Culling the Herd

By Edward R. Etzkorn

While working for a humane organization in Kenya, Chloe Freestaff, a twentysomething magazine writer, finds evidence of a mass murder in a remote grassland. Infuriated by the senseless slaughter, she determines to find the perpetrators.
Back home in New York, she learns of a secret group called Population Office for the World, whose five members, all scientists, believe that the only way to save the future earth from human-caused destruction is by reducing the world's population at any cost. When the entire population of San Ignacio, a small California city, is wiped out by an aerosolized toxin, Chloe is sure this group is responsible. She tracks down the group's leaders, but is captured and, in order to survive, agrees to write an article for them.
The article, intended to convince the world to take population control seriously, will announce the date of the next strike but not its location—which will be Phoenix, Arizona. As disturbing as the strike itself is Chloe's discovery that the toxin originates from deep-sea corals, whose DNA is spliced into the genome of E. coli bacteria that, unlike the usual attenuated laboratory bacteria, can potentially share their genes with the E. coli that inhabit the bowels of every person on earth.
Although she has come to agree with the group's message, if not its methods, her escape is now even more urgent, to save not just her own life, but that of the residents of Phoenix and possibly millions of other people as well.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543924503

Book preview

Acknowledgements

Chloe pulled the Land Rover to a halt beneath a solitary flame tree, welcoming the canopy of shade it provided. She reached to turn off the ignition, then hesitated—once she turned the key and left the sanctuary of the vehicle, she would become part of the ageless African plain, alone on a field of grass half as tall as she, the sky its only boundary. One with the wild herds that grazed here, one with the predators that gorged themselves on the guts of their fellows. A middle-class girl from Long Island could not have found herself farther from home.

Unthinking, she latched onto a tuft of hair at the back of her head and curled it around her finger, drawing reassurance from its coarse yet familiar texture. Her heart thumped against the inside of her chest, dredging up bubbles from her stomach that slicked her throat with acid. She regretted she’d volunteered for this mission. She should have let one of the rangers respond to the old tradesman’s claim that he’d found something evil in the midst of Kenya’s Mwenga National Game Reserve. As usual, she’d been unable to resist the call to adventure, unable to resist the urge to jump up and shout, I’ll go!

She turned to face the old man in the seat beside her. He was staring ahead, his eyes black orbs that might have been gaping into the maw of hell. She addressed him in Swahili, the language she’d studied when she joined Free the Animals, the non-profit organization that had placed her in the game reserve, a scant fifteen months and yet forever ago. You’re coming with me, aren’t you?

As she awaited his answer, her eyes roamed the grassland around them, grateful for the lack of movement that might indicate the presence of some creature headed their way. The spot up ahead, the spot the man had pointed out from far back on the plain, looked far less peaceful—a jungle-like grove of brush and stunted trees whose side-to-side borders measured perhaps three hundred yards—the length of three football fields—but whose depth she could only guess at. Around the grove, a flotilla of vultures circled in broad loops, cordoning it off and laying claim to whatever lay within.

When the old man remained silent, she focused on him again, noticing how his face’s ridges and valleys heaped over his skull like a coat of blacktop, remarking the thickness of his red cloak, so out of place in this land of hundred-degree heat.

His head shook at last, so slowly Chloe fancied only the wrinkles moved. I do not need to go. I have already seen. I do not need to see again.

With a sigh, she looked ahead again, as the bubbles in her chest seemed to tighten around her airway. She patted the carbine on the floor between them, speaking more to convince herself than to convince him. We have this. Nothing can hurt us.

Again only the wrinkles moved. Gun will not help. Nothing will help.

"Please come with me, Mzee," she begged, using the respectful title for an older man.

This time he merely stared ahead with no attempt to answer.

She gritted her teeth. All right, you win. I’ll go alone.

Shutting her eyes, she leaned back in the seat, swallowing the hot acid and pulling the collar of her khaki shirt up around her neck as if she could hide in it. With a jerk, she turned off the ignition, grabbed the carbine and her camera and bolted from the vehicle.

Fifty yards before she reached the grove, the stench struck her. She held her breath as she pulled her scarf from her pocket, shook out the dust, and tied it over her nose and mouth. Through the protective cloth, she took several deep breaths, then sprinted the rest of the way. Spreading her arms wide, she threw back the first of the broad leaves, ignoring the shroud of cobwebs that slapped her in the face.

A cloud of vultures and pink-and-gray marabou storks flapped into the air with the noise of a retreating army. Above her, they hovered, fanning the air with their downdraft and stirring up swirls of putrid dust.

