“Whoo hoo! Hey, Everybody!” Gemma shouted into a microphone while facing the audience. She then walked up ‘beside’ Julian in the virtual sense, “Welcome to CARS ala mode! We’re here with famous chef Julian Ng whose culinary skills have been called upon to make a meal of zombie proportions!
Here’s the scoop: Our Teams are concerned that their teammates may be coming down with zombie fever. We have it on good authority that, like the hair of the dog, a bit of squirrel meat may ward off the infection. As my granny used to say, ‘feed a cold, starve a fever’. But I have my own saying, ‘When the fever turns you into a zombie, feed it, starve it, do anything you can to find a cure!’”
The audience laughed and laughed.
“But that isn’t all. We have a special, yet tearfully tragic surprise for you. Crewmen, please!”
The cameras on our side panned over to the barn, on the Singapore side they zoomed in on the audience to capture their reactions. Inside the RV, Sheldon licked his lips as he stared at the monitors. His eyes were bugging out of his head as if he was trying to force the events through telepathic telekinesis.
I craned my neck as far to the left as possible and could barely see what was happening in my peripheral vision.
Two men in hazmat suits creaked open the double doors, taking their time for optimum effect. Standing in the center of the archway and looking befuddled was Tucker and next to him was Yvonne in the Team B strait-jacket with a ball gag in her mouth and strapped to a dolly. Tucker pushed the dolly forward toward the stage. You could hear the wheels creaking as he struggled with it through the high grass.
The crowd was a ball of excitement.
Jamie gasped as she watched an exhausted looking Tucker push Yvonne up the ramp and onto the dais next to the large preparation table, tenderly propping Yvonne up so that she faced the screen and the audience on the other side.
“Yvonne …Yvonne … she’s not well,” Jamie whispered in my ear.
It was then that I realized what I was witnessing.
Yvonne was Berjalan penyakit.
Yvonne’s head twisted slowly in aimless movements. I couldn’t get a good look at her but the bloated legs bulging out from her torn pants were a dead giveaway that she was teeming with infection.
The crowd grew silent as they pointed, whispered and stared at the unnatural way her eyes rolled around and the uncontrollable nodding and chewing at the ball gag.
Members of the crew brought orange bio-bags now marked with a large ‘NEGATIVE’ sticker on their sides and set one on each of our preparation tables. Gemma reached down from the dais to take a bio-bagged squirrel and she set it down on the table in front of Tucker who looked as if he’d been pumped full of powerful tranquilizers. He stared off into the distance.
I could imagine the scene from the perspective of the audience and cameras facing us from the other side. The stage was set up in such a way so that Julian Ng stood in front of the stainless steel table and chopping block that was on our side of the screen. Zombie Yvonne was set next to the chopping block, facing the audience for maximum gross out factor. Tucker in his chef whites and Gemma in her fur bikini stood behind the table. Behind them were our four tables lined across the grass at the perfect angle so that the audience’s view was unobstructed.
Gemma lowered her voice and spoke into her microphone, “Ladies and Gentleman, as you can see we have a special guest. Not only have we brought back one of the eliminated teams; we’ve also brought with us the very scourge spreading across Malaysia, the Berjalan penyakit!
Now don’t feel sorry for creature you see here today because Yvonne, the woman it once was, is already gone. However, Tucker still has hope that she can be saved and has sworn to keep Yvonne alive until they find a cure for IHS. In the meantime, he’ll need to keep her fed, otherwise she won’t be just a zombie, she’ll be a dead zombie!”
The crowd laughed at the irony.
“Julian Ng will teach Tucker how to care for his love with the fresh meat she craves. And what if one of the other team members gets infected? Their partner may also need valuable instruction to help their team member survive. Teams,” She looked back at us standing beside our tables, “follow Julian’s instructions carefully. You’ll want to make those squirrels good and edible because when you’re finished, you must feed the raw meat to your bound partner.”
The orange bio-bags were waiting on the tables.
“Let’s begin by taking the squirrels out of the bag, my apprentices,” Julian pointed at us with his thumbs, his signature move. “Teams, you must follow my instructions closely or I’ll kick you out of my outdoor kitchen and you will be eliminated from the rally. Now, place your squirrel on the chopping block, belly down.”
