Chapter 21.
Back in the canoe. I have no idea how much closer this village is. This is the third day I've been paddling, and I am hauling about a hundred pounds of dead weight in the shape of a teenage South American native. Wait. Scratch that. I need to be careful about throwing around such euphemisms in a zombie book. What I really need to do is throw out the jerk in the front of the canoe.
The girl. Does. Nothing. Nada. Zip. She yells at me, I yell at her. We're not doing the English-French-Portuguese connection anymore. The language barrier broke when I learned the Portuguese word for paddle: pata de puta. The more I tell her to paddle, the more she digs in her heels.
There hasn't been a sole seen for days… fish, that is. Not a sole. No people either. I would think with a nearby village (at least one where she walked to school a few years ago) that it would have taken under an hour to get to the village. More than that, even if I missed the path leading into the village from the river, surely there would be fishermen around. Nobody.
So I paddle. Dena continues to be a mute, unwilling to fish (she does eat through our supplies, though), talk at night (she snores pretty loud), or do much of anything except stare straight ahead.
On the third day, I see a canoe pulled up on the southern shore. My heart beats. Technically, if any nefarious evil doer sees me without a master, they will claim "Finders keepers." Such is the life of a master-less slave. It's nerve wracking. This past week I have gotten in tune for providing not just for myself, but the poor girl too. I do feel bad for her, honest. I just wish she would help out. At least paddle. The current is getting stronger, and there are some rapids up ahead.
"Pata de puta! Puta!!!" I yell. Nothing.
Dena gets jerked forward as the canoe digs into the sandy shore of the river's edge. I get out, slosh through the water, and I do a quick look around. Important to remember: people are just as dangerous as zombies. More so, even. They can brandish weapons, hold grudges, make assumptions, racially profile, prejudge, and chew bubble gum. Zombies can chew bubble gum too, but to them gum is us.
I see smoke up out past a clearing hidden beyond some dense jungle. There's a well hidden path that goes diagonal through this jungle. So the jungle looks deep and dense, but it really isn't under closer inspection. If whoever lives here just cut a straight path to the clearing, I could have easily seen it from the river. It's simple, yet elegant. If that canoe wasn't out front, I would have totally missed the place.
I motion with my fingers to Dena a walking motion and point to the path, and she gets up out of the canoe and starts striding off in front of me. Huh. She must know the place. I follow her through the clearing, and it's a cow pasture. Clear cut rain forest. The odd giant tree stump or two juts out from the high grass like picnic tables. Weird ferns growing everywhere. There are cows (and cow pies) too. Both brown and fat. They observe us silently as we walk by. Huh. Maybe my cookbook idea ain’t so great. Cow is good. Better than charred zombie. Unless you marinade…never mind. Somewhere along the way, I’ve lost my taste for the undead. Weird.
As we make our way across the clearing, a small village starts to take shape. There's a long rectangular building on one side made of concrete cinder-blocks and has wide open windows with no glass. The doorways have no doors. What does that tell you? For those of you who said, "No zombies," give yourself a cookie. You're catching on.
I hear the telltale sounds of desolation, and the quiet suspense of a surprise party in the making. Who's the guest of honor? Dena looks as puzzled as I do. She pokes her head in a few doors of the long building as we both walk down the common area of the village. The jungle has been beaten so far back that only clouds of dust grow around our feet. Some weeds and shrubs cling to the corners of buildings, but for the most part, this place looks civilized. Almost like an English garden in the middle of the Punjab somewhere. Like out of a Kipling book.
Past the concrete block building there's a smaller brick building painted white. It has two stories, and a rickety staircase runs along two corners of the building. There's an old radio antenna attached to the building too.
I poke my head inside, "Hello?"
Nothing. Hmm.
I climb the stairs. Wait. Yep. There it is. Sticky blood, like brown syrup, all over the CB radio, which lies smashed in pieces in the upstairs room. I pick up the mike and click the button a few times. The springy rubber wire picks up a broken radio piece and it oscillates like a yo-yo in the air. I place it back down. I don't throw it like you'd see some hero in a horror show. I'm careful not to make too much noise.
So is Dena. I didn't even hear her come up the stairs. She waves her hands across the village and shrugs. I shrug too.
We go into the village proper. I want to take a look at the source of smoke. If it's a cooking fire, how big it is. How long it's been burning. Columbo stuff.
Dena walks real cautiously from tin hovel to hovel. She holds her hand over her mouth as she discovers some entrails. Bloated pink twisted balloons covered in sticky brown syrup. No flies. Fresh. I find a severed lower leg besides a hut, with a sickly yellow and white tibia protruding from brown skinned stump. It looks like a giant chicken leg, if it were not for the unshod foot with the dusty sole on the bottom of it. Sole of foot, not fish. The skin and cartilage is cleanly hacked off. I look in the hut, and the matching pair of cadaver foot is bound to a metal framed bed by a thin leather strap. Nobody claims ownership of these boots.
