Free Wild Meat by Nero Newton Page A

the ones we are finding dead. There is another body yesterday.”
    “Do I have to go out and get those clothes myself?”
    “Look at these scratches!” Marcel protested. “When you run away from the men, they can’t get to you fast enough, and the animal do this. That’s how you get infected. You go back out there again, you get a lot more sick.”
    A few times Sanderson started to leave the trailer, still naked, and with each attempt giggles erupted from a dozen girls who had positioned themselves a few yards away. To keep him from walking back across the camp and exposing himself to anyone who might have missed his first performance, Marcel had to promise him the clothes he wanted.
    “And sunglasses,” Sanderson shouted as Marcel went out the door.
     
    * * *
     
    Half an hour later, Hugh Sanderson was dressed in oversized coveralls with the sleeves and legs rolled up. The boots were at least a size too small, and the cheap, rigid material didn’t bend at the toes when he walked.
    “Still looking for sunglasses,” Marcel told him, and left again.
    Sitting on the foreman’s bed, Hugh began to feel sleepy. He focused on the sound of the small gas generator just outside the trailer. He marveled at the complex mixture of sounds, all harmonizing in a way he’d never noticed. Now he not only noticed, but understood. He could not have explained it in words, but he was sure that now he understood.
    He opened the door of the trailer and the light stabbed him even more viciously than before. He retreated, slammed the door and held it for a moment, as though the rays of sunshine might try to pursue him. He sat straight-backed on the edge of the bed, not sure what he was waiting for, but certain he would know it when it appeared. 
    Marcel returned, still without sunglasses. He turned on a fan and a big portable stereo. “Sorry about no air conditioning.”
    There was no radio reception, either, but a CD started up and Sanderson vaguely recognized an old rock tune, something from the seventies or eighties.
    Marcel said, “When Mr. Wilson come here two months ago, he forget his CDs that he bring in the car.” The foreman left again.
    Wilson. Hugh vaguely remembered the production manager. But now the world such people occupied was no more real to Hugh than a cartoon playing on TV, seen through a neighbor’s window.
    H e must have dozed because when he suddenly sat up, fully awake, he saw that the sunlight slanting through the windows reached far into the room, its angle approaching horizontal.
    Marcel reappeared , followed by a husky middle-aged woman carrying a plate of meat and rice. The foreman opened the little fridge and handed Hugh a cold bottle of Beaufort beer from Cameroon. Hugh’s first icy swig thrilled him from throat to crotch, and he finished the bottle at once. Marcel handed him another, pointed out that the fridge was full, and told him that the woman who had brought the food would be right outside if he needed anything. Then he departed again.
     
    * * *
     
    Marcel guessed that Sanderson was fairly well settled and would soon sleep off the urge to charge into the forest. He breathed a long sigh as he stepped out into the sunlight and closed the door behind him.
    The big barrel-shaped guard was coming his way, and Marcel greeted him with a slight head movement. The big man was tiresome to talk with, but at least Marcel could switch back to French and quit struggling with English.
    The bloody splint on the guard’s nose usually made him seem to be squinting angrily, but at the moment his mouth was curled into a sloppy smile of triumph. He held out a well worn, double-folded piece of letter-sized paper.
    “I found it in her Land Rover.”
    My Land Rover now , Marcel thought. He’d found the record of sale in the glove compartment, with no buyer’s name filled in. The woman had picked up the vehicle just a day before she arrived in the camp, and hadn’t even filled out the forms that made it legally