Zombie Team Alpha: Lost City Of Z

by Steve R. Yeager

  In some of the deeper parts of the jungle, the practice of cannibalism and shrunken heads went with the territory. Cutter didn’t necessarily want to meet those tribes. Neither was he enamored with the idea of having his head shrunken. He was content with the size it was now.

  For the most part, the drive had been uneventful, with the occasional rutted track dipping so low that the G-63 tipped up on its side to squeeze through. Cutter kept checking the rearview mirror and kept making eye contact with Reyna in the back, wondering if he should explain his concerns to Gauge and Morgan, or share with them anything concerning the surprising appearance of Warren Bell.

  For now, though, he figured it was best to play things close to the vest.

  “About five or six miles,” Morgan said from behind him.

  Cutter acknowledged the unsolicited comment with a nod and glanced over at Gauge. The big man had his cap pulled down low and was fast asleep.

  “At the rate you are driving,” she added, “it’ll be another two hours before we get there.”

  “Hey! Can’t really help it.” Cutter waved a hand at the vehicle in front of them. “Any idea what we will find when we get there?”

  “Not a clue,” Morgan said.

  “You’re slacking.”

  “No, I’m pissed.”

  “Still?”

  “Yes.”

  Cutter frowned and wrapped one hand over the top of the steering wheel. He glanced again at Gauge and gave a quick jerk of the wheel. The man’s head jiggled, then Gauge came barely awake and wiped under his nose with a finger, pulled his cap lower, and dozed off again. Cutter’s frown turned to a grin. He sucked in a deep breath and sighed it out.

  As the drive continued, he became even more bored with their turtle-slow progress. So bored that he started driving just a bit too far up on the side to see how much he could lean the G-63 before it would tip over, getting more and more daring with each try. When he felt it finally begin to roll, Gauge came awake with a start. Cutter let off and let the big tires slide back into the ditch where they belonged.

  He glanced at the rearview mirror. He had not only climbed the dirt berm, but had tried to climb up the side of a tree and had scraped the bark clean off.

  “Whoops,” was all he said.

  “You keep driving like that, and we’ll never get there,” Reyna said from the back seat.

  He said nothing in response as he slowed down again to match the pace of the lead vehicle. He picked up the radio microphone, ready to tell Moray to stop driving like a little old lady on Sunday.

  Before he could key the mike, something heavy dropped on the roof and slid down the front windshield.

  Cutter braced against the steering wheel and slammed on the brakes. “What the hell is that?”

  The slithering thing slid out along the front hood.

  “That’s a jararacussa,” Dr. Martinez said. “You don’t want to mess with those. One bite is enough to kill twenty people, and it will leave you screaming in pain as you bleed out from your eyes and your anus while pieces randomly drop off your body.”

  “Ouch,” he said. “No, I’d rather not be bitten by one of those.” Cutter fumbled about for the wiper switch as the thing crawled back toward the windshield. When it hit the moving wipers, the snake was unceremoniously flung back into the jungle.

  “So much of what lives here will kill you,” she said from the back seat. “Just be careful, will you?”

  “I plan to be.” They’d been in situations like this before and had survived—barely. Sometimes you don’t have to be good, just lucky. That was something Warren had once instilled in him. Cutter knew he’d been blessed with an overabundance of good luck. Perhaps more than his share. With all the stupid shit he’d done in his past, he figured he should have been dead ten times over by now, if not more.

  The monotonous drive continued until they entered a long tunnel of green. Then the trees gradually shrank away, and they emerged through a net of hanging vines into a wide clearing. From there, the twin dirt tracks led to a rickety bridge crossing an expanse of river. The bridge looked as if it were merely minutes from collapsing. Half the boards were missing and others were crisscrossed in various directions to cover the obvious holes.

  Cutter stepped on the brake pedal and brought the vehicle to a standstill. He tapped the steering wheel as he watched Moray in the first vehicle approach the bridge.

  “Looks a little shaky, boss,” Gauge said from the passenger seat.

