Tomas took the head and the remains of the brain and sealed them back into the biohazard bag. Fearing an outbreak of this mutant virus in the middle of Johor, he thoroughly cleaned and disinfected the instruments and table. When he was finished, he set the slides into the data analyzer next to the computer, sent the information to the Vancouver lab and waited for Dr. Greer.
Tomas spent the next few hours deep in thought, analyzing the tissue and trying to isolate which parts of the brain the virus was controlling and which parts may still be latently human.
Finally, Dr. Greer appeared on the screen, her signature raven black hair streaked with white pulled back into a tight bun. There was a look of concern on her smooth matronly face. “Tomas, please tell me you’re taking every precaution handling these samples.” Qual Pharmaceuticals had been keeping tabs on Vitura’s field experiments during Malaysia’s outbreak. They knew their rival was close to manufacturing a cure and that Vitura was attempting to create a more efficient virus. But this mutant strain of zombie fever was an extreme that even Dr. Greer hadn’t anticipated.
“I’ve been doing my best to avoid contamination. But the field doesn’t exactly measure up to the cleanliness of the lab.” He held up the head. “I’m trying to be as safe as possible under these conditions. Believe me, if you saw these new crazed monsters, you’d agree that getting infected by the original strain would be a much more humane fate. At least, after that fever, your higher reason is decimated. I’m not so sure with these creatures. They may still retain some intelligence. It may even be possible they are aware that they are somehow
different
.” He raised the head again. “I saw this one dragging a corpse like it was saving it for a future meal.”
Dr. Greer nodded, “Tomas, this definitely isn’t the same virus we’ve been fighting. Genetically, it’s not even close to the contagion that killed your father. The virus in the brain tissue you have there is nothing like we have seen. Damn them! Vitura obviously hasn’t vetted their bioengineers. They seem to be redesigning strains without proper controls. It doesn’t have the half-life cycle of the original IHS that made it possible to contain before spreading through an entire population. This virus,” she held up the pile of research that she, the labs AI computer and their grad student forensic examiners had produced over the last hour, “is unstable. It is going to continue to mutate and the virus will become more and more virulent.”
Tomas let her words sink in.
If they were correct, then this new mutant strain could be the global killer they had hypothesized after the first zombie outbreak in China four years earlier.
“Oscar is working up various scenarios for a potential global pandemic. But you need to know the danger you are in, being so close to ground zero. Our preliminary results show that the incubation rate will continue to decrease as the virus mutates. Infection rates will be impossible to contain.”
Oscar leaned in over Dr. Greer and said, “Tomas, it was a straightforward process to contain the previous outbreaks--just quarantine those stricken with the fever and round up those infected wandering around. But this new contagion won’t be so easy to control. A population stricken with this mutated virus will be devastated in days. There’s even a distinct possibility that this virus could become airborne. And if that happens, then it’s all over.”
“Doc,” Tomas interrupted waving his hands in front of the screen to get Dr. Greer’s attention. When Oscar had spoken up, she had lost herself in the data. She focused again on Tomas. “The samples I sent were the bad news,” he said, “but that’s not the only news I have. I also have some good news. I helped two Singaporean girls escape Vitura’s field hospital in Mersing. They had been given the latest Vitura vaccine that supposedly inoculates against IHS
and
IHS-2. Right now they’re safe in Singapore. I wanted to send you these samples before I go after them. I’ll have them on a plane tonight and tomorrow we can begin synthesizing our cure. If it’s not too late, we’ll finally stop Vitura and rid the world of zombie fever!” He grinned into the monitor and, quoting from his favorite fantasy trilogy, said, “Even in the darkest moment … there is light.”
Chapter Four
Gleneagles Hospital
Orchard Road, Singapore
After threading her way through the crowds of staff and befuddled patients milling around in the ground-floor corridors, Abigail found a less hectic exit in the rear of the hospital. She pushed her way through the revolving doors into an alleyway.
