(Is breathing hard) My goodness, I feel like I was participating right alongside our two protagonists in this chapter after writing it. While I feel that I'm very good at composing and typing up action scenes, actually doing the "choreography" for a lengthy, drawn-out one is a major struggle, make no doubts about it. This chapter is-at last!-the first in a climactic trilogy where both our hero and heroine'll be doing the "Desperation Samba" in deadly earnest-and with apologies to Jimmy Buffet too.
I also want to tell my readers three things: First, if you have managed to keep at my side during this journey without becoming bored and wandering off, I profusely thank you. Your patientice is about to be paid off in a big way. Second, this fanfic is about to live up to its T rating in a big way, so brace yourself. As I've drafted it, Nduli's personality profile is closest to the sociopathic/psychotic/gangbanger type. He talks very much like a gangbanger too, so consider your eyes and ears warned.
Third, I know that the willingness and tenative trust-well, more or less-Jack and Ann display by going into the situtation they're about to be swept up in will likely be rather difficult to swallow for many readers, in spite of my best efforts to give it a whitewash of plausibility. However, there are more instances by far in Jackson's King Kong where, under the banner of thrilling spectacle, we as viewers have our ability to suspend disbelief put under considerable strain, to say the least. Mine occur much less often and hopefully are far less obvious in comparison.
After all those words, the only thing I have left to say is thanks so much to my loyal reviewers! Your reviews light up my waking days!
Three blind mice,
Three blind mice.
See how they run,
See how they run…
Three Blind Mice, a Mother Goose Rhyme.
Running about madly will not prevent death. Swahili Proverb.
"Are we there yet Uncle Scar?" Simba asked for perhaps the forty-sixth time (although to be frank, Ann had lost count long before), restlessly skipping around as both humans followed close behind over the green plain.
Compressing his lips and slightly laying back his ears in wearied irritation, Scar replied, "I told you, not yet Simba. But it's coming up ahead. See?"
Shading her pale brow with her hand, Ann squinted through the convection currents that roiled the air, and saw where the endless green lawn they'd been traversing stopped abruptly in a haphazard, jagged, impossibly long line about a quarter mile away. It was almost like Kong himself had dug out a colossal gully in the plain just for a lark, as her father would've said, ripping out vast lumps of soil and stone with those leathery, tree-trunk thick fingers.
A part of her wished like anything that the ape was here and alongside her, for her sense of distrust towards Scar and disquiet about where his seemingly friendly proposition was leading them multiplied with every mile of distance they put between them and Pride Rock, nervous fear chewing at her brainstem like a cow at a corncob. Lightly, she bit her lip and looked at Scar's claws, always partly extended, pricking the rich dirt as he sauntered on towards his goal. There was an aura of anticipatory pleasure exuding from the great cat, and Ann did not like it in the least.
Picking up on her unsettled state of mind, Jack looked over his right shoulder at her with a frown, replacing it with a small smile of reassurance that filtered up into his expressive olive eyes. Drawing closer to her side, he lightly brushed the side of her torso with the knuckles of his right hand. He didn't utilize his fingers, for they were coiled around a fire-hardened wooden spear.
Wordlessly, he pointed at it with his free hand, then gave a jerking nod towards Scar. The message was clear as the torrid sky. I don't know why you're being such a jittery Jane about him, but if you still frankly think he has something up his sleeve, remember, I have no qualms about putting this spear in his chest if he tries to do away with us-not that he would in Simba's presence of course.
She mustered a smile of reluctant confidence for his benefit. Her mind, clawing as it might to prevent itself from going down the slick slope, couldn't keep from conjuring back up the hardly conceivable, numbingly overwhelming scene of a similar weapon jutting out of the soundman's breast. But it looked a lot better-and was much more empowering-for Ann to then visualize it bursting out from between the shoulders of an even more surprised black-maned male lion trying to attack.
As is too often human nature, Ann Darrow chose to disregard what her intuition and heart told her, focusing on piecing together a comforting, appealing façade with her intellect. Yes, Jack had a strong arm and a spear to defend her. He was even keeping his body between her and Scar as they traveled, holding it in his right hand so that if the lion went for one of them, all the writer would need to do was execute a quarter-turn to meet him.
And if Scar was going to bump them off, why, for cripes sake, would he have brought Simba in tow? No sensible murderer wants to have a witness along for the fun if he can possibly help it, especially a prince and family member, Ann reasoned.
Unless he meant…
The chilling scenario slid into her skull like an aardvark's tongue, and her spine vibrated with incredulous fear. No. No. As slippery and cool as he behaved, Scar wouldn't stoop to that too-not with the certain, savage wrath that Mufasa would bring down on his head for it.
Perhaps, the analytical portion of her told Ann conversationally, this was another bothersome instance of that paranoia about losing others getting the best of her. Couldn't an attempt to take a strained association and restarting it from square one be just that and nothing more? Christ knew she and Jack hadn't had a picture-perfect first meeting.
Then why did she have that constant, nagging feeling that she, Jack, and maybe Simba himself, were allowing an undertow to sweep them out, unresisting and foolishly complacent, into a pack of sharks? Why did the sight of Scar make her think of the native hag's cracking, hissed threat in last night's nightmare?
To tell the truth, when Scar had put forth the offer to her back at Pride Rock after she and Jack had eaten, just like with Carl at the diner, she'd almost flat-out refused to join the escapade. Everyone here all knew that Mr. Driscoll had taken the spear along in the first place more to humor his dame and provide a psychological crutch for her than anything else-despite Scar's level, coaxing protests that "It's perfectly safe where we're going. There's no need for a weapon."
"What time is it Jack?" she asked, trying to look across his chest at the Rolex Oyster.
Raising his wrist, he looked at the dial thoughtfully, replying, "Twenty to six, more or less."
"Thanks," she said vacantly, focused more on the gorge now, growing ever bigger through the heat haze as they advanced on it.
"Now Scar fella, remind me once more why you wanted us to come all the way out here just to meet up with Mufasa-especially when there's all sorts of other places we could've gotten together without having to walk this far," Jack prodded, his tone of voice half dry and half irked.
That wasn't an inappropriate question by any stretch as far as Ann Darrow was concerned either. After a wonderful, filling meal of catfish and roasted impala liver, and walking for 6-7 miles in such blazing heat, she understandably felt rather tired out. (Just like with the hare and the flamingo, the gruesome, sanguine, hacking process of cleaning had been too much for her blinkers to take in, and although she'd assisted Jack in his work by clutching the legs or horns of their prize in her hands and maintaining a steady backwards pull, she'd avoided actually looking at the disgusting results as passionately as if they'd been a basilisk.) Mercifully however, the air had begun to cool at around a quarter past four, so that had been one partial blessing for their journey.
Looking over his arching shoulder, Scar gave a smile that seemed a bit patronizing to Ann before saying, "I'm so awfully sorry if the distance we have to travel inconveniences you Mr. Driscoll. But my dear brother is out on patrol as you know, and since this gorge is on his way, it's an ideal place for him to meet you."
