Page 12 of Sheltering Instinct

“Thorough,” Gwen said, pulling her arms through the straps of her safety-ten pack.

“Absolutely,” Tess whispered, “I’d feel better if she had these.”

“I hear you.”

With her GPS on her palm, Tess dropped a pin to indicate their tent’s location. That way, she and Gwen wouldn’t be wandering the desert as lost as Mandy—more lost; Mandy was at the gas station just outside the camp gates. Eventually, the workers would show up, and Mandy would be sitting at one of the picnic tables in her jammies and flip-flops.

Tess glanced toward the tour vehicle and saw that the soup pot from dinner was resting on the fold-out table. “Five bucks says he tries to feed that to us for breakfast.”

Meals were part of this excursion’s fee. When the driver, Otto, skipped over lunch yesterday, everyone was too polite to ask when they’d get to eat, but this also made them hangry with a side of carsick.

It had been a visually exciting but hot and unpleasant five-hour car ride from Namibia’s capital city of Windhoek. The trip had been two hours longer than anticipated because of the stop to change a flat tire and another when the engine decided to conk out for no apparent reason.

Along the route, dotted across the powdery earth, termite mounds towered as high as Tess’s head.

Baboon families lounged by the side of the road.

An occasional giraffe or springbuck would make everyone point and gasp.

And then there were more termite mounds. And more termite mounds. And more.

Tess liked them. She held a sense of awe that tiny termites could make their own skyscrapers. She’d love to see one of the mounds cut in half to discover the interior architecture. But, given that they were full of termites, Tess was equally glad Otto didn’t offer to chop one open—for everyone’s sake, including the termites.

It was all magical and amazing.

The only problem was that Tess wasn’t great without food. Since she was sitting next to Otto, she took up the subject with him, making sure the guy knew she was displeased and that they expected to be fed properly throughout. Maybe her tone wasn’t as diplomatic as she’d wished, but Tess succumbed to the effects of hangry like any other human.

Tess got it. Namibian jobs were sparse. With a twenty percent unemployment rate, people were willing to work for meager wages. Tess had concluded along the drive that Otto was probably pocketing the designated food money to fatten his wallet. That was understandable, especially since he’d told Tess he was divorced with a child support check going to Botswana.

But still, Tess knew from her lean-pocketed grad school days as a single parent that there were plenty of creative ways to feed a crowd. Otto could skim a little off the top without someone posting bad reviews for future tourists to read, causing them to click over a different tour operator’s page. Seemed to Tess like that was biting off your nose to spite your face.

As Tess stumbled along following the GPS red arrow on her rescue hunt for Mandy, Tess realized from her inner dialogue that her hangry hadn’t been appeased since yesterday, and she needed calories to let go of her inner grumbling.

A missed lunch wouldn’t have been that big a deal, except she’d skipped breakfast for their early departure and then arrived at the campfire to find a dinner unfit for consumption.

Not just unpalatable but inedible.

They’d all been starving, and—after Otto’s bragging about his gourmet camp cooking skills—the travelers had high expectations and growling stomachs.

When the group gathered in a line to dish up their share of food from a pot in the fire pit, they discovered that Otto offered them a dinner of half-cooked rice. The chicken wings he’d thrown into the pot, with white, gelatinous-looking skin, floated to the top. Some vegetables that had been green and leafy were now cooked to strings. But the combination of soggy everything and the crunch of the uncooked rice made this stuff not just visually off-putting but a top candidate for causing a bad case of travelers' sickness.

Tess and Gwen pulled out the meal replacement bars they’d left in the vehicle, keeping them safely away from their tent where the enticing chocolate scent might lure scavenging jackals.

That’s what they ate for supper. And now the friends were out of options. Tess needed to think about something other than her empty stomach. “I’m not a fan of being out here with the jackals.”

With her headlamp in her teeth, Gwen wound her long black hair into a messy bun at the nape of her neck. Tugging her lamp back into place, she said, “They’re out here looking for a quick snack and maybe a willing female for a little midnight lovin’. You’re not a small animal, and you’re not furry enough to make them consider you for a girlfriend.”

Tess pulled a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose in a wet and satisfying way. “I don’t know about that. I haven’t shaved in a couple of weeks.”

“TMI, my friend.”

“Right.” Looking around, Tess could understand Mandy’s disorientation. Every camp looked almost identical—tents, numbers, and vehicles— all the tourist groups were like theirs. “Over there.” Tess pointed at the activity to her right. “Turning my head with my headlamp on and seeing the jackals humping is just kind of rude on my part, wouldn’t you say?”

Gwen chuckled as they stumbled forward through the deep desert sand.

It didn’t take long to get to Mandy. There she sat with her arms wrapping herself, shivering.

Gwen called out, “We’re here.”

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