Cutter had, but he would never admit to it. “Z? As in zombies?” He pushed himself back from the table and began to rise. “You can count me out. I’ve had very bad experiences with those goddamned things.”
Moray gestured with a hand, palm facing down. “Sit, please. Z is not about zombies, Mr. Cutter. Nothing…quite like that. I was there in Russia as well. I know what we all saw.” He placed both hands on the tabletop and laced his fingers together. “There is an interesting connection we are only becoming aware of now. The origin of—let’s just call it an infestation of something…otherworldly.”
“Otherworldly or not, I know what the hell I saw.”
“As do I, Mr. Cutter. There has been no reported activity in Russia since we left.”
“Because the military blew the whole goddamned place up. Those Russians don’t mess around.” Cutter flicked his fingers in the air, mimicking an explosion.
Moray’s chest rose, then fell. “It’s all been taken care of, that’s clear. We did what we could.”
Cutter didn’t care if Moray personally escorted every last survivor to safety and set them up with a maid and butler. “People died. A lot of people. Needlessly.”
Moray sighed and adjusted his cuffs. “Mr. Cutter, I did not bring you all the way here to argue with you over the methods employed to suppress a life-ending outbreak of something over which we had no control. No, please. Listen to the full story on this—and perhaps you will understand why I called you all here. Please indulge me a few minutes of your time. You owe me at least that.”
Cutter reluctantly tugged his rolling chair closer to the table, then leaned back as far as the chair would go. He almost swung his feet up on the desk, but thought better of it.
Ajay continued as if Cutter’s outburst hadn’t happened. “Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, Mr. Cutter, was a world-famous explorer in the early part of the twentieth century. He’d survived in the Amazon Basin—against all odds—for tens, if not scores of years. Most of those years, he spent surveying and mapping many of the unexplored areas for the Royal Geographic Society. He suffered physical hardships and overcame obstacles that led to the deaths of many of his predecessors, who were much more lauded and well-equipped men than he was.”
Ajay clicked the pad on the laptop and the picture on the screen changed. It showed a handsome, gaunt man riding on the back of a mangy-looking mule.
“This is Colonel Percy Fawcett.”
Cutter had always thought Fawcett was a rather handsome guy from the one picture he’d seen of him. He’d read about him briefly, and of all the other men, and the few women, who had gone off into the jungle, or the Arctic, or into the vast, unexplored forests, and pushed back the boundaries of the known world. As a kid, he’d often pictured himself in the man’s position, riding hard to some mysterious adventure on horseback. It’d been a boyhood dream of his to explore and find the hidden gems and lost cities and buried treasures that were out there. It was because of all that he’d gotten into the salvage and recovery business. He didn’t have the grades to become an archeologist or a scientist. He wasn’t bright enough, so he had done the second best thing. He married one.
He shut his eyes for a brief moment. It hurt a bit too much to think about how far off track he’d gone over the past couple of years. He’d rather suppress it. The thrills were gone, his dreams had been destroyed, and his wife had died. The universe was trying to tell him something.
Give up.
He opened his eyes when Ajay cleared his throat. “This is what we have learned of the areas he once explored.” The map behind Ajay showed parts of South America with areas highlighted in red. “In total, he explored an area as large as the state of Texas, Mr. Cutter. Mostly on foot. Or on horseback.”
“So all that time he was searching for El Dorado?” Morgan asked.
“Not exactly.” It was Dr. Martinez who spoke up. “It was for something else entirely.”
Moray looked impressed. “You are indeed correct, Dr. Martinez. That is why you are here with us as well.”
Cutter had just assumed she was there because she’d become a part of his team. He wasn’t sure if it was official or anything, since she wasn’t yet on the payroll. That all depended on whether or not he planned to return to work anytime soon, which, at the moment was in serious doubt.
Moray nodded once to Ajay.