A few more steps into the grove revealed what the carrion birds had been guarding. Overwhelmed, she reeled backward, stumbling over a tangle of roots and landing on her backside. Retching, her eyes tearing, she vomited a vile concoction that soaked through her scarf and ran down the front of her shirt. She tore the scarf off and opened her mouth for a breath, only to choke on a squadron of winged insects.

Shutting her eyes, she concentrated on breathing in and out through her nose. Calm yourself, Freestaff, she told herself. There’s no danger to you. What’s happened has happened. Your job is to document the crime and help bring the perpetrators to justice.

With a new burst of determination, she pulled herself to her feet, shook the blanket of insects from her clothes, and marched toward the rows of corpses. The vultures and storks kept their distance as if to allow the victims a moment of privacy with one of their own kind. The flies and giant ants, however, did not have the same decency. They continued to carpet every square inch of flesh with their undulating bodies.

Three yards from the nearest row she stopped and surveyed the atrocity. The bodies were stacked like cordwood, five or six high and ten or twelve across—men, women, and children, few wearing anything more than loincloths.

Steeling herself, she stepped closer, trying to be philosophical about the empty eye sockets and the holes that had once held noses. No one could help these people any longer. She was perhaps the only person alive who could make sense of their deaths.

Without exception, each body had two holes in its cranium—a small entry wound and a larger exit wound, the latter surrounded by a jagged crater of bone. 5.56-millimeter rifle rounds, she recognized, fired at close range. Oddly, the victims appeared peaceful, showing no signs of a struggle. As if they had happily rolled onto their sides and offered their bodies in sacrifice to the gunmen.

She had to force her legs to move from the first row of bodies to the next, then the next and the next, to make some sort of body count. She had reached five hundred when the grove gave way to a clearing. Once again, her stomach rebelled. Here the body stacks had been toppled. Hyenas and wild dogs had feasted the night before. With more than enough to go around, they had been less fastidious than usual about devouring every scrap.

More angry than repulsed, she marched into the trampled grass and poked among the fragments with a stick. In addition to the scat of the canines, she recognized the spoor of a lion or two. But no evidence of the human animals she was looking for—no litter, no spent cartridges. Had the victims been shot elsewhere, and their bodies transported here after death? That made no sense. But bodies did not just appear in the midst of vast grassland where the nearest human habitation was fifteen arduous miles away.

And someone had gone out of his way to stack the bodies in neat piles—which made even less sense.

With nothing more to do, she swung her Pentax into position and began clicking. She snapped some shots from a distance, then moved in closer and brushed the ants off several skulls for close-ups of the entry and exit wounds. She did not stop until her battery light flashed low. With a look at the sky, she trudged back to the Land Rover. Just enough time remained to return to civilization—or what passed for it around here—before sundown.

As she tossed the carbine into the back of the vehicle and swung herself into the driver’s seat, the old man’s eyes bored into her, as if trying to detect some curse that had been planted on her. She spoke to him as calmly as she could, hoping he would not smell her vomit or intuit her fear. "Tell me again, Mzee. How did the bodies look when you found them?"

As before, the tarry skin flowed through a series of wrinkles before he replied—as always, with unerring politeness. "Like I tell you, Bibi Ka-lo-ee. Like piles of wood. Many, many."

She turned the ignition key and jammed the vehicle into gear. The Rover shot forward, its rear wheels stumbling over a root knuckle that bounced her and the old man half a foot into the air. And you have no idea who killed them?

"Bibi Ka-lo-ee, I tell you all I know. Many years I have walked this way. Never have I met any people, alive or dead. Yesterday when I walked, I found these stacks of dead bodies. Who they are, I do not know. How they died, I do not know. How they got here, I do not know. I do not know what else to do, so that is why I tell you."

Chloe took a deep breath, and from her tired face squeezed a smile. "You were right to tell us, Mzee. Thank you for taking me here. I would not have dared to come alone."

Fighting back a feeling of exhaustion, she raised her sleeve to wipe her forehead, inhaling as she did so the scent of her own body oils, mixed with the other smells that coated her—wood smoke, vomit, dust, animal feces—and now death.

Although she had loved the months she’d lived in Africa, and would leave behind people to whom she felt closer than anyone she’d known before, days like this reminded her she needed to return home. Home, where she could snuggle down in a real bed, surrounded by four walls that were sealed from snakes and insects, with a roof that did not leak and running water at the touch of a finger. Someone else could take over the struggle to save a few token lions and elephants while the majority continued to be slaughtered to protect villagers’ cattle or provide wealthy foreigners with ivory.

