Amazombia Read online

  Chapter 3.

  We walk down the terraced steps towards the drawbridge. It seems to take forever. I keep looking back at the stone house, but it doesn't get smaller in the horizon as you'd think. It's massive, and I am missing it already.

  I follow George down to the drawbridge, the ropes and planks nestled hidden in the high saw grass. It's midday, still as death. Big red headed crickets wearing black turtle necks cling to the grass that outlines the start of the marsh. I snatch one up and eat it, head and all. Delicious! I offer one to George, but he refuses. He's not so big anymore, again...an illusion. It's just that my hut is so small. I still wouldn't want to tangle with him; he must weigh over three hundred pounds and is easily over six-three.

  I was right, you know. It took four men to replace that Peruvian lady. An old relic climbs the tractor, grabbing the seat and heaving his arthritic body up. Two small wiry men grab one wheel and a stout chubby guy grabs the other and they rock the tractor as the old man fiddles with the throttle. His knobby knees vibrate as his feet operate the peddles. The back tires spin and the engine spits black fumes of diesel puffing into the rich blue sky. The tires shudder and muck goes flying as they spin wildly, then catch and the tractor lurches forward like a stubborn mule getting pulled by the nose. The tractor stops, and the four men go back to mumbling. The chubby one makes a sweeping gesture with his hand, boding us well on our journey across. In their broken Spanish, it sounds like they're talking about lunch and siestas.

  The drawbridge bounces and sways as we walk across. "So just how far is this trip, Boss?"

  "Call me George, por favor."

  “OK George, how far is this trip?"

  "Not too far, his three months on foot east of here."

  I pull out my hub cap hat and strap it on. I pull up the antenna with a little orange flag on it. You know, so the bird knows where to fly back. The old Mexican laughs and points.

  We get to the end of the drawbridge, and the smell of decaying grass and assorted fermenting vegetation is only slightly overwhelming now. George's pack is hidden in the grass at the end of the drawbridge. It's a wicker affair, and straps around him with two wide brown leather bandoliers, glistening with brass cartridges. Worn well near the shoulders, and tan along the edges.

  "I hate guns," I say, as I watch him strap on his pack.

  "Si, is needed out here," he mutters and grits his white teeth under the weight of his pack.

  "What you got in there, boss?"

  He grimaces a moment, then takes his pack back down.

  "Por favor, I ask you one final time. No call me 'Boss'...you make it sound like a dirty word."

  "I do?" I ask earnestly.

  "Si, and I understand why. I too have had to answer to hombres. His no fun, but necessary. Like my guns."

  I know I can be a curmudgeon, but I am hoping to hide my feelings for the predicament I find myself currently in. Plus, the sun is really beating down on my hubcap. I don't hike often, actually never, and I probably should have on some sort of cap underneath it. It’s frying my head like an egg. To be honest, I'm follicle challenged. Not only that, but the spokes make it extra heavy, and I wasn't too keen on trucking across zombie filled jungle with something that has only aesthetic purposes. Like those inner tube valves, not very practical. A life of leisure behind a desk tends to hamper practicality. I look good, I know that. The hubcap is from an old Cadillac, but that's enough about that.

  He watches me pull at grass and tuck it under my hat. He waves his big hands and I cower. He rummages through his pack. "I has nothing to hide, Senor. You has the look of fear when you look at me. Por favor, don't. I has something in my sack for your head."

  He graciously starts emptying his pack despite my protests. I feel like an even bigger jerk than before.

  "I carry only in my pack a tin cup, some bags of rice and lentils. Some charcoal for tinder and upset tummy, my blanket, and my Jumpy."

  He pulls out a small ball of black fur. Did he say his jumpy? My Spanish is no good, jumpy must mean hat.

  It's not a hat. It's a ratty ball of toy poodle. Its snarling muzzle houses rows of crooked teeth. It looks like some vile deep sea fish pulled from the bowels of the Pacific Ocean. Even its eyes look like evolutionary relics of glossy white and black marbles. A little velvet pink tongue laps at a shiny black nose. I go to pet it. Nope. Dumb.

