The Beast Slayers

The chirping of the crickets had filled the night. The owls hooted from the top of tall trees. Occasionally fruit bats fluttered their wings, travelling from one tree to the other. The winds rustled the leaves. The night was loud. And in that loud night, dried leaves cracked as the forest guards trod over them, following a path that was shone white with the flashlight held in the hand of the man in the front. 

Nirban could feel the moisture loosening his grip on his gun. It was a hot night and even the wind couldn’t keep the guards from sweating. Their breaths were long and silent as if someone would hear them if they breathed normally. All of their senses were sharpened; they could even hear the whispers of the wind.

The man who was leading the party was Phukan. He was old and experienced. He knew the ways of the poachers; and there is only one thing to know about the ways of the poachers, which is that the poachers don’t have any way. They can do anything to escape if they were ever chased; if the guards get so lucky as to be able to chase them. Perhaps it was the anticipation of such a large variable of failure that had made the man perspire, or perhaps it was the prophecy… “Your death will strike you while you stride in the jungle,” a random Baba had said to him while on a bus journey two years ago. It had seemed so foolish a prophecy, up until now. 

Nirban was right behind the leader of the party. He too had encountered poachers more than once before. But each of the times, they were either already arrested or badly injured in some terrible accident; the kind of accidents that happen in the jungle. Nirban once glanced backwards. There were three other guards behind him; Deka, Das and Kalita; their weapons held firmly between their hands. They weren’t afraid. They will be the ones to flee the first if anything goes south, Nirban thought and focused ahead.

The information about the poachers was given to Phukan by a source residing in the village by the forest. The man had told Phukan that the exact Rhino which was being targeted was Mandakini. She was the mother of a three-month-old rhino-cub and hence would be easy to be lured as she would naturally try to protect her baby and would go to any extent to do that. In a way, the cub would be her weakness. That was what the poachers might be thinking as far as Phukan could tell. So he had put undercover surveillance on Mandakini’s surroundings. The poachers could hunt on any given day, so he needed to be careful if he had to catch them before they could kill Mandakini. Yet he told no one how he had acquired the intel. 

And here they were, sneaking through the jungle to Mandakini’s usual shelter. Phukan had specially instructed the surveillance team not to use any GPS tags on the rhino, or the poachers would be alerted and would flee. If they were not caught, then there would be another dead rhino within a month. 

Phukan turned off the flashlight and raised a hand, signalling the party to cease their movement. There was a clearing in the forest ahead. They halted at once as if they were playing statues. The safeties of their weapons were turned off; their triggers were unlocked. All of them aimed at the darkness ahead. There was no sound except for the usual nightly ones. The chirping of the crickets, the hooting of owls, the flutters of the bat wings, the wind rustling the leaves and… and what was that? That wasn’t a nightly sound. It sounded like a low growl, so viciously close and the hearts of all the men who stood there, petrified in strange positions, beat like drums. Nirban’s hand was trembling. He held the gun tightly to stop the trembles. If they had to fire then and there, all of them would have misfired; their hands shook badly as their heart became the epicentre of tremors. 

Phukan signalled them to lie low, and they all disappeared behind the shrubs swiftly. It was Mandakini’s growl. She had sensed men around her and wasn’t happy about it. But something in his mind told Phukan that the men that Mandakini had sensed weren’t them. There were others. And if Mandakini could sense them, it meant that they were dangerously close. They would not risk coming that close if they were just surveying the movements of the rhino. 

They will be operating tonight, Phukan’s muscles tensed. A part of him was singed in rage. The other part was still repeating that damned prophecy. Behind him, Nirban became sure about the presence of the poachers too. And so did the guards behind him. 

Bamm! The sound of a rifle shot thundered through the forest. Mandakini let out a sharp cry and then… Thud! Phukan sensed that she fell. They tranquillized her, a voice inside him roared. He signalled the men behind him to ready their weapons. There would be no mercy shown to the poachers today. 

Nirban steadied his muzzle, ready to aim at anything that comes into his sight. The guards behind him did the same. There were muffled footsteps in front of them and then somebody almost whispered in a coarse voice, “Bring the dagger, quick!”

Phukan understood the urgency in his voice. They were not afraid of forest guards but of the rhino cub that would probably be nearby and would attack them in no time once his eyes fell on them. Phukan prayed for the cub to be not in the vicinity. They would tranquillize him too, or maybe even kill him. 