  “Glad you are awake for this,” Cutter shot back.

  Gauge gave a neanderthalic grunt and straightened himself in his seat.

  The two rear doors opened. “We’ll walk across,” Reyna said as Cutter twisted in his seat and glanced over each shoulder in turn. Both Morgan and Reyna got out and slammed their doors shut.

  “What about you?” Cutter asked Gauge.

  The big man gave another grunt and rolled his shoulders. “I’m good.”

  Moray stepped out of his vehicle and inspected the bridge. He climbed back in, and, with guidance from Rogers, crept the first wheel up onto the rickety wood. The truck rolled forward until it was fully supported by the bridge, but the weight of the heavy vehicle started causing the bridge to sag and bounce.

  Moray drove forward slowly, and the old weathered boards bent ominously, but not once did Cutter see a brake light come on as the other vehicle inched its way across the entire span and down the opposite side.

  Cutter shifted into low-range and let his G-63 creep toward the bridge at idle. Slow and steady was the way to go.

  “Want to get out and guide me?” he asked Gauge as they approached slower than a walk.

  Gauge gave another of his grunts and waved a hand in the air dismissively.

  “Sure hope you can swim,” Cutter said dryly as he put the first two wheels up on the bridge. He felt the entire vehicle sag along with the bridge. Everything bounced up and down a bit. But then the tires bit into the wooden planks, and he kept everything rolling with a small amount of throttle input.

  The boards creaked and cracked. He felt each vibration through the seat of his pants. Those vibrations were growing worse and worse, and he was certain that the bridge would collapse any second now. He had to hurry.

  A mosquito chose that particular moment to buzz past his ear. The buzzing stopped and he sensed where it had landed. He shook his head slightly, to no avail.

  Then the damn thing bit him.

  But there was nothing he could do. He was still working hard to keep the vehicle going in a straight line. He didn’t dare take his hands off the wheel to kill the bug.

  After crossing the halfway point, the bridge bowed and the opposite edge lifted up to the same height as the hood. The hairs rose on his arms and a new fear shot through him—the bridge was coming apart and crumbling away beneath him.

  Any second…

  He touched the gas pedal with a bit more pressure and sped up as fast as he dared go. The other end of the bridge rose while the vehicle sunk lower. A little more throttle and the engine RPMs climbed. The wheels then slid and began to slip sideways. A foot or two more and he would tip the G-63 on its side and drop it in the river.

  But he knew now just how far it would lean.

  Balanced precariously, he steered against the sideways creep, turning the steering wheel gently in his hands and praying for traction. With a jolt, something caught underneath the vehicle and everything lunged forward. The balance of the span changed, and the end of the bridge that had bent upward, slammed back down, forcing the vehicle higher.

  Cutter gunned it for the last few feet, and the heavy G-63 rolled off and back down into the soft earth.

  As they coasted to a stop, Cutter let out the breath he’d been holding and swiped at the mosquito that had bitten him on the neck—but it was gone already.

  As he scanned the cabin, he saw the little bloodsucker from the corner of his eye. It slowly crossed his vision, almost lazily, fat from his own blood. The thing landed on
the side window, wanting to get out. For half a second, he thought of squishing it with his thumb against the glass and make it pay for what it had taken away from him.

  Instead, he simply rolled down the window and let it fly away. Oddly, he had a strange onset of sympathy for the small insect. He didn’t know where it had come from, but he was in a merciful mood.

  Unfortunately, though, rolling down the window to let one mosquito out, invited another hundred in. He puffed hard to blow them all away and sought for that little black box at his hip and clicked it on when he found it. Like magic, the mosquitos dissipated out the half-rolled-down window, just like blown smoke.

  Cutter glanced over at the only passenger brave enough to have accompanied him on the crossing. Everything could have just as easily gone badly. Gauge wore a puzzled look, but not one of relief. Nodding, the big guy reached down and turned his black box on as well without comment.

