Chapter Ten
Jamie’s Apartment Building Rooftop
Bishan, Singapore
The report Jayden had read over earlier had listed the building they had landed on as Jamie Ong’s residence. Her apartment was on the twelfth floor, eight stories below. As he descended the stairwell, he could hear residents arguing loudly behind their barricaded doors. There were a few screams and a few people stumbled by him in the darkness as he pressed up against the wall, watching their panicked faces through the infrared setting on his visor. He was careful not to be seen or intrude as he was wearing a combat bio-suit and may have been mistaken for someone who gave a damn about their plight.
Before exiting the stairwell, he scanned the hallway to make sure it was free of prying eyes -then crept to the door marked #12-371. After listening quietly for a few minutes for movement behind the door, he pulled out a set of lock picks that would make short work of the residential deadbolt. After a few minutes tinkering with the lock, he silently pushed the door open and, like a shadow, merged with the blackness of the hallway.
On the far side of the living room, Jayden saw slow exhalations of heated air puffing out of a young female Singaporean lying fast asleep on the sofa. He stole his way to the sofa, flipped his visor to night vision and stared down at the sleeping girl, letting his visor check the girls face against its identification program.
To his surprise, the display came up as a positive identification of Abigail Tan -not the resident he was expecting to find but her reality show teammate.
Deciding that the sleeping girl on the couch was minimally dangerous, Jayden took off his helmet and gloves and set them on the table, failing to notice Abigail’s note in the gloom. He searched the rest of the apartment and after finding no one else inside, set down the assault rifles, Eli’s bio-sample kit and his pack and placed them beside the front door in case he needed to make a hasty retreat.
He went to Abigail and shook her,.“Hey. Wake up.”
“Wah? Tomas?” Abigail muttered, then sprang to a sitting position when she realized this was an intruder in front of her. She immediately thought of the shotgun leaning against the wall in the kitchen and mentally kicked herself for not keeping it beside her.
“Calm down. I’m not here to hurt you. Where’s your partner? I’m under orders to evacuate the two of you.” Jayden replied in his commanding baritone. It would make the extraction much easier if the girls believed he was helping them escape, not taking them prisoner.
“What? Who sent you? Is Tomas with you?” Abigail asked, relieved that help had arrived and that she may get out of Singapore with Jamie after all.
“Yes, Tomas sent me to retrieve the two of you and take you to our ship waiting off shore. Where’s your friend? I’m here for both of you.”
“I knew he would find me.” Abigail had stars in her eyes and Jayden recognized the look of infatuation.
His heartbeat raced at the thought of capturing Overstreet, “Tomas sent me, but we’ve lost contact. I was supposed to rendezvous with him but haven’t been able to pick him up on my com. Do you know if he’s found his way into Singapore?” He held his breath, hoping for a positive answer.
“What time is it?” Abigail squinted at the wall clock, “I’m supposed to meet him at midnight with Jamie and he’s flying us to Vancouver to make the vaccine for the zombie virus. Who did you say you were again?”
She’s quite trusting and naive,
he thought. She had made the assumptions Jayden was hoping for. But he found her response puzzling.
Had the girls been given the vaccination in Mersing?
He had assumed that Bertrand merely wanted to get them back to the ship for debriefing about what they knew about Tomas.
If they’d been given the latest vaccine for his, then their elimination was inevitable. They’re too much of a liability to Vitura, especially if a competing pharma is planning to use them to synthesize a serum.
“Where’s your friend?” he asked again.
“She should be here any minute.” Abigail squinted at the wall clock across the room. “Hey, is it past midnight? Shit!” But she knew he was lying
.
She regained her composure and the worried expression on her face shifted to an expression of rapt attention with a hint of coy admiration. Her time on the television show made acting that much easier. “You’re handsome! Are you a scientist? What’s with the military fatigues? It’s very brave of you to come for us, what with all the zombies running around. What’s it like on the street? Still crazy, yes?” She leaned forward and gave him her most trusting smile.
