Lake Manyara Hotel, Lake Manyara National Park, Tanzania
Wednesday 29th May, 12.30 a.m.
The three men entered the hotel and were met by a black man about Simon's size. "Welcome to Lake Manyara Hotel. You must be looking for a room. And how did you get here in the middle of the night?"
"I'm Simon Banks, this is Jim Ellison and Blair Sa..."
"Banks? Are you the lost boy's father? Follow me, please."
Before they could reply, the man walked off towards a room at the back of the hotel. Glancing at each other, they decided to follow him.
When they entered the room, they saw 3 teenage boys and a girl sleeping in their sleeping bags, and an older man, sitting on a couch, looking at what appeared to be a map.
This man noticed the newcomers enter and walked towards them.
"You must be Daryl's father," the man said in a soft voice. "I'm Joshua Halika, one of the group's guides."
"Simon Banks. This is Jim Ellison and his partner Blair Sandburg. Any news on where he might be?"
"None at all, sir. Search parties were out all day, but couldn't find a trace."
"What have you covered so far?" Jim asked Halika. The man walked back to the maps on the couch and the others followed him. The movement across the room woke the teenagers, and they stared at the unknown men. One of them got up and walked towards Simon.
"Mr. Banks? I'm Tony Krindle, the one who called you Friday. I'm really sorry, sir," the boy said with his head down.
"Hey, I'm just glad you called me. I'd have shown you my worst side if I had found out about it later." Turning back to Halika, he repeated Ellison's question. "Where have you searched so far?"
"Your son and Masemi said they were going towards the lake. We searched the whole area from the hotel to the lake that's within walking distance. We found a few traces, telling us they did go there in the first place. However, when we went on, we couldn't find anything, nor could we find proof they went another way."
"Okay, I'd like your groups to continue searching as you had been, and Ellison, Sandburg and I will go our own way, and see if we can find something out."
"Right," Halika said, wondering for a while if it was wise to let these three out in the wild without a guide, but let the thought go. They'd probably know how to take care of themselves. He already had enough people to take care of.
"Let's rest until sunrise, then we'll go out to search."
Halika and the kids went back to their sleeping bags, while Jim, Blair and Simon went back to their car. They discussed what they were gonna do the next morning, which came down to the general idea that Jim just reached out with his senses, and wander around till he picked something up. After that, they grabbed some blankets and went to sleep.
Wednesday, 29th May, 5.30 a.m.
Jim was the first to wake up, when the first signs of light reached the sky above. He gently laid his hand on Blair, waking him up. A groan behind him told him that Simon had also started to wake up. Blair yawned out loud. Simon followed his lead.
"Please, don't do tha…" The rest of Jim's words were caught up in a yawn of his own. "Damn, too late. You two made me yawn too."
They got out of the car and walked into the hotel, straight to the room they were in last night. When they entered, they saw four sleepy heads, sticking out of their respective sleeping bags. Halika was already up, studying his map. He looked up at the three and greeted them.
"We'd like to go as soon as possible. We'll grab something to eat at the restaurant, then we'll be off," Banks told the guide. The guide nodded in response.
They left the room again, just as the teenagers were getting out of their bags, rubbing their eyes. They went to the hotel's restaurant and asked for a few sandwiches. Eating them while they walked, they went outside and went to their car.
The first place they went was the place where Halika had said they had found traces of the two missing people. They came to a sandy spot, where there were many footprints. A little way off, however, they could see two other sets of footprints. Jim studied the prints and figured that one person was wearing sandals or something, size 9, and was heavier than the other, who wore smaller sized hiking boots.
"These prints must be Daryl and Masemi's. I'll see if I can find more clues."
As Blair put an anchoring hand on his friend's back, Jim heightened his eyesight. He saw the prints move a little further into the woods, but lost them as the grass covered their trail. One by one, he checked his other senses. Nothing.
"Can't find anything, sir," Jim said, shaking his head. "Now what do we… Wait. I smell something." He took a slow breath, trying to determine what it was and where it came from. "I can't identify it. I can hardly smell it, but it's there."
He walked off to his left, leaving the footprints behind him. Simon and Blair followed him. A strong wind was now coming from behind, so not even the Sentinel could smell it anymore.