Nirban was getting impatient. He could see the flashlight ahead. He could see the dark silhouettes of the men that had suddenly surrounded the rhino. He wanted to put a bullet through each of their guts, just thinking about what they would have done to Mandakini had Phukan not acquired the information.

And then suddenly something clicked inside Phukan’s head. It clicked so loud and suddenly that he was frozen in his poise. This time he was terrified for sure. How could a regular village dweller know which rhino the poachers were going to hit? And even if he did, why would the poachers be so careless to use a rifle to tranquillize the rhino? Why hadn’t he thought of that earlier? None could tell as none ever knew.

Against the light coming from the torch of the poachers, Nirban saw a sight that heightened his senses at once. The poacher whose silhouette could be seen through the leaves of the shrubs behind which Nirban had been crouching, aimed his rifle, not at the rhino, but towards Phukan. Nirban did the only thing that he could do. He leapt at Phukan and pushed him aside. At once the entire forest reverberated with thunderous sounds of rifles going off. The poachers weren’t there to kill the rhino. They had prepared not for procuring Mandakini’s horn but to put an end to her protectors. There were seven of them against the five guards. The guards scattered as soon as the rifles went off. As Nirban had suspected, two of the guards behind him, Das and Kalita, fled at once. But that was good; that meant they would go to the station and come back with reinforcements soon.

The guard, Deka, who didn’t flee, turned towards the way through which the party had come, through which now the two guards were fleeing. And there were two more thunderous shots, consecutively, from that guard’s barrel.

Deka is with them! Nirban saw him firing. And the next thing Nirban heard was a lower thunder than the previous ones. This time it was a pistol. Where the bullet plunged itself remained a mystery but Nirban didn’t waste time finding it. He turned towards Deka and aimed his loaded rifle at him. As soon as Deka turned Nirban pulled the trigger and the bullet escaped the muzzle with a roar. It pierced through Deka’s left palm and ricocheted off the rifle and plunged itself into his stomach. Deka fell hollering in agony. He reached for his rifle but Nirban fired another shot and he was dead with a bullet right on his forehead.

The seven poachers fired again and again but each time Nirban managed to avoid the bullets by hair’s breadth. It took another one and a half minutes for them to empty their rifles. As they began reloading, Nirban emerged from the shrubs and shot four of them, right in the head and the chest, one by one. The other three couldn’t believe what they had just seen. They ran back at once and took cover behind the giant Gurjan trees that towered in the dark of the forest like ghosts waiting in the shadows.

Nirban crouched down and crawled back behind the shrubs. It was only then that he saw Phukan. The prophecy had come true. There were three bullet holes in his body, as would be discovered later in the autopsy; one in the gut, which was probably the first one and the one which felled him to the ground, defenceless. The second one was in the chest; it went right into his left lung. And the third one on the top of his balding head; Phukan probably had been dead by then.

He was lying with his face downwards. A lump of fright solidified in Nirban’s throat. He felt his limbs go numb. His hand, which suddenly seemed to have a life of its own as it surely wasn’t Nirban who was controlling it, turned the body of Phukan over. Nirban could barely see the blood-soaked uniform in the darkness. Regaining control over his hand, he pulled out the flashlight from his pocket and turned it on. It shone over the ghost-pale face of Phukan. 

The silence probably had emboldened the other three poachers as they now emerged from their covers and began firing. One of the bullets pierced Nirban’s right thigh and he roared in pain. He rolled over towards a tree for cover. This time the shooting stopped in lesser time. Nirban leapt at the open ground at once. The men who were loading their guns turned back at once. But before they could disappear, Nirban rapidly fired twice, both the bullets hit two of the poachers right in their legs and they fell. The one who wasn’t shot ran off in fear. He never turned once to save his comrades. 

The shooting was over. The two poachers, who now crawled towards the covers had unloaded guns in their hands. The few bullets they had, got scattered in the darkness around them. Death came limping towards them. He aimed right at their heads and fired, one shot only slightly later than the other. 

“You motherf-” Nirban fell. There was no way he could cross through the jungle to the station, limping with that leg. He knew that forest guards would be coming. Someone had surely heard that thunderous bedlam in the middle of the night. He waited for them to come. He lay there in the clearing, looking at the starless sky on that hot July night. There was one last thunder, this time it was the real one, and the rain poured. He closed his eyes and felt each drop hitting his skin. It relieved him at least of the humid heat. 

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