She was full of questions much to Jayden’s irritation. He was not much of a talker and didn’t want to cloud the mission with irrelevant information. It wasn’t difficult to see that she was a very attractive young woman under the scarves and hat and he was usually awkward with pretty women. But her dark-brown eyes drew him in, and he found himself picturing what she may look like beneath all the clothing. He coughed and said, “You should take off those rubber gloves. They can’t be good for your skin.”
Abigail looked at the gloves as though noticing them for the first time and hastily pulled them off, examining her sweaty hands and raisin fingers. “Wow, good call. It looks like I’ve been swimming for hours. I wasn’t planning on falling asleep on the couch. I thought Jamie would be back by now and we’d be off to meet Tomas. I hope she’s okay.” She continued to rattle on while trying to come up with a plan to get away from this stranger in military fatigues. “Her parents were supposed to bring her back from Gleneagles Hospital down in Orchard. She’s got a broken ankle, you know. And I had to give away all our prize money to a ferry boat captain to take our brothers and sisters and my mom and her grandma. Do you think we’ll be okay in Canada without money? I mean, Tomas didn’t say anything about what we would need for the journey. I kind of figured his company was footing the bill, considering we’re the valuable ones and all.”
Jayden held up his hand, “Wait. You said your friend’s in a hospital with a broken ankle?”
Shit, the difficulty of this assignment just grew tenfold.
“Which hospital? We should go get her.”
“I doubt we would get there alive. It’s clear down on Orchard in the center of the rioting. Do you think Jamie’s okay? I mean, her parents will protect her, won’t they?” Abigail’s concern for her friend was distracting and her eyes were mesmerizing. She seemed so vulnerable. He wanted to protect her.
How does she see me
?
Does she only see a battle-scarred soldier aged beyond his thirty-six years?
He shook his head.
The mission is the sole priority. Everything else must be set aside.
“Are you thirsty?” Abigail got up from the sofa and stretched, “I’m so dehydrated. I just finished racing in a reality show competition, you know. Did you catch any of the show? It’s really popular. Cera’s Amazing Rally Showdown? Heard of it?”
She went into the kitchen and Jayden watched through the entryway as she took out a water jug from the fridge and poured up two tall glasses. She turned and walked back into the living room, slipped and dropped one of the glasses. Water and broken glass splashed across the floor.
“Holy crap! I’m so clumsy.” Abigail crouched down on the floor and began picking up the pieces of glass, shaking her head. Jayden went to her aid, plucking up the biggest pieces. “I’ll grab a towel. Can you get that piece of glass? The big one under that shelf?” She pointed to the shelf against the wall. He helped her to her feet and she held onto his arm to steady herself.
Jayden got down on his knees and peered under the shelf, unsure as to why they were bothering to cleaning up the spill, considering the current situation. Maybe it was because it felt like the “normal” thing to do in the midst of abhorrent circumstances.
He saw a glint and slid his arm under the shelving to pick it up.
Abigail bashed the butt of the shotgun against the back of his head with all the force she could muster. Jayden slumped against the shelves, dazed but not unconscious.
“You move one inch and I’ll blow your head off, Vitura scum. You don’t think I know who you are? I’ve seen that stupid fascist symbol on your lapel before. Just recently as a matter of fact. And the people wearing it were purposely turning people into zombies! Assholes!”
He leaned against the shelf, his head clearing, his left hand reaching for his stiletto concealed in his waistband.
Abigail pressed the barrel against his head. “I don’t know what you’re doing there, but you’d better stop. I’ve been through way too much this past week to let some old man soldier-for-hire take me down. Put your hands behind your head and lie flat on the floor. My finger is on the trigger. You do anything I don’t like and I’m pulling it. I’ve had a tough week, what with us causing this outbreak in my own country and all. I’m at the end of my rope.”
Jayden did as he was told, the water on the floor soaking into his pants. When she pulled the barrel away from his head, his hand shot out, gripping her ankle, trying to drag her down to his level.
Abigail nearly went down, but she happened to catch the shelving with her free hand and yank it forward. The top heavy shelving crashed down on top of Jayden. He shifted underneath, still conscious. The shelves hadn’t taken him out as Abigail had hoped, but she knew he would have a difficult time recovering - precious minutes that she could use to escape.