When they walked for a mile or so, crouching now and then to avoid branches, the wind suddenly turned. Blair and Simon turned away as they smelled the horrible odor of rotting flesh. Jim had his sense of smell dialed up to the max, to pick up even the slightest trace of what he smelled before. Now it hit him like a sledgehammer. He fell to his knees and coughed, almost choking. He tried to stand up, but fell backwards as dizziness hit him. His vision turned black as he fought two battles: to get his dials down and to stay conscious. He barely noticed Sandburg kneeling beside him, talking in his soft, low, Guide voice.
"Jim, listen to me. You got to find those dials. Close your eyes, imagine the dials for smell and turn them down to a minimum. Come on Jim, stay with me. Turn down those dials."
Guided by Blair's voice, he found the right dials and turned them down. He stayed there for a while, barely conscious and with a terrible headache. He didn't feel like getting up yet. He was lying comfortably on the ground. Then he remembered what he had smelled. Rotting flesh. Rotting human flesh. He got up, but grabbed Blair as he noticed he was still dizzy. Simon, who had stayed away while Blair did his job, grabbed hold of Jim.
"Let's go, Jim," he said. "It's probably just one of the thousands of animal carcasses in all of Africa, killed off by a lion a week ago."
"I hate to say this, sir," Jim answered while trying to block out the smell, "but I'm sure it's a human body. Human flesh has a different scent. Besides, I can smell some of the herbs I noticed back at the hotel. This person must have been there."
Jim led the way to the place the corpse was. He heard a gasp from Simon as a part of the body came in sight. It was the body of a young, black man. Jim focused in on the body and heaved a sigh of relief.
"It's not Daryl, sir. It must be the guide."
He moved closer to the body, with Banks and Sandburg close behind. He kneeled next to the body, and saw a tiny needle hole in the dead man's neck. Scanning the area, he found a blow dart a couple of feet off.
"I think he got hit by this dart here," he told the others, while walking towards where the dart lay, "managed to get the dart out, stumbled a couple of feet further, and died."
He searched his pockets and found that he still had a few plastic bags in his pocket, which he always carried to crime scenes. He carefully picked up the dart and put it in the bag. A little behind the needle of the dart, he could see a blackish-brown, sticky substance. Smelling it, he found that it had a bit of a plant-like smell. Maybe one of the locals knows what this is.
After they made sure there wasn't anything else to find, they returned to the hotel. There they'd ask if anyone was willing to pick up the body and give it a proper burial.
When Jim showed the dart to one of the people of the village, the man became very excited. "Aco! Aco! No good stuff," he exclaimed while pointing at the plastic bag and its contents. Jim tried to get the man to explain, but he couldn't get anything useful out of him, except that it's 'no good stuff'. Blair and Simon noticed that everyone around them had stopped what they were doing when they heard the feared word.
"It is a very deadly poison," Halika said, walking up to the trio. "It is used by bad people, who kill animals for money. A little bit of Aco can kill any human. Very bad stuff."
"Wait a minute," Blair said to his friends. "I've heard of this stuff. It's called Acocanthera. It's used by poachers, because it can kill even the biggest creatures on the face of the planet. They put the Acocanthera plant in a pot and let it boil for 3 to 4 days. Then they remove the lid and leave it for a day. The poison is so powerful that they put the pot in a deep pit and keep everyone away, except for the man who extracts the poison. They test its potency by cutting a vein of someone, let the blood drip down his arm and put a little bit of the substance on the lower part of the arm. The poison turns the blood black. The faster the blood turns black, the stronger the poison is. You might want to make sure you don't have the tiniest scratch on your hand before touching it."
Simon, who was just about to inspect the dart, quickly pulled his hand out of the plastic bag and gave it back to Jim.
"Oh, thanks Simon. Put me up with it. What am I supposed to do with this?"
"Well, you can't leave it here, some local kids might pick it up and play with it. So we have to take it somewhere safe."
"I heard they also use Aco at ranger stations, to capture large animals alive. They might have a storage for the stuff," Blair suggested.
"And since you're the one who found it, you get the honor of keeping it with you until we get to a ranger station."
"Really, you guys are too much. Thanks for letting me keep this stuff for a while and giving me a chance to accidentally kill myself."
Turning to Halika, Jim said: "Who, besides poachers and rangers, use this Aco-stuff?"
"Nobody, sir. It is too dangerous. We do not take any risks."
"Where is the nearest ranger station?"
"The road heading southeast from the hotel leads to a ranger station. Are you thinking that they killed my friend?"
"No, I don't think so, but they should know if there are poachers around or not. That would get us closer to finding Daryl and your friend's killer."
TO BE CONTINUED…