The River of No Return

by Jon Voelkel

  Max shrugged. “We have a pretty good track record against those morons!”

  “They may be morons, but they’re powerful morons.”

  “We have power, too. We’re smarter than them.”

  “This is not one of your video games, Hoop. It’s deadly serious. You could get hurt … or worse.”

  “I know that. And if there was an easy way out, I’d take it. But I know something about bullies. And I’m pretty sure that if we hand over the White Jaguar, they’ll ask us for something else. And they’ll beat us up anyway. Honestly, I think we’re safer keeping hold of the White Jaguar and calling their bluff.”

  Lola stared at him. “I hate to admit it, but you’re right.”

  An owl screeched nearby. They saw it swoop out of the trees and fly toward the Black Pyramid.

  “That’s probably Kuy or one of his minions,” said Lola. “I bet he was eavesdropping on us.”

  Max passed the White Jaguar to her, then stood up and cupped his hands around his mouth. “You can tell them that the Hero Twins are back in business!” he shouted after the owl.

  As soon as the words left his lips, a conch-shell trumpet boomed out from the Black Pyramid.

  Lola trained her hunter’s eyes on the top platform. “There’s someone up there!”

  “Don’t tell me,” said Max. “He’s wearing a headdress with tusks.”

  She nodded.

  “It’s Eek’ Kitam,” he told her, “the zombie from the beach.”

  “Eek’ Kitam? Black Peccary? Catchy name.” Lola threw earth onto the fire to extinguish it. “But we also call peccaries skunk pigs. I think that suits him better.”

  Max was staring at the pyramid. “I see him! He’s coming down!”

  Lola took a deep breath. In an instant—as if a fairy godmother had waved a wand and erased the Death Lords’ taunting—she snapped back to her old self. She quickly packed away the White Jaguar, and swung her backpack onto her shoulders.

  “Ready, Hoop? It’s time to put our master plan into action.”

  “And what was our master plan exactly?”

  “Run, Hoop, Run!”

  Max was concentrating too hard on not tripping over tree roots or impaling himself on low branches to think too much about what was happening. The good thing about running through rainforest was that not much grew on the sunlight-starved forest floor—so the going was relatively easy. The bad thing was that the tree canopy also blocked moonlight, making it very hard to see.

  Lola paused. “Listen!”

  Max was no jungle hunter, but even he could hear Eek’ Kitam following their trail.

  Evidently, this zombie was not your usual silent tracker type.

  Where Max and Lola picked their way carefully, the zombie crashed along. Where Max and Lola stepped gingerly over tangled tree roots and skirted leaf litter for fear of snakes, the zombie stomped on everything in its path.

  Lola looked back. “He’s gaining on us.”

  She was running at full speed, and Max had to push himself to keep up.

  Where was she headed? Where could they hide?

  Whumph! Max tripped over a root and fell face-first onto the forest floor. Lola grabbed his hand and dragged him along the ground. “Get up! Get up!” she yelled at him.

  “Ow! Ow! Ow!” Even as he struggled to regain his footing, he saw the flash of an arrow. It landed—thunk!—in the tree behind Lola.

  “Get up!” she shouted again, but Max’s shaking legs wouldn’t bear his weight, and his feet couldn’t get a grip on the damp roots beneath them. He felt sharp pain, like his arm being pulled out of its socket, heard Lola scream, then nothing, just a strange silence, a sense of weightlessness, as the world collapsed around him.

  The next thing he knew he was being dragged through water in a lifeguard armlock. For a moment, he thought he was back in Venice and kicked out at an imaginary octopus.

  “Don’t fight me!” yelled Lola. “We’re almost to the bank.”

  She pushed Max onto a rock. “That was lucky,” she spluttered, pulling herself up next to him.

  “Lucky?” Max was sick and dizzy and his lungs were full of water. “How do you work that out?”

  “The ground gave way beneath us! We fell through the roof of an underground cave!”

  “You call that lucky? We must have fallen twenty feet.”

  “But we landed in water! We’re alive!”

  “That’s quite a low bar for defining lucky.”

