Looking at it from an existing knowledge base and error checking point of view, I feel like C++ smart pointers or Rust is a better option for someone doing a dangerous low level thing rarely. I'm not sure Zig is really all that favorable a choice in your given scenario.
Rust unsafe is less safe than writing C code. Rust is not good language for writing "unsafe code". C++ smart pointers are really bad compared to arena allocators, and not allocating at all. It's very easy to end up with dangling references in C++, or double frees with smart pointers. Also the fact that C++ initialization itself is a huge foot gun.
