Zombie Team Alpha: Lost City Of Z Read online

  ZOMBIE TEAM ALPHA

  LOST CITY OF Z

  By

  STEVE R. YEAGER

  Copyright 2017 by STEVE R. YEAGER

  Gaily bedight,

  A gallant knight,

  In sunshine and in shadow,

  Had journeyed long,

  Singing a song,

  In search of Eldorado.

  But he grew old-

  This knight so bold-

  And o’er his heart a shadow

  Fell as he found

  No spot of ground

  That looked like Eldorado.

  And, as his strength

  Failed him at length,

  He met a pilgrim shadow-

  “Shadow,” said he,

  “Where can it be-

  This land of Eldorado?”

  “Over the Mountains

  Of the Moon,

  Down the Valley of the Shadow,

  Ride, boldly ride,”

  The shade replied-

  “If you seek for Eldorado!”

  —Edgar Allan Poe

  - 1 -

  THE LOST CITY OF Z

  Muddy and soaked to the core, Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett leaned heavily on his walking stick and resisted the urge to cough. More of the difficult Amazonian jungle lay ahead, but he was now much closer to his goal. It was just past the next grove, or around the next towering Kapok tree.

  Somewhere close.

  The city was drawing him to it—step by step. He felt it deep in his bones.

  “Stop,” he said, raising a hand to signal to his son, Jack, that it was time for a short break. He lowered himself onto a fungus-covered tree root large enough to sit on. His son stopped short beside him, choosing to remain on his feet.

  In the distance, misty steam rose from the verdant growth, which sagged and swayed whenever a bloated drop of rain dripped down from the forest canopy above. Before him, beams of light cast shifting shadows on the dense vegetation and created great swaths of intense darkness and white-hot glare.

  At least the storm was clearing, he thought. One small favor. He was certainly feeling every bit of his nearly sixty years of age and needed a minute to recover. Perhaps two. With his mild fever and clammy skin, his very flesh crawled and felt as if it were rotting away right along with the stinking jungle surrounding him.

  Jack did not sit on the gnarled root beside him when he gestured for the young man to do so. The lad hardly seemed winded. Sweat and dampness collected and dribbled from his son’s proud face, and a black mass of insects swarmed about his head. Still, he did not bother to mop his brow or swat away the stinging pests. Instead, he kept his feet planted firmly, leaned back on his heels, and stared at the overhanging canopy above, hands braced on hips.

  As his gaze descended from the heavens, he asked, “Do you think we’ll ever see that little man again?”

  Colonel Fawcett rubbed his aching neck. “I suspect he will not return. Nor will we see him again.”

  “He has your ring, your compass. I thought those might be important to you.”

  Colonel Fawcett said nothing.

  “I see.” Jack cleared his throat. “You know Mother would never approve of you giving away your ring. When we find him—”

  “It no longer matters.” There was plenty that Percy had done in his lifetime that his wife would not have approved of. He’d been neglecting her ever since they were married. That was by far his biggest sin—and his deepest regret. But it couldn’t be helped. One could not go back and repair the past. One could only go forward.

  Ob terras reclusas—for the discovery of new lands. It was the motto of the Royal Geographical Society of London and something he kept foremost in his mind. He had been the first white man to explore many of those new lands, and the lost city for which he sought above all else was but his for the taking.

  He only needed to find it first.

  The disappearance of their guide, he’d anticipated. Few had ever returned from where he and Jack were going. The natives in the area were convinced the location was haunted by demons, or ghosts. But it was difficult to tell for certain what they meant because their language did not contain the proper words to describe what they’d seen, and the tales they told often grew more wild with each telling.

  “What about Raleigh? Aren’t you concerned with his well-being?”

  There was a biting undertone in his son’s voice that Percy didn’t particularly appreciate. He chose to ignore it. He was not about to abandon his quest and return to Dead Horse Camp. The man Raleigh Rimmel might have been his son’s best friend, but the man had chosen his fate—for better or worse—when he’d agreed to come along.

  “He will recover on his own,” Colonel Fawcett stated plainly. It was yet another lie in a long list of lies he’d been telling his son. He knew well what a massive infection could do to a man. Mr. Rimmel would not be recovering, much less surviving for long without dedicated care. And even then, the odds were strongly against him for living more than a few days. While Percy abhorred withholding the truth from his son, he knew it was for the best.

  Jack got down on one knee and worked at the laces on his boot. “How much further, do you think?”

  “Not far,” Percy said. He scratched at his thigh. Under the skin, tiny botfly larvae from a bite he’d received a few days ago wriggled about, deep in the muscle. There was nothing he could do about it now. Digging them out would only make the mild infection worse. Perhaps much worse. He forced himself to pull his hands away, flexed his fingers, and tried to ignore the all-too-familiar sensation of having parasites eating away at his flesh.

  “We are close,” he said. “Can’t you sense it?”

  Jack Fawcett raised himself to his feet and glanced about in a widening circle. “All I see is more of this damned jungle. We should turn back, I think.” He drew a breath and let it out slowly as he added, “Father.”

  “Nonsense.” Percy glanced down at his leg and covered the swollen area with his hands. “I will be fine.”

