Bungle in the Jungle

We are in a bit of a quandary as to what to do. I think there is some mental catastrophe associated with burying your dead body and then flying away as though nothing happened. I have the urge to salvage any fuel left in the tangled wing tanks and burn this mother down.

I am standing over my body as Lou comes up beside me, his foot... his dead body's foot, in his hands as he drags his corpse to a stop. The look on his face is one that you might have seen in an Nazi death camp newsreel.

I point to my body,"Does my ass look big in those pants?"
Lou looks at me and in a moment and that horrible look on his face is replaced with a smile and then a quick laugh.

"You're sick, Nancy." He drops the foot and we drag what is left of me from the cockpit as well. "We can't just leave ourselves here."
"We bury the bodies and we can burn the wreck. Or we just burn the bodies in the wreck."
"Won't the fire draw someone's attention?" Lou asks, looking at our surroundings.
"It's not like they have a police department that will be able to check our dental records."
Lou looks skyward for a moment, "I don't even have dental records. Not in this country, anyway."

Even though the wings are a mess, there is still a half a gallon or so of fuel to start things off. We don't have the time to strip the wreck of identifying markings. I doubt anyone will come before the plane is cooked and our bodies are just dust in the wind.

Inside of the folded fuselage we find a case of ammunition for the Fifty. The big gun itself is nowhere in sight. I am hoping it is with Abigail. There is half a case of what look like Korea era hand grenades... the kind with the segmented wire wrap around the explosive center, then wrapped in a smooth, round case. There is a duffle with two .45s and what looks like Lou number two's handy work of rolled Walkers, a bottle of tequila, and a roll of hundred dollar bills as thick as a soup can. We take all of it with the agreement that we don't touch the happy stuff until we have met up with Jerry and all is safe.

We take the goods and walk them back toward the trail, then go back to stage the bodies on the remains of the wing tanks to provide a thorough burn.
"Man, this is fucking bizaar." I heave my headless corpse up on the wreckage, lifting the legs and shoving as hard as I can. It slides on its own gore like an oyster from its shell.
"Think fast." Lou throws my head and I manage to duck away just in time.
"That's not funny, asshole."
"Stop being a pussy and grab the other end of this."
Lou's body is bloated and soft, like a man size piece of liver in a flannel shirt.
"You stink more than you usually do."

We grunt as we sling the carcass up on the wreckage. The stink of death is all around us, on us, up our noses and in our clothes. The fire is lit and there is the whoosh of combustion. Before the meat begins to cook we let the heat bake the smell out of our clothes and hair, then we walk back to the head of the trail.

"I sure hope we wake up from this fucking nightmare soon."
Lou reaches down and picks up the grenades and the duffle and I grab the Fifty rounds.
"This isn't going to get better, but it is liveable." I reposition the ammo box in my arms.

"Wasn't to liveable for those two bastards."

When we get to the plane we realize that their might have been a little more AV-Gas in the flora and fauna than we expected. There is a blaze twice as high as the treetops and probably three times larger than the wreck. Nothing we can do about it. Nothing we want to do about it.

We fire Naomi and try to sight the best piece of the road to use for our take-off. We head up the road a piece. The hole thing is shit, full of holes and washboard, but we give ourselves enough room to go with full take off flaps. I hold the brakes and throw the coals to her. The Wasps fill the cockpit with a deafening roar and I feel her skid just a bit before I release the brakes and we jolt down the dirt road.
Our speed doesn't improve the fact that this road is just a collection of holes
"She's gonna shake apart, Jake."
"No... no, she'll hold. We'll get her up where the road turns."
"The road... turns?"

I gesture ahead of us, both hands holding onto the controls for dear life. Fifty yards ahead the road makes a lazy turn to the left and the path ahead drops off and down a bit of an arroyo. We will either be airborne or we will be the second set of bodies and Goose to loose it in this part of the jungle.

To our right the blaze from our inadvertant scortched earth policy has grown to the size of a football stadium in a matter of five or so minutes. I glance down at the fuel gauge for a split second as the turn in the road fills our windscreen... more than two thirds of our fuel. That plane must have soaked the ground with enough fuel to cook the Mall of America.

"UP" Lou pulls on his control wheel.
"Not so much, we don't want to stall... "

There is a tremendous shudder as we leave the road and engage the burm as it makes the turn. We leap into the air, judging the tree tops ahead and the ground dropping away below us. The old girl responds to our urging and lifts us up and out of the jungle, scraping the gear in the tops of the trees as we pass.

