Dark Places

22. Dark Continent Dreaming

There were twenty of us in Africa. Hallam Chevalier, our laconic and casually competent Zimbabwean driver. His gregarious Kiwi wife, Nicole Seams, radiator of good cheer. Steven McPhee, a St. Bernard of a man, a brilliant mechanic, a big friendly Aussie a lot smarter than he looked. Those three were in theory the official representatives of Truck Africa, the company that owned the truck and sent it across the continent every so often. But after a couple of weeks there was no distinction between them and us.
   The passengers came from around the world. Claude, a French teenager who had come on the truck barely speaking any English, a wildlife expert, a proudly lazy good-for-nothing loved by everyone. Mischtel, a lanky Namibian/German girl with an inimitable deadpan sense of humour. Jose, a phlegmatic Mexican with a razor-sharp mind, easily the smartest of us. Lawrence, a hard-drinking, hard-nosed Kiwi who somehow always got his mitts on the last beer. Aoife, an Irishwoman who could cook like Julia Child and find music anywhere in the world. Carmel, a garrulous Australian computer guru who liked everything about Africa except the chocolate deprivation. Melanie, a Scottish chiropractor and oceangoing sailor who simply refused to be fazed by anything.
   And a crowd of Brits. Chong, nicknamed "Chong the Indestructible," a ferociously fit marathon man, the most British person on the truck despite his name. Emma, aristocratic and model-pretty, who was ready for absolutely anything so long as her moisturizer supplies were adequate. Her "slightly less evil twin" Kristin, a movie producer back in Real Life, who had the rare gift of making people who assisted her with anything feel afterwards as if they were the ones who had been done a favour. Michael, the most charming man alive, taking every disaster in stride as if it was the day's entertainment, with an amazing knack for finding hashish in even the most remote corners of the globe. Robbie, a good-natured London club kid with a first-rate mind on the rare occasions that he chose to use it. Rick, a social animal armed with sandpaper wit that stripped the slightest hint of pomposity from anyone within twenty paces, and a heart of gold beneath. Michelle, everyone's little sister, a slightly dazed and comic-book-pretty little blonde girl who seemed incredibly out of place in Africa but handled it with surprising aplomb.
   And Laura Mason, everyone's sweetheart. And Morgan Jackson, the Great White Hunter. And me.
   Aside from Hallam and Nicole none of us knew each other before the day we met. From a certain perspective the whole trip sounds like either a Survivor-esque reality show or some kind of ethically questionable psychological experiment: take a large group of perfect strangers, force them together nearly 24 hours a day and 7 days a week for four months, give them an extreme task such as driving across West Africa, make them work for the bare necessities of life such as food and shelter, and see how they cope. We coped all right. It turns out that people are good at coping when they have no other choice.
   In chemistry, when chemicals are brought together in conditions of extreme heat and pressure, certain combinations are apt to violently explode. Other combinations repel one another and simply will not mix under any circumstances. However there are some rare chemicals which will only bond under those conditions — and will form stronger bonds than those found anywhere else in nature.
   I think people are the same way. I think groups of people in intense situations will explode, fragment, or gel. Our truck group didn't go to war together, we didn't survive a plane crash together, but compared to the plastic existences led by most people in the First World at the end of the twentieth century our time together was unspeakably raw and intense. And we had the right combination. There were other overland trucks who attempted to cross the continent at roughly the same time, and we heard of some that fragmented, where the driver and passengers battled daily, where half the group fled the truck for weeks on end to travel independently and returned only reluctantly if at all. But we had just the right combination.
   In chemistry they call it sublimation when a substance moves from a gas to a solid without ever becoming a liquid. Something similar happened to us. We started as strangers and somehow became a tightly-knit tribe without ever really passing through the stages of acquaintancehood and friendship. Many of us would never have become friends. It wasn't in us. But members of your tribe do not have to be friends. Sometimes it is better that they are not. That was the most important lesson that Africa taught me.

   This was my plan:
   I wanted Morgan Jackson dead. I was willing to kill him myself. I was sure of that now. I wanted to turn the tables on him, track him down in some desolate corner of the Third World and do unto him as he had intended to do unto me.
   But. I doubted I could find him when next he traveled, and he certainly wasn't going to respond to any invitation I sent him. Also he was still bigger, stronger, faster, more dangerous. Even if I could find him again I didn't have a chance. Not alone.
   And who would help me? Certainly not Talena, and I couldn't fault her for that, not for a second. It wasn't a blood oath for her. It wasn't personal.
   Morgan Jackson was a psychopath, a murderer, a serial killer; he had violated the laws of God and man; but he had found a loophole, he performed his atrocities outside the range of those who steadfastly enforce those laws. He would never be brought to justice by them. Nor by the ruthless, impersonal law of the jungle. But there is another kind of justice, and another kind of law. When he killed Laura Mason he had killed one of his own tribe. Nations and governments might be powerless, hamstrung by their own rules, but tribes have no such limitations. They do not do what is written; they do what they think is right.
   I flew to London.