Zombie Team Alpha: Lost City Of Z

by Steve R. Yeager

  She looked down. Looked up. “I-I can do this.”

  “Yes, you can. It’s all you. One-hundred percent, you. I’ll be right there by your side the entire way. Trust me. We’ll just run to the edge and jump right into the heart of Africa. It’ll be fine.”

  She gave him a quizzical look like he’d said something crazy, or stupid, then she drew a deep breath and let it leak out through her lips.

  “Okay, Jack. You’re kidding, right? Africa…?”

  - 10 -

  DOWNFALL

  Normally, Cutter made some effort to study the landing zone before any jump he planned to make. He’d also made the assumption Moray would not let them jump into somewhere that was overly dangerous. That meant plenty of wide-open spaces and not an obstruction in sight.

  His assumption turned out to be partly true.

  The ground below him was a patchwork of browns and greens, light and dark. Almost horrifying in its scope of wanton destruction. So barren. Everything was scarred and alien—like some malevolent god had come through and ripped up all life by the roots and left behind a vast wasteland.

  Far off in the distance, the horizon was a perfect line of green where the blanket of the jungle canopy began. Before that, the land was crisscrossed by lighter brown trails that led to nowhere in particular.

  Everything had been bulldozed into oblivion.

  A lump grew in his throat. He’d witnessed such destruction before, but never of this magnitude. It was heartbreaking to see, but he knew he could do nothing to change it, much as he may have wanted to. Though, in that moment, he made a promise to himself that, if he survived this mission, he’d find some way to put an end to this level of destruction. While he was about as far away from a sandal-wearing, dope-smoking hippie bent on worshiping the gods of Global Warming as he could possibly be, there was only one Earth—and some goddamned assholes were destroying it.

  Wind roaring past his ears, he chanced unbalancing his free fall for a quick peek at the altimeter on his wrist and watched as it counted down closer to the red zone. He glanced off to his right where Reyna was still in free fall. She was doing what she’d been told to do, which was nothing. She just laid there like a rag doll, remaining flat, eyes focused downward.

  He counted off the remaining seconds in his head before he expected his chute to open.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  One again…

  Her chute exploded first out of her pack and, half a second later, so did his.

  Cutter was jammed hard against the straps of his harness, knocking the wind out of him. Soon after the chute fully deployed, he raised his arms above his head and felt around for the control handles, found them, and pulled on each to test their effectiveness.

  When he looked over again to locate Reyna, she was gone. He spun left and right, scanning the sky for her, then yanked hard left to spin a complete one-eighty.

  There! He found her.

  She was about fifty feet below him and maybe two hundred feet away. Dumping air from his chute, he maneuvered himself closer, watching to make sure everything with her was going as expected.

  It was. He relaxed a bit. The air was growing warmer, much warmer, almost hot. Sticky.

  A thought struck him. Where the hell had everyone else landed? He scanned below and wasn’t able to pick out any signs of the team. No smoke trails, no colored parachutes, no nothing. Just more swaths of brown dirt, punctuated by lighter colored, dead vegetation. No trees to speak of other than one or two gray skeletal forms dotting the landscape.

  He looked over at Reyna. She seemed to be enjoying herself. He would have been too, if he hadn’t been so worried about her. There were few things more peaceful than floating to earth, suspended by a parachute, while still high above the ground. It was just the last part—the landing—that could be troublesome.

  She seemed to have everything under control, so he shifted to get behind her to make sure she lined up properly to make a soft landing. He followed her in, dumping air from his chute. Her billowing parachute obscured most of his line of sight, so he tugged on his handles to let her drop lower than him so he could see past her.

  Oh, shit! The words exploded in his head as he realized she was heading right for one of the gray skeletal trees in the middle of the flat plain.

  It would be just his luck for her to hit it and end up with something broken—or worse—become impaled on a branch.

  “Left! Left! Left!” he yelled at her.

  She yanked hard on her left handle.

  Too hard.

  She went into a spin and started corkscrewing toward the ground below. He swung around to the right to gain a better view, then let up on his handles and leaned into a dive, causing his velocity toward the ground to increase dramatically.