"Jesus Christ... "
"What I wouldn't give for a little community airport next to a nice green golf course." I pull the handle for the gear and Lou moves the flaps to full up.
"Well, we don't have any of those out here in the jungle, Nancy, no tee times or pro shops either."
"I'm getting too old for this seat of the pants shit."

We decide to bank around and do a fly over of the crash site. As we line up for our fly by we can see that the fire has subsided a bit as the fuel burns away. It will probably burn itself out soon enough. In the center of the blaze the wreck is a slurry of blackness and pooling metal. Our bodies are no more than large chunks of charred bone.

We leave it all behind us and get back on a heading for Mascoala. We have brought along all of the pertanent cargo from the other plane. I can only hope that slight delay didn't put us out of reach to help Jerry and this Taylor fellow.

Time will tell.

Through the Looking Glass

Sleep comes easy, and although it is only for six hours we feel pretty rested.
Babe tries to wake up with us, but we say her goodbyes while she is still in bed. A silky soft hug on that warm body will stay with me for a few days... keep a smile on my face. Lou goes one step further and plants a kiss on her for good measure.

We want to be wheels up while it is still and dark outside. We discover the gun safe from Corazon out in one of the hangers. Inside we found two 9mm pistols and an ammo case with 9mm and .45 rounds. We took both types. No M16s, no grenades, no big Fifty door gun. I am hoping those things are with Jerry, but I fear they are not. Over the top of one of the workbenches, wrapped in an oily tarp over clean linen we find Lou's sniper rifle, the one he had when I first met him in Santa Cruz Hautulco. With it is a bandoleer with each of the fifty spots holding a round.

"Hello old girl" Lou gives the stock a smooth run of his palm before wrapping it back up. He slings it over his shoulder, hand on the wrapped barrel, bandoleer

Most of the tools I would have taken with me are missing. They must be on board Abby. I do find a couple of five gallon containers of oil that I grab and stuff in the back of the plane. You can never have enough oil. There is also a ten gallon can of av-gas that I throw on board for good measure.

In the gun safe is plenty of money. More than I remember leaving here. We off load the gold into the safe. Lou makes a pretty good suggestion to bag up a little to take along just in case cold hard cash doesn't do the trick somewhere. We find pipe tobacco cans, must be Taylor's unless Jerry has a new habit. Each holds five pounds or so. Thirty grand in gold will take us here or there if we need it. That and the ten grand in cash should cover all bets.

Babe has put together a box of supplies for us. The white powder is now mixed into the apple juice, a nasty paste at the bottom of the amber liquid. You have to shake the hell of it to make it mix. There are papayas and bananas, some jerky, a couple of chicken salad sandwiches, and two boxes of Wheat Thins. It will help us through this first day and we will be able to make some time.

We get her fired up and once Lou pulls the chocks he makes his way to the right seat and settles in. Naomi runs like a top... no problems. She took a quart of oil on the starboard engine, port was fine. I took the oil for Abigail. I don't know who this Taylor is or how well he manages on Abigail, but if he let's her engines go low on oil I think I will beat the shit out of him.

Monkeys scoot off the runway ahead of us in the reaching beam of our taxi light and then we are up. Through a canopy of low clouds we surface and see the light of dawn approaching to the east ahead of us. Lou looks at the chart and gives me a heading. We bank to the north and take her up to a thousand feet. Old habits die hard... I like to stay close to terrafirma.

We fly in silence for the longest time, each of us reflecting on what has happened to us. Ollie, dead in this time line, is certainly causing panic in the village. We shouldn't have left him there. These people are unyielding in their religious beliefs. They might think he is an evil spirit or something. They might just kill him to put things right.

"He'll be alright." Lou tells me as he looks out his side window.
"Are you thinking about Ollie?"
"Yep, but he'll be alright. He will find some way to explain it to them. Besides, we don't know how he died. What if he was blown up, burned, drowned... hell, they might not have been able to be sure who they buried was him anyway." He uses the sleeve of his shirt to wipe condensation off the window.

A sliver of sun pulls over the horizon and once it climbs the cloud cover below thins in the heat. Lou reaches behind him and yanks up the gallon of spiked apple juice. He shakes the hell out of it and then uncaps it and up ends it for a couple of mouthfuls. A quick nod of approval and chugs it again before handing it to me.

It tastes just like apple juice but with a pasty, clay like quality. I take the same amount Lou has and then we stash it back behind us. It isn't a minute later that we feel the effect.

Chatty Cathy, that doll from the late 60's, pales in the face of the babbling brook that Lou becomes. It is only ten minutes later that I too am wading into the conversation. This shit is great.

