Free Zambezi Seduction by Tamara Cape

tried hard to interest me in his weekend hobby.”
    “Don’ t tell me he thought you were a tart?”
    “No. His thing was climbing church towers to observe and photograph bats.”
    “Yuk!”
    “My thought too . The other hunted rare butterflies.”
    Chad was still chuckling. “I take it you tol d batman and the lepidopterist, ‘thanks, but no thanks’?”
    “Right. With the mutilation of my ad, the whole thing had gone flat.”
    ***
    When the rain stopped they got out of the car and walked around to ease their cramped limbs. The storm had brought one major change: the river was reborn. In the dark they stood on the bank listening to the wet swirling noises as the flood passed.
    “Things could be worse,” Chad quipped. “The car might have stopped in the river bed.”
    Kerry saw the water as yet another obstacle to overcome.
    “Now I feel even more cut off.”
    “It’ll be down to a trickle by morning,” Chad reassured her.
    For several minutes he paced back and forth along the bank.
    “Tomorrow, if they haven’t found us by mid-morning, I’ll walk up to the road,” he announced. “I am not spending another day playing Crusoe while you test your survival training.”
    Cruel. He could be the most annoying of men. It was almost as if he blamed her for their predicament. He seemed to have forgotten she had urged him to slow down during the silly chase of the zebra that had led to the breakdown. She didn’t argue. He was quite right in one sense: they had to get out of here.
    They lowered the seat-backs, making themselves as comfortable as possible. The storm had cooled the air and they put on woollen jerseys against the night’s chill and ate their meagre supper, finishing with half an orange each.
    “Try to sleep,” Chad said. “It ’s going to be a long night.”
    ***
    Kerry lay thinking of the highlights. Camp – the squirrels, glossy starlings, small lizards and hopping hornbills. The solitary giraffe walking down to water, alert, wary of the crocs along the shore. The awkward movement that spread the front legs before the head could be lowered to drink. Best of all was the evening when they heard the trumpeting squeals and the elephant herd came out of the trees in a long dusty line to the lake – backlit through the Mopanis by the sun sinking like a huge blood-red fireball.
    Sunsets were one of Africa ’s wonders. Nowhere else Kerry had been did they come close.
    Their pleasure in these sights had been marred by only one thing – their failure to see a leopard. That very morning they had left camp early in determined mood and travelled along a road through perfect leopard country. There was good cover, a patchwork of light and shady ground, and a mostly dry river bed with the occasional stagnant pool.
    She had her orders. Search every tree on her side of the road – in particular, big shady trees with a fork close to the ground. There were false alarms when Chad stopped the car and used the binoculars. Kerry’s neck was still stiff from the constant turning to look from tree to river bed to tree to road. They glimpsed shy bushbuck and enjoyed good, sometimes excellent, sightings of elephant, buffalo, kudu, waterbuck, reedbuck and giraffe moving out to their daytime feeding grounds. Scenes to live in the memory. Yet somehow they failed to compensate for not seeing a leopard in that perfect leopard country.
    Then in mid-morning, well out from camp, they had spotted the wheeling vultures.
    ***
    Distant hyena noises roused Kerry. Beside her Chad slept on. She could smell the rain – or the river – on the breeze, cold now against her face. She looked forward to morning when the sun would burn off the dampness, leaving everything smelling fresh and clean.
    Over the next hour hyena sounds continued to reach the valley. From up by the lion kill, Kerry guessed. She had stopped taking notice; then suddenly the night reverberated with a wild savage roaring – so powerful it seemed to engulf them in