The one-way street was devoid of traffic and people. She began to jog in the opposite direction of the mayhem up the hill towards the expressway a couple blocks ahead. Behind her, sirens and orders shouted through bullhorns and an occasional gunshot punctuated the stillness of the back road.
Abigail leaned forward and sped up her pace.
She spotted a police sedan blocking the road at the intersection branching to the expressway at the crest of the hill. The officer had set up a barricade of traffic cones along in front of his car. The sedan was facing towards the junction and she could see the officer sitting in the driver’s seat through the rear window. The driver’s door was wide open and the blue lights were flashing on the roof.
“Hey, there! Help!” Abigail yelled as she approached the back of the car. She wasn’t yelling because she needed help - she just didn’t want the police officer to mistake her for a threat.
But the police officer didn’t move or acknowledge her approach.
She stopped by the trunk and hollered even louder. “Hey!”
And still no movement.
Yet, the policeman continued to sit immobile in the car.
Abigail timidly knocked on the trunk and said, “Excuse me.”
She eased around to the side of the car and looked inside at the officer. He was a young man, not much older than she. He was holding a bloody towel wrapped around his arm and was sweating profusely. His eyes were shut, but they were rolling around behind his eyelids.
Abigail gave him a light tap on the shoulder and he groaned. She knew there was nothing that could be done for this young man. He had been bitten and soon he would awaken with the all-consuming hunger of the fever.
The rioters had entered the narrow street at the base of the hill and steadily marched towards her. One of the hooligans launched a beer bottle high into the air and it crashed on the roof of the police car.
Abigail grabbed the officer by his shirt collar and heaved him out of the sedan onto the ground. She slid into the driver’s seat, buckled in and put on the policeman’s cap that was sitting on the passenger seat.
The rioters were now directly behind her. One of them jumped onto the trunk and began pounding the roof with a metal pipe. She turned the ignition and slammed on the gas, flipping the rioter off the car into the approaching crowd.
With blue lights flashing, Abigail roared across the intersection and up the ramp of the expressway. She whipped around a barricade of police and, mistaking her for one of them, the officers manning the barricade waved her by.
The CTE expressway was crowded with people trying to escape the city district. Abigail pulled onto the narrow shoulder. She took the police car to a dangerous, reckless speed, flashing past the slow-moving traffic as the drivers of the other vehicles on the road stiffened at the sight of police lights.
The police radio was squawking about squadrons of army personnel being deployed in the central business district, riots breaking out around MRT subway stations across the island, and shopping centers being evacuated because of vicious feral human violence, only to be broken intermittently by the order to ‘stand by for further instructions.’
They don’t have a clue what they were up against,
Abigail thought,
they’re treating this like a resurgence of anti-government protests from fifty years ago.
At least they hadn’t put a total lockdown on Singapore’s borders.
She still had a chance to get her family to safety.
To say that Singapore is crowded is an understatement. With towering apartment complexes pressing uncomfortably together on every piece of available land, a five-minute drive meant passing over ten-thousand people every square mile. So while the drive to her home district of Bishan was short, the perception, the feeling of
human
distance in Singapore is lengthened.
She took advantage of the authority of her stolen car, running stoplights and aggressively forcing other motorists aside.
Five minutes later and she was in front of her apartment block. She drove the sedan over the sidewalk, across the grassy knoll in front of her building and onto the void deck underneath the building. After taking the stairs to the eighth floor, she burst through the door of her flat.
Abigail’s mother jerked out of her rocking chair in surprise. She had no idea what was happening outside the confines of their tiny flat. The wall-sized screen was blaring at full volume about a salacious affair by so-and-so celebrity. Abigail pressed her hand on the screen and the wall went blank.
“Mom!” Abigail said, giving gave her a big hug.
At least she’s safe.
“Where are the girls? We have to leave Singapore now! I’ll explain in the car.”
“But my show’s on. Give me another ten minutes, could you dear?”