  “Hey, city boy, you’re back in the jungle. It’s all about survival, remember?”

  Morning was breaking, and a shaft of weak sunlight shone down through the opening and illuminated the cave. It was a narrow, oval-shaped cavern about the length of a basketball court with a shallow creek running through the middle into a deep pool of water at one end.

  “And now we’re trapped,” said Max, “and no one knows we’re here.”

  “At least we lost Skunk Pig,” Lola pointed out.

  Even as she spoke, a shower of rocks and debris splashed into the water. Eek’ Kitam’s head appeared in the opening, close enough for Max to register the jade beads implanted in his teeth.

  “Or not,” she whispered. “We need to move. With him stomping around up there, the rest of the roof could come down at any moment.” She looked around the cavern. “Let’s try upstream. These caves usually lead somewhere.”

  As they splashed their way up the creek and into the gloom, an arrow whizzed by.

  “Keep down, Hoop!”

  It was unnecessary advice, as the ground was sloping upward and the cave roof was getting lower.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. We’re following the stream.”

  The problem with that plan became apparent when the water disappeared into a crack and left them facing a wall of solid rock.

  “What now?” Max ducked as another arrow missed its target and bounced off the rock.

  “We’ll have to fight.”

  “He’s a zombie. We don’t stand a chance.”

  “But we’re smarter than him.”

  “Are you suggesting a pop quiz? Because I don’t think he’ll play along.”

  “It’s not funny, Hoop! How do they kill zombies in movies?”

  Max flinched as an arrow missed his head by inches. “You can’t kill them. That’s the thing about zombies. They’re already dead. You have to destroy their brains.”

  “So we’ll need ammunition.” Lola tucked her backpack behind a large rock and began to gather stones. “Guava size is perfect! As many as you can find!”

  “How big is a g—?” Over Lola’s shoulder, Max saw the end of a rope made of thickly plaited vines drop down through the hole. “He’s coming!”

  “This size,” replied Lola calmly, showing him a baseball-sized stone. “Ignore him and keep collecting the ammo.”

  By the time the feet of their enemy came in sight, they’d amassed a good cache of stones and stacked them up like cannonballs.

  They hid behind the rock and watched as Eek’ Kitam lowered himself down the vine rope until he hung just above the surface of the water. He looked around the cavern. Evidently the lack of eyeballs in his empty eye sockets did nothing to impair his vision.

  He swung on his vine in their direction and landed at the edge of the pool. Pointing the obsidian blade of his spear ahead of him, he walked straight toward Max and Lola.

  “Ready?” whispered Lola. “Aim at his head.”

  Max swallowed hard and lifted a stone.

  “Fire!”

  Disappointingly, even when their stones found their mark, they didn’t have much effect. Max hit Eek’ Kitam square in the face and cracked his jaw, but the zombie didn’t notice a thing. Lola hit the back of his skull dead on, but the stone bounced off as if his cranium were armor-plated.

  He was on them like a whirlwind, spinning his spear in a blurry arc above his head like a kung fu master.

  First he dealt a hard swipe with t
he spear shaft to Max’s neck, then, whirling around, brought a sweeping blow to the back of his legs, knocking him off his feet.

  With Max laid low, Eek’ Kitam turned on Lola. The spear shaft felled her just as quickly. When Max looked up, the zombie had one foot on her back and was pulling her head up by the hair to expose her neck. With his other skeletal hand, he took his battle-ax and raised it to deliver the killing blow.

  “Stop!” yelled Max, between gasps for breath.

  Eek’ Kitam paused and slowly turned his head. A slight tilt of his chin told Max he was interested in making a deal.

  “The White Jaguar’s in here.” Max crawled forward with Lola’s backpack. “Take it!” he said, tossing it at the zombie. “This is what you’re programmed to find! Just take it and leave her alone!”

  Eek’ Kitam made his death rattle noise, which Max mistakenly assumed was an expression of agreement. (In retrospect, he would realize it was a zombie approximation of a villainous laugh.)

