Zombie Team Alpha: Lost City Of Z

by Steve R. Yeager

  Nothing happened.

  The expression on her face changed to one of puzzlement.

  She clicked the detonator again.

  Nothing.

  Cutter felt for the remote she had originally given him—the fake one. He had put it in his pocket. “Did you give me the wrong one?”

  She examined both and flashed another confused look.

  “I…must have. But—”

  “Let me do this.” Cutter took both remotes and put one in his left hand and one in his right.

  “Duck,” he said.

  But, he hesitated to pull the triggers to set off the explosives.

  “What is it, Jack?” Morgan asked, fingers in her ears.

  “I can’t. I don’t know why, but I can’t do it.”

  “You have to, Jack,” Reyna added. “Pull the trigger.”

  He didn’t. Instead, he stared forward. Coming into the plaza before him was the Golden Man. It was not looking at him. It was instead walking toward the pile of corpses that Cutter and his team had left behind. It stooped before one of the bodies and touched it on the cheek. It then slowly turned its head toward Cutter.

  - 40 -

  DECIDER

  What Cutter witnessed—even from fifty yards away—was a deep, deep sorrow. The Golden Man was not angry over what had happened. Its eyes were not so red as all the other zombies, and its countenance expressed a great sadness.

  Cutter corrected himself. That was not the Golden Man. That was Jack Fawcett. He understood finally what had been gnawing at the edge of his thoughts.

  He now knew why the Golden Man had not attacked him. All those zombies had been created and were maintained in near perfect health by the strange powers of rejuvenation that existed in the valley. He also understood why he had been drawn toward the temple. They all had been. They’d been pulled straight into a giant trap. A spider’s web. He only had to look up at the massive structure that spanned the valley from one side to the other to know the truth. The answer had been there all along. Right before his eyes. He just hadn’t put the pieces together—until now.

  In the middle of the trap, was El Dorado, the Golden Man. But Jack Fawcett was not a hostile spider sitting and waiting for its prey to arrive. He was as much a slave to the seductive powers of the valley as all the departed zombies. He had been their reluctant leader. He was their caretaker. Those tied to the trees above the valley were tied there not as a warning, but to keep them from returning to the valley—and to let them die in peace and not be constantly rejuvenated by the seductive bait at the center of the trap.

  The horror of what all this represented hit Cutter like a boot to the gut, rendering him speechless. But he stood strong, watching with reverence.

  Jack Fawcett stopped at the limp form of a native that had once been drawn in, enthralled, and then made into a zombie. He knelt and touched the tiny figure on the cheek in the same way he had touched the others. Purple sparks followed his fingertips as he pulled his hand away. Then, reaching under the body, he scooped the small form up into his arms, and stood. Blood ran freely from the gaping wound in the former zombie’s head and dribbled onto the gray stones at his feet. Slowly, body cradled lightly in the crook of his arms, Jack Fawcett made his way to the foot of the temple steps.

  Cutter continued to watch in mute respect. There’d been a great sacrifice made today, but it hadn’t been his sacrifice. By killing them, he and his team had released all those zombies from an existence of perpetual servitude and an eternity of suffering.

  What they’d done by killing all those zombies—had been an act of mercy.

  Jack Fawcett made his way to the top of the temple stairs. He paused for a moment in the only remaining sunbeam and looked skyward. The ray of light caused the millions of flecks of gold covering him to glow and sparkle. Then, he lowered his head and disappeared inside the temple.

  Saying nothing, Morgan, Reyna, and Gauge stood shoulder to shoulder beside Cutter while he waited a few more seconds to give Fawcett enough time to make it to the platform in the center of the temple. He was not entirely certain if the coming explosion would be powerful enough to destroy the temple and the Golden Man along with it. Nor was he confident he would be strong enough to set off the explosives and finish the job. If his and Fawcett’s roles had been reversed, he didn’t know if he could resort to killing his own people as a way to end their torment—even if they had become possessed and controlled by some malevolent force. While he was willing to sacrifice himself for anyone on his team, he was unsure if he could actually end the life of any of them, no matter what affliction they might suffer from.