Abigail opened her sisters’ bedroom door and saw them playing teddy at tea on the floor. She helped them up and said to her mother, “Grab the satchel with the passports. We’re taking a little trip.”
Down at the car, Abigail shushed their questions about the police car with a fierce look and once they were all secured inside, said, “Wait here. Lock the doors. I won’t be long.”
Jamie’s flat was in the next block. It was twelve flights to their floor. She ran to the door and banged on it with her fist, “Mrs. Chen! Open up!”
She banged again, and Jamie’s grandmother opened the door.
“Why, it’s little Abi coming for a visit! My, my. Come in, come in,” the nearly blind, ninety-year-old said, ushering her in with a toothless grin, “Jamie’s not here. She’s filming a television show with her best friend Abigail.”
Abigail squeezed past the doddering old lady. She spotted Jamie’s ten-year-old brother standing on a stool eating a steamed bun and leaning precariously against an oversized, rickety and wobbly bookshelf filed with knickknacks from surrounding Asian countries, old-fashioned hardcover books, and toys. Ryan was stretching up as far as he could, reaching for a commando robot sitting on the top shelf. “Ryan, where are your parents?”
He continued reaching as the shelves swayed back and forth. “They went to pick up Jamie. She called awhile ago from the hospital. After the call, they decided it best to get her out of there.”
“Ryan! Get down from there or you’ll get a time out!” Jamie’s grandmother hollered.
He grabbed the robot toy, turned to her and asked with innocent eyes, “Abigail, is it true? Are we under attack?”
“There’s an emergency, yes. Ryan can you show me where your parents keep your passports? I need you and your grandmother to come with me. We’re going to take a little trip.”
Ryan leaped off the stool like a superhero with a grunt and his grandmother gave him a disapproving scowl as he ran to his parent’s room.
Abigail followed, watching him dig their passports out of a wooden box in the closet.
Abigail picked up Ryan’s mobile phone and dialed Gleneagles, but all she got was a disconnect sound. She tried her home phone number and heard nothing but the same.
“It’s been like that for a while. I’ve been trying to call my parents since they left and can’t get through.” Ryan said.
Abigail searched through the kitchen drawers and found a pen. She quickly scrolled a note and set it on the table in front of the door for Jamie:
Jamie,
Sorry I couldn’t take your parents with me. Hope your parents made it to Gleneagles. I’m taking your grandmother and brother. Once I get them off the island, we’ll figure out what to do next. Stay put and I’ll meet you here. If you’re up to it, we should try to rendezvous with Tomas tonight.
Be safe.
Love,
Abi
******
For a vast majority of Singaporeans, this Saturday night was like any other, except for the inconvenience of disrupted phone and internet service, and the irritating wail of emergency sirens. Between the rumors of violence and rioting in the city area, people were surprisingly slow to realize that they needed to take heed of the government’s warning to get to safety.
Before they retreated behind their padlocked iron-grills and dead bolted reinforced doors, hungry Singaporeans continued to wait in line for their favorite noodle or curry dish in takeaway restaurants, thinking to themselves, “Wah! The rioting not in my neighborhood, lor! Have plenty of time to get home.”
And with so many citizens still out on the streets, the infection rate began to escalate and the incubation rate of IHS-2 dropped below fifteen minutes. Those unlucky souls who were traveling in the crowded subways with biters and people succumbing to the fever were now crawling and climbing their way out of the underground into the heartland neighborhoods.
And it wasn’t helping that dusk was settling over the land. In less than half an hour, darkness would begin to conceal the extent zombie fever was spreading across the island.
******
The ride to Changi International Airport was more or less without incident. Abigail took advantage of the less busy side streets and soon they were closing in on the airport.
But her mother wouldn’t stop asking questions: “What is going on, Abi? Where are we supposed to go? I need to get hold of Faris before we leave. What will your stepfather think when he comes home to an abandoned house?”