"I've never even been to this gorge before," Simba excitedly cut in. "When Dad comes, he can show us all the cool sights here-That is why you told me he wants me and Mr. Driscoll and Miss Darrow to come here, isn't it Uncle Scar?"
Scar laughed lightly. "Close my good lad, but no gazelle shoulder. No, it's even better than that, and I'll tell you what he'll do very soon."
"Very soon indeed," Jack remarked. Ann wasn't perplexed by his statement this time, for now they'd arrived at the gorge's lip, a place where the savannah made a roughly 550-600 foot drop down to a floor of weathered sandstone.
"Now that we've attained our destination, I suppose we'd best find a safe route in," Scar confidently remarked. Only 80 yards away or so was a deep, downward sloping tributary ravine leading into the gorge, and Scar led them towards it. For some reason, Ann couldn't help but suddenly think of Tennyson's poem The Charge of the Light Brigade as she approached it, most of all the lines about the cavalry regiment riding "into the valley of death." She wanted to nip in and then nip out of this place as swiftly as possible.
At the cusp Scar drew back, saying, "After you," in his cultured voice. Gathering up her courage even while she chewed at her lip in profound doubt and apprehension, Ann began to carefully make her way down the talus-strewn slope.
Simba accompanied her, ever the live wire as he bounced from rock to rock with a jubilant, zany kind of grace. Not nearly as adept on merely two legs, Ann kept the palm of her right hand flat against the rock face while she picked her way over the cracked, broken stone. Vaudeville might've have blessed her with agility, poise, and a sense of balance that was second to none when compared to most other women, but she still didn't want to take risks.
Then why was she being such a stupid hypocrite and taking an even more deadly one?
Hearing the unmistakable, clacking yet almost metallic sound of stone shifting, she looked over her shoulder, expecting to see Jack coming down to catch her up. Instead, it was Scar arrogantly descending, giving her a crafty leer that prickled her insides as he passed her. Managing to tear her transfixed eyes away, she raised them up to her boyfriend once more, standing indecisively on the upper edge of the sloping ravine.
Ann thought at first that he was working out the safest path or stance to use while picking his way downward with such a nice sharp object in hand. But then she realized Jack's gaze was twitching back and forth as he shifted very nervously from foot to foot, and he was breathing hard. The playwright's face was tense and strained, and Ann realized with a shock that Jack was deeply afraid.
He resembled a spooky horse that one day, although it'll stand in front of its stall without any problem, suddenly decides that it won't dare walk inside for anything. Did that mean-hopefully-that he'd finally come to his senses and realized that Scar was no good, not to be trusted, an enemy of theirs and not a friend?
"Is anything wrong Jack? Are you okay?" she gently ventured.
"I'm okay, but there's something wrong with this scene to me," he answered.
From further down below, Scar whirled around and assured Jack, a little too forcefully, "Wrong? Oh, there's nothing wrong about this. This is just an open gorge you're visiting Mr. Driscoll, perfectly benign."
"And that's the problem Scar," Jack spoke down to him in a tone of querulous flatness. "It's a gorge, and to be on the level, I don't want to have anything else to even remotely do with gorges as long as I live."
"I've been in this gorge dozens of times before, and no harm has ever come to me," Scar shrugged, trying to sound soothing.
"Scar old boy, you weren't in the last two I was in," Jack droned grimly, briefly closing his eyes as he drew a ragged breath.
Ann knew only too well what he was talking about-especially as it pertained to the second-and she for one didn't blame him in the least for now having a phobia/complex about chasms. The touch of her compassionate hand on his nape and shoulders happily seemed to provide emotional support and comfort to chase the fear away, and Jack gave her a grateful smile before half-quipping, "Thanks Lady Ann. Your white knight can take it from here."
But for all that, on reaching the gorge's floor, while a wound up Simba tore out into the open without a second thought, Jack still stopped and warily gave it an assiduous once-over, standing on tiptoe like a gigantic meerkat as he scanned to their left, then to their right. Ann couldn't help but mimic him. Nothing seemed wrong or threatening about it, at least not outwardly. Unlike Skull Island's, this gorge wasn't enclosed, narrow, twisty or brooding.
Instead, it was well lit and very open indeed, offering plenty of room to see and evade any attacker. There were no sharp bends or angles to offer a predator much in the way of cover or, as in the case of the Brontosaurs Jack had fled from, to conceal a bunch of herding animals until they burst out upon them without any warning. Even more relieving was to see that over to the left, the gorge proper originated from an impressively steep, 65-75 degree incline, so it was very unlikely anything dangerous would be coming from that direction.
As she and Jack walked out from the side ravine's mouth, Ann noted that unlike on the plain, few other animals were sharing the gorge with them. Eight or ten lesser striped swallows kited up and down the gorge's length on their crescent wings, and maybe two hundred and twenty yards away, she noticed the thick vermilion whip that was a red spitting cobra writing calligraphy in the sand as it serenely crossed from their side of the gorge to the other. Overwintering from Serbia, a disinterested rock kestrel panted from her perch atop one of the isolated trees that had somehow managed to take root here and there in this cragged, dusty desolation, like specks of lichen growing on a fossil bone.
It was hardly a wonder why the kestrel was panting. Reflected from and imprisoned by the enormous walls of stone, the heat down on the gorge's floor was savagely intense. If the plains had felt like an oven at their worst, this gorge felt like a sandstone crucible.
Once more, Ann yearned for Kong's presence. His bulk would make an ideal canopy of shade to travel in. And if danger reared its head, he could spirit her out of here and up those cliffs before one could say Tarzan of the Apes. Ordinarily, a smile would've curved her lips at the thought-but now there was just that roiling, faintly vibrating feeling in the pit of her stomach. Their present location looked nothing like the native village or the elephant graveyard-but why did it still feel so eerie, an eeriness that seemed to increase with every careful stride she prodded herself into taking? No cicadas droned or grated, no doves slurred or cooed, no grasshoppers scraped or chirped down in here.
The strange nervousness being generated by the place in Ann was evidently lost on Simba. Pouncing at random spots in the sand just to make the dust fly up as he kept pace with his grim uncle, he asked cheerfully, "So when is Dad coming? And where's he gonna meet us?"
"Very soon my lad," Scar distantly responded. "Just a few minutes in fact. And you see that tree there?" he indicated with his paw. "That's where we shall meet him."
Sweating in the heat, Ann and Jack followed Scar and Simba over to a wild olive. As they did so, they occasionally had to step over or around the scattered pits dug into the sand and dust by larval ant lions, conical death traps that funneled other incautious insects down to where the builders lay buried in ambush, caliper jaws agape. In their own way, both humans and the lion prince were stepping over the edge of an equally cunning and efficient pit trap.
The wild olive's shade extended a blessed offer of sanctuary from the heat, and despite her ambiguous expectation of danger, Ann Darrow was only too happy to take advantage of it. Folding her legs underneath her, she took Jack's free hand and helped guide him down. As he seated himself, the writer stared at her arm and frowned. "You're sweating Ann," he commented, a tone of slight concern to his voice.
"Yeah," she panted. "The sooner this is done and we're back in the breeze, the better."
