Wild Africa
Justin D’Ath
There was no warning. One moment they were moving slowly through the treetops, next moment they jolted to a stop. Sam Fox gripped the safety bar with one hand and his five-year-old brother with the other as the cable car dangled, swaying sickeningly to and fro, over a small muddy lake. Half a dozen hippos lazed idly in the water.
‘Pow! Pow! Pow!’ went Harry, picking them off with his green plastic pistol.
Sam tried not to look down. It wasn't the hippos that worried him, it was the twelve metres of empty air beneath his swinging feet. He had never been good with heights. He'd only agreed to come on the Sky Safari because it was the twins' birthday and children under fourteen weren't allowed on the ride unaccompanied. Harry's twin brother Jordan rode with their grandmother in the car behind them.
‘Why have we stopped, Sam?' Nan Corcoran called across the five-metre gap separating the two suspended chairs.
Sam had to raise his voice because Harry was loudly pow-powing at a group of zebras under some gum trees fifty metres away. ‘It must be a power failure.'
All along the cable, which hung from iron pylons spaced at thirty-metre intervals across the Wild Africa enclosure, other stranded zoo-goers were having similar conversations. A fat man in the chair behind Nan and Jordan joked about being stuck there all night.
Jordan started to cry. He wasn't as plucky as Harry and he shared Sam's fear of heights. ‘I don't want to be here all night,' he whimpered.
Nan put an arm round him. ‘It's all right, darling. I'm sure they'll rescue us soon.'
Sam hoped she was right. He could hear the distant wail of a siren, and what sounded like a woman or a child screaming. Jordan heard it too and became even more upset. His crying got worse. Between sobs, he began wheezing and struggling for air. Sam recognised the signs.
‘It's his asthma, Nan. He needs his Ventolin.'
‘Where is it?'
Sam touched his shirt pocket and felt a lump there. Shishkebab! He should have given Jordan's puffer to their grandmother before they went on the ride. He swivelled round in his seat.
‘I've got it. Here – catch!'
A five-metre throw. It should have been simple. But Sam's body was twisted at an awkward angle and both chairs were swaying from side to side beneath the supporting cable. The puffer fell short. Three pairs of eyes – Sam's, Harry's and Nan's – watched the small grey cylinder fly down past Nan's outstretched fingers.
And saw a small hand flash out of nowhere and catch it.
Nobody had been watching Jordan. Even though his every breath was a life-and-death struggle, he was fully aware of what was happening around him. He saw Sam throw the puffer and realised, even before his grandmother did, that it was falling short. He needed that puffer! Sliding under the safety bar, Jordan made a wild, one-handed grab.
Gotcha! he thought as his fingers closed round his prize.
But the fingers of Jordan's other hand, the one clinging to the safety bar to prevent him going headfirst into the hippo pool twelve metres below, were slippery with sweat. They jerked free.
Jordan felt himself falling.
Nan grabbed him by one sneaker. For a terrifying moment he dangled upside-down. Then his foot slipped out of the sneaker and down he went.
Watching helplessly from the other chair, Sam saw his little brother hit the lake between two hippos. There was a huge splash and he disappeared.
‘Stay here, Harry,' Sam said.
He unclipped the safety bar and jumped.
I'm going to diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie! he thought.
SPLASH!
He landed flat on his back. The wind was knocked out of him. But as the muddy brown water closed over Sam's head, the reality of his situation overrode the shock that had momentarily numbed his mind and paralysed his body. He was no longer suspended in a cable car above Wild Africa. He was in Wild Africa. In a lake full of hippos!
Sam fought his way up to the surface. He gulped a big mouthful of air and looked around. Where was Jordan? A large brown boulder rose out of the water right next to him. It snorted. For a second, Sam and the hippo eyeballed each other. Hippos are dangerous. They kill more people than any other wild animal. Sam dived down as deep as he could. The water was like soup. A huge shadow came straight for him. He twisted his body like an eel, threading himself between the hippo's bludgeoning legs, and surfaced behind its tail.
The first thing he saw was Harry, hanging out of the cable car directly above him. ‘Pow pow pow!' cried Harry, peppering the underwater hippo with a fusillade of imaginary bullets as it went churning away like a submarine.
‘Behind you!' Nan called from the other chair.
Sam spun around, expecting another attack, but it wasn't a hippo – it was Jordan. Floating face-up in the water. His eyes were open but his skin was deathly pale and his breath came in ragged, wheezing gasps. Sam forgot about the hippos. He grabbed Jordan's small, limp body and began pulling him towards shore. There were hippos all around them. Just their ears, eyes and nostrils were visible. It wasn't far to the lake's edge but it seemed to take forever. Finally Sam felt squelchy mud beneath his feet.
Made it! he thought.
That was when Nan screamed.
There were seven hippos in Wild Africa. Six were in the water. The seventh – a massive, three-tonne bull – had been lying in a patch of pampas grass twenty metres from the lake. Fast asleep until all the shouting and splashing started. It woke in a bad mood. The first thing it saw was Sam staggering out of the water with Jordan in his arms.
