I recognized that sound. There is a flock of black crows that lived in the trees near our HDB block. Sometimes the flock would grow too large and the government would issue a temporary permit to members of the Singapore Gun Club to hunt down the birds and kill them on hygienic grounds. That noise was the sound of a shotgun firing, just like from the recent crow culling around my block.
“It’s probably a car back-firing or something,” I reassured Jamie, thinking about that boy lying on the lounge sofa slick with fever, his hands and legs tied from long strips of orange table cloth.
But I think Jamie could tell from my voice that I thought something was off. She climbed into my bed beside me and put her arm over my side and we drifted off to sleep, together.
For the rest of the night I dreamt of sweaty bloated faces, greenish goo, chewing sounds made by blackened teeth, Jamie screaming for help, dead crows mutilated on the ground, in my bed, legs with teeth marks, running, panting, need to get back, no help, scared, fear, running, running, running …
******
Ring, Ring! Ring, Ring!
I awoke to see Jamie slamming the phone into the receiver, her bed hair and sleepy eyes telling me it was still early in the morning.
“We have to get ready,” she croaked through a mouth parched from a night of dry hotel air-con dropping the room temperature below our comfort zone.
She went into the bathroom and shut the door.
I drifted in and out of sleep listening to the muffled sounds of Derrik and Lydia arguing in the next room.
After my shower we decided again on matching outfits, but this time we went retro-eighties. We put on the same black spandex pants we’d been wearing the day before, no longer smelly as we’d meticulously hand washed them in the bathroom sink the night before and hung them to dry on the shower door. We put our hair up into lop-sided pony tails with neon pink scrunchies and donned ‘dance-style’ t-shirts, which had the sleeves and collar torn away, leaving the bare threads exposed. It was a look that I called fashionably trashy. We even had neon pink leg warmers and cheap black wayfarer knock-off glasses to complete the look. Jamie snapped a few pictures with her clandestine mini-handphone as we posed in front of the bathroom mirror. I made her promise not to post them though, ever. Could you imagine if we got sued a couple of years after the race for a couple of meta-time and location stamped pictures? That would be so stupid.
The rest of the teams had gathered in the lobby cafe. Tucker and Yvonne were notably absent as were Sheldon, Kip and Gemma who were apparently staying in the five-star villa up the road.
A sparse buffet had been set up for us and it was typically Malay fare. There were three trays, one filled with oily noodles, one with rice and the other with a mutton curry. There was also a toaster and loaf of white bread and butter sitting on a small table beside the trays. We had a choice of coffee, tea or bottled water.
“Where’s the bloody fruit and veggies or anything nutritious for that matter?” Quaid was complaining as he stood over the offerings in disbelief, “Now how do you expect me to compete in a race with nothing but off-brand tea and a couple slices of white bread?”
But he was the only one talking. The rest of us got our food and ate, keeping our thoughts to ourselves. The entire room was hushed, thoughts of that little boy, the Berjalan penyakit and what was in store for us on the second day of the race weighing heavily on our minds. The television had been removed and the remaining hotel staff refused to give us any information about anything, just shaking their heads to our questions and keeping mute. I suspected they had been paid off to remain so silent.
The cameramen were sitting at a table near the double doors acting in their role as guardians, not letting anyone into the hotel lobby to inspect the damage from last night’s collision.
The minutes and then hours began to tick by. One hour, two hours of waiting. It was grim. Nothing was happening and it was getting on our nerves. Finally, we heard the crunch of tires on gravel as Sheldon, Kip and Gemma (who for some reason ‘deserved’ better accommodation than the stars of the reality show, I seethed enviously) came strolling into the lobby restaurant, Sheldon in the lead.
“Good morning, Everyone!” Sheldon came toward our tables smiling and clapping his hands together as though doing so made the long wait we’d just endured disappear. We were all super tense now that the clock was nearing twelve. We had to get on with the race and make it to our next destination, didn’t we?
“About bloody damn time. It’s quite rude of you to force us to sit here on our arses, don’t you think?” Unlike the rest of us, Quaid wasn’t the least bit afraid to speak his mind. Norris leaned forward, nodding in silent support.