  He glanced at each member of his team, then at the twin triggers in his palms. A bird squawked high above. Then another. As he breathed in the thick, moisture-laden air, he inhaled the life force of the jungle as well. He could suddenly sense the heartbeat of the forest and the magnificence of Creation circulating all around him. In a flash, the wonders held in a singular moment in time between knowing the highly improbable existence of life and the realized certainty of it came to him.

  Maybe this final act wasn’t only about mercy. Maybe it was about something even more important. Maybe this was about the ongoing struggle between good and evil and how to tell the difference. What was good? What was evil? When a fire provided warmth, was it good? When it burned down a house, was it evil?

  Who determined which was which?

  Cutter forced himself to keep his eyes open. He stared at his hands. The twin detonators rested lightly on half-curled fingers. He jostled the devices slightly, shifting them onto his palms.

  Who was truly entitled to make the ultimate decision between what was good and what was evil?

  He was.

  Curling his fingers around the detonators, he pressed both triggers.

  There was a loud, brilliant explosion. Stone shattered. Dust and smoke erupted. In half a heartbeat, the concussion wave closed the gap between the temple and Cutter, and it knocked him back a step. He leaned into the wind slightly while pebbles and chunks of stone whizzed past his face, some pelting him like hail, but none doing any real damage.

  A bright angry light lit the smoke emanating from the temple in a fiery glow. Flames and shrapnel spewed forth from the resulting fireball while billowing clouds of gray smoke boiled out of the arches high above.

  With a deep, resounding groan, one massive support pillar after another cracked, sheared off, and gave way. The temple began to buckle under its own weight as if it had been smacked by a giant fist.

  Then, making the earth shake, it tumbled down on top of itself.

  In the aftermath, dust obscured almost everything.

  As the dust cloud cleared, a solitary figure emerged from the chaos, moving slowly, unsteadily. Dust blanketed the figure, making it as white as a ghost. Its eyes were reddish and dark.

  But it wasn’t the Golden Man. It wasn’t Jack Fawcett.

  The thin figure was dressed in tattered clothing, a uniform of some kind worn long ago, now rotting away.

  The solitary figure ambled forward, using a cane to support itself. Ropes hung from the creature’s limbs as if it had been bound and had managed to escape. There was something else oddly familiar about the figure—it was missing its left forearm.

  “Is that…?” Cutter asked.

  Morgan said nothing, so he turned to Reyna for confirmation. She pursed her lips and nodded. Cutter then held up a hand to make sure Gauge did not shoot it outright.

  The figure was tall. Perhaps six-foot-two or more, and lanky. The clothes it wore had been reduced to rags. The skin beneath those few shreds of cloth was shriveled and wrinkled like dried jerky.

  But the specter still walked with a prideful gait.

  The wraith-like figure got to within a few yards of Cutter and tried to raise its right hand and cane, but it could reach no higher than the level of its chest. When it dropped its arm and shambled forward again, Cutter saw through the threads of its shirt. The skin underneath was com
pletely desiccated, and remnants of dried gut had melded with the dead folds of muscle, sinew, and shriveled skin.

  Standing tall, Cutter asked, “Colonel Percy Fawcett?”

  The figure stopped. It dipped its head respectfully in a slight bow.

  Then, Colonel Percy Fawcett collapsed on his cane, toppled forward, and landed dead at Cutter’s feet.

  - 41 -

  SPECIAL DELIVERY

  The warmth of a campfire barely reflected from Cutter’s sweating cheeks, heating them further, drenching him even more. He sat on a stone that had fallen from the wall behind him. He used it to keep himself propped up. He was exhausted, both physically and emotionally, and knew for certain now that he had destroyed whatever it was in the temple that had healed him—while, at the same time, nearly drawing him to his doom.