  "That bastard bit me!" I look at my hand and count my fingers.

  "His ok, his my lady Jumpy," George cradles his hell hound in his giant paws, soothing and crooning to it. The little dog answers him by licking at his face one moment, and looking at me and snarling the next. He lets the dog down, and she immediately goes to trying to jump back into his arms. Over and over she jumps. Finally, she relents to her plight. She sniffs around the grass and ignores me.

  I laugh nervously, “Got me good. Look at this, I’m bleeding.”

  "I have something for you head. Here," he offers me a large ball of grey wool.

  "Does it bite?" I reach out to it, and pull my hand back, unsure.

  George laughs, "His just a harmless sock, Senor."

  "Whew. I’d hardly call that harmless, it stinks! I had no idea a sock could make a marsh smell refreshing. You expect me to wear a sock on my head? “

  "His your choice, Senor. Maybe when we make it to the tree line tomorrow, and go two days through the jungle, you trade in your hat for something not so shiny!" He laughs again.

  "Give me the sock," I laugh along with him. There is nothing funny about Senor George. But then I remember that he could just as easily kill me as offer me one of his socks. I rub it into the grass, and dip it in mud, and wring out the stench of old Mexican feet as best I can, and put it under my hub cap hat. My head feels good, my nose, not so much. It stings every time I inhale, so I try breathing through my mouth. I already feel thirsty, so I breathe through my nose again.

  We walk through the marsh, taking the high lands when we can. But high areas are few and far between. When we find mud, we debate whether to walk around or through. It's a 50/50 deal at first, and then it's usually no debate, straight through the mud. You get used to it after a while. A muddy spot comes along; you get down on your hands and knees and shuffle across like a newborn. Along the way I snack on crickets and lime green tree frogs that perch themselves atop the grass. George chews on fish jerky and sings about a young village girl. She is betrothed to a man from another village, and the local boys try to come up with schemes to woo her. I'm sure it's a good song when not sung by an overweight old guy spending half his time singing on all fours. Huffing and puffing out the lyrics.

  We have circumvented the stone house mountains, heading south, now east. George moves like a machine. For six hours I have watched his giant back, and his checkered red shirt. His cowboy hat dangles between his giant shoulder blades, held around his neck by a thin leather strap. He doesn't really have a neck in the proper sense, just chins in the front, and a small area where the back of his head meets up with his body. Basically, either he or his barber shaves his upper back, calls it his neck, and then calls it a day.

  We, however, appear not to be calling it a day. We march nonstop through muddy ravines and up and down rolling hills. When we grow tired of climbing in and out of the mud, we zigzag up the embankment of the ravine. When we grow tired of zigzagging, we go back to crawling through the slop. It's monotonous. All day, looking at George's back, a giant checkered table cloth, a dangling white hat. His small wicker pack sloshes back and forth, hypnotizing me to silently follow. He starts up with the singing again, and nowhere in his song do I hear what I think is the Spanish word for camp.

  The sun starts dipping behind the mountains in the west. The days are slightly longer. At a hill crest, I hold out my hand, the non-bitten one. The bitten one I keep tucked within my tattered button down shirt with one of the buttons acting as a sling. Anyway, with my good hand, I spread out my fingers and estimate how much daylight we have by counting my fingers between the sun an
d the horizon.

  "Hey, George, you think we ought to maybe start setting up camp? We uh, we ain't got much daylight left."

  "Camp?" he wonders aloud.

  We eventually make it to a small oasis of trees in the vast savannah. The soft, rolling hills of grass sway in the cool evening breeze, golden waves ripple against the island of trees. The trees are savannah palms, and small yellow finches dart from bushy tree to bushy tree that sit under the massive palms. The finches chatter about their migration north, and the abundance of seeds they dined on all day. I understand their singing more than George's. High up between the palms, rocking in the wind, are several ropes tied together. They're hammocks. Some dried palm fronds hang like skeletal specters between the ropes. One of the trees has a tattered old red nylon rope ladder.

