“I know, I just thought I would help.”
“You’ve helped enough, Max.” She rolled her eyes at me. “I am perfectly fine. There is no need to be jumping off vehicles to rescue me and running to my tent in the rain—I can rescue myself.”
She seemed very determined, so I turned round and pulled myself out of the muddy puddle and back onto hard soil using the tuft of grass as an anchor. My legs were covered in mud from my knees down and it was pointless trying to wipe them. This was the kind of dirt that needed to be hosed off.
I stood back and watched Ash as she tried to pull her leg out of the mud and take a step. But each time she tried to pull it out, she seemed to topple to the left and had to put it down again.
“For fuck’s sake!” she moaned loudly, and tried again. “And no, I still don’t want your help!”
“I wasn’t going to offer again,” I called as she struggled in a particularly soft bit.
“Good, because I am not some bloody damsel in distress you can run around rescuing, Max!”
“I’ve never thought of you as a damsel,” I said.
“I also could have gotten that thorn out of my foot myself, just saying.”
“I’m sure you could have,” I agreed, even though I knew there was no way she would have been able to yank that massive thorn out herself—God, no one would’ve been able to do that. But I knew what she was doing right now, so I let her. She’d made herself vulnerable last night and I had “rejected” her, and now she was simply trying to take back some of her power, so I’d let her. I’d stand here all night and wait for her to climb out of the mud if it made her feel a little better about what had happened last night. Anything to make sure she was okay.
I looked over my shoulder and vaguely registered that the vehicle looked as if it had also gotten stuck in the mud. But that wasn’t my focus right now, my focus was watching Ash as she struggled through the thigh-high mud until she eventually managed to climb onto solid ground. She collapsed, out of breath and totally covered in mud. I turned my attention back to the vehicle now and finally registered the seriousness of the situation as I watched Bongani walking around the vehicle thoughtfully.
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to get out of this ourselves. I’m going to have to call for help,” he said as I walked towards him. He began trying to radio out, but like he’d said before, the storm had knocked out the communication and a bad feeling sank into the pit of my stomach. I pulled out my phone and looked at the screen—still no bars.
“Do you have any reception yet?” I asked Ash, who was now bent over at the waist. She looked at her phone and shook her head.
“I also don’t have cell reception,” Bongani said, and a strange group silence descended in which we all took stock of our current predicament.
“We need some sticks to put under the wheels for traction—only way we’ll stand a chance of getting out of this mud,” Bongani announced.
“We need sticks,” I called over to Ash. We all looked around. Where the hell were we going to get sticks from? We were in the middle of the bloody Kalahari Desert, on a salt pan, no trees except for that distant baobab. But baobab trees are protected so breaking any branches was out of the question. Our only hope lay in the possibility that maybe it had shed some branches that were now conveniently on the ground.
Bongani pulled his rifle onto his shoulder and called for us to start walking towards the tree. The sun was setting quickly now and I could make out the shape of a herd of wildebeest walking towards the watering hole.
Bongani declared the obvious. “Animals are coming out.”
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Ash said, catching up to me with her ridiculous brown legs and face. It was the most she’d said to me all day, so I tried to set her mind at ease.
“This guy is a pro. He knows what he’s doing,” I reassured her.
“I don’t know. This feels like we’re kind of . . . stranded.” I could hear a quiver of panic in her voice. I turned, stopping her abruptly. Our eyes met for a second, before she very deliberately looked away.
“Why don’t you get out your camera and do your work while we’re doing this, but stay close to us. That should distract you.”
She nodded. “Good idea.” I almost melted at that, the first vaguely friendly words she’d given me all day. And I was also filled with the satisfaction I was able to help her, even if it was in a small way.
CHAPTER 25
Ash
“That’s a fucking lion,” I whispered, pointing at the animal slowly walking up to the watering hole now only meters away from us. It was a little past sunset, that time when the light was at its softest. It would be dark soon and there was a fucking lion drinking at the watering hole, and,oh, another lion, yes, here comes another one . . . An entire pride of lions was now having a sunset drink at their favorite drinking hole. Don’t get me wrong: I like lions. I like watching them from the comfort of a game vehicle, though.
“Okay, let’s head back to the vehicle.” Bongani turned and started walking back. He didn’t need to ask me twice; I was more than happy to climb back into the vehicle and get away from this watering hole where we were not at the top of the food chain.
I slapped my arm as a mosquito bit me. Another one got my neck and then another one. “Great,” I moaned, briefly looking up at Max, who was smiling at me. I looked away as fast as I could. Mosquitoes had always come for me. If there was a group of us, I was the one that they gravitated towards. Max used to joke that it was because I had the sweetest blood. It had been cute at the time he’d said it, but that was not in the middle of Botswana, near a watering hole, at night when the sheer number of mosquitoes was such that I was sure I could be well and truly exsanguinated by the end of this ordeal. I slapped myself on the cheek this time as another one got me.
“Crap!” I jumped up and down and flapped my shirt frantically. “They’re in my shirt!” But the more I flapped it, the more the vampirical opportunists saw it as a free invitation to go inside. “Oh my God!” I slapped my thigh next and then my ass as the little bastards somehow wiggled their way inside my shirt.
When we were finally back at the vehicle, Bongani passed me a blanket and I wrapped my entire body in it and sat on the floor, huddled in a corner. But even then, I could hear them circling like mini bloodsucking vultures.