  He continued to follow her in, keeping watch as she fought with the control handles. Right before she hit the ground, she flared and started walking, touching her feet to the parched soil and landing upright. Her chute floated down behind her, lazily.

  She’d made a perfect landing.

  He spun his head to concentrate on his own situation.

  The tree he had been pushing her to avoid loomed large in front of him.

  He reacted instantly, yanking hard to flare while raising his feet to absorb the impact with the tree. He slammed into the outermost branches, snapping them off as his boots came down hard. He heard a bigger crack as more dead wood broke away. The smaller branches slowed him somewhat, but he was moving far too quickly still and crashed through the empty space between the larger branches and came shooting out the other side of the tree.

  The ground came at him fast, as if he’d tried to jump from the tree. He turned his head away, bent his legs, and prepared to roll on impact. But, instead of landing on the ground, his parachute caught in the tree, and he was slammed hard against his harness, driving every bit of air from his lungs.

  Stunned, gulping air and wheezing like a dying fish, he found himself hanging about six feet above the ground, swinging back and forth on the parachute cords. The shock of landing so hard kept him gasping, trying to force his spooked diaphragm back into a normal rhythm. He clamped his eyes shut and winced against the pain.

  When he opened his eyes, somewhat recovered, there was a group of tiny, half-naked men in front of him. Each little man had a haircut that reminded him of Moe from the Three Stooges. Their dark faces were painted completely red, and their deeply recessed eyes viewed him with rapid, bird-like blinks.

  Then a skinny white man dressed in a khaki shirt and blue jeans, wearing a cowboy hat and cowboy boots and a big silver buckle, stepped between them. The man towered over the much shorter natives. Cutter hadn’t seen the guy in a long, long time—because the guy was supposed to have been dead.

  In a slow Texas drawl, the man said, “Nice of you to join us, Jack.”

  - 11 -

  MENTOR

  While Socrates had mentored Plato, and Plato had mentored Aristotle, and Aristotle had gone on to mentor Alexander the Great, the man standing before Cutter had once been his mentor. Maybe the relationship wasn’t the same, maybe it was more in line with Mr. Miyagi mentoring Daniel-san—or maybe even, Splinter’s mentoring of Leonardo. Whatever the case, Cutter was certain the man who stood before him now had suffered the fate of all flesh and had died some time ago. Two years, as best he could calculate, considering his heart rate was still trying to drop out of overdrive. He’d even attended the funeral of the man with Sharon at his side, and he’d spoken well of his former mentor.

  No, this can’t be. The guy should be dead. But there he was. In the flesh.

  Still swinging in the tree, hanging by the entangled parachute cords, it was hard to reach out to be certain the man was real. Even wearing a helmet, Cutter figured he might have smacked his head on a thick branch a bit too hard, and the whole thing in front of him was just a hallucination—or he was seeing a ghost.

  “Warren?” Cutter asked as he c
ontinued to swing back and forth in the tree.

  The man pulled off his sand-colored Stetson hat and wiped his brow, then set the all-too-familiar hat back on his head and beamed wide, showing a full set of white teeth.

  “Well, ain’t you looking good, Jack.”

  Cutter kept swinging in the tree. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

  “Rumors of my demise have been a bit…exaggerated.”

  Glancing over each shoulder, Cutter scanned the tangled branches behind him to see just how he was hanging from the tree. He wouldn’t want a sudden, unexpected drop to occur when he started trying to free himself. It seemed, though, that the multi-colored chute was well-snagged on the skeletal branches, in the middle of a ravaged landscape, where it was the only tree in sight.

  Figures.

  He started slapping around for the harness release, wanting to appear competent in front of his former mentor and the natives gathered around the man.

  “Need any help?” Warren asked from below.

  “No, I think I can handle it.” As soon as he said that, the harness released, and he fell the six or so feet to the ground and landed bent-legged and then fell to all fours like a cat. Standing, he brushed the dust off and reached out to shake the man’s hand.