She backed up towards the front door, leaned down and picked up the two assault rifles by their straps. Then she put on his helmet. The visor blinked on, and after reading the room’s dim lighting, adjusted to a low density vision setting. Abigail could see a clear outline of Jayden underneath the bookshelf, his hands still on top of his head. “Cool.”
She opened the door and set all of the soldier’s equipment outside the door. “Still got the gun on you, soldier. Move an inch …” She stepped out and locked the iron safety gate with the spare key she had grabbed in the kitchen while formulating her plan to escape, hefted the soldier’s rifles, his pack and the bio-sample kit over the railing to the ground below and ran for the stairwell.
Chapter Eleven
Bishan Central
Bishan, Singapore
Fung shui experts say that Bishan is Singapore’s “Eye of the Dragon” and the district is very much in demand as it is not only auspicious but conveniently located just outside Orchard Road and the CBD (Central Business District). As a consequence, Bishan has more than double the average population of the rest of the island at twenty-five thousand people per square mile.With that in mind, Singapore’s master planners made Bishan the main subway hub, where the four main MRT lines intersected into a grand station. It was these arteries that spread the virus across Singapore’s interior. So, due to its unique location, Bishan was catching up to downtown in the number of infected inhabitants and quickly becoming the eye of the storm.
Drops of rain began to fall on the windscreen as Tomas did his best to maneuver around the mobs of panicked citizens streaming away in exodus from central Bishan.
Frightened and confused eyes darted into the interior of their vehicle as Tomas and the boy squeezed through the throngs of refugees. You could almost hear the questions behind those eyes:
Why were they driving towards the mayhem? Who were these people heading into the abyss?
Tomas and the boy pressed forward and the light rain increased its volume into a heavy downpour. The rain was a welcome respite for the refugees. Not only did it cool the nighttime air, it also hindered the infected who seemed confused at the deluge from above, staring up at the sky in bewilderment, making it easy to pick them out of the multitude and take them down before they could spread the virus.
The boy was now his reluctant and captive guide as Tomas had to secure his arms and legs with a roll of duct tape from the glove compartment. After taping the boy’s arms and legs, Tomas had stuffed the remainder of the roll into one of the pockets in his cargo pants along with half a book of matches and flat head screwdriver in case he needed to get stabby.
It was a stroke of luck that the lorry operator had left his keys under the floor mat. Otherwise, it would have taken them half the night to get this far if they had to wade through the throngs of evacuees. And it would have taken even longer if they were attacked by the flesh-starved zombies aggressively warring against the crowds, sometimes alone, sometimes in small groups of three, four and five. Tomas noted this grouping behavior with a cold scientific eye. It confirmed his previous findings, that these IHS-2 zombies retained some of their reasoning skills. Which brought up the unsettling question: how long could they survive in that frenzied state? These infected weren’t going to lie down and die after a few days from exposure, dehydration or starvation like those from the original. These mutants may be able to survive much, much longer.
“A couple more blocks and we’re there and you can let me go, right?” the boy asked Tomas, his face pale from witnessing so much carnage outside the lorry’s cabin.
“Yes. Show me Block 542 and I’ll let you get on your way. But I suggest you stay inside here until morning. If these infected are anything like anyone in the tropics, sunlight and heat aren’t allies. They’re just as likely to seek shelter from the sun as any healthy person. And you’d have a better shot getting to safety if you could see what was coming at you.”
“Sure, sure. Anything you say, boss,” was the boy’s reply, his eyes on a pair of men armed with hammers as they beat on another who cowered to the ground.
They pulled inside the gates of Block 542 and the boy directed Tomas to Abigail’s building, which was closest to the main road.
Tomas stopped beside the void deck of the building and shut off the engine. He took the duct tape and secured the boy’s hands around the steering column. “I tot you said I could go, lah!” the boy wailed. But Tomas didn’t want to put him in anymore unnecessary danger. It would be better if he took the boy to a safe location before letting him go. Telling the boy that he was going to let him go when they arrived at their destination was a stall tactic to keep him calm. He made the boy lie down on the seats and put a blanket over him. It would be stiflingly hot but it would keep him out of view.