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he sucked his teeth and chuckled happily.
Once more he ran into the kitchen, pausing to select a long
stainless-steel carving knife from the cutlery drawer before hurrying
across the yard to the gate and along the path.
In the lantern beam, Debra's footprints showed clearly in the soft earth
with his own overlaying them. He followed them to where she had
blundered off the path, and found the mark of her body where she had
lain.
Clever bitch, he chuckled again and followed her tracks through the
forest. She had laid an easy trail to follow, dragging a passage
through the rain-heavy grass and wiping the droplets from the stems. To
the hunter's eye it was a clearly blazed trail.
Every few minutes he paused to throw the beam of the lantern ahead of
him amongst the trees. He was thrilling now to the hunter's lust, the
primeval force which was the mainspring of his existence. His earlier
set-back made the chase sweeter for him.
He went on carefully, following the wandering trail, the aimless
footprints turning haphazardly in a wide circle.
He stopped again and pa
tops, and he saw something move at the extreme range of the lamp,
something pale and round.
He held it in the lantern beam, and saw the woman's pale strained face
as she moved forward slowly and hesitantly. She went like a
sleep-walker, with arms extended ahead of her, and with shuffling
uncertain gait.
She was coming directly towards him, oblivious of the light which held
her captive in its beam. Once she paused to hug her swollen belly and
sob with weariness and fear.
The legs of her trousers were sodden with rain water and her flimsy
shoes were already torn, and as she hobbled closer he saw that her arms
and her lips were blue and shivering with the cold.
Akkers stood quietly watching her coming towards him, like a chicken
drawn to the swaying cobra, Her long dark hair hung in damp ropes down
her shoulders, and dangled in her face. Her thin blouse was wet also
with drops fallen from the trees, and it was plastered over the
thrusting mound of her belly.
He let her come closer, enjoying the fierce thrill of having her in his
power. Drawing out the final consummation of his vengeance, hoarding
each moment of it like a miser.
When she was five paces from him he played the beam full in her face,
and he giggled.
She screamed, her whole face convulsing, and she whirled like a wild
animal and ran blindly. Twenty flying paces before she ran headlong
into the stem of a morula, tree.
She fell back, collapsing to her knees and sobbed aloud, clutching at
her bruised cheek.
Then she scrambled to her feet and stood shivering, turning her head and
cocking it for the next sound.
Silently he moved around her, drawing close and he giggled again, close
behind her.
She screamed again and ran blindly, panic-stricken, witless with terror
until an ant-bear hole caught her foot and flung her down heavily to the
ground, and she lay there sobbing.
Akkers moved leisurely and silently after her, he was enjoying himself
for the first time in two years. Like a cat he did not want to end it,
he wanted it to last a long time.
He stooped over her and whispered a filthy word, and instantly she
rolled to her feet and was up and ru
through the trees. He followed her, and in his crazed mind she became a
symbol Of all the thousand animals he had hunted and killed.
David ran barefooted in the soft earth of the road. He ran without
feeling his bruised and torn skin, without feeling the pounding of his
heart nor the protest of his lungs.
As the road rounded the shoulder of the hill and dipped towards the
homestead he stopped abruptly, and stared panting at the lurid glow of
the arc lights that flood lit the grounds and garden of Jabulani. It
made no sense that the floodlights should be burnin& and David felt a
fresh flood of alarm. He sprinted on down the hill.
He ran through the empty, ransacked rooms shouting her name, but the
echoes mocked him.
When he reached the front veranda he saw something moving in the
darkness, beyond the broken screen door.
Zulu! He ran forward. Here, boy! Here, boy! Where is she? The dog
staggered up the steps towards him, his tail wagged a perfunctory
greeting, but he was obviously hurt. A heavy blow along the side of his
head had broken the jaw, or dislocated it, so that it hung lopsided and
grotesque. He was still stu
Where is she, Zulu? Where is she? The dog seemed to make an effort to
gather its scattered wits. Where is she, boy? She's not in the house.
Where is she? Find her, boy, find her. He led the labrador out into
the yard, and he followed gamely as David circled the house. At the
back door Zulu picked up the scent on the fresh damp earth. He started
resolutely towards the gate, and David saw the footprints in the
floodlights, Debra's and the big masculine prints which ran after them.
As Zulu crossed the yard, David turned back into his office. The
lantern was missing from its shelf, but there was a five-cell flashlight
near the back. He shoved it into his pocket and grabbed a handful of
shotgun shells.
Then he went quickly to the gun cabinet and unlocked it. He snatched
the Purdey shotgun from the rack and loaded it as he ran.
Zulu was staggering along the path beyond the gates, and David hurried
after him.
Joha
spectacle of the ru
passion to chase and drag down and kill, yet it was seasoned with a
feline delight in torment. He was playing with his wounded dragging
prey, ru
the climax, the final consuming thrill of the kill.
The moment came at last, some deep atavistic sense of the ritual of the
hunt, for all sport killing has its correct ceremony, and Akkers knew it
must end now.
He came up behind the ru
the thick dark hair in the crippled claw of his hand, wrapping it with a
quick movement about his wrist and jerking back her head, laying open
the long pale throat for the knife.
She turned upon him with a strength and ferocity he had not anticipated.
Her body was hard and strong and supple, and now that she could place
him she drove at him with the wild terror of a hunted thing.
He was unprepared, her attack took him off-balance, and he went over
backwards with her on top of him, and he dropped the knife and the
lantern into the grass to protect his eyes, for she was tearing at them
with long sharp nails. He felt them rip into his nose and cheek, and
she screeched like a cat, for she was also an animal in this moment.
He freed the stiff claw from the tangle of her hair, and he drew it
back, holding her off with his right hand and he struck her.
It was like a wooden club, stiff and hard and without feeling. A single
blow with it had stu
across the temple, a sound like an axe swung at a tree trunk.
It knocked all the fight out of her, and he came up on his knees,
holding her with his good hand and with the other he clubbed her
mercilessly, beat her head back and across with a steady rhythm. In the