Shadows of Africa

By Wayne McCain

Inspired by the true story of the pride that claimed the lives of more than 1,500 men, women, and children.

When a small team of contract special operators land in Tanzania, it’s just another day at the office. But things change when they stumble across a pride of&nbs

• Language: English
• Publisher: Patrick Wayne McCain
• Release date: Jul 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9780999042823

Wayne McCain

Wayne McCain was born in Birmingham, Alabama. After graduating high school, he went from college to the Navy and finally landed back in Birmingham where he and his wife are raising their ever growing family. He has a deep love for his savior, Jesus Christ, and has made it a life goal to stay young at heart. His favorite hobbies include being with his friends, reading, and shooting.

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SHADOWS OF AFRICA

—For my bride and our little warriors.

To the boogeymen

(You know who you are)

SHADOWS OF AFRICA

Wayne McCain

Little One Publishing

Copyright © 2017, Wayne McCain

first edition

produced and printed in the United States

Little One Publishing

Prologue

(Tanzania, 1946)

The young girl put the eggs she’d collected into a basket made from woven vines. She was excited to give them to her new friend George when he arrived back at her small village in southern Tanzania. She put the basket on a small table in the corner of her hut. The sun was beginning to set and she still had a few chores to complete before it got too dark. She finished the last of her tasks just as the setting sun slipped beneath the horizon. As she made her way up the small hill to her hut with firewood in both arms, the breeze blew over the grass and she could hear elephants down at the river calling to one another. Her feet sunk deep into the soft sand making the final trek up the small berm all the more draining. Her little legs burned and her arms ached. There was a sudden, muffled thud that could barely be heard from the top of the hill. Then there was nothing. Just a small pile of sticks that lay on the side of the hill for a few moments before darkness slid over them.

Four days later George Rushby, a British game warden, arrived back at the small village to get the news. The little girl he’d become so fond of had become another victim. George had been brought in months earlier by the colonial authorities to deal with a pride of lions that had been killing people across southern Tanzania for over fifteen years. When he arrived, he met with district commissioner W. Wenban-Smith who welcomed him with open arms. As the two sat down to discuss the issue, Wenban-Smith unrolled a map of the area and proceeded to bring George up to speed. As far as he knew, the problem had started around 1932 in the Njombe District, but no one had any idea why. He told Rushby that four African game scouts had been permanently stationed across the district. They were well armed and were under orders to hunt the lions, but the rumor that the animals were under the control of a local witch doctor using black magic kept them from performing their duties. The scouts would claim that whenever they pursued the lions, the pug marks left by the cats would turn into human footprints, giving credence to the rumor circulating that the animals were simba ya mtu, or were lions, that could change form from feline to human at will.

When Rushby asked why his predecessor, Dusty Arundell, hadn’t addressed the situation Wenban-Smith told him that he’d tried, but every time he would start to make progress at eliminating the animals, he would be called away on other business.

Wenban-Smith pointed to a map and told Rushby that the lions seemed to be active in an area that covered three large villages: Mtwango, Rujewa, and Wangingombe. All three had been troubled for the same length of time. The size of the area marked on the map was about fifteen hundred square miles. Wenban-Smith explained that when the problem was still in the early stages, the tribes-people were living spread out in their customary smaller family units. There was no way of knowing how many casualties they’d suffered as none of them would’ve been reported. He continued explaining to Rushby that the lack of information was made even worse by the fact that the local populace had become so convinced the animals were some kind of demonic presence, no one would even speak of them. They were so gripped with fear over the supernatural power of the lions that if the animals took a child in the middle of the night, the parents wouldn’t speak about it to the neighbors the next day out of fear they would become the pride’s next target. Wenban-Smith told Rushby that there was one exception to this. Jifiki, the sub-chief at Wangingombe. Jifiki was not only willing to talk about the pride, he’d actually started keeping records in 1941 of the people in his village who were taken by them. As the district commissioner handed Rushby the list, he clarified that it didn’t include visitors or travelers walking through the area who were eaten. George looked at the list and felt a sense of shock creep over him. In the previous four years, 230 people were listed as having been killed at Wangingombe. The implications of the figure were staggering. Wenban-Smith continued to explain the killings in Mtwango had been on the same frequency as Wangingombe and that in Rujewa, as hard as it was to believe, it had been worse.