Hippos might look fat and slow, but over short distances they can run at forty kilometres per hour. Faster than an Olympic sprinter. Sam had no chance.
Harry had been watching from the cable car suspended over the centre of the lake. As the huge bull hippo charged his two brothers, he unclipped his section of the safety bar, pointed his plastic pistol, and jumped.
The animals in Wild Africa are used to tourists. Every day they see a constant stream of them passing slowly overhead in the cable car. But they don't see them falling out of the sky, going ‘Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!' all the way down to the water. It distracted the bull hippo just long enough for Sam to throw himself and Jordan sideways. The hippo thundered past, missing them by millimetres, and hit the water like the backwash from a tsunami.
Harry landed feet first. His sneakers punched through the lake's surface and hit the bottom, buckling his knees. The water was surprisingly shallow. And getting shallower! Harry felt himself being lifted up. He was standing on a hippo's back! The animal swung round and snapped at him with its massive jaws.
CLUNK!
Missed. It couldn't reach him if he stayed on its back. The hippo started turning circles. Harry struggled to stay upright. It was like riding a big wobbly skateboard.
Another hippo surfaced two metres away. A third one floated just beyond it. There were two more closer to shore. Harry estimated the distance between each animal. He took a deep breath, and jumped.
It was like crossing a series of giant stepping stones. Jump, jump, jump, jump. With the fifth and final jump, Harry landed knee-deep in the water only two metres from shore. He charged up the muddy bank onto dry land.
All along the line of stationary cable cars overhead, people cheered and clapped.
‘Bravo!' said the fat man in the chair behind Nan's.
Meanwhile, Sam knelt over the other twin. Jordan was barely conscious. His ribcage rattled and quivered with each struggling breath. It seemed like his chest was about to cave in. Sam looked up at their grandmother.
‘Nan, did you see where the puffer is?'
She carefully surveyed the water from her vantage point twelve metres above the lake. ‘I can see something over there!' She pointed.
Sam saw a small cylindrical object floating three metres offshore.
‘I'll get it,' said Harry, ploughing back into the water.
‘Look out for hippos,' Nan warned.
Harry was fearless. He waded out towards the hippos and grabbed the cylinder. ‘It's just Jordan's bubbles,' he said, holding one of the little plastic bottles of Bubble Juice that Sam had given both twins for their birthday.
Sam rolled his eyes. Only his little brothers would bring toy pistols and bubble bath to the zoo!
‘Get out of the water, Harry,' he said, then turned his attention back to Jordan. ‘We can't find your puffer, Jords, but help should be here soon.'
Jordan opened his eyes. He tried to speak but ran out of breath. Instead, he lightly tapped Sam's arm.
‘Save your strength, Jords,' Sam said.
But Jordan swivelled his eyes sideways and lightly pressed something against Sam's wrist. The puffer! Jordan had been holding it all along, but he'd been too dazed and weak to use it. Sam gave him a long, lung-filling whoosh of Ventolin.
Within a minute Jordan was breathing normally again. The colour returned to his face and he was strong enough to sit up.
‘What's Harry doing?' he asked.
The other twin was wading out into the lake, directly towards the nearest hippo.
‘Harry, we've got the puffer!' Sam yelled.
Harry picked up a green object floating in the water. ‘Just getting my pistol.'
Idiot! thought Sam. Risking his life for a toy! He waited for Harry to come ashore, then hoisted Jordan up in a piggyback.
‘Okay guys, let's get out of here.'
They began following the route of the Sky Safari back through Wild Africa. Earlier, when they first got on the ride, Sam had noticed a locked gate in the high chain-link fence surrounding the enclosure. All they had to do was walk back to the gate and call for help.
It was a good plan, except for one thing.
‘A lion's coming!' gasped Jordan, who was riding on Sam's back and had the best view.
‘Don't be silly,' said Sam, his heart in his mouth as a herd of wildebeest came charging towards them and raced past on both sides. They were followed by a procession of warthogs and two galloping giraffes. ‘There aren't lions …'
His voice and his feet stopped at the same moment. The lioness was a hundred metres away, trotting towards them through the gum trees. Now he understood why the wildebeest and other animals had been in such a hurry.
There weren't supposed to be lions in Wild Africa. Their enclosure was outside the fence. The Sky Safari went over it at the beginning of its journey. But part of the fence separating the lions' enclosure from Wild Africa had been flattened. Sam could see a damaged bus resting against the base of a fallen pylon. It must have crashed into the pylon and toppled it onto the fence, allowing the park's two lions – a male and a female – to escape into Wild Africa.
‘Quick!' Sam hissed. ‘Up a tree!'
But none of the trees looked easy to climb. They were either too skinny or their trunks forked too high from the ground. Anyway, lions could climb trees. People started yelling advice from the cable cars dangling overhead.
‘Hide in those bushes!'
‘Go back to the waterhole!'
‘Run!'
None of their advice was useful. It was too late to hide; the hippo pool was three or four hundred metres away; and they could never outrun a lioness. Lowering Jordan to the ground, Sam picked up a stick.