  Instead of a handshake, though, Warren Bell, the man who had been a friend and mentor for years, pulled Cutter close and wrapped him in a bear hug.

  “It’s good to see you again, Jack.”

  Cutter, still breathing hard from his near brush with death, was released, and he took a staggering step backward. “Why no word? I thought you were dead? Where’ve you been hiding all this time?”

  Warren eyed him for a moment. “It’s a long story. Perhaps another day?”

  Reyna Martinez joined them. She was carrying her parachute wadded into a bundle. She dropped the pack and chute at Jack’s feet.

  “Dr. Reyna Martinez, this is Warren Bell, an old friend of mine.”

  She smiled and nodded at the man dressed as a cowboy, and Cutter realized that the two already knew each other. A whole bunch of small things he’d noticed, but had not stopped to think about, clicked into place in his mind.

  “So…” he began.

  “Yes, Jack,” Reyna said. “I’ve been working with Warren for some time now.”

  “Then this whole thing with you delaying the jump was a—?”

  “Setup,” Warren filled in. “She’s a smart cookie, Jack. Bet she even had you fooled?”

  Cutter blew air through his lips and shook his head side to side. “But…?”

  “Next you are going to ask me why I am here. I’m sure you’ll figure that out soon enough, but we don’t have much time to catch you up on what is going on. She can do that later. I’m sorry we had to do it this way, but you’ll just have to trust me. Okay?”

  “Trust?” Cutter asked. “You faked your own death. Now I meet you in the middle of the Amazon? I…? Why are you here…?”

  “Not the right question, Jack. You can do better.”

  Cutter thought about it for a moment. He’d known Warren Bell since the man had recruited him out of high school soon after his mother and father had died. The man had been his father figure ever since, and when he had died, Cutter had been crushed by the grief.

  Now that was all some elaborate ruse? For what?

  All that time they’d spent together did count for something, and the man had not made answering any of his questions easy. Though, right now, the last question was a cinch.

  “Why am I here?” Cutter asked.

  “Bingo.” Warren pointed his trigger finger and pantomimed a shot. “See, you are not as dumb as you think you are, Jack.”

  “So…why then?”

  Frowning, Warren rubbed his hands together. He looked away, then back. “I didn’t quite make it to Russia in time, Jack. Almost did. But almost don’t count for shit. When I found out that pipsqueak asshole Wayland betrayed me, as he also betrayed Moray, I asked Reyna if she’d keep quiet about it. I figured another opportunity would present itself.”

  “But she…?”

  There was a twinkle in Warren’s eyes when he next said, “I think she might be even smarter than you are, Jack. Fancy that. Just stay quiet a sec, okay? I have a few things I need to say, and I need to say them quickly. There’s not much time.”

  Cutter glanced from Reyna to Warren. She nodded and Warren made a series of rapid hand gestures. The natives that were with him scattered, running off behind Cutter, bent low, spears and bows in hand. He could smell them as they passed by and was surprised that they didn’t have that awful stink most unwashed people possessed.

  “Jack, you can’t trust Anton Moray. Not for a second. He’s looking to acquire a Seed.”

  “A Seed…?” Cutter again looked from Reyna to Warren.

  “You haven’t told him?” the man in the cowboy hat asked.

  She shook her head no.

  “Well, tell him. Soon, okay? Just not now.” A look of disappointment crossed his face, but he blew out a breath and continued. “Jack, Moray is down here after a thing we call a ‘Seed.’”

  “A what…?”

  Just then the radio at Cutter’s hip chirped. “Jackson Cutter, you read? Cutter? Jack?” The voice was Morgan’s. The radio beeped again and then repeated a similar message. He reached for it to answer, but a quick hand-patting gesture from Warren caused him to stop.

  “Not yet, Jack. My time’s up here. Reyna’ll explain what I mean by that later. All I can say is you cannot under any circumstances let him get to it first.”

  “Who? Moray? Why? What is it?”

  “She’ll tell you later.” Warren handed him a small black box about the size of a cigarette pack. “Keep this on you at all times. I’ll be able to track your location with it.”