  The distinct stench of decaying human flesh wafts in now and again from the evening breeze. Jumpy peaks her black face from George's pack, and licks at her nose to better take in the smell. She lets out a soft growl as me and George eye the trees for movement. Instinct kicks in pretty quick out in the field. We become stone statues. We are both silent. The only other sound’s the creep of zombie wind and groggy sleep.

  "Sheesh, George, it looks safe enough-"

  "Shh!" He takes off his bandana and quickly mops and dabs at his forehead. I still have not seen this guy’s eyes. I understand looking at the back of his head all day, but we rested now and again. The best I could make out were deeper wrinkles where I guess his eyes should be: about the middle of his head. But his head is round, bald on top and his jawline melts into all those chins, so my ratio might be off. And when he talks, his massive jowls vibrate like an English bulldog. Very distracting.

  I mimic his intense stare into the oasis. I don't really know what to look for anymore. Being quiet before when we came near the oasis? Sure. Like I said, that’s instinct. But the long shadows of the bushes and the trees moving with every gust of wind. As far as I can tell, the whole damn oasis could be cluttered with zombies, or marauders. Or both. There could be a family of anteaters living here that walk on their hind legs, for all I know.

  Capybaras! You know…those overgrown beavers. Four feet long, big chomping teeth. Oasis like this, must house a whole family of them. No…they like more swamp than marsh.

  George is stiff as a statue, and it begins to make me feel uneasy. My heart, pounding all day, thumping steadily, keeping pace with step after step after step...now it wants to leap from my throat as I stop and listen, and look, and peer into the moving black shadows. Peer into the unknown, hunting for phantoms that lurk behind everything in my imagination.

  Eyes, burning from sweat, bloodshot. I can't make out anything. My eyes hurt. Unresponsive to my efforts to squint them just a little more. Yet, I can't open them wide either. They are stuck in limbo, as me and George are. The shadows lurch, and the scent of decay seems to grow stronger as the wind gusts up. Then, for several moments, all is still. All is quiet.

  "Senor, I think it's safe to rest here."

  "Here? Here? Are you kidding me? Screw this place, man. Come on, let's get the hell out of here."

  "His safe, senor. Relax." George is standing with the last rays of the sun behind him. He looks at me, puts his hands to his face, and lifts his eyelids wide with his fingers. "I look good, Senor," he says in silhouette.

  I am convinced the man has no eyes, but I can't say with certainty. I try to make it around so I can get my back to the sun to look into his face, but he puts down his hands and shuffles off. I ache. I take off my pack.

  George lumbers towards the rope ladder, and tugs hard on it. Then he takes off his pack, and his little dog jumps out and begins sniffing the ground, and disappears into the underbrush. George stoops over his pack. He hands me his tin cup, "I think I see some water in there, Senor. His not much, but enough to soften my rice and beans."

  I take the tin cup and grumble, "Great. Just go in there, fumble around under all them bushes, and come out with a cup of water. Brilliant. In through here?" I point at a thicket of impenetrable bushes. "How do you even know there will be water in there?"

  He looks around and makes movements with his hands. He paints the contours of the hills and makes a valley where we stand. Then he shrugs. He picks at dried leaves, and picks up old palm fronds. He begins shredding them in his hands. Maybe he's fidgeting, maybe he's nervous. But more than likely he's making tinder for a fire. Up until now, I have had little use for fire for the past fifteen years.

  “All my food is been fresh, no need for fire,” I say. I make my point. I snatch up a small lizard and swallow him whole, biting down on his head, and feeling his small body whither and twitch in my throat as he goes down. He gets stuck about half way, and I realize a cup of water might not be a bad idea.