“In 1925,” Ajay continued, “Percy Fawcett and his son Jack Fawcett, and his son’s boyhood friend, Mr. Raleigh Rimmel, set off from a small port town in western Brazil named, Cuiabá, presumably to search for the Lost City of Z.” He paused and began tapping his index finger on the desktop. He glanced at Moray. “Percy Fawcett, his son, and Mr. Rimmel were never heard from again.”
Cutter knew this, vaguely. The details might have been a bit rusty in his mind, but the general impressions were there. People had been searching for Colonel Fawcett for years. Many had died in the process. That didn’t strike Cutter as very encouraging for what he expected to come next. Sometimes things that were lost should stay lost. He’d used that same bit of reasoning on his wife when she spouted her crazy ideas to go searching for ancient artifacts in countries with rather challenging policies toward non-natives. He rarely won those arguments. Half the time because he didn’t believe those same arguments himself. His worries had been elsewhere, more personal. He didn’t want her to die. Tragically, he’d been proven correct when she had.
“Nothing?” Morgan asked. She glanced up from the screen of a phone she was holding at arm’s length. “I just read that they found his ring and a compass.”
“You are most indeed correct. They did find a ring that is said he once wore—and a compass. No traces of him, or of his son and companion. They were never found. Many rumors claimed he was killed by one of the local tribes. Others say he found his lost city and became a part of it, and did not want to come back.”
Cutter scoffed. “An ancient lost city of that size? Impossible.” He was certain of that. He’d looked even. He’d paid a small fortune and studied classified satellite maps well before the Internet had become popular. And when the Internet came along and he could see much the same thing for free? Nothing. In all that time, he’d found no signs of lost civilizations still waiting to be discovered. They had either crumbled to ruins, or were buried beneath years of growth. He was dead certain that no sprawling, mysterious ancient cities existed anywhere on the planet.
Moray stood and circled the table with a piece of paper in his right hand. He laid the document in front of Cutter, who leaned onto his elbows and stared at it. On the thin slip of paper were coordinates and a rough map. Latitude and longitude. From his quick, calculated estimation, what he was seeing was inside Brazil—the Amazon Basin, in particular.
Moray tapped his finger on the paper. “Mr. Cutter, there are still great mysteries left in the world. Still things we have not yet discovered, and I’m here to tell you that we have indeed found one of them.”
Nodding, Cutter got out of his seat, pushed the comfortable chair he’d been sitting in up against the conference table, and left the room without saying another word.
- 5 -
NO WAY IN HELL
No way, no how. That’s what Cutter was thinking as he walked through the lobby of Moray’s Atlanta headquarters. Can’t do it. He figured there had to be some connection with what Moray was sharing and the trouble in Russia—and the trouble in Ecuador that had taken his wife Sharon from him. Now that he’d found a tiny bit of happiness with Reyna, along came this new gig. It had dropped right in his lap, and it could send him straight to Hell.
No. No way.
Others had been dragging him this way and that for much of his life, which made much of what he’d done a cosmic joke. He’d become the team leader and owner of a rather complex salvage and recovery operation. It was something he never quite understood. He’d pretty much fallen into it. Maybe he’d simply been the one stupid enough not to have taken a step back with everyone else when they we
re looking for someone to be in charge. He’d been the bagman, the fool. He didn’t feel like a leader, and never wanted to be in charge. He just wanted to be left alone and do his own thing. Somehow, he kept getting dragged back, kicking and screaming like a misbehaving toddler, and put in charge.
But not this time.
He stepped onto the street and his heightened, almost mysterious sense of direction kicked in, and he locked onto his destination. His mind then worked out the fastest route to get there. Morgan was better at it than he was, but her skill worked quite differently.
When he reached his final destination, he breathed deeply, taking in the atmosphere. The place was not exactly what he had wanted. It had far too much class.
As he sidled up to the bar, he slid onto a leather barstool and dropped his elbows on the mirror-polished surface of the bar. The whole place exuded money. Fake antiques adorned the richly darkened walls. Scraped and polished distressed wood hung in horizontal slats, and there was far too much aged bronze ornamentation for his liking. He would have preferred more cheesiness. Maybe a few neon beer signs, or gritty peanut shells and pretzel crumbs along a scratched-up, sticky bar top, with an old guy behind the counter named “Mick.”