  “S-sure…?” Cutter was still not certain what was happening. Too many things were going on at once—and they were not adding up. He was used to not knowing everything. He’d been married for ten years to a woman much smarter than he’d ever been. A man gets used to not knowing things when his wife is smarter than he is—he’d learned that lesson long ago. Here he was again, falling into the same traps, with the same cycle repeating itself.

  “So she knows? She can tell me what’s going on?” he asked.

  “Yes. Now, I’ve got to go. You have a long trek ahead of you both. Remember—not a word about us meeting. Got that?”

  “I think so,” Cutter said. “But will I—?”

  “Good.” Warren tapped a finger to his cowboy hat and pulled down the brim a bit. “Ma’am.”

  Reyna grinned a knowing smile back at him, nodded her goodbye, pulled a pair of black-framed glasses from a pocket, put them on, and adjusted them with her index finger.

  “Goodbye,” she said.

  For half a second, Cutter thought she was saying goodbye to him. Then he realized with relief that she was staying with him. He had so many questions that needed answers. He didn’t even know where to start.

  “You’ll need this,” Warren said as he handed over a metal canteen. The man nodded once, turned on his heel, and set off across the destroyed landscape.

  Jack watched his former mentor go, walking across the barren wasteland toward a distant horizon. It was then that he noted the natives that had been with Warren had vanished, even though there wasn’t a twig to hide behind, nor blade of grass. All that was left was the single cowboy, walking off to who knows where. Cutter wanted to chase after the man, but realized in the moment that whatever he was now involved in was much bigger than him alone. No longer was it about finding a mystical city filled with gold. This was something different. This was about something called a “Seed,” whatever the hell that meant. He had a pretty good idea, though.

  It meant more of those goddamned zombies were in his immediate future.

  For the briefest of moments, he wondered if some grand hole in the sky was about to open up, and he’d sprout wings and fly through it. With all the weirdness goin
g on around him, it was up there on the list of possibilities.

  Blowing out a long breath from his aching lungs, he turned to Reyna. He had misjudged her. She was just so damn beautiful, and had kept him so…occupied. He had been looking past everything else. Maybe he was slipping. Maybe he was avoiding it. Maybe he just didn’t care any longer.

  “You planned all this?” he asked. “You knew he’d be at this specific spot? By this tree? How in the world could you possibly…?” He shook his head.

  She grinned, stood on tiptoe with her hands folded behind her back, and pecked him on the lips.

  The radio at his hip chirped again, and he pulled it off his belt and answered. Moray relayed the coordinates of the landing zone, and Reyna entered them into the tablet computer she had pulled from a pocket on her cargo pants.

  “That way,” she said. “Five miles.”

  Cutter glanced up at the sun. He was already sweating, and his skin felt flushed and clammy. They had the single canteen Warren had given them, but that was it. He checked the gun at his hip, which was there more for reassurance than anything else because there didn’t seem to be a damn thing left alive to shoot at other than him and Reyna.

  She bent to pick up her parachute.

  He put a hand on her arm and shook his head. “Leave it behind. No need to haul that with us.” Then in a voice that was meant to both imitate and mock her hesitation to jump from the plane, he said, “Let’s go do this.”

  - 12 -

  SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION

  “Jack, you ever heard of the Book of the Dead?” Reyna asked.

  Cutter picked out a path through the boney, sun-bleached roots of some long dead tree. He’d heard of the text before, but not the specifics. His wife Sharon had spoken of it, and she was certain there were answers to some of the various riddles in life that were contained in the book hidden in Ecuador. She’d taken both the riddles and the potential answers to them with her to the grave.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of it, but not the details,” he said.

  She looked at him questioningly, then nodded. “The ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead was also known as the Book of Coming Forth by Day, which isn’t quite as sexy a title. It consisted entirely of a series of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Some parts of it were written down on papyrus scrolls. Other parts were carved into the walls of burial crypts. Most of the glyphs depicted the same stories of how one is supposed to descend into the land of the dead.”