“It’s all part of the game, part of the game, “Sheldon replied cryptically, although it wasn’t true, he’d overslept after a long night on the phone to his superiors at Tua Kee Media taking care of the mess created by Tucker and Yvonne, “You’ll get your marching orders in due time. Now, let me update you on the current situation. Tucker and Yvonne have been disqualified for failing to complete yesterday’s events. So now we’re down to five teams. That means,” he paused, “there’s now a one-in-five chance at a million dollars.” He licked his upper lip at the thought, letting the moment sink in and become real to us, knowing that greed and the competitive spirit would focus the teams back into the game.
“Today’s events are a combination of racing and, if everything goes according to plan, events that will test the courage and can-do spirit of each of your teams.” He grinned slyly, “Kip here will be in charge of setting up the starting point and get you going. Gemma and I will hit the road now to the event destination. There will be a surprise celebrity guest at the event. Celebrity guests need a lot of love, so when you arrive look surprised and act happy to see them.”
“What about the boy? Did he have the fever?” Jamie asked when it looked like he’d finished with his yapping.
“What boy? Oh you mean the boy from last night? No, no, he was experiencing a bad case of food poisoning. He’s fine. In fact, his aunt picked him up this morning and took him back to play with cousins in their quaint little kampong.”
We knew he was lying but what could we say? There was a million dollars on the line and no one wanted to jeopardize their chances at those riches.
“Rest assured that the outbreak hasn’t spread into this region. No worries, lah. But as you know, the outbreak is part of this show. We will be incorporating ‘zombie-themed’ situations and props into the rest of the day’s shows. Don’t let it frighten you. Think of it as a character that has yet to make its appearance until today. So don’t let it take you by surprise if you see someone in full zombie make-up. For safety, we’ve hired another local crew whose primary purpose is to locate and keep at bay any zombies in the general vicinity of our production. I promise you that when it comes to the welfare of my teams, you are number one! You’ll not be put in harm’s way. Any questions?”
Of course, there were no questions. Competing for a million dollars gives a person a one-track mind. We were all trying to figure out who would be eliminated next and if there was any way we could speed up the process of their demise. Everything else was background noise.
Chapter 5
“JAMIE, here’s the exit, slow down! Turn! Turn! Damn it!”
We careened off the road and down the embankment slick with leafy vegetation between the expressway and the off ramp. I began screaming as the car slid sideways over the wet jungle grass towards the bottom of the ramp and grabbed hold of the dashboard to brace for impact. We hit a large dirt knoll and jerked abruptly to a stop.
I watched as the other four rally cars shot down the ramp and disappeared ahead along Leboh Ayer Keroh, a long winding road that led to Malacca. I could see Lydia pointing and laughing at us as they sped by, the black lenses of cameras pointing out the rear windows of the departing cars to film our potentially disastrous crash for the show.
“What the heck were you trying to do? You want to kill us, no?” Felix shouted from the rear floor, trying to pull himself back onto the seat. His camera had hit the ceiling and landed in my lap. I threw it back at him, taking my frustration at Jamie’s inattention and carelessness out of him.
“Oh, you can speak English, you dick!” I shouted back at him, “Why don’t you do something useful and help me get my door open.”
I pushed and pushed against the door, but it was jammed shut against the dirt pile so I climbed out my window and circled the car to check the extent of the damage done to the exterior. Luckily, the tires still looked straight and weren’t flat. There was a lot of vegetation stuck to bottom of the car, so I did what I could to pull some of it off. Felix wasn’t being at all helpful, instead, taking out a small handheld camcorder he had in a pouch on his belt to film me as I grappled with the noxious weeds stuck to the grill.
I approached Jamie’s open window. She was still sitting there gripping the steering wheel, gritting her teeth and staring straight ahead. I gave her my diagnosis, “The frame’s bent and buckled a bit, but it still looks drivable. I don’t know if there’s any damage underneath, there’s too much foliage to see. Does it start?” I asked.
Still looking ahead, she reached down, twisted the key and pumped the gas. The sedan revved right up. I ran around to my side and climbed back in through my window.