Her attention was redirected by Scar talking. "Now you wait here with Jack and Ann," he told Simba. "Your father has a marvelous surprise for you, especially his son."
"You think anything that would please a lion would matter all that much to us?" Ann quipped to Jack on the sly.
White teeth flashed in the shade's darkness, and Jack just shrugged. Not really, but then, they can speak, so who knows?
Hardly able to contain himself, an intrigued Simba enquired, "Ooooh. What is it?"
"If I told you, it wouldn't be a surprise, now would it?" Scar slyly parried.
"If you tell me, I'll still act surprised," Simba prodded hopefully. Jack couldn't help but give a wry smirk of understanding at the clever attempt as Ann felt a smile tug at her own mouth corners.
Apparently amused himself, Scar smoothly half-chuckled, "Ho ho ho…you are such a naughty boy!"
Placing his forepaws on his uncle's shoulder, Simba thinly pleaded, "Come on, Uncle Scar."
"No no no no no no no," Scar strung out in emphasis. "This is just for you, our human friends, and your daddy," he pointed out, green eyes briefly meeting and boring at Ann's before dropping again. "You know, basically a sort of father-son…thing…with a special guest or two besides…" he casually specified, dismissively rotating his paw.
Simba pouted in resentment for a few moments, plainly frustrated by his uncle's unwillingness to spill the beans. "Trust me buddy, it's always way more fun when someone doesn't squeal before the fact," Jack informed the lion cub, and Simba seemed to take some heart from it.
"Quite so," Scar concurred. As if he'd been abruptly reminded of something, Scar leapt erect and declared, "Well! I'd better go get him."
This was absolutely news to Ann. And it was oddly calming as well. She'd thought that Scar would stay with them down in this gorge the whole time until Mufasa arrived in due course. It never had struck her that the black-maned male intended to rendezvous with his brother and accompany him back with-whatever diverting spectacle or royal gift the lion king meant to present to her and Jack. At any rate, Scar couldn't strike any of them down when he was absent, and that was plenty swell to her. Just like last night, she had the conviction that the less time she and Jack spent in the lion's company, the better.
"I'll go with you," Simba merrily said, leaping from his rock.
"NO!" Scar fiercely, almost desperately snapped. Virtually bursting out of her skin with surprise, as a newborn garter snake punches through the transparent membrane that enveloped it in the womb, Ann couldn't help but give an immediate, startled cry at the outburst, readily accepting the prompt security of Jack's arms clasping around her body.
Scar gave Simba the strangest look for a second, like he'd almost given the game away, before regaining his composure and unconvincingly laughing, "Heh heh heh," as if the matter had been one big joke. "No. Just…stay on this rock. You wouldn't want to end up in another mess like you did with the hyenas…" The implication drifted in the air.
"You know about that?" Simba gasped, his eyes widening in shock.
Carefully pulling herself loose from Jack's arms, Ann realized that her breathing was labored from fear, and fought to control it. Turning, she stared back, dreadfully serious, at Jack's agitated angular face. NOW do you believe me? Now do you think that there's a chance he may actually be trying to pull something?
"Simba, everybody knows about that," Scar revealed almost condescendingly.
"Really?" Simba asked. Both the poor thing's voice and his body were slumped and crestfallen with humiliated embarrassment.
"Oh, yes," Scar droned. "Lucky these two wonderful heroes and Daddy were here to save you, eh?"
"Scar, lay off the poor kid about it okay?" Jack firmly interjected.
Other than a barely perceptible backward twitch of his ears and a flip of his tail, Scar completely ignored the playwright, putting a paw on Simba's shoulder and conspiratorially continuing, "Oh…and just between us, you might want to work on that little roar of yours, hmm?"
"Oh…Okay…" Simba muttered, seemingly at a loss about how to reply or what was meant.
After a good-natured pat on his nephew's head, Scar turned and began to fluidly stroll back the way they'd all come. "Keep a good watch on him," Scar requested as an afterthought. For Ann the command hardly registered. She was too busy releasing her pent-up breath and loosening the steel pipes from around her muscles as that lion finally went away.
A thought occurring to him, Simba shouted to his uncle's retreating back, "Hey, Uncle Scar?…Will I like the surprise?" Evidently he too had considered the possibility that one species would be far more pleased than the other by Mufasa's gesture.
Scar stopped, began to speak, and then halted. Turning over his tawny shoulder to give the cub a fox's smile, Scar fervently promised him, "Simba, wa ni katikafariki kwani."
"He's speaking in Swahili," Jack muttered.
"And what's so secret that he can't use English?"
"Nothing is, he just basically said that it'll be excellent," Simba perkily informed them from his perch atop the rock. "Man, this is almost more excitement than I can take!"
If he'd only known…
Concealed in the grass growing on the eastern side of a rock triangle, almost seeming to be fused to the earth, Nduli waited with extraordinary patience for his cue, ears laid back as his good eye peeked over at a massive herd of grazing wildebeest. He was hungry, both for flesh and to indulge in the thrill of dealing out death. Being only a leopard, he lacked the ability to count any higher than five-and far less to mentally grasp that this herd contained around a thousand times that number of individuals.
The only thing Nduli understood was that the herd contained an absolute shitload of yearlings, some within easy range of him, and that he was so tempted to flash out, crash against one, and drive his teeth into its bearded throat. But he knew when the most opportune time to make the strike was. Like his master and partner, he knew how to defer natural impulses and not complain about having to do it in the interim-unlike some animal allies he had the misfortune of knowing.
Beneath and a little way in front of where the leopard tom crouched, there was a timid, growling sound. It was worrying that he could hear it even up here. One of the three hyenas, most likely Banzai, was evidently having trouble demonstrating something that vaguely resembled self-control. Again.
Nduli couldn't help but roll his eyes in slight contempt. He wondered at times why Scar had chosen to surround himself with hyenas. They didn't even act like decent, real, predators should, haphazardly running their prey down instead of expertly stalking unseen to within only several body lengths of it, whooping and cackling until every creature for fucking miles knew that they were on the prowl, and allowing themselves to become covered in dried mud, blood, or anything else stinky enough to be worth rolling in…rather than staying clean and at least halfway presentable.
"Shut up," Shenzi snapped out from below the leopard. That hyena at least, had sense in her head.
"I can't help it," another voice whined back. Yeah, it was Banzai. Go figure. "I'm so hungry-I gotta have a wildebeest!!"
Quiet, you frigging moron! Nduli silently implored.
"Stay put," Shenzi sharply ordered.
"Well…can't I just pick off one of the little sick ones?" Banzai asked reasonably. For Chaka Chui's sake…
"No!" Shenzi admonished firmly. "We wait for the signal from Scar."
As if summoned on cue then, Nduli saw his very-soon-to-be-royal master appear atop a squared granite pinnacle, ebony mane blowing in the wind. This was it, he thought ecstatically.
"There he is…let's go," Shenzi said stonily. She and her two companions then rushed out into the leopard tom's field of vision. Taken totally off guard, the wildebeest snorted in alarm, wheeling in panic as the demented whoops and cackles of the hyenas lacerated the air.