After he’d familiarized himself with the area, George decided he was ready to begin his campaign against the pride. Knowing he would need help, he recruited six of his of his best game scouts to assist in the effort. They were split into three groups with two of them being stationed in areas that the lions were known to operate in regularly and the third put on a roaming patrol to follow up on any news of the lion’s whereabouts. They also set up twenty traps throughout the area in an effort to increase their odds of success. The bait for the traps consisted of bleating goats, yelping dogs, human remains recovered from killings, and on many occasions George and his scouts. Throughout the entirety of the saga that played out between George and the man-eaters, not a single trap was ever touched.

As George began to study the pride and compile information on their activity, he realized there was something that was going to make catching up to them harder than he initially thought. Normally, lions hunt and travel at night, spending the warmer daylight hours resting or sleeping in a hide nearby where it’s fairly easy to find them. George came to understand as he studied the pride that they did do most of their hunting and feeding at night, but when the sun rose, they would leave what was left of the victim and cover great distances. They’d travel so far that by the time news of the kill reached a hunter and he arrived on site, the trail was already cold. Even when Rushby got a good start on them, it was almost impossible to stay on their trail. The lions had developed a very strange habit of dispersing following an attack. The entire pride would attack a village one night, and the next morning scatter into small groups, pairs, or even single animals who’d hunt alone for many nights on end. Then, for no apparent reason, groups of them would band together for another combined attack. They never attacked the same area on consecutive nights, and never stayed in the same place for more than a day at a time. Rushby also noted from studying the victims that the lions had substantial appetites. What was left behind when they abandoned a kill was hardly worth using as bait in the traps. They also seemed to be fond of human brains. Every victim’s skull was always carefully opened and the contents licked clean. Something else Rushby noticed rather quickly was the pride’s dedication to their chosen food source. As is common among man-eating lions, once they start to see people as food, they won’t eat anything else. There were large numbers of domestic livestock throughout their range but they went completely untouched. The cattle even got to where they didn’t show any fear of the lions. They wouldn’t stampede when the lions would charge directly into a herd to grab the herd boys that literally rode on the backs of the bulls. The lions would just grab the victim and walk back out of the herd with their kill not paying attention to the thousands of pounds of beef right in front of them.

After three disappointing weeks, George had to return to Mbeya bringing two of his scouts with him. They were being removed from the effort after suggesting to Rushby that they might have better results if they opened negotiations with the witch doctor who controlled the animals.

It was on Rushby’s next trip into the field that he met the little girl. He was training two of his new scouts when they received word from a transport driver that the night before, the pride had attacked the village of Mambego, fifty miles away. When he arrived, the village was only a shadow of what it was the day before. Most of the population had fled. As he walked through the village, he came to a small goat corral. Inside the corral were the almost unrecognizable remains of two human beings. The pride hadn’t even bothered to drag them into the bush. As George called out to see if anybody was still around, a young girl emerged from one of the nearby huts. She recounted the events of the previous night telling Rushby the lions had come out of the bush and jumped onto the roof of her hut. At the time, she’d been asleep under a blanket. When the lions dug their way through the roof, some animal skins that were hanging up inside had fallen on her. She’d frozen under them and stayed there until morning. When she climbed out, her parents were gone. She wasn’t sure if they’d been eaten or simply run away.

The next day, while George was eating breakfast, the girl’s father came wondering back into the village and informed Rushby that he and the girl’s mother had run to a neighboring village seeking shelter from the pride, but the girl’s mother had been taken by the man-eaters the next night. George quickly finished his breakfast and set out with one of his scouts, the girl’s father, and two tribesmen. The girl’s father and the tribesmen had initially refused to go, but Rushby needed guides and wasn’t in a mood to negotiate. After three hours, they found the lions trail. They were the freshest tracks George had seen to this point in his pursuit of the pride. As he studied the pug marks, he discerned there were four of them. He looked up at his companions excitedly and saw they were all terrified, even his game scout. Carefully, they pushed on.