  “I hate those things,” Gauge said.

  Without any words needed to be said, Cutter nodded back, rolled up his window, and parked the G-63 beside the lead vehicle. He shut off the engine and stepped out.

  Another much larger river flowed past in the distance. The water was murky and brown, the color of mud, whereas the river they had just crossed had been mostly clear. When the two met at the confluence, the waters swirled together until everything was the same ugly brown. The settlement was much like the two rivers, a sharp contrast of old, discarded technology and jungle. The outpost or village or whatever the hell it was, looked as if it had been built over a hundred years ago, and added to piece by piece. Peeling paint adorned walls built from various metal scraps, and those flimsy pieces were fastened together with whatever plant material could be gathered from the surrounding forest. To give the village an even odder appearance, wire-mesh satellite dishes were affixed to about half the rooftops, which themselves were made from little more than wide leaves and rust-tinged corrugated steel. Dogs roamed the empty spaces between the buildings, searching for scraps, and a solitary goat with a long white beard stopped chewing and stared at the strangers who’d just arrived.

  While Cutter continued to take it all in, he found himself suddenly engulfed by a crowd of mostly naked children that had appeared almost out of nowhere. Those children were followed by women whose breasts dipped down to their midriffs. Most of the natives coming to greet him had pierced noses and ears, and some even sported full body tattoos. One crazy-looking guy was wearing a T-shirt that was ripped and torn and the logo on it was barely recognizable. But Cutter knew what the logo represented—the Dallas Cowboys. He gave the guy a thumbs up and the small native man mimicked him, smiling broadly.

  The Cowboys were doing pretty well this year, finally. Cutter wondered if the guy even had any idea what American Football was, or why it even mattered.

  Probably not.

  He turned to Gauge. “Hope the natives are friendly,” he said as the children continued to mob them both.

  - 15 -

  CHIEF OF THE FOREST

  Cutter and his team, along with Moray and his, were led by the native children of the village through the muddy lanes between the leaning and dilapidated structures. Fingers probed Cutter’s pockets, all while the little rascals held big smiles on their faces as distractions. Kids without much were always looking for something, and he obliged a few of them with small pieces of hard candy that Moray had provided. But those same smiling kids often took the candies, rejected them outright, and tossed them aside as if they were poison.

  They walked past a wiry teen boy sitting on a five-gallon bucket, playing a video game on an old Gameboy. The boy had the same hollow look in his eyes that kids back in the States had. Cutter caught the scent of exhaust fumes from the generators running outside the hut across from the boy.

  Inside the nearby hut, the familiar murmurs of a television show could be heard. It was an American TV show. Cutter stopped when he recognized the voice of Captain Kirk and listened for a couple of seconds. When he realized what episode they were watching, he grinned—Spock’s Brain. Probably the dumbest of all the old episodes, but still far better than any of the Star Trek television shows that had come after it. No other captain even held a candle to Kirk. Not a single one of them.

  Their escort ended in front of one of the decorated huts. On one side was a beat-up wooden American Indian carving, like the kind that once sat in front of cigar stores many years ago. It had been repainted in odd colors—blues, and purples, and reds. Behind it on a wall was an unlit neon beer sign that promised Bud Light on Tap.

  Ajay Covenant had been acting as their interpreter as they walked. He spoke fluent Portuguese, or so it seemed. That still meant they had someone else from the village doing most of the interpretation for them, so it took two people in total just to make whatever Moray was saying understood by the natives. Cutter figured that these people knew more than they were letting on. They just gave off that vibe. The jungle native ignorance display was all an act.

  He was sure of it.

  Ten minutes after they had arrived, Cutter, Moray, Gauge, and Rogers were allowed to enter the chieftain’s hut, which turned out to be the size of a small apartment on the inside. The women were told to remain outside, which Morgan took as an affront, but she held her tongue. Reyna accepted it as if she’d been expecting it.