Nduli was only too happy to join the fray himself, leaping out from the patina of grass like a spring and vaulting down to the plain. Transforming into a yellow streak of muscle, he flew at the closest members of the herd like a dart, snarling and slashing at their hocks and tails while his hyena partners separated to toothily snap again and again at the hind legs of other wildebeest.
The herd had nowhere to flee without having to face their adversaries-except immediately west, smack into the gorge. And in one massive, jarring, fear-maddened conniption, bulls and cows, young and old, all bunched together and launched themselves over the brink.
In the wild olive's shade, offering such welcome protection from the reflected heat, Ann, hugely relieved by Scar's absence, sat with Jack and Simba, lying on his tummy and more than a bit cross over his uncle's parting suggestion.
"Little roar," the lion prince spat ruefully. "Puh!"
"I didn't think it was that trivial," Jack humored him. "It certainly got my attention when we were fighting the hyenas."
"Me too. And it's more than I could've managed if I was in your shoes," Ann added. "You'll get there."
"Thanks," Simba said, mustering a cheered half-smile. At that moment, a male Jackson's chameleon, methodically swinging his tongish feet forward in the drugged, deliberate fashion of all chameleons on the go, crawled down from the branches and quite close to Simba. He brought back to Ann's mind recollections of the sapient deep-sea beings in H.G. Wells' Into The Abyss.
Despite almost certainly possessing sentience himself though, this one was evidently more focused on his destination then on worshiping the humans as deities, showing no reaction even when Simba rose and gave a challenging "Rowarr!"
She couldn't help from laughing at the sight: not only because of how cute it was in itself, but also from a kind of pride at watching Simba giving it his best shot. Jack too, chuckled through a skewed grin.
Paying them no mind, Simba blithely leapt down from the rock he was perched on and let forth a second, louder "Rrrraowr-nh!" The chameleon still showed little reaction. With even more determination, the prince followed, came closer, inhaled deeply, and produced a wildcat-worthy "RAWOR!" It echoed off the gorge walls, and made the startled, strange horned lizard leap as high as his legs would allow him before scrabbling away over the sand.
Ann gently applauded in praise and smiled as Jack softly laughed, declaring "That's just how it's done buddy, just how it's done," as Simba erected his ears and looked back at them, basking in both his human friends' praise and the sound of his echoes.
As Jack stood, took a few strides, and bent down in order to rub the cubs' back with a broad hand, the echo began to be painted over by a new sound. It was strange and indiscernible to Ann Darrow, and the former stage actress felt confusion envelop her as she somewhat anxiously got to her reed-shod feet. Was this a cousin of yesterday's inexplicable music at the waterhole?
A look at Jack Driscoll's face brutally disabused her of the idea. Before him and Simba, pebbles were convulsing, and although the lion cub seemed every bit as at a loss as Ann, the proud, eye-lightening smile on the writer's face was substituted by one of dawning alarm, then abject terror.
"Jesus Christ, not this!" he thinly exclaimed, green eyes expanding. Flashing around, the playwright intently gave the wild olive a panicked, momentary once-over from top to bottom. Then, evidently pole-vaulting into another course of action, he desperately commanded, "Ann, keep between me and the wall, and run like hell, fast as your legs can carry you!!!"
With that, Jack Driscoll automatically, promptly, began to dash down the gorge, spear clutched in his right hand, the pointed end sticking out over his shoulder. Puzzled, yet instinctively perceiving that something was very wrong, Ann dared to clap her peepers on the gorge's head for a few snatched seconds, her cobalt blue eyes and concern level swiftly rising in unison. Initially, in spite of the mounting shuddering, only a great flock of spooked African black crows and wattled starlings winging up into the air was visible. Didn't seem worrisome. Then, over the lip of the gorge, like a black avalanche, poured the advance guard of a wildebeest herd.
Crazily, the first thought that struck her was: My goodness, how can they rush down a steep slope like that without tumbling head over heels? Then the dreadful gravity of the situation leapt up into her breast like a bear charging out of its cave, and Ann broke into a frantic, sand-eating run herself.
Passing a stupefied Simba, his ears smashed against his head as if in imitation of her cloche hat, she caught up to Jack in a few pumping strides and veered to his left side in acquiescence to his terror-infused order, sandwiching her slender form between him and the gorge. Reaching out with a dark-tinted hand even as he ran, Jack's fingers interlocked with hers while he ruefully huffed out, "You were too right, and I ignored you like a sap Ann."
"Right about what?" she enquired in puffing perplexity.
"That Scar would take us for a ride, that's what!!" Jack shouted.
"But Scar isn-" Ann began. Then she was drowned out by the bone-shaking drumroll of the wildebeest herd as its lead members gained on them with terrible rapidity, froggy grunts resounding ever louder in their ears.
Regardless of their rocking, clownishly awkward running style, an adult wildebeest in good condition can reach a speed of 46 miles per hour at full gallop. Even a reasonably fit calf can outrun a hyena on its first day of life if it has a decent head start. At full tilt, the average human being can only run a third as swiftly.
In her peripheral vision, Ann noticed with dismay that even young Simba, now released from his uncomprehending paralysis, was dashing down the middle of the gorge faster than they, although that wasn't fast enough either to prevent the herd from unwittingly running him down. Still, as Jack tugged her along, Ann bravely accelerated in another desperate burst of speed, racing from the herd as fast as she had from the tyrant lizards. It was just that there was no Kong here to save her this time, her mind screamed.
The center of the canyon seemed to be the path that the greatest mass of the droning antelope intended to stick to, and Jack roared in command, "Over here Simba!!" But the panicked lion cub either couldn't hear him or was too overwhelmed with panic to understand. To her profound horror, Ann saw him vanish under the bodies of the head animals several dozen yards in front of her and Jack.
There was no time to feel anything else before the inevitable occurred and the hoofbeats of the left flankers were abruptly at, then paralleling their churning heels. As the first goatish heads and bearded throats invaded her vision, Ann rent the heated air in a scream of helpless terror. Desperately drawing even closer against her, Jack changed his grip on the handmade spear and wielded it like a cattle goad with his free right hand, repeatedly giving the passing animals a quick, sharp jab in the shoulder hump in order to turn them and keep others away. Each wildebeest leapt up as if it had just had an electrical shock administered and made a truncated groan of distress on receiving the nasty prod.
As dust erupted into the air around them, the sight made a sort of semi-hope flash through Ann's soul. But then she saw that they had to run at least 350 yards to reach a cleft big enough to shelter in or use as an escape route. They'd never make it that far, and the knowledge of this hopelessly futile goal made her feel so despairingly sick at heart.
As if he'd just been using psychic powers, Jack firmly grunted, "I know, but don't stop running. We're going to get out of this." As if begging to differ with the playwright, a wildebeest cow's head caught him behind the right shoulder and flank at that instant, hitting him with 350 pounds of force. He cried out, and the sky suddenly skewed in Ann's vision as Jack fell to one knee, dragging her down as she windmilled with her left, then suddenly free right arm.