  I push my way through the bushes. At the other end, are only more bushes. And this goes on and on for about all of eight feet. (For the record, I am not a big guy by any stretch of the imagination...I'm not much bigger then Jumpy. Picked last in everything I ever did in the confines of a school gym. Chosen most likely to be a chimney sweep when I graduated school...too small to be a jockey.) I reach a small puddle. Jumpy is lapping up water; she doesn't bother to acknowledge me. I give her the middle finger she bit, put my hand in my mouth and suck on the broken skin.

  I fill the tin cup; chase the lizard down with murky slop, then fill the cup again. Then I freeze. I look across the puddle. Fear overcomes me. Again, I try to be still, but my body fights against me. My hands shake uncontrollably. My heart races. Is it a tree stump? I stare at it, long and hard. Do tree stumps stare back? The tree stump is staring back. I look down at Jumpy. She is oblivious, lapping up water slowly and carelessly, stopping now and then to pant and lick her muzzle. I fill the tin cup. I am ashamed of my fear.

  I break through the bushes faster than I intend, but fear has gripped me. George has a small fire he is blowing to life. He is giving the fire mouth to mouth. It crackles as he nurses it. He builds it with a pyramid of small twigs and shredded palm fronds, and small bits of charcoal from his pack. When he stops blowing, he doesn't acknowledge me, only the tin cup I hold in my hand.

  He takes the cup, looks at it briefly, and hands it back to me. "Oh no, Senor," he chuckles between blows to the fire. "The cup is only half full! Push it down in the mud and let it fill. Relax, Senor. I would not let us rest in danger."

  I begin to protest, but then stop myself. It would be futile.

  "Screw it," I grab back the cup, careful not to spill any of the mud that I collected, and push back into the bushes.

  I set the cup down, and look for Jumpy. I hear her moving about; the rustling of leaves has grown with the gusts of wind. The wind blows steady now, and the air is filled with the horrid stench of rot and decay. Sulfuric, rancid smell of death, both human and marsh. Purgatory, a marsh is purgatory for all that manages to live within it. Jumpy emerges from the bushes on the other side of the puddle. I look up from her; the stump has taken the form of a man.

  I blink and fall back. Jumpy walks around the edge of the puddle, sniffs at my hands, then walks back through the bushes towards George. The stump does not move. It mocks me. The shadows are long gone. There is little time after the sun sets near the equator. Dawn and dusk are fleeting. The little light coming from the fire makes everything seem alive. It makes the stump grow before my eyes, and move with each gust of the wind. I breathe deep, and fill my lungs with humid marsh air. I am breathing underwater; I am drowning in cowardice.

  I force my hands to work, and lurch up towards the tin cup, and fill it with mud and water. Then I defy my fear. I stare at the stump at the other edge of the puddle, and empty the cup. I tip it sideways and let it fill again with water. My fear grows with the loud groaning of the wind. Fear wins.

  I race out of the bushes, tin cup in hand. "Half full, half empty, who gives a flying rat’s butt. Here you go. I'm tired. Been a long day. Goodnight, George."

  "Senor!" George says this with the stern
ness of a tired lion yawning. "Gracias," he says as he takes the cup from my trembling hand. He looks me over, "The hike today fatigues you, your hand shakes."

  "Si," I fumble for words as I look back towards the bushes. "How far did we travel today?" He offers me a cigarette and I take it. I singe my eyebrows as I light it in the fire and try to hold it, nonchalant like. It's not working. I'm shaking like a tambourine. I smell my burnt hair. Jumpy does too, and she growls. It smells like burnt, rancid microwaved popcorn that’s been burnt in the microwave (naturally) but left in there for three weeks. Forgotten.

  “What is the matter, Senor?”

  “Huh? Or, nothing, I was just thinking how good it would be if we had some popcorn for this campfire, is all.”

  "Sit, sit by the fire. The night air gets chilly so fast. Sit," George commands.

