Pyramid of the Dead: A Zombie Novel (5 page)

“S
ir...please
Colonel
...
please
...
help me
!
”

Crack!

A single shot rang out
in the cold night air
. The natives stopped
dead in their tracks
, heads whipping towards the source of
this
new and
startling
sound.
They
saw
the one called
Pizarro
h
olding a long stick with smoke seeping
out
from it
s end. The rest of
Pizarro
’s men
knew
that
he
had
just
demonstrated the
heavy
cost of disorderly conduct under his command.

Palencia held
shaking
hand
s over his
large
,
rotund
stomach. Blood seeped
between his
tightly clasped
fingers and
dripped
down
to the ground
at his feet
,
one
heavy
drop at a time
.
He stumbled forward one
heavy
step,
and then
fell
to his knees.
T
hick
blood
gurgled from his mouth as he tried to speak.

Crack!

Another shot shattered the shocked silence that had followed its predecessor
.
Pizarro
had grabbed
the late arriving
Almargo’s musket and sent the second shot straight through Palencia
’s
fore
head.
The man
topple
d lifelessly to the ground
.

“Drop your weapons,”
Pizarro
said
to his men who were now
all
amassed behind him
and readying their
own
weapons
. “Do as I say. It’s our only chance
to get out of this alive
.
Do it now!
”
He
raised his
musket
over his head
and
then threw it to the ground at his feet
.

Slowly
, very slowly,
his men did as
they were
ordered until only Almargo stood with his
rapier
sword
up and
at t
he ready. The
old soldier was
extremely reluctant to leave himself unarmed, especially considering the palpable tension in the air.

“Please
,
my
old friend,
drop it,
”
Pizarro
said. “You must know t
hey would have killed him anyway. Don’t grieve for him, he was
nothing but
a
stupid
fool
who
se actions
m
ay yet cause
the death of
us all.”

G
ently
,
he
took the
long
blade from his
loyal friends grasp
and threw it to the ground
too
.
“Trust me,
Almargo,
”
he whispered in his ear
, “
please
just trust me.”

The
swarm of
natives
had regained their courage
after the
shock of the
shots
and
were edging closer
again
,
so
Pizarro
steppe
d into the middle of the square,
holding
his hands
skywards
.

“Min
co,” he said
quietly
. “I can do nothing more than
apologis
e
to you
for what that man did
to your woman
. He deserved to die
, die
like a dog
.
But
please
remember i
t was I who
took vengeance in your stead,” he said pointing at the blood-soaked corpse
beyond them
.
“
Please…
please
,
Minco
,
don’t let w
hat
this one man
has
done
destroy everything that
we can build.”

Minco
angrily regarded a
t the
body of the
dead Spaniard
,
the
n
back toward
the
still
crying
young
woman
. Thoughts raced
wildly
through his
mind. The
King
had ordered him to
go and
bring these visitors
back
to Cuzco
unharmed
.
But a
girl
, an
Incan
girl
had been
attacked;
one of these
so called
visitors had forced
himself
up
on her
. His own
men
wanted
blood,
much
more
than
the
life of
that
one
single
soldier
. T
heir
burning
eyes
were locked on
Minco
, waiting for
him to give
the order to
attack, to
destroy these evil men
.

For a
ll
of
his life
,
t
he most important thing
to Minco
had been
his loyalty.
L
oyalty to his people
,
but
even
more viral
was his
loyalty
he had
to his
King
.
With a heavy heart
,
h
e
knew
what he must do.
Through gritted
teeth,
he
turned and faced his own people
, speaking
to them
in his native tongue
so that
Pizarro
and his men w
ould
n
o
t understand his
word
s
.

“
My people, w
e must wait. We will have our revenge
, but it cannot b
e
today. Our
King
has ordered me to bring these men
back
to
Cuzco to
meet
with
him. We must
,
as
always
,
obey the
word of the
King
. But I promise you
all
this- we
will take
our revenge.”

It was
all too
clear
that
h
is tribe
smen
were
far from
happy
with his words
, even
Pizarro
and his men could
clearly
see that
.
Murmurs
and whispers
flew
back and forth among
st
them
as they questioned their leader
’
s orders
.
They did
n
o
t like what he was saying, b
ut they were
nearly
as loyal to the
ir
King
as
the
great
Protector
was
.
For now, t
hey would do
just
as he said. F
or now
Minco guessed
, but not for
too
much
long
er
.

Minco looked
over to
Pizarro
then marched towards him
.
A
nger was
still
racing
in his eyes
when
he said,
“Spaniard, g
et
the rest of
your men together. W
e
’
re leaving here
now.
” He looked to the
night
sky. “
We
’
re
not waiting until the sun comes up.
”
Without another
word,
h
e stormed off
into the darkness
.

*****

The journey
to Cuzco
got
even
harder, f
or
in
the next two weeks
,
marching
was all
that
they seemed to do
. T
hey never stopped at any
of the
settlement
s
they passed
. Minco was
n
o
t willing
to risk an
ything else going wrong. If any
thing
like
the previous incident
happened
again
, nothing, no
t even the word of the
King
himself
w
ould
be able to
stop the Incan
warrior
s
from slaughtering the Spaniards
.

Cold
, damp
and
insect ridden
n
ights were spent under the stars with
only
some
meagre dried rations
to eat
and none of that
wondrous
chicha
to taste
.
Minco
also
kept h
is distance from the Spaniards, setting his
own
camp apart from
Pizarro
and his men.

Eventually
Pizarro
had enough of the
constant
silence
. Such cold silence.
O
ne night
,
he
went
to the Incans camp
to speak
directly
to
Minco,
who he found was
warming
himself by
a
fire.
H
e felt the
urge, the
need
,
to
try
to
build
a
bridge between them
again
.
This was
of course
, s
o he could keep this Minco
as close as possible.
 

“
T
ell me something Minco, h
ow did you
manage to
lear
n our language so well?” he asked
as he sat down
beside the man
.
It was the only slice of small talk he could think of.
“Who was it that taught you?”

Minco
did
n
o
t want to talk
to the Spaniard
but as the D
efender of
Cuzco,
he saw it as a chance to learn more about his enemy
.