As he used the spear's butt end as an anchor, Ann regained her balance and then lunged to grab his left hand for additional support. As they started to stand erect, another cow leapt right over their clasped hands, missing them with her forelegs but clipping them with her hind ankles. It sent a hot wire of pain through both their hands, but they fought it off and resumed running.
This time they both ran separately, Ann's arms pumping fiercely as she and Jack did their damnedest to stay within 8 feet of each other, sidestepping and dodging and leaping and curving and flinching to keep from tripping or worse being knocked down.
Everything was one massive, constant, universe-encompassing jar, reminding Ann of how the Venture's deck felt whenever the steamer's engines were operating at full speed. Shaking and dust and glaring light and glinting horns and searing lungs and tossing manes and feet/hooves flying over the ground and Jack Driscoll bounding over the stone and sand alongside her, near whenever possible, sometimes further away.
During her many years in vaudeville, Ann had found herself required to perform all sorts of acts that involved a fellow performer or an animal leaping over or on top of her, ducking comedic blows or missiles from behind or turning to block them, until she'd developed a well-honed sense of spatial perception that made her almost flawless at telling how close a moving object coming from behind was to her, and precisely when to react to it.
Today it served her very well, tipping her off to when a wildebeest's horns or head began to ride her a little too closely and when she should cut into a gap between two animals. Jack wasn't as accomplished, and to Ann's horror paid the price when a bull got him between the shoulders with his horn boss, throwing him to the ground. The sight of Jack crashing spread-eagled against the stone with such an awful smack and a wavering cry was unbearable-made even more so when several more wildebeest tap danced on him in succession before he was able to roll on his back and jab another animal in the pit of the left foreleg, turning it and gaining just enough space to stand up.
Distracted by the distressing sight and not thinking about anything else but helping Jack, Ann ran right for him-and was blindsided by another wildebeest cow. With an ear-splitting scream of shock and pain, Ann saw the tawny stone rushing up from the left as she heavily struck the ground, catching herself with an elbow. She pawed and kicked, but couldn't get up for wildebeest hooves chopping at her thighs, flanks, and shoulders with bruise-worthy strikes. Then Jack was above her again, turning a two-year-old bull that was putting his front hooves into her ribs away with a slug between the eyes in addition to a rather serious spear prod.
"Jeez, are you okay Ann?" he yelled in true fear as she managed to regain her feet. Nodding, she resumed her flight down the gorge, through the storm of dust and wildebeest. The middle of the gorge was becoming packed, and now the spillover of clumped animals was reaching them. A yearling sideswiped Jack from left field, the playwright somehow catching himself with his right elbow against the flank of a passing cow before he could fall. Shoulder to shoulder, two more cows, a big bull, and a yearling forced Ann apart from him, and she was nicked by the bull's left horn. As Jack struggled to get back to her side while they both scrambled to avoid another collision with a herd member, Ann sharply dodged to evade one cow that she sensed was right at her back, only to be rammed obliquely from the left by another.
"Ann!! No!!" Jack yelled helplessly as the badly off-balance actress had the evil luck to plunge her right foot into a rock hollow and fall to the stone once more, the force of the impact ringing through the heels of her hands and up the bones of her arms. There was a profoundly worrisome, flaming pain in her ankle, and a part of Ann wondered in numb horror if she'd just irrevocably sealed her fate of being trampled to death through a break or twist down there.
As Jack's voice screamed out her name again and again, all that registered in her vision was the rickety, cloven-hoofed legs of wildebeest and the swirling dust that they kicked up. So this'll be the last sight I ever see, a sector of Ann thought clinically. Jack bellowed, "For chrissak-unh!!" Somewhere close by, even as Ann Darrow went fetal and tried to roll, a cow uttered a spectral groan of heartfelt alarm. Ann could sympathize all too well with how she felt.
Once more, Jack appeared above her, face a strained portrait of terror. Fresh blood oozed from a scrape on his forearm and a short tear on his chest.
"Oh God Ann! Get up and keep running!"
"I don't know if I can run anymore Jack," she replied, voice wiry with panic.
As the understanding stabbed him, Jack stared back at her with an expression very like nausea. In the next instant his body was draped over Ann's, gallantly shielding her from the pulverizing hooves. A desperately probing, scratching part of her mind came to the decision several drifting moments later that even though her ankle might've sustained some trauma, it was very minor and wouldn't prevent her from continuing to run.
"Jack, I think I can still run after all. Let me up," she commanded firmly.
Drawing back, Jack's green eyes, profoundly frightened and confused at the same time, linked with her blue ones. "Are you absolutely sure?" he shouted over the noise of the stampeding herd. "I'll keep covering you or carry you over my shoulder if that's needed!"
"Yes, I am!" she shouted back, getting up on her feet once more. "I'm fine!"
After a couple moments of anxious, skeptical consideration, the writer panted out, "We can't call ourselves fine until we reach the cleft!" his back to her as he turned another wildebeest bearing down on them by strong-arming the side of its muzzle with the spear shaft. As Ann's legs started to propel her down the gorge once more, Jack flanked her for several more seconds-until a pair of cows butted them apart.
"No!!" Jack yelled, almost gagging on his fear as the wildebeest duo knocked them apart. They would be trampled to a pulp long before reaching a chance for safety, he knew, black despair pressing at his eyes. But he knew with a grim certainty that if and when Ann reached that point where she truly could no longer keep going, he would flop down on her and shield that angel frame with his own, covering her like a buffering mattress of flesh.
Flesh. Cover. Buffer. Flop down. The words and concepts disengaged themselves and came together in a loosely gathered assemblage inside the playwright's skull, even as he ran for his life. Then they triggered the memory of a terrifyingly similar situation's denouement, and how it had come about.
Jack Driscoll pawed through the awful photo album that Skull Island had locked inside his head. A chopper, an Aquilasuchus effortlessly running and rock-vaulting, and wounded dinosaur legs… He thought too, of a method that farmers used to punish cattle and horses for misbehavior or plain screwing around.
Fighting and zigzagging back through the wildebeest over to Ann's side, he tossed the spear to her. Plucking it out of the air, she fixed him with a blank, wide-eyed look as he shouted, "Hang on to that and hold them off with it until you see me come back."
"What are you go-"
There was no time at all to explain. "I'm going to level the playing field," Jack sharply proclaimed. Wheeling around, he flashed into the space between two wildebeest cows and tore back in the direction they'd come. Executing the first stage of the plan, the determined playwright went straight for the biggest bull that he could see through the dust and was reasonably close, an animal that he estimated as weighing perhaps 420-440 pounds.
Despite the speed at which the animals ran, approaching the stampeding wildebeest head-on made it much easier to swerve around and avoid them instead of merely blindly running before the Picasso-esque antelope like he'd been doing. They were nothing more than barriers, obstacles to go around, just like whenever he'd be driving New York's streets. Instinctively intimidated by his foreign human figure rushing so aggressively toward them through the dust, many wildebeest even parted before Jack as best they could, making the job that less difficult.