We talk about Babe, Lou saw her naked when she came out for a drink of water last night. He rambles on about tits and ass for a while. We both figure we have fucked her from the greeting we received when we landed.
"I think I will take her to bed when we get back. Let her re-experience the best sex in her life."

Lou reaches back and grabs the apple juice.

"You fag, the best sex would have been with me... and you aren't invited. Fucking Nancy lookey-loo pervert mother... "
He stops his own diatribe with a hit on the jug. He hands it to me and I do the same.

For the next half an hour or so we talk about what's going on. What has changed and what we can do about it. Obviously the kills we made in the Old West have have had a moderate effect on our time here. I wonder what might have changed with Antonelli's world, if anything. Or Andy and Mike's lives back where they came from.

We both fall silent for a while. Lou looks out the window as the jungle gives way to more of a high desert fauna below as I sweep the gauges. She is running like a top, pressures and temperatures right down the middle. Just as I re-settle into my seat and begin to relax... it happens.
"BIRDS" Lou shouts.

I see them as well and yank up on the stick as we fly through and above what look like a couple dozen yellow nape parrots. In all my time flying I haven't experienced a flock of birds this big. Naomi strains with a near stall condition as I pull up and out of the green flurry. The birds tuck and dive, I climb and turn.

"Holy shit that was close. Did we hit any? Any damage?" Lou looks back at his wing.
"I think we're okay, Lou... I think we're alright." I take a quick look over my shoulder as I tuck her wing over and head back down to get out of this stall. When I look back out the windscreen Lou is pointing, "Look at that... unlucky bastards."

Below us in the trees is the wreck of a plane. You can see the white tail at the end of a scar of a clearing made by the crash. I make a wide back, right wing down and circle the crash sight. The only thing you can really see is part of the tail section and then the jungle/forest swallows it up. Lou shakes his head as he looks, "No fire... but there ain't no way those fuckers got out alive."

"If that were us and we were still alive down there we would want us to stop."
He looks at me.
"You know what I mean." I look out at the scene below. There is really no where to land at the sight, but up a half a mile away is a clearing, probably a farm at one time, bordered by a road that will accommodate a safe landing. We both take a bearing on the crash sight and then drop her down on the road.

From above we couldn't see the condition of the road, but once down we realize that it is carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey. We bounce and almost touch a wingtip down when one of Naomi's wheels finds a rut. But in the end we manage to stop her in one piece.

"Wow... " Lou give's Naomi's dash a pat, "that's my girl."

I pull the hand-held compass from the flight bag and we grab the pack shovel, which folds and also has a serrated edge, and we are on our way. The plane should be fine, and we won't be gone for long. We slog through the field in a matter of ten minutes and then into the bordering trees. It is not a lush green jungle like we have back home, more of a tangle of trees and bushes. About five minutes in on the the heading I took and we see a flash of white paint in the growth ahead.

We make our way through until we hit the crash path that is torn out of the terrain. At the end of the path is the tail, well part of it anyway. From what must be the cabin entry door back, with a stabilizer/elevator and the vertical and rudder intact. As we approach there is complete silence. This type of jungle/forest doesn't seem to generate the same living noise that we hear in Guatemala. Either that they are much more aware and afraid of our presence.

"Would you look at that." Lou points at the wreck as we come up to it, "Is that a Goose like Naomi?"
"Looks like one." I walk forward, Lou by my side. The wings and engines have broken off and are just a twisted mess.

Ahead in the trees is what is left of the plane. There is a body, or I should say half a body sticking out from beneath part of the cockpit. We approach with reverence, listening for breathing or groaning, but we both know this one is dead. Lou gives the foot a little kick... nothing.
"Dead."

Leading away from the crash, deeper into the brush is a blood trail. We follow for about twenty feet and find another body. Both of the legs have multiple fractures from the looks of them. Lou kneels by the body and feels for a pulse on the man's neck but he pulls back. Just touching the flesh tells the story. Then Lou looks at the body with a renewed interest. He shakes his head just slightly and then rolls the man over.

Half of the face is badly mangled, but the other half raises questions that we can't answer.
"That guy looks just like you, Lou."
"No shit."

We look at each other and then go back to the cockpit and pull the metal back. There is gore and green feathers on the borders of what is left of the windscreens. I catch my breath... it is me, my head nearly torn from my body by the collapse of the overhead panels as the plane had folded around me.

"No fucking way, Jake."
I am speechless.

The plane had suffered a massive bird strike. They... we... weren't so lucky in this time line.