Wild Meat by Nero Newton Read Free Book Online

her. Something big.
    It was making plenty of noise, apparently not aiming for stealth. It stopped and started, fell back ten or fifteen yards, then caught up with her again. A couple of times she heard wheez y, tired-sounding grunts.
    She kept walking. There was no place to run if something charged her here, so she just plodded on steadily because there was nothing else to do. The movement in the foliage passed her up, and she hoped that the source of it had lost interest in her.
    The chimpanzee that emerged from the vegetation fifteen feet ahead of her looked awful. This was no juvenile like the one in her dream, but a big female, its rear end bright pink and swollen in estrus. A large hand came listlessly up to shade its squinting eyes as it regarded her. The animal’s posture was droopy, the face, arms and neck badly lacerated, as though it had been in a fight. One scratch along its chest was puffed up, clearly infected, as Amy’s own wounds would be if they weren’t treated soon.
    Her appetite had been raging only seconds before, but the sight of the sick animal made her queasy. Suddenly she wanted only to be safe, clean, smeared with antiseptic, and pumped full of antibiotics.
    The animal was definitely focused on Amy, but didn’t seem aggressive. If it had been defending its territory, it would have screamed and shaken its arms at her. This one just stared.
    Amy still didn’t feel safe so close to the creature. An adult chimp could kill a person with a few blows if it wanted to, and there was no guessing what this one wanted. She crossed the road like a kid avoiding a bully.
    The animal also came lumbering across, knuckle-walking after her in no particular hurry.
    Amy picked up the pace, making her sore legs and feet complain, and her head throb harder. When she looked back, she saw that the chimp was being followed by a second one, even bigger and just as bedraggled.
    The first ape broke into a trot, caught up with Amy, and put its hand on her back. She stopped walking and just waited, hoping it would eventually get tired of whatever it was up to and go away. She felt its breath on her arm and hip.
    It grasped the right side of her tank top and rubbed the fabric against its face, then moved lower, turning its attention to her shredded jeans.
    Amy pulled the tank top to her own nose and sniffed, wondering what had attracted the ape. She couldn’t smell anything.
    That wasn’t exactly true. The fabric had a distinctly clean scent. She sniffed the left side of the tank top and it smelled just like it ought to: a sweaty old shirt that she’d worn for a whole day and then slept in. So did the front. But the right side that had so captivated the chimp smelled as though it had just been laundered and dried in a garden breeze. She took another whiff and decided that it smelled more like a doctor’s office where every surface was frequently wiped down with alcohol.
    The second chimp arrived and followed the first one’s lead, snuffling at Amy’s clothing.
    Amy was nervous, but not acutely afraid. She wondered if this was happening because of some plant she’d brushed against, a spray of flowers rubbing perfume onto her when she had dashed off the road to avoid the truck.
    Zoologists had long ago verified that chimps were attracted to certain plants when they were ill – various plants depending on the ailment. Different chimp populations had discovered different treatments. Maybe the ones in this isolated basin used a completely unique set of medicinal plants. Maybe Amy’s shirt had picked up enough of the right sap or pollen for whatever ailed these two, and they’d caught a whiff of it.
    She eased the camera out of her pocket, put it in video mode, and tried to capture some of what was happening. It was hard to focus the lens on movements occurring so close to her.
    That effort was cut short when she heard a chimp war cry, and turned to see a third ape, not slouching or shading its eyes from the sun, but