Darting among them like a quarterback, Jack Driscoll's path to his target opened then, both human and wildebeest straight on a collision course with the other. Flawless timing would be everything now. Drawing his right arm back even while he ran, Jack's fist connected hard with the bull's broad, spreading nose that the playwright had joked about only 24 hours ago as being so uncannily like his own.
Surprised, the coldcocked bull's sheep eyes widened as he wildly flinched, exposing his striped left shoulder. Still maintaining his momentum, Jack dropped into a squatting position, clamped onto the bull's left leg above the elbow joint with both hands, and shoved upwards, using every ounce of his weight as leverage. There was a terrible, ghastly, almost explosive, popping noise, and the wildebeest bull groaned in agony as he pitched forward. As Jack leapt back and away, the bull turned in his direction and tried to stand up, but failed to get beyond a half-erect sprawl. The creature's shoulder had been dislocated.
Unable to stop, other wildebeest crashed into the fallen bull as Jack turned and tore down the gorge to rejoin Ann, tripping over and trampling their fellows. The playwright felt an awful dagger of regret at what he had just done to the poor fella, inflicting such horrible agony and almost certainly dooming him to die. Still, it had worked splendidly in favor of survival, and the result of the pile-up taking place behind him was a kind of corridor, a path occupied by far less trampling hooves and smashing heads. To be on the level, he felt pretty goddamn clever about himself-and amazed that he would ever end up being grateful to Bruce for anything.
Seeing the figure of Ann still running through the dust, he forced his straining legs into another turn of speed to catch up. As he got closer, he saw a flash of blue feathers above that materialized into Zazu, the hornbill's face choked by almost overwhelming fear as he zoomed down the gorge. Following the majordomo's trajectory, Jack saw him stop in the air, taken aback by horror, then plunge down to where an upside-down Simba was clinging precariously to the dead, dusty, termite-eaten remnant of a bush or tree.
Seeing Zazu approaching, the scrabbling cub imploringly yelled, "Zazu! Help me!!" Jack was silently amazed that he could still hear that wild, pained child's voice even over the earth-shaking percussion of hooves and so many nasal drones.
Of course, there was precious little Zazu could really do, except fortify Simba with the assurance that "Your father is on the way! Hold on!"
"Hurry!!" Simba cried, beginning to lose his grip as Zazu left.
"Don't bother with getting help for us too old boy," Jack remarked dryly in offended surprise. But he couldn't rightly feel bitter towards Zazu for putting his ducks in a row among this awful confusion. God knew that only a single priority and virtually nothing else had been compressing his brain and tunneling his vision on Skull Island.
Besides-if Zazu had even noticed them-the hornbill had probably assumed that as adults, he and Ann could cope with this dreadful mess a hell of a lot better then Simba would manage. They'd strive mightily to see if that assumption on his part was correct, Jack thought as he ran up to Ann, the actress jabbing another cow away with his spear.
"I'll take that pig-sticker back now," the playwright stated with a kind of lunatic half-humor as he regained his flanking position. Seeing him back and okay, Ann's pale face slumped with relief before she tossed the acacia spear back to him.
As Jack deftly switched the weapon from his left hand to his right, she shouted over the rumble, "I don't know what you did back there, but you did a swell job of making things a lot safer."
"Comparatively so," he dryly replied. The nearest cleft was actually, mercifully within reach now, but they couldn't pretend to be out of the woods yet. "We're almost there. See?" he indicated, pointing at it as the distance shortened.
Her huge soulful eyes gazed fearfully at him, past him. "We've got to make a break through this and rescue Simba before he slips Jack!! He can't hold on much longer! Look!" she indicated, voice badly winded and panting.
Jack wanted to say I know, but didn't feel he wanted to waste his rapidly declining stamina any more than he needed to, so only nodded. "First I'm going to get us out."
Before Ann could reply, Zazu's voice chopped through the air from the far side of the gorge. "There! There! On that tree!" he specified.
Her legs glowing structures of frail cardboard, Ann turned at the sound of Zazu's voice and saw that both Mufasa and Scar had arrived. Perched on a low ledge roughly across from where she and Jack were still in flight, the scene made a burst of thankful hope and a sinking feeling of twisting dread compete for ownership of her heart. Hope because Mufasa's presence meant that Simba now actually stood a good chance of getting out alive, piercing terror because despite his aghast appearance, Ann knew this was the moment when Scar was going to do his stuff, and she didn't see a way that anyone could stop it.
"Hold on Simba!!" Mufasa shouted out, almost overpowered by fear for his son.
In the next instant, as if things weren't hanging by a thin enough thread-in an almost hellishly literal sense-, a panic-stricken young cow rammed into Simba's crude refuge, half-breaking it with a dry crack that sounded as sickening to Ann as a breaking bone. Her beseeching "Oh God in Heaven!" mingled with Simba's wrenching "Ahhhh!!!"
It was definitely more then Mufasa could stand to see either, vaulting off his stone perch and successively bounding down a series of lower outcrops like an india-rubber ball until connecting with the gorge floor, and immediately courageously plunging into the herd. A wildebeest is about as tall as a hay bale at the shoulder, and it occurred to Ann that Mufasa might not be able to see Simba and his tree through the dust and darkening sky as well as she could.
Another yearling clumsily shoved Jack, the playwright fighting to, then somehow maintaining, his balance even while on the run. For a few moments, a straining lump in her throat, she was unsure of whether to keep rocketing forward or to cut across and dodge wildebeest until she got to Simba. She was agile. She could probably pull it off. They were just about neck and neck with Simba now…
The side ravine's entrance and the promise of safety and escape it offered was only a few dozen yards ahead, separated from the gorge bottom by an outcrop of stone about 6-7 feet tall, and that clinched Ann Darrow's decision. With one last, straining burst of adrenaline-fueled speed, Jack not far behind, she passed the struggling Simba by and came up to the outcrop's base.
At the edge of her vision, she saw red fur flash through the dust, a burst of relief sweeping through her equally fast. Mufasa was staying on track and knew what to do.
Turning, she leapt with all her remaining strength at the outcrop's upper rim, once, twice, thrice, like a desperate gazelle hurling itself at a steep bank at the end of a river crossing before a crocodile can crush its life out in those spiked jaws. It was too high!
The comforting strength of Jack's arms enveloped her around the waist from behind, and he yelled, "I'm going to throw you up! Get ready to grab the edge!" His angular body lowered, then heaved underneath her, and Ann found herself bouncing up into the air, ivory arms flashing out to embrace the rock. Digging her fingers in, heedless of a scraped calf, she hauled herself up onto the outcrop and gratefully filled her aching, burning lungs with air. Even up here, the stone thrummed like a railroad tie.
There was another dry, fibrous snap nearby through the clouds of dust. Turning, Ann saw Simba being ejected into the air, rotating over and over in slow motion before her horrified eyes with a "Yahhhaaaahhhh!!!" of complete panic.
The actress was only even distantly aware of seizing the wooden spear that Jack chucked up to her. Then, mercifully, miraculously, as if they'd been performing a stage act themselves, Mufasa erupted out of the stampeding herd to pluck Simba from mid-flight in those great jaws.
