Kalahari by Jessica Khoury Page B

anywhere.
    “Binoculars,” I gasped, holding out a hand. “Somebody give me binoculars!”
    “I have this,” said Kase, offering his camera.
    I took it and climbed back onto the Cruiser, bracing myself better this time. Pressing my eye to the viewfinder, I roved the bush. Then, my hand shaking slightly, I twisted the heavy lens and zoomed in.
    My breath stuck in my lungs. I couldn’t understand it. It was like my mind rejected what I saw, telling me it was too impossible, too strange. It had to be a trick of the light, or some kind of prank.
    “Sarah?” Sam asked again. “What do you see?”
    What do I see?
I had no idea. I could have seen a ghost, and it would have made more sense than the creature hovering in the lens of the camera.
    It was a lion. Or at least, it was something
shaped
like a lion.
    But it wasn’t tawny or golden or even white, like the one the poachers were rumored to be hunting. It was like no lion I had ever seen.
    This lion was
silver
.
    Not silver as in silver gray or silver white. It was
silver
, from nose to tail, as metallic and gleaming as mercury. It moved slowly through the bush, twitching its silver tail and shaking its silver mane.
    I stared, but couldn’t comprehend anything about it.
    “Sarah!”
    I jerked my eye away from the camera and looked down at Sam. He gave me an exasperated look.
    “It’s a lion,” I said. “I think.”
    “You
think
? We heard it roar.”
    I nodded. I had heard it too. I looked through the camera again, but the lion was gone. Frantically, I zoomed out and searched the bushes—there it was. It was moving faster now, its nose lifted. Had it caught our scent?
    “Sam,” I said slowly. “Kase. Get in the truck.
Now
.”
    “What—”
    “Get in the truck.”
    They climbed up, using the wheels and roof supports to haul themselves into the back of the Cruiser. Everyone crowded behind me, straining to see. Still shaking, I focused on the lion and snapped three photos.
    “Holy cow,” said Joey. “Is that . . . is that it?”
    So they could see it now.
    “What
is
it?” Avani asked, looking doubly shaken that here was something she didn’t know the genus and species of.
    “It’s a silver lion,” said Miranda.
    “No,
duh,”
said Joey.
    “It’s impossible,” I said.
    “Is it covered in paint?” asked Sam.
    It was the most reasonable explanation I’d heard yet—except that no paint I’d ever seen looked that much like metal. No paint could cover a full-grown lion without flaking or wearing off.
    I turned the camera to display mode and zoomed in on the picture I’d snapped. Kase’s camera was extremely expensive, taking higher quality photos than even my dad’s professional gear.
    Everyone leaned around me to look.
    “That’s not paint,” said Kase, taking the camera and squinting at the display.
    I knew he was right. The silver was too perfect, showing no bare spots, not so much as a single tawny hair. The individual hairs of the lion, caught in crisp clarity by the camera, seemed to each be made of silver strands.
    All silver, like the moon.
Theo’s dying words. I had taken them for delirium, never imagining. . .
Keep watch, Tu!um-sa. Watch for silver eyes. The lion is hunting
. I had been right: The lion—
this
lion—had been following the vehicles, and Theo must have seen it sometime after he’d been shot, thinking it was a vision, a spirit come to escort his dying soul into the sky.
    “It’s like . . . it’s like . . .” Joey started, but he stopped and shrugged. “I don’t even know. What the hell is it?”
    “The silver lion,” I said softly. “This is what the poachers are after. I thought—the rumors Henrico told Dad about—they mentioned a white lion, an albino, we thought, but this . . . This isn’t natural.”
    “I think that’s obvious,” said Avani. “So what is it? Some kind of robot?”
    We all stared at the creature as it made its way toward us. The hairs on my arms stood vertically, and