  Nothing would stop Percy. Not even if he had to cut off his own leg with a rusty knife. He’d gladly give the limb up if he could have a single, solitary view of what he desired to see above all else.

  The Lost City of Z.

  His city.

  Some called it El Dorado. Others called it by different names. Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett had always referred to it using the last letter of the alphabet, Z, because secretly, he had always believed the city was in fact the fabled El Dorado—the city of gold, or more technically, the Golden Man. Obfuscating the name had been a ruse in a long series of ruses he had perpetrated on anyone who had asked him of his destination. Nobody would find the city before he did.

  Nobody.

  He continued to flex his fingers. “We are close. I can feel it. Can’t you?”

  When his son said nothing else, Percy stood and snatched his walking stick from where he had leaned it against the tree trunk. He shrugged his shoulders to adjust to the weight of his pack while stifling a groan. With fresh new pains shooting up and down his spine, he took his first few steps in the direction they had been traveling for nearly five days.

  “Let me carry more of your burdens,” Jack said.

  Percy took another ten steps, leaning hard on his walking stick. “I will carry my own burdens, thank you. I’m not some shrinking invalid too feeble to continue.” He snorted and spat on a broad leaf as he passed by. The brief respite hadn’t given him much time to recover, but it had helped. “I’ll rest when we find the city. Not a moment sooner.”

  Fueled by years of frustration and disappointment, he set off again, chopping his way through the dense undergrowth ahead with a nicked an
d battered machete.

  They climbed a small rise in the forest floor, ducking low through the hanging vines. On the far side of the rise, Percy came to a sudden halt, and his right hand with the machete in it fell to his side. He leaned again on his walking stick and tilted his neck.

  “Listen,” he breathed.

  Jack Fawcett remained stock still for a moment and then looked skyward, jaw hinging open. He had heard the same thing.

  Silence. Complete silence.

  The constant refrain of buzzing insects had ceased. Neither were there any bird calls or other background din. Just an eerie silence. It was unlike anything Colonel Fawcett had experienced in his many years in the Amazon rainforest.

  “I don’t like this,” Jack whispered. “We should turn back.”

  Percy scoffed and hurried his way forward, increasing his pace and hastily pushing past large leaves entangled with choking vines.

  He stopped suddenly. Drew back.

  In front of him was a stone. It was a chunk of igneous rock covered in lichen so green it almost glowed. The stone was shaped in such a way that the angles could not have been formed by any natural process.

  It had been cut by hand.

  “Stone…” he breathed in bewilderment. Sharply faceted stone was not something common to the jungle environment. Especially on the canopy floor where years of plant growth swallowed virtually everything.

  “Hurry,” he said, hobbling along as fast as he could make his swollen leg carry him. As he raced through the jungle, he began to see more of the gray stones. His growing excitement increased with each step he took, and the pain in his leg became almost non-existent, no more annoying than a buzzing insect.

  He came to a sudden halt.

  All around him were skeletons tied to trees.

  The skeletons appeared to have been laid out in a ritualistic way, as if they’d been tied up vertically as some means of ceremony to honor the dead. But that wasn’t it. He let his gaze roam over them carefully. The skeletal forest stretched as far as his eyes could see.

  This was no mere burial ceremony. This was something else entirely. Something different from what he had ever seen before.

  Something far more sinister.

  “Careful,” he warned his son. “Stay back. Stay here.”

  Percy Fawcett didn’t stop. Immediately after warning his son, he started off again, going further into the midst of the skeleton-covered trees, dumbfounded by the various ways the bones had been fastened to the tree trunks. Some of the skeletons were missing limbs, some still wore rotting clothing, some had what looked like rusted armor, perhaps centuries old. He ignored all that for the time being and continued to scan the area for what he knew must be nearby.

  His eyes soon landed on what he had been seeking—two standing stones which formed an archway. Under the archway was a dark recess filled with creeper vines.

  “There.” He pointed with a trembling finger and started off again toward the archway. His son, having ignored the earlier warning to remain behind, was still at his side.

  They entered through the stone archway, peeling away thick vines and tangled roots until they uncovered a small tunnel that disappeared into the darkness. When he examined the rough-cut stone burrow more closely, he noticed a dim light filtering in from the far side. That small glimmer gave off just enough illumination to make it through without the need of a torch.

  After hacking through the last of the twisted vines covering the exit and emerging from the interior of the tunnel, Percy continued to stride forward, completely oblivious of his surroundings. A hand landed on the back of his shirt, held him fast, and stopped him from going any farther. Looking down, he noticed that he had almost walked straight off a cliff. One more step would have led to his death.

  “Let go of me.”

  His son released him and Percy took a step backward, mind still reeling from the enormity of it all.

  From his vantage point on the edge of the drop off, he saw a sight that his mind struggled to take in fully. The scale of it all was enormous. His gaze wandered over a sprawling city of tiny stone buildings far below. Most were covered with the same bright-green lichen as the igneous rock he’d seen in the jungle.

