A Feast Unknown

At one time the Kitasi had been a powerful people. They had warred with the Masai, the Agikuyu, and the Bandili. The thirty villages of 20,000 population, as a result, were now six with about a thousand inhabitants. The Kitasi hated many people, but they hated me most of all, and with good reason.

The men in the old stake-bed truck heading out from the village may have been told about me by radio and were looking for me. It was going southeast; I was going southwest. We were about a mile apart.

Then they spotted me, and the truck swung around and raced towards me. I ran towards some acacia trees, a half a mile away, and got behind the nearest one as the truck pulled up, brakes screeching. It had stopped about a hundred yards away.

There were three men in the cab and six on the bed. All got out of the truck. Three were armed with rifles that looked, from my distance, like pre-World War I Enfields. One carried a heavy spear and a machete in a sheath. Two had bows and wore quivers of arrows on their backs. One had a revolver, and the other two carried big axes.

They talked awhile and then spread out in an ever-widening arc, the ends of which curved out towards me. A rifleman was on each end; the third rifleman was in the center. The two bowmen flanked him, and the spearman and the axemen were equidistant between the center man and the end men. The arc advanced slowly while the men shouted encouragement to each other or shouted insults and threats at me.

So far, they did not know whether or not I had a revolver, but they did know I had no rifle. There were nine of them, and they should have charged me in the truck, swung broadside when near me, and then let loose with a volley. Afterwards, they could have jumped off the truck and charged me on foot. If they were brave and determined, they probably would have gotten me, even if I had killed a number of them.

They preferred to take it cautiously. My reputation probably made them extra careful. When they were within 60 feet, they stopped. I remained on the other side of the tree. The riflemen on the ends ran even further outwards and then cut in so they could get behind me. I waited. I was naked and had only the knife, which had been worn down so much that it no longer had a good balance for throwing. I was going to have to depend upon speed, and I was not at my freshest after having run all night without eating and with little water.

Nearby were several stones, two of which were of the right size and shape for throwing. I put the knife between my teeth and picked up a stone in each hand. The riflemen on both ends seeing this, shouted the news to the others. Then they started shooting at me.

A bullet ricocheted off the tree. I darted around to the other side and started ru

All of these men had been raised on tales about me and so regarded me as some sort of demon. They were very excited and apprehensive, and the fact that I ran towards them instead of away additionally rattled them. Moreover, under these conditions, my zigzagging made it even more difficult to hit me. And

I am swift; I have been clocked at 8.6 seconds in the 100-yard dash, and I was barefooted.

Yet they were brave men and stood their ground. (The Kitasi still eliminate their cowards before they reach 18, despite the watch that the British had kept on them.) They kept to their stations and fired at me, and the spearman and the two axemen ran towards me, shouting Kitasi war cries.

I stopped briefly and cast a stone. It caught the rifleman on his head. He fell backwards, and I ran again, this time straight towards him. The youth with the revolver ran towards me, firing. I paid him no attention because he would hit me only by accident while he ran. The bowmen aimed again at me, while the axemen and spearman ran in towards me. I threw myself down and then jumped up and hurled my second stone. It struck the bowman on my left in the neck, and he fell down.

The riflemen on the ends were ru

It had been nine. Suddenly, it was six. The spear went over my shoulder and thudded into the ground before me. I yanked it out, paused as bullets screamed by, and cast. The spear went through the shoulder of the youth with the revolver.

I dived for the rifle by the first man I’d hit, rolled, and came up with it. It still had an unfired cartridge in it. I took my time and aimed, and the rifleman on the right threw up his arms, his weapon flying, and fell on his face. I picked up a cartridge off the ground beside a spilled box and inserted it in the breech and jumped to one side, went to one knee, and fired again. The last of the riflemen clutched his leg and fell down and kicked and screamed. I removed the bandolier from the corpse and slipped it over my shoulder.

Sun flashed off an axehead as it turned over and over with me at the end of its arc through the air. I leaped to one side, inserted another cartridge, and killed the man who still had his axe. He fell a few feet from me; another two seconds and he might have split my skull.

The others ran away. Since I was between them and the truck, they went on foot. I drove off in the truck. The fuel meter was broken, so I could not know how much gas I had left. It did not matter. I would drive until it ran out.

I was happy. The fight had lifted me up, and I had a means for putting more distance more swiftly between me and my pursuers. I also noticed that I had not had an orgasm during the killings. This meant that the exertion and excitement had been too much for even that powerful aberrated behavior to appear, or it meant that I was still drained of seminal fluid, or it might mean that I was rid of my aberration. I was inclined to favor the second speculation.

But I had water in several canteens in the truck and could rest for a while. The bumpy ride was, to me, a relaxation. And I was headed at a speed faster than I had hoped to attain this morning towards the people who could give me an answer, if anyone could.

12

The shadow slashed across the truck like a knife cutting apart my hopes of escape.

The roar of the jets followed the shadow. Overhead, by 30 feet, the jet sped ahead, pulled up and around, and then came back in. In the brief look at it, I saw that it was a Kenyan Army plane, an English

Huntley-Hawker.

The jet came back only 20 feet above the ground and about fifty yards to my right. The pilot was trying to see if I was in the truck. He shot by, his black face turned towards me. He gri

I began evasive action. It looked, however, as if my evading days were over. I had no cover near. Even if I had, I would have been burned or blasted out.

The jet passed me and continued near the ground for perhaps 2000 feet. Then it pulled up to about a thousand and circled so that it would come in straight at me. Undoubtedly, though I could not see his features, he was still gri

He probably did not know the reason for the Kenyan government’s decision to destroy me. He may have heard stories about me, but, as an educated man, he would have been forced to laugh at the teller of them as an ignorant and superstitious man.