One more month, Freestaff, she told herself. It’s been great, but it’s time to go.

Think of the benefits—nightly showers, soap, makeup, mouthwash.

Eligible men. A few jerks, too, but that went with the territory.

Time to get serious about a career. Her editor at Ravage, where for four years she’d edited a column on diet and exercise, had promised a job when she returned. But she bore Elijah no obligation. If she found returning to the magazine too boring, she could work as a freelancer, with some control over what she wrote and when she wanted to write it.

And at worst, if life back home became too stressful or too superficial, she could always return to Africa. It was not about to disappear.

The sun was bedding down in the arms of the thorn trees outside the village, lending the simple homes its pink-champagne glow, when Chloe dropped off the old man and parked the Land Rover beside the ranger station, a stone’s throw from her hut. As she expected, the door to the ranger station was padlocked shut, but from the chief warden’s house nearby came the voices of the warden and his assistants, all loosened by alcohol. She licked her lips. Yes, indeed, this was a night for drinking. In a mere five minutes she, too, would be on the road to blissful oblivion.

With hardly a glance at the garden of maize and beans to her left and the rows of mangos and papayas to her right, she hurtled down the path to the mud-block dwelling. Still, the image of the body stacks filled her mind, an image so gruesome it crowded out any other sight.

She had questioned her presence in Africa from the day she’d arrived at the village when the Free the Animals volunteer she was replacing had introduced her to the hut she would share with another new arrival, a glorified yurt with walls of sticks matted together with mud and topped off by a roof of straw. Her first encounter with the geckos that inhabited her hut had increased her doubts, and the leer of the snake that peered down at her every morning through the roof fronds had convinced her that this land wanted her gone.

Still, in one more month she would have completed her full eighteen-month commitment—two in Nairobi studying the language, sixteen working in the field. Long enough to prove to herself, as well as to friends and coworkers back home, that she could do whatever she set out to do. Even more, she’d accomplished a large part of her goal—to extend the knowledge of the local people in conserving the game in the new game reserve, and to refine their English so they could communicate with their international guests. Her cute white face shone with innocence as it smiled amidst a half-dozen black ones in Free the Animals’ website photo and coaxed donors in the wealthier countries to part with their hard-earned dollars.

But battling poachers and upholding the rights of wild animals while recognizing the needs of farmers and pastoralists was one thing. Coping with the sight of slaughtered elephants and lions made her sick for days. How was she going to deal with the mass murder of hundreds of innocent people?

She peered in the open doorway of the chief warden’s house before entering, gagging at the smell of goat stew that emerged from the kitchen, a smell that usually set her mouth salivating. She focused her attention instead on the cleanliness of the dirt floor—the chief’s wife would not tolerate even a speck of debris.

The three men were reclining on mats in a corner of the room, half hidden behind harvesting tools and bushwhacking equipment, passing a bottle back and forth. Their faces shimmered in the heat, and their voices rebounded off the walls with a conviction that only alcohol could bestow.

Chloe could manage only a hoarse croak to announce her presence. "Hodi!"

"Karibu!" sang the voice of the chief’s wife from the doorway in the rear wall, welcoming her and inviting her to enter.

The chief warden’s assistants looked up, and the raven-black faces of his two toddlers peeped out from the rear doorway. The chief finished expounding a point before he, too, looked her way.

His eyes popped open at the sight of her, and he leaped to his feet, arms extended so wide his wiry, muscular frame seemed to grow in every dimension inside his Notre Dame T-shirt. He addressed her in English. Ka-lo-ee! What is it? What’s wrong?

The two other men stood as well, murmuring groans of concern. Although similar in ability and devotion to their jobs, the pair could not have appeared more different, Moises short and pot-bellied, Tessfaye tall and thin. Both wore the same frayed khaki uniform that Chloe wore.

Leading her to the mat, the men helped her close a circle with them. Tess handed her the bottle of pombe, the local brew distilled from millet, that they’d been drinking from. Without hesitation, she grabbed it and gulped down several mouthfuls. Even though she knew what to expect, the liquor burned her throat and made her eyes run. She gasped and shook her head, but took one more swallow before handing the bottle back to Tess. As she looked from one of them to the next, her vision blurred and the first tears began to fall. She spoke in English. The old man . . . Don’t know how to describe . . . Never saw anything like . . .

She gave up trying to talk, yielding to the tears she could no longer suppress, making no effort to still the shaking of her shoulders. Handing her camera to the chief, she leaned back against the wall, watching but only half-seeing the men’s expressions as they passed the camera back and forth, only half-hearing their exclamations and comments.