  But it was what he saw next when he looked up that shocked him the most. The entire area above the city was blanketed in a giant net made of intertwining vines. Some light leaked through, but much of it was blotted out from the sky. Still, an occasional beam shone through, casting long, Godly rays down on the various sections of the city below.

  Percy blinked hard, wondering if it was his mind that had gone mad, or if what he was seeing was indeed true.

  It was all so…impossibly big.

  He stumbled again, and Jack guided him farther from the edge.

  “Stop that.” He rolled his shoulders to shrug off the unwelcome help and straightened to his full height, which led to another odd development. It had been weeks since he’d been capable of standing up so straight. And all the aches and pain? They were gone now. Head to foot. He suddenly felt far better than he had in many, many years.

  Jack stepped beside him. “You found it, Father. You really and truly found it. By God’s good graces—”

  “We…found it,” Percy stated in a strengthening voice as he clapped a hand on his son’s shoulder and squeezed.

  In the valley below were long ribbons of gray stone roadway stretching to the farthest edges of visibility. The arrangement of the structures to either side of the roads were built with a purposeful layout, as if some master architect had designed everything. At the very center of the city, bathed in a beam of light from above, was a magnificent structure with high, graceful arches. The design was of no architectural school that Percy had ever encountered. It was not Greek, nor Roman, nor was it modern or classic, nor did it bear any resemblance to any native culture. It was something completely new. Undiscovered. Spectacular. Even from almost a mile away, the detailed workmanship of the structure was stunning, as if it held some sort of special significance to the community that surrounded it.

  “It is…” Percy whispered, “magnificent.”

  “What? Father, I never would have…”

  He ignored his son and withdrew a spyglass from a leather case at his hip. He scanned the structure in the center of the city. What he was searching for had to still be there. He was absolutely certain of it.

  Excitement tingled his spine when he finally spied what he had so painstakingly sought. A glint. Yes, he was sure he had seen it. The color of—

  “You found the city,” his son said with a touch of awe in his voice. “You really found it,” he said a bit louder. “If I hadn’t…”

  Percy ignored the additional comments. The city was important, but it was what was contained inside the city that had driven him to the brink of madness to find. The discovery would surely change the world.

  He, Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, would alter mankind’s very existence.

  Then, looking at his son, he corrected his thinking. No, we will change the world. Jack still had a major role to play. Madame Blavatsky, the world-famous seer, had told him of his son’s wondrous destiny. Soon it would all be realized.

  Sighing heartily, he glanced at Jack in pride, then sank to his knees. He had no words to convey what he felt deep inside, so he closed his eyes and let his emotions overcome him.

  When he opened his eyes again, Jack was pacing the cliffside, occasionally glancing past the edge. “I see a way to the valley floor. A stairway, I believe. It’s not much, and it is a long, winding course to the bottom. Perhaps we should turn back now. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Nonsense.” Percy rose to his feet and joined his son near the edge, blinking away sweat and tears.

  Carved into the sheer walls of the cliff were stairs that switched back on themselves perhaps fifty or more times. Percy lost count of just how many steps there were as he followed the zig-zagging path all the way to the bottom. It had to be in the thousands.

&
nbsp; He checked his watch and readjusted to the weight of his pack. It now felt as light as a feather. Drawing a deep breath, he balanced himself with the walking stick and said in a voice brimming with excitement, “Hurry. This way.”

  - 2 -

  VACATION’S ALL I REALLY WANTED

  Jackson Cutter sipped from his beer, then licked his chapped lips. The gentle breeze blowing in from the calm ocean waters was just enough to keep his temperature below the sweat zone. He would start to sweat soon enough once he got back to the hotel room shared with his new girlfriend, Dr. Reyna Martinez.

  That both excited and frightened him.

  He watched the tiny whitecaps forming on the far horizon as he listened to the rolling surf murmur and swoosh about on the beach. The water was the color of polished turquoise stone, and the sandy beach was such a pure white that it almost glowed.

  As he remained sheltered under a palm-frond umbrella, resting on a time-worn chase lounge, beer in one hand, nothing in the other, he was about as far away from any sort of trouble as he could be. He’d become lost in his own private paradise—score settled with himself and with the world.

  It hadn’t always been so peaceful.

  Months had gone by since returning from Russia. With the help of Mr. Moray, and that of his salvage and recovery company, Cutter had been able to smooth over the rough edges concerning the troubles he had with the US Government, the FBI in particular. Even with the greased skids, problems with bruised egos and bureaucratic red-tape still lingered, which was why he had pulled up stakes, tucked his tail between his legs, and exited stage left to Mexico, where he could hide out in the anonymous lands of the bandidos, street tacos, and the finest tequila money could buy. It was a nice, warm, comfortable place where he fit right in with the local inhabitants—one in particular—the ever lovely, Dr. Martinez, who had been born there and spoke the language far better than he did.

  Along the way there had been a few days of unavoidable hardships. He’d been forced to spend a few days with her family and had not had her exclusively to himself. It sucked, but it hadn’t been all bad. Her brothers were also sailors, and one was a pilot as well, so they’d found plenty to talk about, brag about, and swap manly sea stories, all in Cutter’s broken Spanish and their own stylized form of mocking English.