The girl starts to look inside, but I usher her away. I motion for us to walk past the huts to the fire pit. I bend down, and motion for her to do the same, but she's already bent down. She's no dummy.
We make our way slowly to the fire pit. There's a large blackened pot, foaming white suds of stench. Putrid, like the smell of burning human flesh and rotten eggs. I used to find the smell so appealing. The small taste of freedom heightens my pallet to old familiar things. Cooked fish, fresh berries that grow up near the river. This just smells like senseless massacring now.
I watch Dena as she peers in the pot and covers her nose. She is tough. She holds her own and we both go back on the blood trail. Fear is our universal language. I pick up a thick stick from beneath the fire and blow on the charred tip, making it glow bright orange. We walk past the fire; the sun is hanging low now. Our shadows grow long as the daylight grows short. Our feet make the sounds of dough getting placed on a flour covered table. The ground is packed hard where foot traffic has worn grooves into the dust and dirt.
We follow the path as it leads to a smaller row of houses, sitting opposite each other, with the path in between. There's one hut with clay pots, and the smell of bourbon sweetens the air. Candle stubs that reek of citronella poke out from a banister in front of this jungle village watering hole, white smelly things. Giant lemon scented maggots waiting for a flame.
I place the edge of my stick on the candles and blow it bright orange again. The flame spits and hisses as the oil burns and the wick dances with light. I pull off my cape and fashion a torch made from strips of cloth rubbed over the wax covered railing. It takes a flame easily, and the girl comes in close to my arm. She is no longer sullen. She trembles, and comes so close to the flame it nearly burns her.
I push her firmly away with my arm. I need fighting room. The law of the jungle is every man for himself in situations like this. Survival is one of them universal language things.
The sun makes grotesque shadows on the village as it sets abruptly. The crickets and frogs out in the field begin their evening serenade, beckoning the moon to rise. The cows gather themselves up, about ten or so, and begin walking into the village. Their hooves stir up the dust, and it gives them the appearance of walking on a red cloud as the sun sinks behind the far off jungle.
They huddle and toss their heads. Dena and I move aside as the slow motion moseying of cows moves past the fire and down to a large barn at the end of the path.
Between the drinking hut and the path are buildings that are getting harder to determine
their purpose. One looks like a forge, with a huge bellows sticking out of one side of the building, and a stone chimney poking through the roof. Another building looks like it's a tailors shop, or a laundromat. There's clothes blowing gently as the evening wind begins to stir.
Shirts and dresses sway, phantoms of the village dance in the breeze.
Dena lets out a slight gasp. She is grabbing my arm and points down at a figure near the laundromat.
I gulp. She hangs close behind me, and for once in a few days I am happy that she is now with me. We walk slowly up to the huddled figure, lying like a ball of bloodied gore to one side of the path. I clear my throat, and pretend I walk the path every evening for exercise. My heart races.
I hold the torch down low by the figure. It doesn't move. The blood is fresh on the ground, as it oozes from two stumps of legs. It's the corpse of a man in his twenties. His has been severed nearly in two, straight down the front of his face. His ears are nearly together on the back of his head. His eyes stare skyward, like a Picasso painting, or a human flounder. His tongue sticks out of his throat and lies on one side of his mouth, that side of his face is almost peaceful. The other side of the two-faced corpse has his mouth stuck in a hellish scream.
I hear a voice clear and I pull the torch away.
"Hello, are you American?"
My eyes grow wide and I look for the source of the question.
"Who said that?" I ask.
"Yes. American. And the girl? Is she native?" the disembodied voice asks from one of the huts.
He speaks Portuguese gibberish and the girl answers hesitantly.
"Where are you?" I ask. "We don't want any trouble."
The slow squeaking noise of machinery lurches from within a small brick building. Heavy rubber tires rest on the roof, holding tar paper on plywood down. A small sign swings in the light breeze, "Machina el Shoppe." I barely know Spanish, but even I can tell it's a play on words...like "Orange Julius" or "Cinnabon." Bicycles are knocked over on one side of the building, and bike frames little the doorway, they look like the scattered, discarded bones of a hungry mechanic.
The squeaking gets louder, then stops.
"I can shoot you where you stand, very easily" says the voice. "Now please. Put down the torch."
"Show yourself first," I answer, gripping the torch, feeling the weight of it in my hands. It is a weak weapon, but I can bluff.
"Put down the torch."
"First show yourself and you have my word-"
Chug-shock. The only other universal language ever spoken. The chambering of rounds into a pump-action shot gun.
"Putting. Down. The stick," I say real slow.
There's a burst of movement from the hut, and a small lump of a man comes flying out in a wheelchair. His hands furiously work the wheels in unison. Then he grabs the right wheel, and spins towards us, stops dead on a dime. He picks a shotgun up off his lap and levels it at me and the girl.
Wait. I recognize this man.
"Oh, hello Dodge."