The men’s voices grew louder, and their gestures became more expansive. As their discussion grew more heated, the occasional English words vanished in favor of rapid-fire Swahili, and Chloe gave up trying to understand what they were saying.

When at last they quieted, the chief turned to her, his face shiny with conviction. He reverted to English. This is not the work of warring factions, Ka-lo-ee. Nor is it the work of insurgents or government troops. No army of riflemen would take time to stack dead people in piles like that.

She sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. So what, then? She tried to recall some of the explanations that had crossed her mind during the ride back to the station. Mass suicide, tribal revenge, a sacrifice to some god—none of them made any more sense now than they did then. Her head spun. Had she drunk too much, too fast? Or too slow, and not enough?

Ka-lo-ee— The chief turned to his assistants, then back to her. "Ka-lo-ee, all these people were killed with shots to the head. In all the world, there are no riflemen so accurate they can kill every screaming, running victim with a single shot to the head. Those people were unconscious before they were shot."

She pulled her scarf from her pocket and found a nearly-clean portion of it to wipe her eyes. She’d thought of that possibility, but it made no more sense than any other explanations. Supposing they were. What would that tell you?

The chief turned to his companions and spoke in a voice too low for her to hear—something obviously not meant for her ears. Although she leaned closer, she could pick up only a few words. Moises’ and Tess’s eyes darted in her direction, then back at the chief. Yes, as so often happened, they knew something more and were deciding whether or not to trust her with it. At last Moises and Tess nodded, and the chief turned to her again.

Ka-lo-ee, while you were gone we have been hearing stories about a village up in the mountains that vanished last night.

She blinked—and not to wash away tears. Back home such a comment would merit a Duh…, but here she knew better than to express her doubts out loud. O-ka-ay, she said instead.

The chief read her disbelief, and a hint of annoyance crossed his face. Ka-lo-ee, I am telling you what we have heard. It was a small village named Abarwonya. If you choose not to believe, that is your right. But in a case where we have no other explanation, we must consider every idea before we reject it.

Of course, Chief. But I mean, really, why would anyone pick a village at random, especially one up in the mountains, kill everyone in it, then move their bodies 20 or 30 miles to stack them in piles down here in the savanna?

The village was farther away than that—maybe 50 or 60 miles, or even more.

"Okay, 50 or 60 miles. That makes it even more crazy."

The chief shrugged. If I had an answer, I would become a writer like you, Ka-lo-ee. But with your own eyes, you have seen that it happened.

Moises took a swig from the bottle and passed it to her. Without a thought, she downed several more mouthfuls, then gasped and wheezed as she considered her next step. Her tears had dried up. Her mind had focused on revenge rather than pity. What do we do now, Chief?

I will notify the police. And we have to arrange for the bodies to be moved back to where they came from. The inspectors will want to talk to you, Ka-lo-ee. Will you be able to bring them back to where you found the bodies?

At the moment, Chloe was not sure she could navigate her way back to her hut a few yards away, let alone find the stacks of bodies again. Of course I can. Her mind wandered further, this time into the future. Will they want an article for a newspaper?

They usually bring a reporter along with them.

Aah. But they’ll need photos.

Probably, Ka-lo-ee.

She fell silent. She inhaled the scent of the goat stew, which no longer nauseated her. Not only was she hungry, but she also needed food to give her strength for the days to come, as well as to help her body battle back against the alcohol with which she’d so recently poisoned it. No more pombe, girl, she told herself. You can’t bring those people back to life. But you can do the next best thing. You can find out who killed them and see that justice is done, maybe prevent such a thing from happening again. Thoughts of home and a comfortable place to live could wait. She had come to Africa to help better the world. She’d done what she could to help save the wildlife. Now she had to save people. What an insane world she lived in. But was this not why she’d become a writer? Someone had to work to bring sanity back into the world.

Police inspectors arrived by helicopter early the following morning, and Chloe and the chief warden accompanied them to the site of the massacre. There, at the edge of the jungle-like grove, she saw an elderly man taking photos as she had done the day before. While she had no intention of photographing the bodies a second time, she was miffed by the thought of another person preempting her and taking credit for the work she had already accomplished. Excusing herself to her chief and the police inspectors, she began stalking toward the man, only to see him lower his camera and, with a wave, begin walking back toward her.

