He needed to strip the gear from their bodies before he could flee and he still hadn't found Jean-Paul's body.
Samson's keen eyes spotted movement. A large humanoid shape, light brown and hairless, leapt an impossibly wide space between the treetops in a single bound. Samson was too slow to aim, but he fired anyway in a hope the noise would scare his opponent away.
The lofty canopy cast a deep shade, preventing anything else besides waist-high fern thickets to grow below. Samson realized how exposed he was so he raced for cover within the ferns. He made it several yards before his foot snagged a looping root and he fell sprawling to the earth. His gun skittered into the undergrowth and he cursed the fact that he'd left his machete behind.
Blood trickled from Samson's hands, cut on sharp thorns. He tried to ignore the pain, but it had stirred a memory. The figure he had seen swinging above his head reminded him of tales of the White Ape that was said to roam the mountains. Some Elders claimed it was the spirit of a slain silverback gorilla that murdered hunters. Samson had never believed that.
Until now.
Fighting the urge to vomit, Samson crawled through the foliage, flicking away a long black millipede that was crawling across his hand. He scrambled quickly, determined to put distance between him and his assailant. Then he became aware that both hands were damp and sticky. Had he torn them on further thorns? A quick check revealed it wasn't his blood but he had crawled through a stream of it.
His gaze was inexorably drawn to the source: A pockmarked human face peered out of a bush with dead eyes.
Samson's bowels churned and he couldn't stop the whimper escaping his lips. He rapidly scuttled in the opposite directionâignoring the soft thud of feet landing behind him. It could only be his attacker. Terror propelled Samson onward. He didn't dare look behind. If he could only reach some denser cover than the thickets . . .
Something flicked past his ear with a sharp whoosh. A rough vine noose neatly gripped his neck and a violent jerk forced him onto his back. His blood-slicked fingers groped at the noose as he was dragged backward through the shrubs.
From his prone position, Samson had a fleeting glimpse of the murdererâit was a man. Naked save a ragged pair of cargo shorts, he possessed a deeply tanned body that was as muscular as a Greek god's. The killer had a dark mane of tangled hair, and intense gray eyes peered at him with contempt. Samson tried to pull himself free, but the killer moved with a grace and speed that he couldn't match. A blood-soaked hand drew a tarnished knife and swung it down with precision.