Chapter 24.
Dodge and I play catch up. No flash backs, just shop talk between me and him. Long story short, he survived the plane getting shot up (obviously), though he had debated not to. He thought the best way to serve the world would be to leave it. He crashed out in the clear cut jungle not far from the village and fate had other designs for him. Of course, this only fed into his delusions of immortality.
He became a teacher as the villagers nursed him back to health. He learned their native language, then he began teaching them languages that he knew. French, Portuguese, English, and a little Japanese. But since Japanese is lacking in the Latin roots, he abandoned that endeavor. He helped build the school, bartering with other villages for the bricks.
“So you know Dena, then?” I ask.
He shakes his head no. Then he says something to her in slurry. I don’t follow it.
“Anyway, he says, “in my spare time, I recently started putting together bicycles.”
“Wait, she was a student here-“
“Will you get off it?” he stares me down.
I fall into old habits, I kowtow. “Why bicycles?” I ask. “They'd be useless in the jungle. Why not build boats?"
"Boat building became more of a chore then a passion after I mastered it. You haven't been this far east have you? Since the crash, that is?"
"Me? Locked up on a plantation. Worked as a gopher for a time, till one day I found a few pigeons, and convinced my boss that a messenger service could be profitable. Took some doing, but it was a living."
"That was my idea, too," says Dodge.
"I'm sure it was, you told Bell about the phone too, right?"
Dodge doesn't say anything, just furrows his brow in being one upped.
"Anyhow, to answer your previous query, no. I never left the plantation. What does that have to do with riding bikes through the jungle?"
"Good question. To answer your query, yes, it wouldn't make sense to make a bike that rides through the jungle."
"Well, there you go."
He smiles smugly.
"Dodge, are you telling me there ain't no jungle anymore?"
"Climate change. As predicted, clear cutting the Amazon at a rate of forty acres per hour. As predicted. What you've seen, that's about as thick as it gets. Around here, anyways. I've been to the Atlantic, dude. All on a modified bike. Well, bike carriage. I'm telling you it is the promised land."
"Then why are you back here in this village?"
"Just got back last week. I was looking to move the whole village away from the river. It's becoming too unstable an ecosystem. I'm sure, with time, this continent will return into a jungle paradise. But not while man still walks the earth. Not in your day. Not in mine." He points to the girl, "Not in her children's children lifetime either. We have screwed the pooch royally."
"I'll just stick with the here and now and the zombies. One thing at a time. So you were saying about the village?"
"Right. I came back, the elders were reluctant. However, many of my students were on board. Those most fluent in English, at least. The one's that looked down on me teaching them English, the native speakers. Harder sell. But I had a good ten, twelve people that were willing to hop on board. All I had to do was make enough carriages."
"What would you use to draw them? You can't use cows...you find horses?" I ask. I doubt it. Horses are as rare as hen’s teeth.
He pulls me in close and whispers, "Not cows. People."
"Hey, hey, whoa Nelly. Look at my eye, bro. I'm offended. Slavery is something that should have been buried and dead and never resurrected. Ever. You and I are cool. But want to know what happens when we run into somebody out there? I get a poster drawn. Then they will probably use my very pigeons to get the word out that there's a run-away slave. ‘What's the reward?’ Is all people will ask. Slavery is not fun."
Dodge looks at me again, like he did before with his 'No more jungle' news.
"What? Zombies?"
He stretches his arms and lies back. It's uncanny how easily he sits up, I would think legs would give you leverage, apparently not. He sits up like a spring and says, "It is pure poetry. I harness up, ten, twenty zombies, the more the merrier. We go at a nice pace, files miles an hour. In two weeks, we're in Venezuela. In a month, East coast and paradise."
He lies down and stretches again. The girl asks him something in gibberish, and he points to a corner of the room. There's a blanket, she uses it to cover herself as she squats out the door and pees on the zombies below.
"How do you, you know, harness them up?"
"Zombie-catcher. Like a dog catcher. Totally safe. I've done it. I have harnesses."
"Yeah, but...I mean, with a team of horses, you know, pulling the carriage. What drives the horses? You can't just whip a zombie into submission. People have tried. It does no good."
"I thought of that, and some of my earlier designs addressed it. First, remember all those runners you put out of business putting my carrier pigeon idea into play?"
"Where do you-“, I pause. I hate debating with this guy. “How do you come off on having the patents to all these ideas that have been around forever, Dodge? Now you came up with pigeons carrying messages. Something that has been around since Noah's Ark? Yeah, I'll bite. Since implementing Dodge the Magnificent’s carrier pigeon idea, I do recall putting all the runners out of work. They just shifted their market around to becoming delivery boys. You can't tie a pizza to a pigeon, you know."
"I'm surprised you haven't tried that," Dodge says. His joke falls flat, he's very socially awkward. "Anyhow, I hired a runner from another village who was empathetic to my...condition. He agreed to run in front of the zombies. And it worked splendidly. I fitted the zombies with blinders, so they couldn't be distracted by me. Not the cones, mind you, just blinders, they could only see ahead. It worked great. When I wanted to go faster, I told the runner to slow down. When I wanted to slow down, I told him to walk just out of their reach. Sometimes they would lurch forward. It became very difficult to gauge the team's disposition."
"So?"
"I resorted to putting the runner in a cage. Then I realized I didn't need a runner anymore, just anyone. Small children work best. They find the cage thrilling."
"I'm sure they do," I say. "So wait a minute, you want me or the girl in the cage? You’re nuts."
"Why not? It's nearly 100% effective."
"Yeah, no thanks. I'll walk or take the canoe. Zombies still can't swim, you know."
"Then you're limited to where the water takes you," Dodge says smugly. He says everything smugly. Just assume, from this point forward, if Dodge says, "Pass the salt" that he said it smugly.
"You know, Einstein," I say, "your whole carriage design is good and fine, and I'm on board with putting the zombies to work instead of us always running away from them. But you ever heard the expression, 'Putting the horse before the carriage?'"
"What do you mean?"
"Rear wheel drive. You put the zombies behind the carriage. That way there's no need for blinders. You dangle your rear over the seat now and then to spur them on. Eliminate the need for the cage totally. Easy peasy."
He cocks an eyebrow and nods his head. "It would take a simpleton to come up with such a clever idea. Jolly good show. How on earth did you ever come up with it?"
"Oh that? Nothing. When I saw the girl dangling her butt out the door to take a leak. All the zombies down below started groaning to grab her. Instead of gas driven, you have uh…you know, rear driven."
Dodge is puzzled, "But how do we stop the carriage?"
"How do we stop-how did you get along so far in life without me? You're building carriages out of bike parts! I don't know, hand brakes should work. Don't dangle your rear so far down, maybe draw up a curtain. Out of sight, out of zombie mind."
Dodge smiles and lies back down, "Horse before the carriage. So simple it might work."
"Might?" I say. "Will work. I'll put my own rear on the line to prove it."