  Inside the hut was just as eclectic as the outside. On the far wall was a large, flat-screen television playing a gameshow where half the people were wearing costumes and jumping up and down to the sound of a buzzer. On a far wall were movie posters with figures like Stallone and Schwarzenegger. One poster was of John Wayne. Cutter appreciated that one and tipped his hat toward it. He was already liking this chieftain and knew that they at least had something to bond over.

  Then his focus landed on something else. Tiny heads dangled from drooping lines across the back wall. As he examined them closer, he noticed that the hair was still attached, and while they were all shriveled up like prunes, they were indeed human. He wondered if they were real or fake. It was hard to tell the difference since he’d not actually seen them this closely before. He turned away from them and tried to ignore what he’d just seen, not wanting to entertain the possibility that they were indeed real.

  On his earlier trip to Ecuador, his wife had brought along gifts for the natives. Not candies like Moray, but something more substantial. Still, what she had brought along were just little knickknacks. After one look around, however, Cutter knew for certain that glass beads and shiny baubles were not going to make much of an impression with this crowd. They’d require something more sophisticated, more substantial, more…American?

  Maybe.

  The man they met was less than five feet tall, with eyes ringed with black soot. The little guy sat in a chair that appeared to be more of a barstool with the legs chopped down to size. His legs were spread apart and Cutter couldn’t help from seeing, that the man’s penis had been entirely adorned with gold—or maybe it had just been painted gold. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but, for the briefest of moments, he wondered what his might look like if it had been decorated in a similar way.

  The chieftain grunted once, and the man beside him said something in Portuguese.

  “He welcomes us,” Ajay translated.

  Moray bowed his head, and Cutter mimicked the gesture. The chief’s eyes roamed over each of them in turn and stopped at Gauge.

  “Schwarzenegger,” the man said in a gruff tone, pointing with a bent finger.

  Gauge flexed and showed off his meaty biceps. The chief smiled with delight, then his smile turned to a frown, and he mumbled a few words.

  “He says that man is an imposter. He is not a movie star. Err… Ah… The chief does want to know what he eats that makes him so big.”

  “Rocks,” Cutter said. “Tell him that he eats a lot of rocks.”

  Ajay looked at Cutter funny and repeated the word in Portuguese to the other translator.

  The chief listened, grunted a chuckle
, and then smiled again, this time fully, showing his few remaining teeth through the tough hide of his leathery face. Even though the chief did not speak, the man beside him did.

  “Atikibono would like to know what you have brought him and what you are asking of him in return,” came the final translation from Ajay.

  Anton Moray stepped forward and held out a black case. He lifted a lid and folded back a layer of velvety cloth. Contained inside the case was a bar of gleaming gold. He removed the shiny bar and offered it to Atikibono. The eyes of the man beside the chief went wide at the sight. Cutter figured the gold bar was enough to buy the entire village, and everything in it, ten times over.

  Atikibono grunted as he examined the gold bar. He set it on a table beside him and made a gesture as if he were asking for more.

  Moray, shaking his head, took another package from Rogers and unfolded it. Inside this one was a silver Colt .45 Peacemaker with a leather belt filled with shiny bullets. Even Cutter questioned the sanity of giving a gun like that away to a complete stranger, but he figured Moray knew what he was doing.

  The chief removed the gun from the holster and waved it around. “Bang, bang, bang,” he said as he pretended to use it to shoot everyone in the room.

  Moray smiled back, nodding, and went to help Atikibono return the gun to the holster. Cutter was reasonably sure it wasn’t loaded.

  Reasonably.

  “Ask him for permission,” Moray said as he returned to Ajay’s side.

  Ajay began speaking, and the man at the chief’s side translated on the fly. Some words Cutter understood. Fawcett, Eldorado, but other than that, he understood nothing else that was said. Atikibono also didn’t display anything that Cutter could read on the little guy’s face. The man just sat there stone-faced and accepted the translation. When Ajay finally finished, the chief rose from his chair, folded his hands behind himself, and waddled past everyone and out of the hut.