Wild Meat by Nero Newton Read Free Book Online Page A

bounding toward her at a furious clip. It was an enormous male, at least a hundred-fifty pounds. Every hair on its body stood out, giving it a round and monstrous look.
    Before she could even imagine reacting, it arrived and knocked her seven feet through the air , and she kept sliding for another few yards after hitting the ground. Her left arm and side erupted in fiery pain as the skin was sanded off.
    The intensity of the violence paralyzed her. No animal or person had ever struck her so hard. She’d been hit by a car once, and this was a lot like that. She lay still, every bit as afraid of this animal as she’d been of the two guards the night before.
    The enraged chimp was above her, still screaming. Amy curled up and clutched her head an instant before its arms came down onto her side like clubs. They rose and hammered down twice more, and for many long seconds her forcibly emptied lungs refused to work.
    Then the ape was moving away, its voice just as terrifyingly loud, but receding. Amy shifted her head and saw that it was herding the other two chimps back the way they had come. They hobb led and stumbled as though not built for the speed they were being forced to achieve.
    Amy lay still for several minutes before standing and continuing up the road. She touched her left side and it stung, and when she pulled her palm away it was evenly coated with blood. She sort of remembered, from the car accident, what cracked ribs felt like, and guessed that none were broken now. Still hurt like a bastard, though.
    Several minutes later she realized that the camera had stayed strapped to her wrist and was still recording. She played back her strange encounter. The lens hadn’t picked up her attacker, although the sound was there. She didn’t remember screaming, but apparently she had done a lot of it.
     

 
    CHAPTER SIX
     
     
    As he drove down the logging road toward the camp, Hugh Sanderson thought about the woman he’d just seen up in the blasted-out trough that served as a mountain pass. The vision of an obvious foreigner loping along, covered in mud, had been a strange welcome back to one of his least favorite countries in the whole world.
    Nine days earlier, while waiting for a hotel limo to pick him up at Grand Turk airport in the Caribbean, Hugh had gotten a call from William, his boss and older brother. William was calling to talk about relief trucks and public relations. He wanted Hugh to return to Equateur for a photo shoot with the relief trucks at the beleaguered logging camp.  “Get your picture taken with your sleeves rolled up. Act like you’re supervising when they pass out the food and pills.”
    William was the chairman of Sanderson Tropical Timber. The company wasn’t really a family business anymore, but William and a few loyal friends still held a controlling share, and the family name remained.
    Little brother Hugh had been kept on board as vice president in charge of keeping the logging rights open in the African theater of operations. He had an office in a colonial-era mansion outside of Prospérité, but lately his work had kept him traveling a lot, mostly in the First World. For the past eighteen months, Hugh’s camera-friendly, cheerful face – vaguely resembling Sting, but with the fleshy cheeks of young Luke Skywalker – had been the company’s principal PR resource while it strove to build an eco-friendly image.
    “Drive out to a logging camp? Again?” Hugh had said. “C’mon, Will. It’s hardly been two years since my last trip to one of those places. Gimme some time to recover.”
    William had laughed. “How about five days from now? That enough time?”
    But a crackle of static had caused Hugh to hear “ nine days,” and he’d accordingly marked the date in his planner.
    “How come we need PR for that relief business?” Hugh had asked. “I thought we were keeping the whole outbreak thing pretty quiet.”
    “World Health Organization already has a couple of people at