Jack's long fingers clamping on to the outcrop's lip yanked her attention away, and she extended her arm to take one of his mitts of hands, providing whatever anchorage she could as both arms got purchase, then levered his head and upper torso into view.
"Thanks. I can take it over doll," he gratefully panted, dust and sweat smearing his hair and face. Evidently he'd managed to stick his toes into a small crevice or on a ribbon of stone, for the writer remained suspended for a few moments, catching his breath and eyes flooded with relief as he looked up at her. Wordlessly, Ann reached out and curled her fingers over his forearm, stroking his hairline with the other.
Jack gave a small, touched smile-then, as if a demon had leapt out of the rock itself to snatch him, a wildebeest bull crashed into his hip, getting a horn hooked under his belt and knocking him loose, carrying the unpleasantly surprised playwright away back into the stampede.
"JAACCCKKK!!!" Ann shrieked at the top of her lungs. Close by, Mufasa roared in shock and surprise, as if joining in with her horror-stricken outburst. She saw Jack wildly claw at the bull's face for a few crazy seconds, like a defensive raccoon does when a hound is lunging for its guts, then push up and fall away into the churning dust. It was so thick she couldn't see him, her eyes desperately gouging through the pounding, swirling, droning mass of dust and wildebeest.
Then, just as Ann was coiling her legs in preparation to leap back into the great herd after him, he popped up out of the chaos like a prairie dog. Fidgeting for a split second, his eyes focused on her and he shot across the intervening distance. Without even coming to a stop, he launched himself back at the ledge, his momentum somehow heaving half his body over. Jack's hands hit the stone from above, teeth gritting as his chest struck a moment late with a hollow SMACLOP!
Legs still hanging in empty space, the playwright crawled forward a foot or two, than flopped limp, blood generously flowing from that Semitic nose and dripping into the dust. As awful as that was to see already, Jack's breathing was now coming in tearing, heated, half-squealing gasps. He sounded like an overheated radiator, or a brutally overworked horse. Ann wondered with powerless nausea if he'd broken a rib somewhere in the stampede-an all too likely possibility-and the bone had pierced or nicked a lung, collapsing it.
"Jack, what's happened to you?" she fearfully inquired.
His voice came, wiry and screeching, after a few moments. "Wind's knocked out of me. He began it, rock finished it. It'll come back," he added painfully.
As he pumped new air into his violently emptied lungs, Ann heard Simba yell "DAD!" in despair from across the gorge and slightly behind them. Jerking her head up at the sound, Ann saw to her great joy that the cub was now safely perched on a ledge of his own, and dismay that Mufasa was involuntarily reproducing what had just happened to Jack as wildebeest collided with him.
Both of them could only watch powerlessly, Ann simultaneously praying that the lion king would reappear and encouraging Jack as he weakly pushed himself up into a seated position with his arms, breathing pattern gliding back into one of relieving normalcy. Suddenly aware of the blood beginning to dapple his chest, Jack pinched his nostrils shut in a vise grip and titled his head back-just in time to get the perfect view of Mufasa rocketing, so impossibly high, into the African air and smashing down on a craggy stone slope.
As the magnificent, ruggedly beautiful lion king achieved what purchase he could manage with his claws, corded logs of golden muscle forcefully pulling him up and up, Ann wildly dared against hope to believe that Scar's wicked plan would fail and everything would turn out okay. Simba was already climbing up a side gully similar to the one both humans were sitting in, and a gentle push from a now standing Jack prodded her into starting to do the same, hands and feet reaching upward over the talus again and again.
But then Jack ceased moving behind her, softly gasping "Scar, no." Half-turning to get a better look, Ann's heart, so soaringly optimistic a moment ago, was viciously yanked down into a pit of powerless, shrieking black despair at the sight of Scar on another ledge right above Mufasa-and by the impact of the realization that Scar possessed even more demonic cunning and cruelty then she'd dared to consider.
Helpless and horrified, quivering and hypnotized, Ann watched with a sickened Jack as Scar imperiously stood over his desperate brother, spread-eagled and clearly begging for help. He's savoring this, Ann thought, fighting back the urge to vomit. The bastard's actually relishing what he's about to do to his own brother!
Then, disdainfully, cruelly looking down at last, Scar's forepaws flashed out, black talons digging like treble hooks into his brother's paw flesh. Ann Darrow's mind screamed for her to turn away from what was about to happen, but her body stayed stick-rigid as Mufasa's roar tore the air, almost certainly generated from incredulity at the sudden realization of his brother's betrayal every bit as much from the physical pain.
"Oh my God Scar, don't, don't, don't, don't do this…" she found herself pleading in a fervent, futile mantra, lava in her eye corners as Scar's head lowered to Mufasa's like that of a snake descending from a tree-no, one of the tyrannosaurs coming down to eat her!-and the smile of Lucifer himself twisted across his face while he spoke.
Somehow, even across the gorge, through the din of the stampeding herd, Ann faintly heard the slow, callous mockery. "Long…live…the…king."
Then, in one fluid motion, as if disgusted by the physical contact with his brother, Scar hurled Mufasa away into space, like some wicked sorcerer casting a spell. He free-fell backwards with an odd slowness, as if through molasses or honey, his desperate roar of protest seeming to fill the whole Pridelands as an equally loud "Nooooooooo!!!!" burst from Ann and Simba's throats as one, denying the raw sight of this wise, good-natured beast-king's plummet to death.
Two instants later, Jack's hand was encompassing her mouth as he fiercely, fearfully spat, "For Christ's sake Ann, dry the heck up!!" Under his hand, her lips opened in shock as her mind wrestled in disbelief with what he was doing. Didn't he understand the full horror and cruelty and shamefulness of what had just happened to their awesome lion friend? Didn't he, a man who she knew had socialist leanings and was quite capable of talking himself blue in the face about the right to free speech and public protest, realize that if there was anything on God's green earth that warranted an outcry, it was the stabbingly agonizing, odious murder that had occurred before their eyes?
Vibrating all over with incredulous, stinging betrayal and fury, Ann thrashed and clawed for a few moments like a wounded cat, sending muffled shouts through the tissues of a desperate Jack's hand, still trying her hardest to tell Scar, Simba, and the whole African plains what she and her horror-sliced heart thought of this supremely wicked, selfishly conniving act.
How could she have stood by while fire was flaring up inside the house? How could she have deluded herself into coming along and not leveling with Mufasa about the dangerous plotting she'd already been more or less certain his brother was conducting? And how, how could her beloved Jack so uncaringly be muffling her attempts to express that raw, undiluted grief and outrage?
But as Ann looked through the steaming tears that blurred her eyes and into the green ones of her boyfriend, shaken and despondent, she understood that in a partial way, he cared very much indeed about the heinous, outrageous deed Scar had just done. It was just that he was more concerned though about what this sudden reversal personally meant for them, and a small part of Ann Darrow began to both love and despise him for it. "I feel the exact same way you do about what that treacherous bastard just did," he said chokingly, "but don't go tipping him off to where we are by screaming!"