  Eek’ Kitam let go of Lola’s hair and replaced his battle-ax in his belt. Keeping his spear pointed at Lola’s throat, he picked up the backpack. Then he reversed away, toward the pool.

  “Thanks for saving me, Hoop,” whispered Lola. She sighed. “I guess Skunk Pig won that round.”

  “At this point, I don’t care. I just want him to go away.”

  Spear in hand, Eek’ Kitam waded into the pool, and tied the backpack onto the end of the vine. Then he turned slowly to face them. His empty eye sockets seemed to stare straight at them.

  “What’s he doing?” said Max. “Why doesn’t he climb up the vine?”

  Eek’ Kitam made the death rattle noise again.

  Then, thrusting the spear point in front of him, he marched straight toward Max and Lola.

  “He’s coming back!” cried Max.

  “Quick!” yelled Lola. “He’s downhill from us. Help me move this big boulder.” Together they pushed and shoved and kicked until the great stone came free. Then, with a mighty heave, they launched the boulder at the zombie, screaming all the while like madmen.

  Eek’ Kitam stepped nonchalently out of the way, and the boulder hit the rock wall behind him with a deep thud. The impact sent a tremor through the cave, the sound echoing around them like rolling thunder.

  There was a groan from the cave ceiling, as if the earth above them—all the teeming leaf litter and tangled roots and rain-weakened limestone—was apologizing for the destruction to come.

  Then a loud crack.

  “Take cover!” yelled Lola.

  Instinctively, Max crouched against the back wall with his hands over his head. Lola huddled next to him. They barely had time to exchange a look of terror before the rest of the cave roof imploded. The noise was deafening, as an avalanche of stones, trees, and earth crashed down in front of them, settling in layer upon layer of rubble and building a wall between themselves and the zombie.

  When all was still, Max opened his eyes. It was pitch-black. He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.

  “I’m blind!” he screamed.

  “You’re not blind, Hoop, it’s just dark. The rockfall has blocked us in.”

  “My eyes are stinging!”

  “It’s just dust. Please, stop shouting. You’re not helping.”

  “We’re trapped!” yelled Max.

  “Come on, Hoop, jungle one-oh-one. In a situation like this, what do we do?”

  “Scream for help? Like this: Help! Help!”

  “Wrong answer. What we do is we stay calm and we find the matches that we always keep in a waterproof bag in the pocket of our cargo pants.”

  “I don’t have any matches! I’m not wearing cargo pants!”

  “Really, Hoop? I thought you said you’d learned a lot from me?”

  “I wasn’t expecting to go hiking when I went to bed last night.”

  “Well, lucky for you, one of us came prepared.”

  Max heard several failed strikes of a match before—yay!—a tiny burst of flame appeared a few paces away. They were in a space the size of a small closet—a small closet with a creek trickling through it.

  The zombie was somewhere on the other side of the wall.

  “He must have been crushed,” said Lola. “Even Skunk Pig couldn’t survive that rockslide. See, Hoop? I told you we’re lucky.”

  She dropped the match before it burned her fingers.

  “Yeah,” Max agreed. “I feel very lucky to be barricaded inside this tiny, dark, airless space. So, Monkey Girl, how do we get out?”

  By the light of a few more matches, she confirmed Max’s worst fear. There was no way out. The rockfall was immovable. To his almost equal horror, he also saw that they were not alone. Scuttling around busily trying to find new homes were giant centipedes as long as rulers, pill bugs like toy tanks, and a scary-looking tailless scorpion with eight legs.

  “What is that thing?” asked Max in horror.

  “It’s a cave spider.”

  “It’s got pincers.”

  “That’s how it grabs its prey.”

  “It won’t grab me, will it?”

  “Of course not,” said Lola, but she didn’t sound too sure.

  “Light another match. I think one crawled into my shirt.”

  “We need to conserve matches, Hoop.”

  “Where’s your flashlight?”

  “It’s in my backpack. On the end of Skunk Pig’s vine.”

  They sat in darkness and a silence so deep that Max could hear the insects crawling and burrowing.