  I am surprised I am not coughing as I inhale deeply, the cigarette soothes me. The wind blows steady, and the fire dances and laps at the broken branches. The ashes fly close to the ground, barely getting airborne, as me and George sit across from each other. I am forced to sit with my back to the bushes, and pretend to scratch my shoulder as I peer back at the bushes now and then.

  The water begins to boil softly. George throws in a small handful of rice, then a smaller handful of beans.

  George takes his tin cup and empties the contents onto a broad green banana leaf, and funnels the food into his mouth with a hungry slurp and a few chugs. Then he takes a canteen from under his shirt, tucked under his belly, and drinks.

  "What the hell is that?" I blurt. "You had water the whole time? Why the heck didn't you use that to cook your dinner with? Geez Louise."

  "I have to see if you afraid of the dark, Senor."

  "Oh, is that it? I bet next you're going to ask me to keep watch while you sleep up there?"

  "Oh no, that's why I bring my little Jumpy. She sleep with one eye open so we can sleep soundly up there." He points to the hammocks obscured in the black night sky. The stars are brilliant, speckles of...do I need to describe stars? Just picture a big disco ball with lots of lights shining all around, only they're real still. More than you could imagine though. It's quite a sight; I highly recommend you try it.

  "That little dog will keep watch?" I huff.

  Jumpy is gnawing on fish jerky, and looks up at me. She barks.

  “Like that, right?” I ask. “She barks on cue?"

  "Senor, we go up the ladder," he says. He gets up, and moves with quiet determination, stuffing Jumpy in his shirt.

  "Now? Now's the only time I've had to ask you about your life story all day long. In the day we walk, at night we talk, agreed? Why now?"

  "Now, Senor," he is already half way up the ladder as I look on, utterly clueless.

  I take one last drag, and throw my cigarette into the fire, "Alright, alright, I'm coming, I'm com-"

  The bushes rustle behind me. A queer groan comes from behind me. I turn around, and face a heaving mass of disgusting flesh; some of it falling off the bone, and blackened skin. A queer cry comes from behind my teeth.

  I race around the fire and start climbing up the ladder.

  "Get off the ladder, Senor," George says down to me, matter of fact.

  "Off the ladder, are you crazy? Is this one of those fear tests, George? I'm afraid, happy?"

  "One at the time."

  "One at a time-", I stop and think. Does he mean one at a time as he anticipates the zombie following us up the ladder? No. Bounty hunters are not crazy. They couldn't be. Too much time in the sun today-

  "One at a time," George repeats.

  The zombie takes a shortcut through the fire, straight towards me. The smell of cooked flesh fills the air, and reminds me about that cookbook I need to finish.

  "Oh George, about this one at a time business with the ladder. I don't know if you noticed, but there is a corpse on fire down here hell bent on killing me. Wouldn't want to get that in the way of violating any jungle laws of ladder climbing. Safety first, you know."

  The zombie claws at me, oblivious that his torso is now a suit of flames. He smells a bit underdone, in my opinion. When he jabs at me, I break off one of his fingers.

  "Mmm," not quite ready.

  I throw the finger at the zombie as I grab hold of the ladder. George pulls all ninety pounds of me straight up, like one of those people movers they have all over Vegas. I'm from Vegas. It was a good town until all this zombie stuff. Speaking of which, the zombie searches down on the grass, using one arm as a torch and his other to grope for his finger in the grass. He picks it up, tries to reattach it to his hand, and looks up at me and George.

  Jumpy barks as the zombie meanders around in flames. Finally, it stops moving, and falls back into the fire, crackling next to our packs.

  I sleep at the foot of the hammock, hanging over it at times. I tie myself up with the ladder. George fell asleep before the zombie even came to a rest. I sleep fitfully. I dream of footsteps below. The night is alive with the howls of monkeys, insects, and my imagination. Now and then, I awaken, and imagine the hills are alive with the sound of music. Zombie music. Moans and groans and lots of shuffling. As the fire dies down, I finally catch some good sleep. Jumpy barks, but I don't care.