The guy behind the bar didn’t look like a “Mick.” He was probably named “Michael.” Cutter signaled to him anyway. The guy came over and stood before him.
Cutter read his nametag—Michael.
Figures.
He nodded and pointed at one of the cheapest bottles of whiskey he could see, then raised four fingers and turned them sideways. The barkeep flashed a big, fake smile, which Cutter ignored.
While Cutter waited for his drink, he spun on the barstool and took in the various patrons. Most were bankers, lawyers, or downtown worker types. The women were all dressed in snappy pantsuits, the men in just…suits? He never could quite understand why there was a difference. They were all suits, when you got right down to it, so why were the suits that women wore called something different?
Sexist bastards.
“Twenty-five dollars,” the barkeep said.
Cutter almost choked. Twenty-five bucks for a few fingers of cheap-ass whiskey? It had to be all the…ambience. Somehow, they had to pay for all the fake shit. But what was money but to spend, anyway? He had plenty of it and planned to get good and rip-roaring drunk, and then wait for Morgan and Gauge to show up and try to persuade him to go along with their harebrained scheme. He would tell them no, and they would keep working on him until he said yes. It was becoming the same old song and dance.
“I’ll get that.”
Cutter was mildly surprised. It was Moray who had spoken. He took the barstool next to Cutter and signaled for a drink of his own.
Cutter glanced about, looking for signs of Morgan and Gauge, even Reyna Martinez. Nothing. He grunted then sampled his drink. Maybe they had finally gotten the message?
Moray rapped his knuckles on the bar. “Do you know what I dreamed about when I was a kid?”
Cutter sipped from his drink.
“I dreamt about gold, Mr. Cutter. Everything was gold for me growing up. I read books by men like Phillip K. Dick about golden mutants, and the often-misunderstood King Midas myths. But most of all, myths about El Dorado always captured my imagination. You know it literally means ‘The Golden Man?’”
Cutter watched in the mirror behind the bar as a very attractive redhead in a low-cut dress took a seat at a table behind him with four very ugly men sitting there already. She smiled a false smile at them, and they very much appreciated her very smooth reaction. Very, very…tired and weary, eyes all bleary—
“Jack? May I call you that?” Moray asked, interrupting Cutter’s near descent into temporary madness.
Cutter said nothing. Bleary? Bleary…? What rhymes with bleary? Mirry? No, that’s not a word.
“El Dorado, Jack, is essentially about a king who covered himself from head to toe in gold in the morning and cleansed himself off at night, washing away a fortune each day. Some say it was merely a rumor, a myth, really. I suspect it represented something else. A metaphor about life.”
Cutter almost asked, “Whose life?” but didn’t.
Moray sipped from his drink. Judging by the hundred-dollar bill on the bar, he’d ordered the expensive whiskey.
“Do you ever dream of riches, Jack? Riches beyond your wildest imagination? Not digits in some goddamned bank account, but the hard currency of gold and gems. Something you can touch and feel. Heavy coins that slip between your fingers?”
Cutter allowed his breath to slowly drift out from between his lips. He nodded, remembering those dreams most of all. But his were more along the lines of a Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny cartoon, where Daffy finds Ali Baba’s treasure cave—should’a turned left at Albuquerque. None of that was real, though. It was just a cartoon, as the real search for riches often was. It more often than not led to finding nothing at all. Just more wasted time. And zombies. Can’t forget them. No, not them. He raised his glass in an imaginary salute to his own misfortune.
“Those riches exist. They’re out there, Jack. You just have to keep looking for them and—”
“Will there be anything else, sir?” Michael, the barkeep, asked.
“No, thank you. Keep it.”
The man took the hundred-dollar bill with another phony smile and disappeared.