Just before noon they pushed through some brush and saw the lions standing together in the shade of a tree. George heard the men behind him gasp. He dropped to a knee, took aim, and fired. The round splintered the lioness’ right front leg and she began to growl and bite at the wound. The other lions began to move off and George was tempted to try and put a round into another one, but he knew how important it was to come away from this encounter with a clear victory. He couldn’t let the lion he’d hit manage to get away, so he took aim and fired at her again. The shot went straight through her head. He reloaded and shot her two more times. When he knew she was dead, he turned to his companions. They were all staring at the animal with a look of terror and expectation. No doubt waiting for it to transform back into a human being and come after them.

As he approached the carcass, George marveled at the animal’s condition. She was young, sleek, and clearly well fed. After examining her, he asked the men to skin the animal. None of them would touch it. He had to remove the animal’s head before any of them would go near it. George decided to carry the trophies back to the girl’s village to get the public relations campaign started. When they arrived, the little girl presented Rushby with a dozen eggs, which would become standard practice in the coming weeks. George never got up the nerve to tell her they gave him heartburn.

In the coming months, George and his scouts managed to eliminate four more members of the pride. The most recent kill being made while George was on leave back in England by one of his scouts. When he returned to Africa, he’d gone to the little girl’s village with pockets full of candy and learned of her fate. He was infuriated when he got the news. The next morning he and Alfani, one of his scouts, began the hunt to deliver the child’s vengeance on her killers. They headed south toward the Mbarali River and on the third day cut the trail of several lions moving north-west.

It’s them, George said.

Alfani grunted in agreement.

They picked up their pace and followed in the pride’s wake. The air was hot and both men were covered in sweat. As they made their way across the African plains, Alfani pointed ahead at something off to the side of the trail. George acknowledged as they approached the object. It was a wild pig, completely intact save for its stomach. This had become a common occurrence when tracking the man-eaters. They would come across wild pigs that had been killed and just left in the trail uneaten. George surmised the lions found the squealing sound the pigs made when being disemboweled amusing. It was a strange behavioral trait he hadn’t seen before. Just before noon they caught up with them. As the lions were unaware of their presence, George and Alfani quickly devised a plan where they would each shoot at a different animal to try and anchor as many of them as possible. They carefully took aim and fired simultaneously. Alfani hit with his first shot but missed with the follow up. George’s lion dropped to the ground, but as he began to reload, it started to scramble to its feet trying to escape into the bush. George took aim again and hit her with the next shot killing her instantly. As soon as he realized his lion was dead, he set his sights on the lion Alfani had wounded. He fired at her twice, scoring hits with both shots and killing her. The remaining three lions all got away in the scuffle, but George found satisfaction in knowing the pride was now slightly smaller than it had been a day ago. He also felt that he’d made a statement, in his own mind if nothing else, that the girl’s death had come with consequence to her killers. Blood for blood. As they examined the animals, they found the same thing they’d observed with the previous members of the pride they’d killed. They were slightly shorter than other lions but heavily built with thick musculature, and they all possessed immaculate coats of glossy, thick golden fur.

Shortly after the event, as had become the rule rather than the exception at this point, George was called away on another matter involving an elephant killing someone in his district that appeared to have illegal activity surrounding it. He’d already been called away on more than one occasion to deal with a locust problem, as well as having been forced to take leave going back home to England. George had realized early on that what Wenban-Smith had told him about his predecessor was absolutely true. Every time he would get a victory over the pride or begin to gain momentum, he’d be called away on personal or professional business that would bring the progress to a halt. Thankfully, when he returned from the elephant investigation, he received news that one of his scouts had killed another man-eater. That brought the total to eight members of the pride that had been eliminated. There was also a downward trend starting in the numbers of people being eaten. George felt the winds beginning to shift.

In the coming weeks, George hunted down and killed another member of the pride after several of them had wondered into a village in broad daylight, grabbed an older man, and drug him a short distance into the bush before feeding. George felt he was on