His demeanor at once disarmed her. Slender and fit-looking for his 70 or so years, his blue eyes sparkled as they danced over her frame before settling on her face. Above his sunburnt face with its stubble of white beard, he wore a vomit-yellow cap topped by a red plastic helicopter rotor. Stepping up to her, he spun the rotor and smiled. Chloe thought his right eye protruded a bit too far from its socket and focused just off-center. Its lid did not appear to blink shut all the way.

Would you by any chance be my colleague in the journalistic profession? he asked.

Australian, Chloe decided. Handsome in a raffish sort of way. Yes, I am, she answered.

"Excellent. I don’t get duked out like this for just anyone, you know. He extended his hand. Owen Kenney, alias Air America pilot, ex-husband to three faithful servants of Her Majesty the Queen, ace reporter for a great many metropolitan newspapers, currently the Nairobi Daily Nation."

His words titillated the wisecracking portion of her brain, which had been switched off since she’d laid eyes on the body stacks. She could not help smiling. "I’m Supergirl. Wonder Woman. Alias Chloe Freestaff, health and nutrition editor for Ravage, New York City’s underdog beauty magazine. Presently, Kenya’s esteemed representative for the infamous wild-animal-rescuing NGO Free the Animals."

A smile cracked his lips. "Then you’re the dish I’m looking for. Excuse me—chick. Don’t mean to ignite any feminist fuses."

For the first time in twenty-four hours, she laughed aloud. "And you’re just the heartthrob I was looking for. Excuse me—hunk."

Outfreakinstanding. Pardon my pig Latin. I’m told you already took photos. Is that correct?

I did.

May I see?

With just an instant’s hesitation, she removed her camera from its case and clicked on the first of her photos. Her breath caught in her throat as she awaited his approval or rejection.

He sampled fifteen or twenty of her photos before nodding with appreciation. Excellent. Any photos I take would be amateurish by comparison. Maybe just a few more to show the grassland with this odd little grove of jungle growing in the middle. And a few shots of the police inspectors doing their thing. With her camera, he snapped a half dozen photos of the scene surrounding them. You’ll be my photographer, then, and help me write the article?

Chloe’s head buzzed with pleasure. Love to.

Then let’s move on, shall we? I’ve got the coordinates of the village where these poor folks lived. Let me call my translator. Without the slightest intimation of fear, he marched through the tall grass on the near side of the grove of trees and brush, then waved to a young man standing alongside the chief police inspector. Jammo!

The young man acknowledged the wave at once and trotted to meet them. Owen introduced him as soon as he drew within earshot. Jammo, this is Chloe, my new assistant. Chloe, Jammo.

Chloe took the young man’s hand, looking into his face as she did so. A bit lighter in color than that of most of the people she worked with, with perhaps a hint of blue in his eyes. Although he looked young enough to be a high-school senior, the depth of his eyes made her suspect he was at least a decade older.

Anything new with the inspectors? Owen asked the young man.

Jammo shook his head. Nothing. They’ll head upcountry in another hour or so and join us. They agree with our assessment that the people were shot somewhere else and their bodies moved here. No one can figure out why. They’ve already decided against a terrorist attack or some kind of internecine warfare.

Glad we’re all on the same page.

Owen led the way around the left side of the grove. Chloe gasped at the sight of the helicopter waiting on its far side, a tiny thing with an oval-shaped cockpit and a spiderlike body and tail fin. "That’s what we’re going to fly in?"

Owen chuckled. That’s her. Fellow Viet Nam War vet. OH-6A Cayuse. Better known as a Loach.

It’s nothing but a glass bubble with a tail. The wind will toss it around like a spinning top.

Owen clucked his tongue. Where’s your spirit of adventure, lass? Here I am thinking of you as Wonder Woman. For your information, the Loach—AKA ‘Flying Egg’—is as sturdy a gal as you’ll ever meet. Can take a lot of machine-gun fire and still stay aloft. And maneuverable as a whore under the influence. Pardon my Greek.

Hurt by his scoff regarding her adventurer status, she stood back, expecting Jammo to enter first, but Jammo deferred to her, indicating the front right seat of the open cockpit. The frame looked as if it had once supported a door, but the cockpit now lay open on both right and left sides. Jammo waited while she pulled herself inside, then with a salute to her hoisted himself into the seat behind her and Owen.

What’s wrong with your right eye? she asked Owen as he climbed into the opposite side. Can you see out of it?

If he was offended by her bluntness, he did not let on as he strapped himself into the seat beside her. Sure. Not the way I see out of my left eye, though—sort of like looking into a cave. But the local aeronautics board doesn’t know that.

Sorry, she said as she drew the safety strap across her lap and chest. "That was nasty. I don’t like people to