Moray watched him for a moment before twisting and looking Cutter directly in the eye. “Together, Jack, we can find those riches. I know it.”
That was all well and good, Jack figured. But he was not so sure. Magic was gone from the world. So was wonder. All that really mattered was cheap alcohol and good sex.
“I want you to come with me, Jack. We’re assembling an operation that I plan to launch in a few days. I think you—and your team—will be a valuable addition. In fact, I’m counting on it.”
“Why? Why us?” Cutter grumbled.
“Why not you? I’m going to tell you something in confidence, which is something I don’t often do. I’ve not been able to trust many people in my life, Jack. They all want something from me, mostly money, of which I have far too much. The money keeps them loyal, sure, but only to a point. I don’t know what it is about you, Cutter, but there’s something special you offer. I can’t put my finger on it, but I know deep in my gut I can trust you. You are a man I want at my side. Think of all the great discoveries out there waiting to be found. When we find them, we’ll share them with the world.” He paused and took a sip from his drink. “Haven’t you ever chased a dream, Jack?”
Cutter finished his drink in one swallow and shoved the glass forward on the bar. He considered what was being offered. He considered what he had to lose. He thought of the soft, warm, yielding woman he had met and how much he enjoyed spending time with her, exhausted as she often made him. He thought of his dead wife, and of the zombies that had been the cause of her death, and of Russia and the zombies there, too. He thought of how he had tried to save them all, and had failed to do so.
There were perhaps a million or more reasons for him not to go with Moray—and none that he could think of telling him he should.
Cutter swiveled to face him. “When do we get started?”
- 6 -
STAGED
Anton Moray’s warehouse was larger than Cutter’s own Texas warehouse. Moray had bigger toys in his, too, Cutter noticed, which left him feeling a bit envious.
The cavernous space was hosted inside a private hanger located just outside a small, nondescript airport on the edge of an Atlanta suburb that Cutter hadn’t bothered to learn the name of. Many of Moray’s company flights originated from there, so the man had built an entire section of the airport and shaped it to suit his own needs.
One of the other big things Cutter noticed was just how many people worked for Moray—a hell of a lot. Way more than he had working for him. He’d asked Morgan earlier how much the guy was worth, and she’d just whistled through her teeth and shaken her head, saying not
hing. It was obviously a hell of a lot more than he had. But it wasn’t about the money. Nah.
“Think I could take a liking to this guy, boss,” Gauge said as they cleared the hanger doors and stepped onto an expanse of smooth concrete two hundred feet across, if not more.
Welding torches sparked in the distance, and the distinct smell of burnt paint and hot metal filled the air. Centered on the concrete floor, surrounded by workers dressed in white overalls, were two identical vehicles. Both were massive. Both were quite pricey judging by the looks of them.
“G-63s…6x6s,” Gauge said, filling in the blanks in Cutter’s mind. They were Mercedes, based on the emblems on the grills, but he’d never seen this particular model before. Though, they did make sense to him. German. Big, spartan, utilitarian with just a hint of design. Each was painted matte black and had six hulking tires mounted on three axles. On top were large tubular metal racks that were currently being welded into place as he watched. At the back, where the big trucks had pickup-style beds, large metal crates descended from cranes attached to I-beams far above and were subsequently hoisted and set in place by those in the white overalls.
Cutter was a bit stupefied by the scale of it all. It was almost as if he’d stumbled onto some villain’s lair and was looking on as the big bad minions prepared to go to war against the barrel-chested hero. Which, as he thought about it further, probably would make him one of the minions about to be expended in the fight.
When he and Gauge got closer to the action in the center of the warehouse, he circled the first vehicle, ducking low to view the undercarriage. Gauge followed closely behind.
“Built like damn tanks,” Cutter whispered. “I want one.”
Gauge grunted his disapproval. “Too small for me.”
“Maybe. But beats that piece of shit cruiser you drive now.”
“You couldn’t afford one of these. Me, I’d prefer a Marauder. They look better.”
Zombie Team Alpha: Lost City Of Z Page 3