Steve’s Savage Safari
Ross Norris
Copyright 2013 Ross Norris
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The acrid scent of tannin was fogging the air. Its seething odor dulled the senses on contact. It was a foreign, wild, and savage odor, so indicative of what this part of the world had become. As James Wyler stepped further into the room his feet scraped across the grit on the floor which had probably once been smooth and glossy. The walls were mold-stained and even bloated in a few places, looking overindulged. The bare bones of a drop-tile ceiling hung above him like a giant vulture-stripped rib cage. A few tables and mismatched chairs were set up around the room. An old glass display case showed off the stuffed heads of several animals. Some were common enough, some were the remnants of animals that could no longer be found on earth, and a few were of such odd variety that Wyler doubted that any naturalist had yet classified them.
Wyler had known, at least academically, what he was entering into when he ventured into the savage lands. It became all the more real when his helicopter had flown over the wall, across the safe zone, and then glided over the cities that were now dilapidated and disrespected tombs; testaments to both an age that had passed and to the power of man and his rage. The sky had grown grayer as they flew deeper in; bludgeoned by the ever present clouds and ash. Long expanses, barren of trees, grass, or water, were drawn out below. Burnt stumps and buildings grated the ground like late day stubble. Long gone were the checkered grids of green and tan of the farmlands. It was one thing to know a fact; it was another to see it with one’s own eyes.
“Hello there,” Wyler heard from behind him. He turned to see a short and lean man walk in through the front door. The man wore cargo pants, clearly patched and mended in a few spots, a sleeveless shirt, and a dusty brown fedora with a frayed brim. Unlike Wyler’s well kept black hair, this man’s shocks of blond were uneven and greasy. It made Wyler feel out of place in his charcoal slacks and crisp shirt.
“Hi.” Wyler continued to look the man over.
“Welcome to Steve’s Savage Safari, Mr. Wyler. I’m so glad to have you with us.” The man put the moist, bitten end of a cigar back into his mouth, wiped his hand on his pant leg, and then offered it to Wyler.
“Steve?” Wyler asked.
“In the flesh.” Steve’s handshake was firm and fast. He looked down at the suitcases near Wyler’s leg and snapped his fingers. A young man, no more than mid-teens and dressed as shabbily as his boss, came out from a shadow-draped corner. “Take Mr. Wyler’s bags to his room.”
“We’re staying here?” Wyler asked, letting his eyes scan the room again and reveal too much of this thoughts.
“You are indeed,” Steve said. “I know it ain’t up to the standards of your hotels out east, but it’s the only building in the camp with heat.”
The boy picked up Wyler’s bags in one hand and waited, shooting glances back and forth between his boss and the visitor.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Wyler said. He fumbled around in his pocket and pulled out a clean Eastern Democracy bill with the sketched face of former president Rudy Giuliani across it. “Thank you, young man.” The boy only looked at the paper being offered to him and then looked back to his employer as though begging for an explanation.
Steve muttered something Wyler couldn’t understand and the boy scuttled off around a corner. “Sorry, Mr. Wyler,” he said, “But that paper money is as worthless as toilet paper out here.” He stopped to laugh. “In fact toilet paper is a better trade actually. Paper money is good in the Democracy, but it ain’t but rags out here.”
“I don’t understand. I paid for this trip in cash.”
“You paid your travel agent. He paid me in supplies; food, meds, bullets, and the like. That’s the stuff with real value.”
“I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to offend the boy.”
“No harm, Mr. Wyler. He’ll get over it.” The shorter man came and put a greasy hand to Wyler’s shoulder to nudge him toward a door on the back wall. “You’re the last one we were waiting for. Shall we join the others?”
Wyler followed as he was led into another room. It was as old as the rest, though a few threadbare carpets and lamps with colored shades tried their hardest to present an air of comfort. The yellow light pouring in through the barred window highlighted the dust as it swirled in the air. Despite the attempted comforts, the décor of stuffed and mounted animals, set up in poses of leaping and bounding, took all the attention. There was an elk, which by all accounts was now extinct, frozen in mid-prance behind a sofa. A mountain lion stood atop a table and some strange scaled dog rested on hind legs in the corner.