  “I wonder,” said Lola after a while, “if your parents will notice you’re gone?”

  “Of course, they will,” snapped Max. “Do you think they’re so wrapped up in their work that they wouldn’t notice that their own son is missing? That’s so insulting.”

  “I’m sorry, Hoop. I like your parents. And I’m obviously no expert on parental behavior. But it’s just that it always seems to be you rescuing them, not the other way round.”

  She had a point.

  A few pebbles tumbled from the wall of stone, dislodged by a moving creature.

  Max screamed.

  “It’s okay, Hoop. It was just a cave spider or a centipede. It won’t hurt you. Calm down.”

  “It’s got me! It’s got me!”

  “Stop shouting. Whatever it is, it’s harmless. Just swat it off.”

  Max croaked out one word: “Zombie.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Zombie!”

  Lola lit another match.

  A skeletal hand was clawing at Max’s neck, digging into his flesh with its bony fingers.

  It took two of them to detach it and pry off its fingers one by one.

  The zombie hand fought like a demon, but eventually they wrestled it to the ground. While Max held up the match, Lola smashed the bones with a rock. When the fingers tried to escape individually, both Max and Lola pounded them until the last wriggling bone had been pulverized.

  “I thought you said zombies were controlled by their brains,” complained Lola as they sat back, exhausted. “So how could its hand have drilled through the wall on its own?

  “Remote control?” guessed Max. He shrugged. “I never said I was an expert on Maya zombies.”

  “Let’s hope the rest of it is buried under some big boulders,” said Lola. “Or we’ll have to destroy it bit by bit. And we’re running out of matches.”

  They sat very still and listened for rampaging zombie body parts.

  “I think I should warn you,” said Max, “that I’m getting claustrophobic. And I’m starving. I feel like I might suddenly start screaming and turn cannibal and eat you.”

  “Get a grip, Hoop. We’ve only been in here an hour or so.”

  “How much air do we have?”

  Lola ignored the question. “Let’s try some positive thinking. Send a message into the universe. See in your mind what you want to happen next. But not the cannibal stuff, okay?”

  “Okay.”


  Max closed his eyes and imagined his parents finding him gone and radioing for help. He visualized the rescue helicopters hovering over the surface. He saw teams of burly rescuers descending into the cave to clear the rocks. It all looked so real and felt so likely that he started to relax.

  “Hoop? Are your feet wet?”

  Lola lit another match. Its course blocked by the rockfall, the little stream that had flowed through the cave had found its way into their hidey-hole. The ground was slick and wet. In the time it took for one match to flare and die, the water rose several inches.

  So this was it.

  After the best efforts of the Death Lords to devise a suitably innovative and gory end to Max Murphy’s life story, it was to be death by drowning, pure and simple.

  What the octopus had started, this cave was going to finish.

  “We can’t just sit here and wait to go under,” he said.

  Lola was silent.

  “Talk to me!” he begged her.

  “What about?”

  “Anything. Tell me what you’re thinking. Please, just keep talking.”

  “I just … I was thinking about my parents, Hoop. Why did they abandon me?”

  “Chan Kan loves you.”

  “Chan Kan wants me to be someone I’m not. He hates it that I want to go to college and travel round the world. He wants me to stay in the village.”

  “It’s your life. What does it matter what Chan Kan wants?”

  “Ever since that freak show in Spain when Landa pretended I was a Maya princess, I’ve felt kind of unbalanced. I’m sick of other people projecting their stuff onto me. I need my own stuff. My own history.”

  The water had risen to waist level.

  “Can’t Chan Kan tell you anything?”

  “He just repeats the same old story about how Hermanjilio found me in the forest and brought me to Utsal. But there must be more to it than that. Someone must know something. I wasn’t a newborn, so where had I been living? It’s impossible to keep secrets in these little Maya villages.”

  “No one ever reported a missing baby?”

  “Weird, isn’t it?”

  The water was up to their necks.

  “Hey, Hoop, I can feel a little ledge. Come and sit on it. It will raise you up a bit. You might find a pocket of air.”