‘Get behind a tree, guys,' he said, and started running.
Towards the lioness.
It was a strategy Sam used with little yappy dogs that came rushing down their owners' driveways when he was delivering junk mail. Instead of running away, he ran towards them. Nine times out of ten, they stopped in their tracks. And the tenth time? Well, Sam only ever tried it on small dogs. And he wore size ten shoes.
But this wasn't a little dog, it was a lioness. One hundred and fifty kilograms of muscle, claws and teeth. A killing machine. But Sam was committed now. Attack was his only defence. Waving the stick above his head, he pounded towards the oncoming lioness, yelling at the top of his voice.
‘Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!'
It worked. Twenty metres short of him, the lioness veered to one side and went bounding off through the trees. Phew! Sam thought. He came skidding to a stop, his chest heaving, the blood roaring in his ears.
When he turned round, the twins were standing exactly where he'd left them.
‘Didn't I tell you to get behind a tree?'
Instead of answering, Harry raised his pistol. ‘Pow!'
‘Hey, don't shoot me – I just saved your life!'
‘I'm not shooting you,' said Harry. ‘I'm shooting Simba.'
A shiver ran up Sam's spine. Simba. Wasn't that the name of the Lion King? Slowly, Sam turned his head. Holy guacamole! Forty metres away, in the shade of some paperbarks, stood a huge, gingermaned lion.
This time Sam didn't even contemplate his yappy dog trick. He started backing slowly towards the twins. He still held the stick, but it was no defence against the lion. The lion knew it too. It licked its chops.
‘Psssst!' said a voice. Sam glanced over his shoulder. A man had climbed from one of the cable cars and shinnied down the support pylon until his feet rested on a narrow steel flange about three-and-a-half metres from the ground. He reached down with one hand. ‘Over here, boys,' he called softly. ‘I'll pull you up.'
It was their only chance. One eye on the lion, Sam led the twins over to the pylon. He hoisted Jordan onto his shoulders. The man stretched down, grabbed Jordan by one wrist and lifted him to safety. They did the same thing with Harry. But when Sam's turn came, there was nobody to boost him up. He couldn't reach the man's hand, even when he jumped.
‘Find a branch to use as a ramp,' the man suggested.
But Sam couldn't see any branches big enough to support his weight. The nearest trees were the paperbarks, and the lions were under them. Yes, lions. Plural. The lioness had returned to join its mate. Both animals stood watching Sam. They looked hungry.
‘Can you get my gun?' said Harry.
He'd dropped the toy pistol when they were lifting him up. Sam bent to retrieve it. And had an idea.
‘Harry, have you still got Jordan's Bubble Juice?'
‘It's in my pocket.'
‘Drop it down to me. Quickly!'
The male lion was on the move. Leaving its mate under the paperbarks, it came stalking slowly out into the sunshine, its big golden eyes fixed on Sam.
‘I can hear a car,' whispered Jordan.
Sam heard it too. A cloud of dust rose above the treetops about three hundred metres away. Help was on the way. But would it arrive in time? The lion was halfway across the stretch of open ground between the paperbarks and the pylon, its body low to the ground, the black brush at the tip of its tail twitching from side to side. At any moment, it was going to attack. Sam's fingers trembled as he carefully poured the Bubble Juice.
‘There it is!' cried Jordan.
A zebra-striped Land Rover came hurtling through the trees. The driver saw what was happening and began tooting to distract the lions. But the male took no notice. All its concentration was fixed on Sam.
With a mighty roar, it charged.
Sam raised the water pistol. His mind shut out everything else – the screams of the people watching from the cable cars, the flash of the sun on the Land Rover's windscreen, his own quaking fear – and aimed at the lion's eyes. At the very last moment, when the big cat launched itself through the air like a tawny missile, he squeezed the trigger.
Bubble Juice was Sam's own invention. It was a combination of oils and detergents that made sensational bubbles when mixed with water. He'd given both twins a bottle for their birthday, along with a cheap pair of goggles. There was a downside to Bubble Juice: if you got it in your eyes – even if it was heavily diluted – it really stung.
The lion got a concentrated dose in both eyes. It let out a deafening yowl. Sam ducked behind the pylon as it flew past. It fell in a cloud of dust and began rolling about on the ground, mewling like a giant kitten and batting its face with its huge forepaws.
The Land Rover slewed to a stop and the passenger door flew open. Pop! A small, red-feathered dart appeared as if by magic in the lion's flank. The animal's movements gradually slowed. Finally it lay still in a deep, drugged sleep.
Two zookeepers stepped out of the vehicle. One hurried off towards the paperbarks with a dart rifle. The other walked over to the pylon where the man who'd rescued the twins was lowering Harry down to Sam.
‘Looks like you guys had quite an adventure,' the zookeeper said.
‘It was wicked!' Harry said as Sam set him on the ground. ‘And guess what?'
The zookeeper raised his eyebrows. ‘What?'
‘After lunch Nan's taking us to Wild Amazon.'