Jamie turned the wheel back and forth, pumping the car forward and in reverse until eventually we got off the raised dirt mound and were back on the tarmac. I could see a bit of buckling in the roof of the car where the doors came together and the rear chassis felt wobbly, but we were still in the game.
“We can still catch up,” I tried encouraging her so that she’d get beyond the little accident she’d just caused by her carelessness. Why had she decided to touch up her eyeliner while navigating through expressway traffic? “The card said that the events start at A’Famosa, we can still catch up. It’ll take them awhile to find the entrance if they hadn’t been there before. Can you get back on the road?” The event card and envelope were in the glove box. All the clue gave us was, “Find the queen of shampoo at Porta de Santiago, A’Famosa for your next clue.”
A’Famosa was an old Portuguese fortress located at the base of a hill in the central part of Malacca town. I knew of Porta de Santiago and the A’Famosa ruins from my father who taught East Asian history at Bayside Secondary school before retiring a few years earlier. I’d even been there a couple of times as a child and remember my father, red-faced, angry, sweating and cursing as he drove around the curving, unmarked streets surrounding the atoll searching for the tiny side road to the Porta de Santiago, a small gate house at the bottom of the hillside and only remaining part of the A’Famosa fortress that was still standing.
So, according to the brief clue, we were supposed to find a celebrity host who I assumed to be Cindy Chia, an actress who had found fame as the Lurve shampoo spokesperson, at the gate house. And sure enough, when we pulled into the parking lot we could see Cindy standing beside a Cera flag surrounded by the rest of the teams. She was dazzling in a long turquoise evening dress, very inappropriate in the afternoon heat but very photogenic and beautiful. She was daintily handing out the next clue to each of the teams, ever so slowly, so she could suck up as much camera time as possible.
Unimpressed by the Singapore starlet, Jamie snatched one of the envelopes from her hand and tore it open, “Where o where is old Maarten Janson, Oh where o where could he be? Is he in St. Paul’s or standing stiff beside a tree? Find Maarten and take a photo of his whereabouts with your new cyber-catch digital camera courtesy of Yu-shot Digital. Return with your HD digital photo image and, if Cindy Chia approves, proceed to your next destination and your next challenge.”
Cindy had a brown leather satchel next to her. As the teams were reading the clues to respective cameramen, she reached inside and began handing out new Yu-shot cameras to the teams.
“Action!” We heard Sheldon say to Cindy, knowing she’d need a reminder to begin her short but oh-so-important lines.
“Congratulations! You’ve all won a Yu-shot HD digital camera for making it to the Porta de Santiago. Now you have to decide which member of your team gets to keep it! Ha, ha! Now take your cameras, go up there and find Maarten, you crazy kids!” Cindy swept her arm back and pointed to the ruins on top of the hill, stupidly giving away where the teams needed to go to find him.
“Cut!” Sheldon said in a sigh, staring daggers into the dopey but breathtaking shampoo queen.
“Okay, people please remember to find your objective as quickly as possible, daylight’s a’wastin,” he looked at his watch, “We need to complete today’s filming before sundown and have two more stops after this. While there haven’t been any sightings of infected in the area, Malaccan authorities aren’t taking any chances and they’ve imposed a curfew. We’ve been ordered to proceed to our hotel by seven. Anyone caught wandering the streets after dark risks being shot by local authorities. We’re keeping your cameramen down here at the gate for the time being. Don’t worry; there are plenty of stationary and handhelds up there to film you running about looking for your objective. The handhelds have been given out to tourists for an amateur look. There may be some surprises in store for you up on the hill. Okay, Go, Action!”
We ran together as a group, scrambling up the zigzag path leading to the top of the hill. Norris was the first to pause on the slope, out of breath and sweating profusely. If I had a guess, by the shape he was in I’d say he drinks too much beer and uses the tropical heat as an excuse not to exercise. Then Ahmed was down, resting on a bench and pouring a bottle of water over his head that he’d yanked out of a tourist’s hand. Then it was Derrik and Lydia collapsing on their knees, wheezing loudly. The rest of us were in good physical shape and we bunched together in a pack, sprinting up the hill.