  While the warmth of the fire didn’t do much to alter the ambient temperature in the already too-warm, too-moist environment, the soothing glow did remind him of home, and of the many times he’d sat on the beach surrounded by good friends, laughing, telling jokes, and drinking beer.

  He took another drink from his canteen and mopped his brow. “Beer…”

  “What?” Reyna asked from beside him.

  “Nothing. Just wishing.”

  “What you really need is a shower,” she said. Still, even that didn’t stop her from inching closer to him and giving away some of her special kind of warmth, the kind he enjoyed getting all sweaty over. She smelled of action and danger and jungle, but that was redolent of the many years he’d spent with his wife, off on some wild goose-chase of an exploration or some other crazed adventure.

  It was a good smell, a comforting aroma.

  All this relaxing was helping him forget the multitudes of aches and pains in his tortured body. Now he’d just have to heal up on his own. It would take time, but time he had in spades.

  Some of the other pains would never go away—the emotional ones.

  He was old, tired, worn thin. Maybe it was finally time to grow the hell up and settle down and give up this traveling about and doing stupid shit life.

  One thing had become crystal clear, certainly. He’d used up most of his good fortune on this misadventure. He was more than positive about that. He’d made it so far, though. And Gauge had made it. And Morgan had made it. And Reyna had made it. That counted for something—perhaps everything.

  He did have the satellite phone that Moray once had, but little good that did. Who could he call that would pick him up in the middle of the Amazon Basin?

  The only path back looked to be extremely challenging—impossible, maybe. They’d have to make the long climb up the crumbling stone stairway and hack their way through the jungle to safety. With all the natives in the area stirred up like a kicked-over hornet’s nest, and the other dangers of the jungle, it was going to be a real goddamned challenge. And that didn’t even factor in their lack of food for the journey.

  But, somehow, he knew they would all make it. They always did. So now was not the time to worry about the coming journey.

  One thing about what they had just been through was still not clear to him. Why, after being bitten by one of those things, had he not turned into a zombie himself? His forearm still burned a little from the bite, but the wound had healed over thanks to the nature of whatever power of rejuvenation the temple offered.

  But that wasn’t it, exactly.

  Reyna sat beside him and across from them sat Gauge and Morgan, both staring into the flames, lost in their own thoughts. No one needed to say anything to each other. Their inherent bond and current togetherness said it all. These people were loyal to him, and he was loyal to them. It was a bond that went beyond any petty squabbles they might have—or childish, idiotic behaviors on his part.

  While adversity could create unbreakable bonds, it was a deep love for one another that maintained those bonds, and a willingness to sacrifice oneself for the good of the group.

  It wasn’t easy to maintain that same connection out in the world among the throngs of humanity, who sought to break those heartfelt ties. But when brought together with others who shared a deep-seeded loyalty to one another, it was unlike any other power known to mankind.

  Cutter didn’t want to even consider the horror that Jack Fawcett had gone through, and that of his father. It was a tragic tale that would take time to dissipate from his mind. Moray had wanted the same fate for himself. If only he knew what that really meant.

  Perhaps Jack Fawcett had done Moray a kindness.

  Cutter patted Reyna on the leg and smiled at her. She smiled back.

  “It’ll be a long trek home,” he said, turning his gaze skyward. The giant webbed structure above looked different at night. He was sure he could still see the stars through the gaps. Maybe not fully, but enough to know a vast universe lay on the other side where an infinite number of things were possible.

  “At least it’s not raining,” he whispered, then raised his arms above his head and stretched his right arm out to encompass her and pull her closer—the oldest trick in the high school playbook. “It’s the height of the rainy season and…nothing. Not a drop of rain in days. Seems a bit odd to me. Do you think it’s due to global warming or…?”

  Prickling, she breathed, “The science is still…” Then she shook her head at him. “Don’t go fretting about the lack of rainfall. It’s bound to come. We might beat it, though.”