“Lovely aren’t they?” Steve said. Before Wyler could respond he went on, “Can I get you anything to drink, Mr. Wyler?”
“Scotch?”
“You got it.” The untamed man stepped into a corner and opened a cabinet and went to work preparing the drink. Wyler kept his eyes on the mounted beasts. He knew the facts; they were dead and stuffed. However, as he looked at each one he could almost anticipate their leaping and clawing. His eyes caught the almost imperceptible imaginary movements. With all of his body he could feel and anticipate a blinking eye or swatting claw.
It was only as his eyes caught the unexpected sight of smooth human skin that he was brought back from his irrational suspicions. He looked up to see the skin belonging to a pair of long feminine legs. The rest of the woman was covered in the sheen of a black dress. The woman attached to the legs was as exotic as the animals, with dark, short, tight curls on her head. Her blade-like fingers pinched a cigarette that added to the haze of the room. A man sat next to her sipping a drink.
“Agata Belinsky,” the woman said with a slight accent, answering an unspoken question.
“James Wyler,” he said back automatically.
The man next to her, a good decade older than Wyler with neat cut gray hair and a jaw as angled as a brick, stood and offered his hand. “You must be the last man on our expedition then, James. A pleasure to meet you; I’m Kyle Aldridge, Aldridge Industries.”
“The construction firm?” Wyler asked.
“Among other things. We rebuilt half of Atlanta ourselves after the war.”
“The war?” Agata spoke, “It lasted three days and you call it a war?”
“What else would you call it, my dear,” Aldridge said, “when over three quarters of your country is nuked? Besides, apparently three days wasn’t long enough for the Russians to determine which side to be on.”
“We were prudent,” she said. She went back to smoking her cigarette as though that explained it all.
“Well, it was a war that we won anyway. They got a lot of us, but we preserved the east and made the enemy pay in the end; am I right, James?”
“Some of us lived. We were lucky.” Wyler was saved from answering any more by Steve who handed a glass to him.
“Your refreshment, Mr. Wyler.” The host nodded to all of his guests. “I have a few things to attend to before dinner. After the meal we will go over the route and some guidelines before the hunt in the morning. If you will excuse me.” With that he tipped his hat, bowed to the lady, and left the room.
“Dingy place isn’t it,” Aldridge said. “Can you believe people actually live like this; surviving off of the scraps of the old world?”
“Well, we in the Democracy were lucky to rebuild.”
“Luck? Luck wasn’t a part of it. We did more than remake buildings, young man, we remade a nation; a better one. We rebuilt civilization. Asia is a slag heap, Europe is a shimmer of what it once was, but
we thrive.” Aldridge stopped talking long enough to take in more of his drink. He caught Wyler scanning the mounted animals again.
“Beautiful creatures, aren’t they?” Aldridge asked. “You ever do much hunting, Jamie boy?”
“I took a few deer with my father when I was kid.”
“Oh, but that’s not the same,” Aldridge said. “I have been big game hunting on three continents. I bagged a lion once in Africa, before the war. It was illegal, where I did it, but the brute was mine.” His chest seemed to inflate with each word. He moved closer to the bizarre scaled canine that guarded the corner motionlessly. He began to pet it as though it were a soft family dog seeking his praise. “I have hunted all over the world, but I have never seen the things that are supposed to live in the savage lands. This thing here is fantastic. It didn’t even exist a few decades ago. It’s amazing what a few nukes and some experimental chemical weapons can do to the evolutionary process.”
“They are freaks of nature,” Agata said, rejoining the conversation.
“And yet here you are to take one for yourself, my dear.”
“I like the challenge. These things are hideous, I’m more than happy to help them die.”
“To each his own,” Aldridge said, raising his glass to toast the woman’s killer instinct. “Or her own, as the case