Casting a wild glance across the gorge as he stood, Jack firmly went on, "I hate like hell to do this, but I'll only uncover your mouth if you promise to hold that urge to lament until we're a nice long distance away from this place. Then I'll be joining you, absolutely," he added, a hot grief darkening those green eyes even as he raised them in another frightened glance to where Scar was haughtily turning away. "Do you promise Ann?"
The sight of Scar turning away and coolly heading over to another entry into the gorge galvanized her with a terrible awareness that his particular hand of cards wasn't completely played out yet by any stretch, and Ann spasmodically nodded under Jack's hand. No, she shouldn't have done that indeed.
Drawing it away, Jack's only response was to sigh before hurtling up the talus-floored side cleft with her alongside. As she scrabbled upward in concert with her love, what sliced into Ann Darrow's heart the worst and made boiling, helpless tears drip from her eyes was the certain awareness that Scar would kill Simba before going after them.
And there wouldn't be a damned thing they or Jack's spear would be able to say about it this time-even if they weren't running away just to save their own skins. Running away as cowardly traitors. It felt to Ann as if she was being skinned alive by this awful, oceanic guilt. They'd rescued Simba from the teeth of three hyenas-only to cut and run at his darkest, and last hour.
And she knew too, with such heartbroken conviction, that this was the epitome of immorality-not what families were supposed to do to each other!
Ivory claws gouging into its nape, Nduli clenched his jaws and plunged his spikes of canine teeth deeper into the yearling's bearded throat as she bleated. The mother frantically danced around him and the calf, hooves pounding hollowly as they struck the stone, snorting and thrusting her horned head forward in a half-hearted attempt at distraction. Nduli could've cared less. Nothing was going to make those jaws open if he didn't want them too. As his spotted form strained groundward in a squat, the leverage generated was too much for the weakening yearling to withstand, and she toppled on her side.
Continuing to clamp down like a vise, Nduli ecstatically reveled in the wonderfully salty taste of blood and the scent of the calf's terror while he waited for the spastic threshing of her legs to cease. Sensing it was a lost cause, and unable to deny the power of the herd instinct any longer, the now bereft cow gave up and bobbed away down the gorge, her hoof beats reverberating in her wake.
The life melted away from those sheep-pupiled eyes, and the leopard tom drew back in satisfaction, grinning with manic glee as he regarded her, then switched to a second yearling that he'd ambushed and laid out in the dust. "Who's the ultimate killer out here?" he gloated to them. "It's me, bitches!"
"Meh, don't be getting too full of yourself Nduli," Shenzi warningly huffed from behind him.
Turning around, the leopard saw her, Banzai and Ed pad out of the dust like wraiths. "I have every reason to," Nduli arrogantly snarled. "Even if we're both going to be on equal footing now in Scar's eyes, that'll never change the fact that I'm still a gorgeous, sleekly lethal leopard-thankfully-and you're all still greedy punkass hyenas."
Snarling, Shenzi said coldly, "If it wasn't for the fact that Scar would be super-pissed off by it, I'd make you less gorgeous by tearing a nice hole in that pel-"
"Oh, do try to avoid squabbling with each other kids," Scar sleekly warned. "At least for now," he added as he came up to them. Noticing the twin wildebeest carcasses, the new lion king groaned in pure exasperation, levelly rebuking, "Nduli, what did I tell you about indulging your yen for killing?"
"To refrain from it," the leopard tom responded, laying back his ears and growling defensively.
"And why is that?"
Nduli hissed and then growled again before bitterly forcing out the answer, "Because it depletes the strength I should be saving for using on the humans."
As with most adult cats, receiving criticism was not something that sat very well with Nduli. And although part of the walleyed tom's mind grudgingly admitted that Scar had had a point, he especially hated rebukes that made him feel stupid. Know-it-all bastard, he thought.
"That can't be helped now though," Scar said, looking past them down the gorge. "I believe in fact, that very soon Simba will realize-"
A resounding cry of despair and pleading exploded into the hazy air. "HHEEEEELLLLLLPPPPPPPPP! Somebody! Anybody!"
Hearing it, Nduli and the hyenas pricked up their ears, and Scar coolly droned, "That's my cue," before vanishing into the dusky dust.
As all four waited, Banzai asked Nduli, "So, why did you go and kill two yearlings?"
"I killed two because I heard you babbling about how starved you were, and I want to have the choicest part of at least one still waiting for me when I'm done with the humans, since I know that you'll swipe it."
"Choicest part? Huh?" Banzai whispered in puzzlement.
"The liver. Yeah, I'm going to feast like a royal employee should and eat nothing but liver tonight," the leopard tom grinned, salivating in anticipation. "Human first, then wildebeest second. All I need is a good helping of beans and a bottle of wine."
"Um, oookay," Banzai warily muttered. "Whatever those things are."
As the two had been whispering back and forth, Shenzi had been standing in front with ears erect, attentively listening to the dialogue between Simba and Scar. Abruptly, she said, "And speaking of feast, it's time for Scar to send us after our appetizer."
"Good eating," Nduli wished the trio as they stalked away. Turning, the walleyed leopard gnawed and plucked at the belly of the nearest yearling, swiftly slicing through the stomach muscles until he reached the viscera. At that moment, he began to rub and shove his blunt bolt-cutter muzzle into and around the exposed flesh.
Rotated backwards, his ears picked up Scar's summoning cough. Still, Nduli lingered for a few more seconds to drag his mouth and lips through the yearling's blood before breaking away. This was a gory sort of impromptu war paint in a way. He wanted not just to torture the humans, but also to terrorize the shit out of them as well for a bit.
Moving in the silent, noiseless canter of a leopard that is both hurried, yet wants to remain unseen, Nduli covered the distance to Scar's side within seconds under the masking dust. Mouth slightly parted in a grisly grin, Nduli looked at Scar's glinting emerald eyes in delighted expectation.
"Put them down," the new king mechanically commanded.
Many people mistakenly consider the feline sense of smell to be rather lackluster. But Nduli had no difficulty in striking the panicked scent of both humans within only a few seconds, chasing it to the stone outcrop. And then, clearing it with one easy, fluid bound, the hulking walleyed tom was silently springing up the side cleft that opened out into the vast northern plains where two fugitives ran.
As you may've guessed, Scar's parting words mean "It's to die for," in Swahili, or at least as best as I could figure out with the help of an online dictionary. I've almost certainly badly erred anyway, but oh well. Chaka Chui means "shining sun leopard," in Swahili.
Speaking of which, next chapter is titled: Leopard Kill!
And just for fun, here's one of the quotes I'm putting before it to whet your appetite; "...Eye to eye and head to head/ (Keep the measure Nag)/ This shall end when one is dead/ (At thy pleasure, Nag)..."
Anyone know where that's from?
It is true by the way, that a good punch between the eyes is one of the methods farmers use to punish cattle and horses that behave badly. When I was younger, I actually saw my dad-who gets along extremely well with animals as a general rule and likes them almost as much as me-do this to a horse at an animal park after it'd walked up behind my sister and delibrately bitten her for no reason at all. Interestingly, some of the other animals there gave the horse a look like they disapproved of his faux pas too.