  He stared at the fire again. “Science is not always the answer. Too many unknowns.” Then he returned his gaze to her when he realized what she had said about beating the rain. “What did you do?”

  “Don’t worry,” she replied, patting him a bit more condescendingly on his thigh than he had patted her.

  Whatever. He let it go. Just as he had let go what she had told him right before he planned to go sacrifice himself—I think I love you. His answer had been so perfectly selfish too. If he understood anything about women, the best thing he could do now was keep silent about it and let her work for it. He’d tell her how he felt about her eventually. More importantly, he’d show it.

  “Why didn’t I turn into a zombie?” he whispered, looking first into the fire for answers, then into her eyes. “What do you think stopped it from happening?”

  Based on the look she gave him, she knew but didn’t want to say. When he held his left arm up to look at where he’d been bitten, his wedding ring glinted in the firelight. She looked at it as well and nodded.

  It couldn’t be that simple. Then he reconsidered.

  The pedestal inside the temple had been made from a silvery metal, or more of an iridescent metal. When he’d moved his left hand near the platform, his ring had started to glow so brightly that he had stopped and didn’t touch the strange, pitted surface.

  Could that be it?

  He raised his voice and asked across the fire, “Morgan, what’s different about white gold from regular gold?”

  “What sort of question is that, Jack?”

  “Just…what’s the difference? I know there are different alloys in white gold, but what are they?”

  “Silver…? Rhodium? Palladium? I think,” she replied.

  “Palladium,” he repeated. “How rare is palladium?”

  She tossed a stick she had been fiddling with into the fire and looked at him crosswise.

  He glanced at Reyna beside him. She weaved the fingers of her right hand in his left and lifted his hand until he was staring at his ring. “You were almost there. It was the trace amounts of palladium that protected you.”

  He knew she was right. He was sure of it. His ring had saved him from becoming one of them. It seemed almost too simple.

  He withdrew his hand from hers and stared at his wedding ring. The firelight backlit his fingers and made them glow red. The ring seemed to sparkle. He had a brief memory of the Russian mine. The leader of the other zombies had stopped when it had seen the wedding ring on his finger. He just hadn’t made the connection at the time.

  It was
the ring all along, and refusing to take it off had saved him from becoming one of them.

  “No doubt about it,” he whispered.

  “What?” Reyna asked.

  “Nothing. Ssh. But what about you? Gauge? Morgan?”

  “Remember when we ran into Warren Bell? Remember the tracking device he provided? Well, each of those contained a tiny chip of palladium. It was just enough to keep us all safe from being fully seduced by the valley.”

  “Each? I thought he only gave me one?”

  She grinned.

  “And Moray and Ajay?”

  She shook her head side to side.

  He was about to ask her another question, but stopped. A distant noise had distracted him. Puzzled, he glanced up at the expansive canopy and cocked his head to one side as the noise grew louder.

  Reyna climbed to her feet. “Come on,” she said, offering her hand.

  “Where?” he asked as he rose to standing along with Gauge and Morgan, who were as puzzled as he was.

  “Just follow me,” she said. “We won’t want to be here in a few minutes.”

  She led them under one of the collapsed stone roofs, and they all crawled inside.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Cutter asked.

  She put a finger to his lips to silence him. Seconds later, he heard a distant explosion followed by reverberating groans. Then the air pressure seemed to change as a breeze blew against his face. Next came a tremendous crash, followed by straining, groaning, ripping, and smashing. It was as if the entire sky had come falling down to earth.

  Cutter braced a hand on a loose rock and instinctively turned away from the rushing air.

  Then the bedlam seemed to settle. The breeze died.

  Slowly, he crawled out from under the stone roof. He looked skyward. There was a hole in the webbed canopy hundreds of feet above his head. Large swaths of thick cable covered with vegetation swung freely in the moonlight. The fire they had left burning swirled wildly and was tossing up sparks and smoke. It was as if the wind was coming at it from all directions, constantly shifting, completely unsettled.