In the Company of Killers by Bryan Christy (ebook reader for pc and android .txt) 📕

Blaze hurled two fists of grassy stomach content as hard as she could into the air, but throwing grass is difficult.

“Goddamn it, Blaze!” Zebra shit covered Krieger’s shirt. It was in his hair. His face. He quick-checked to see if she’d done it on purpose.

“Sorry.” Blaze laughed.

“Oh!” Across the clearing Isaac stifled a shy laugh. Krieger swiveled and glared at the young man. Why didn’t these people just do what they were told, he thought.

The bait tree was ready.

“Like a Christmas tree from the Apocalypse,” Blaze said into her iPhone.

“So now you like baiting animals,” Krieger interrupted.

Blaze turned. It took a moment to see his point. Concern flashed across her face. The whale sharks. The trouble she had caused him. “It’s different here,” she said. “This is for science. And we’re not affecting the lions’ long-term behavior.”

He smiled and stepped back to let her continue.

“Like a Christmas tree from the Apocalypse,” she repeated, and began to circle the tree as she narrated her video. “But it will be worth it to dart this lion. His pride has never been collared before, so we’ll be able to start a completely new study group. This is very exciting,” she said. “We will take blood and hair samples. Check and photograph his teeth. Address any injuries, and collar him with this.” She reached into the back of their truck and withdrew a lion collar. “This is a Total Information Project collar, designed by Perseus Group.” She zoomed in on the collar. “The collar gives the lion’s location, which we track using the TIPP app, first designed for elephants. We can also monitor testosterone and other hormone levels, as well as brain waves,” she said, and focused on a patch of silver metal inside the black collar.

•   •   •

After an hour waiting in the blind without success, Zoeller sent Isaac to the truck. The young man returned with a small equipment bag, a rope, and what looked like a radio. Zoeller set the box on the ground, plugged in a pair of headphones, and scanned through stations, pausing occasionally. He found the one he wanted and removed his headphones.

“We’re going to use a bait box now,” Blaze whispered into her phone. “What’s a bait box, Mr. Zoeller?”

“That’s one right there,” Zoeller said, pointing to the box.

Blaze rolled her eyes and turned her camera to her father.

“What’s a bait box, Dad?”

“It’s a digital representation of a prey item used to attract study animals,” Krieger replied.

“Thanks, Mister Robot. We will be editing this.” She spoke directly to her camera. “I’ve never heard a bait box in action before, so we’ll all be seeing and hearing this for the first time.”

Zoeller handed the bait box to Isaac, who flashed across the clearing and up the baited tree. He tied the device to a high branch. In moments he was back, his chest barely moving.

“You’re very fast,” Blaze said. The boy smiled.

Using a remote, Zoeller switched on the machine, and the quiet low of a calf rumbled from across the clearing. Zoeller slowly increased the volume. Sitting on a folding stool beside Blaze, Krieger listened to the recording and tried to imagine the animal. He pictured the calf with one hind leg staked to the ground standing beside its mother. He heard curiosity in the calf’s calls, no doubt confused to have its neck free but one leg anchored. Then he heard the long question it asked as it realized its mother was being led away. The calf issued a higher note to alert her it was trapped and unable to follow. It cried louder, after she’d probably gone out of view, eager to help her locate it. Then the calf grew quiet.

Krieger watched Blaze.

The calf found its voice again as it saw two men approaching. Clearly the calf recognized the men. I’m safe now, its quiet tone said. Why did you leave me? Krieger knew this moment. It was the same with men and animals. Everyone wanted to believe they were home.

He heard the calf cry out in surprise, then terror, as it experienced pain beyond its understanding, pain that would not end. Krieger had been with men as they made this same journey. He’d designed and manufactured tools to help them get there in a predictable way. In the end he’d discovered it cost almost nothing to transport a man to the same place as this calf, twenty dollars at a CVS.

Krieger looked at his daughter. She was breathing rapidly. Her cheeks were flushed red. “Relax, Blaze. It’s just a recording.”

“What are they doing to that animal?” She was filming him.

“Turn that fucking thing off.”

She blanched and stuffed the phone in her pocket just as a young male lion emerged from the bush sniffing the air, and slowly circled the clearing. More adolescent lions appeared, followed by adult females. Krieger was surprised there were so many. Finally, the big male lion arrived. Cyril did not look at the bait tree. He ignored the female lions, too. Cyril focused on the humans in the blind. Their blind was little more than a sheet of canvas and some tree branches. Zoeller flicked off his safety.

Blaze raised her dart gun.

Krieger placed his hand on the barrel and pressed it toward the ground.

“What are you doing?” Blaze whispered.

He held his rifle out to her.

“No.”

“You are a Krieger, Blaze. Hard decisions are what we make. You kill that lion or I will.”

•   •   •

That evening, Krieger relaxed in a camp chair facing the firepit, his rifle across his lap, a scotch and a cleaning kit on the ground beside him. He’d showered and changed, exchanged his khaki hunting clothes for olive green trousers and a sharply pressed white shirt. He wore his elephant-hide slippers.

His phone buzzed with a text. The text contained only two words. “Mischief Reef,” it read.

Krieger ran a cleaning patch through the barrel of his father’s rifle, a single shot .416 Rigby. Great white hunter Harry Selby had carried the venerated