Amazombia

  Chapter 14.

  I wake up near the river. The canoe is gone, and my head is killing me. I sip water from the river, dying of thirst. I feel an egg shaped lump jutting out of my forehead every time I bend down to drink. I shake my head and slowly rise to my knees. I’m so weak I fall back down. George is gone too, or at least, his body is. The river must have rose, carried him over the water falls. All that's left is his white Stetson, so I take it and bid an ‘Adios, George.’

  My kit has been rummaged through. My notes scattered, my typewriter thrown in the mud. My coffee bean pillow is gone, but my bird is up in a tree cooing. There’s another bird with him. I stand for a moment, gathering my thoughts.

  I put down my crate, and both birds come down. I grab the bird I’m using to talk with my old boss.

  I send a message. “George is missing.”

  I grab the other bird. I don’t know whose bird this is, but my other bird must have looped him in. He might be one of mine. It’s a capuchine. Brown body, white head, fluffy neck like he’s wearing a bomber’s jacket. Lucky me, it’s a message from my daughter. You’re dying to know what it says, but it’s personal. I write back to her. If you want to do me a favor (a dirty word, I know), look up who Rumspringa is. Send me a bird. You wash my back.

  Moving right along. I start climbing the embankment where we were going to ambush those slave traders. It's a steep, steep climb. Lots of clingy vines, long green snakes that disguise themselves as vines, and thorny tendrils that look like vines but only have prickly thorns every few inches. A reminder that not everything in the jungle is as it appears to be. Because I prick myself every time I lose my footing and grab one of these bastards. The snakes, I don't mind so much, because they start pulling immediately. But these deceitful spike vines I can do without.

  Eventually I make it up to where we were going to ambush. I look down at the river. In spite of the thick canopy, this area has a very clear strategic view of everything below. Off far to my right, I can see the mist of the waterfall. Black obsidian rock cuts through the water, and big round boulders stand helplessly against the waters ever churning presence. Up towards my left, heading west, the river just pulls down twigs and logs toward the water fall.

  I feel at my chin to gauge how long I've been out. Without watches and calendars, hair growth is the only reliable measure of time. I pluck out a whisker, and I guess it's about five days old. So I've been out for three days or so. I'm a bumpy mess, covered in insect bites. Flies ate at my burned forearm. I'm just happy to be alive.

  I continue heading east, towards the waterfall, keeping it in earshot as I make my way through the jungle. It’s early morning. There are lime green parrots following me the whole way, and a small band of black howler monkeys inquisitively follows my movements through their turf. Like a jungle do-wop band, they sing my woeful tale.

  I don't care for their company in the least. However, their joyful singing reminds me that I'm not being tailed by any jaguars. I push that to the back of my mind. It's like walking around in a thunderstorm, wondering if you will get hit by lightning. You don't know, you're wet, so you keep walking and cross your fingers. So that's what I do.

  I climb several trees and vines and large bunches of creepers that look like green spaghetti as I make my way down the cliff that has been carved out by the waterfall. There's an abundance of obsidian here, black sharp rock from the volcanoes far out west. I spend a few hours chipping away a stone dagger, because ya just never know. I also make a spear tip and bind it to a rubber tree branch that's about as long as I am. My best bet is to find the village where George double crossed (or not) the slave traders. Maybe I can hitch a ride back to the stone house from there.

  Maybe I should head east. Remember the bird I sent that note out for my daughter? That bird’s heading east. Suffice it to say I am extremely reluctant to be heading east. Lots of awkwardness east. I could never stand those stories that start off with “We needed to go here to save so and so.” Why the hell not just start the story there, then? Because half the time you’re told what needs to be done, then you gotta sit and grind through it. Me? I’m heading far enough east to this village, because being a slave with no master is scary business.

  I walk along the southern bank of the river. It's very slow going, and then I find a washed up dugout canoe half submerged by the river's edge. I pull it up; it's not in bad shape, a small hole in the bottom that will need patching. I find a big rubber tree and drive my knife into the trunk, then put some elephant ears underneath it and wait for the white sap to collect. While that's going on, I take my spear down to the water for some spear fishing.

  I find a shallow pond that is fed by a small brook branching off the river proper. I stand about knee deep in water, real still, and wait. A black snake swims by, and I club him in the head with my spear. His body slithers and twitches as I drag him back to the big rubber tree, and I eat lunch.

  The sap of the rubber tree takes forever to run, so I start to make camp. It took only two or three days for me to get in the habit of wanting to be next to fire again, so I go about making a fire. Figure I will spend the rest of the day patching up the canoe, and start downstream in the morning.

