Megalania (Vile Beasts Series) by Robert Forrester

Megalania (Vile Beasts Series) by Robert Forrester

Author:Robert Forrester [Forrester, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Best of Both Worlds
Published: 2015-01-15T05:00:00+00:00


Chapter 13

Roger Tanner was old. He knew it. He could feel it. And he was sure as hell certain he looked it. All that was left of his thick blonde mane were a few wispy grey hairs and a life under the African sun had turned his skin into the same texture as a rhino’s backside.

Despite his appearance, Africa had been good to Tanner. According to his passport, he was British, yet he’d never set foot in the UK. Born in Rhodesia, he’d spent his formative years enjoying the end of British colonial Africa and all the privileges that came with it—an excellent education, a big house, servants, a king’s life on a middle class income. He spent his days hunting in the bush, his nights drinking in the clubs.

At the time, he thought it would last forever, but Africa changed. When Mugabe took over, he forced the white colonialists out of the country, and Tanner spent the next few decades working in Kenya and Uganda and Gambia and several other African states, taking rich Americans and minor European royals on hunting trips.

Growing disapproval with big game hunting meant men that he had become as rare as many of the animals he hunted. Few places now allowed elephant shoots or lion hunts, and he’d spent the last ten years working as a guide for the government of South Africa. He hated it, but he had to do something to earn a living. He loved Africa, and as archaic and antiquated as he knew he was, he would do anything to put off the inevitable, which was to leave for good, and rest his bones somewhere in England.

He wasn’t ready for that, but he was prepared to leave his beloved dark continent temporarily. His ancient skills were in demand again, and for all his aching joints and sun-ravaged features, Tanner felt exhilarated as his taxi arrived at Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport.

This would only be the third time in his life he’d ever left Africa, and as he took out the luggage from the trunk of the cab, an unnerving feeling crept up his spine, as if he were saying goodbye to a lover that he would never see again.

Kruger had been vague. He’d simply said he needed Tanner to get to Papua New Guinea, a sixteen-hour flight away, as soon as he possibly could.

He had known Kruger since helping him with a lion problem in Limpopo. A man-eater had savaged several local miners, leading the rest of the black workers to revolt and put down their tools. Tanner had stalked the animal for three days, finally dispatching it with a single shot from four hundred yards. He may have been old and decrepit, but if any man alive was better with a hunting rifle than he was, he was yet to meet him.

Still, his old friend hadn’t stipulated what sort of problem he had in New Guinea. Tanner’s World Encyclopaedia suggested there were no big cats in the country, so he had no idea what he was being sent to hunt.



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