  I take the tacky rubber, flip the canoe over, use a bit of my cape (my turban and hubcap are gone, all I got is my ratty shirt, cape and miniskirt, and one sandal), and patch the fist-sized hole. I wait an hour, flip it over, and patch the canoe floor the same way. Wait another hour, then use George's hat to fill the canoe with a little water to see if the patch worked.

  The night passes uneventfully. By morning the canoe is still holding water. Meaning… if it can keep water in, which means it can also keep water out. Use your heads for something other than serving trays, kids!

  I shove off and let the current of the river drift me downstream, using my spear to poke at the river bottom. When I need to turn, I just drag it on the bottom of the river. Once or twice I go into water too deep for my spear, so then I just paddle with my hands. By midday, I see a small shack, tar paper roof, corrugated steel, sitting on bamboo stilts by the river's edge.

  I drift past it, go down stream about a hundred yards, pull ashore. I make my way towards the back of the shack by a well-worn path of bent grass and trimmed jungle. There's even white round stones marking the path on either side. A real South American chateau. As I approach the back of the shack, I slow down.

  There's a man lying on the ground. Face down. His hands bound behind him. His feet are pointing upwards, toes to the sky. But this is ok, because his legs have been cut off right below the knee. Round white bones and yellow cartilage poke out from his brown leg stumps. I creep up towards him slowly. There's a hatchet nearby, smooth handle, the blade is sharp as I run my thumb over it. I never take my eyes off the downed man.

  The man stirs as I approach. Yep. Zombie. He lifts his head, and he's not very decomposed at all. He has the gentle face of a native farmer, looks almost Chinese, but with a pointy arrowhead nose. His mouth has no frown lines, and his skin stretches unnaturally to try to contort into the sneer he’s making. He hisses at me and the putrid stench of death seeps from his mouth.

  Stranger still, his lower lip has a round plate of red dyed wood that slaps up and down on his chin as he slowly squirms towards me. The plate knocks at his chin then his pointy nose. His earlobes also have round pieces of wood in them, big as a silver dollar, but they're dyed black. His hair is thick and black, cut straight across like Moe from the Three Stooges.

  I've never "killed" a zombie, and I'm not about to start now, so I keep Moe at a safe distance, and make my way towards the shack. Behind the shack is a small lean to. There's a tree stump stool, and some small wooden bowls, and some empty plastic soda bottles. The water in them is brown, and I pick one up and shake it, and mosquito larvae swim around inside. I empty the bottle, and then I see a small child, bound just like Moe. Little legs hacked off. Naked torso and wearing a pair of blue shorts. I can't tell if it's a boy or girl, its fac
e twisted into a sickly grimace. It squirms like a brown maggot under the lean to.

  I go inside the hut. It's hot inside. The doorway looking out onto the river is covered with thatch grass and a big sheet of corrugated metal. There's a big rubber tire in the middle of the room with planks of wood resting on top. Probably used as a table. There's even some bowls with rancid fish in them, flies buzzing over. Blood streaks go from the table outside. Some blood streaks go towards a small divided area of the hut, raised beds made of bamboo and vine hammocks.

  There's a stuffed Elmo doll on one of the small beds, and a bookshelf with a few books. I examine the books. School books, mostly. Math, history, all in Spanish. One English French book, then another, Portuguese French.

  Otherwise the place is empty. I pull the tire table out towards the front porch overlooking the river, and fashion a left sandal. Then a make a few spare sets, for bartering. They are poorly made, I'm not a cobbler. A cobbler is well respected nowadays, a lost art. For the longest time, people just went around stealing the shoes off dead people. Like hermit crabs with their shells. Sure. You want a bit of entertainment? Sit yourself down at a beach around sundown, when the hermit crabs start climbing out of the trees and scavenging the beach for decayed fish. They'll all sit there, scurrying from place to place, feeding themselves. Getting in small arguments over turf. Until one of them comes up against an empty shell. He'll grab it. Feel around it, poking and prodding. Then he'll climb out of his shell, with his bleached white soft underbelly exposed for a second or two. He'll park his hiney in the other shell. If it's a good fit, it's his new home. Then you see another hermit crab grab the discarded shell of the first one, so on down the line. Hermit crab house flipping, very entertaining. Well, after people got bored flipping houses a while back, they started doing it with shoes. Only problem, the shoes would wear down over time, and nobody was making new ones. Except the cobblers. And new shoes are expensive.

  I'm contemplating this after I make about five pairs of Bridgestone sandals when I hear a whimper.