I watched Jamie pull our squirrel out of the bag and place the squirrel on the block as instructed.
“Get behind the squirrel, placing the palm of your hand on its back legs. Hold the tail up with one hand, that’s it. Quaid! Don’t start cutting until I say! Now take the chef’s knife with the other hand and cut upward from under the tailbone.”
Yvonne had caught the scent of the fresh squirrel carcass in front of her. The audience snickered uncomfortably at the comical, almost sexual way she was moaning for the gamy meat.
“Now insert the knife between the meat and the skin of the squirrel and cut a couple of inches forward, moving the knife from side to side. Turn the squirrel over. Remove the internal organs before cutting off the head and back feet. Remove the intestine, that’s it. Cut off both back feet and the head, and you're done. Now hold up your squirrels so that I can see the finished product.”
Jamie and the rest of Team A held up their squirrels in the air.
“Tucker, please show the audience and the teams how you like to prepare your lover’s meal.”
Mechanically following instructions, Tucker took the 16-inch scimitar blade and began cutting large chunks of meat off the squirrel carcass.
Two members of the crew came up on stage and removed Yvonne’s gag. She let out an incomprehensible string of moaning gibberish.
Tucker continued to chop until there was nothing left but a plate of raw meat. He took a pair of thick rubber gloves and pulled them on, carefully picked up pieces of bloody meat and delicately held them in front of Yvonne’s gaping mouth.
The audience was deathly silent.
As she tore into the squirrel meat, I could hear the smacking and chewing clear from back where we were about fifteen meters distant. It didn’t take long until the feeding was over and the crewmen wheeled Yvonne off the stage and out of sight, Tucker trailing behind.
Sheldon yelled, “Cut” and the techies did a quick recalibration of the screen to focus it directly on us.
“Action!”
We were now front and center with the audience, Julian paced back and forth on the Singapore side as if he were directly in front of our preparation tables.
“You have exactly ten minutes to season the meat with spices and herbs provided and serve it to your partner on the exquisite dining set provided by our sponsor, Kuerningware.”
Jamie took the carcass and stripped it of meat and started cranking it through the sausage grinder into one of the bowls. I could see beads of sweat forming on her brow as she worked. I glanced to my left and saw Meng tearing at their squirrel carcass with his bare hands. Further on, Lydia was dipping strips of meat for Derrik into a soy sauce and oyster sauce combination.
I looked to my right. Quaid had made little squares out of the meat and had stacked them up in a neat little pyramid on the plate. They seemed to be the only ones enjoying the cooking segment. I could see that Norris jiggling about, laughing behind his gag at Quaid’s artful display.
Jamie ran the meat through the grinder one last time and added some ginger.
Julian said, “Five more minutes, chefs.”
There was a buzzing alarm warning we were getting close to running out of time.
“Chefs, take off the gags and please feed your companions. Make them clean their plates. I have a special announcement that will make the raw meat much more palatable. There will be no elimination today as long as your partner can finish their meal!”
The crowd went, “Ooooooh!”
Starting at Quaid’s cooking station, Julian began a virtual walk in front of each table, having the teams explain their dishes and what they used for preparation while they stuffed their concoctions down their partner’s throats. This got a lot of laughs from the audience who were sadistically enjoying the feeding.
Jamie unbuckled the ball gag from behind my head and gingerly pulled it out of my mouth.
I flexed my jaw a few times. Even with Yvonne’s disgusting semi-conscious feed still on my mind, I had to admit I was a bit hungry.
“Close your eyes, I’ll be gentle.” Jamie whispered, intending on giving me a little personal moral support. However, one of the microphones nearby picked up her husky voice loud and clear and that statement was immediately uploaded to the website and linked to a hot rotating .gif of Jamie dancing in a one-piece mini-dress. Two minutes later, thousands of people heard it, an hour later it was over one hundred thousand and became her defining catchphrase.
She took the spoon and knife and scooped up a small spoonful into my mouth. The mushy texture was a bit of a turn off, but she’d seasoned the meat with just enough ginger to take away that gamy wild taste I was expecting.
Our supporters yelled, “Think of the money!”
I chewed twice and swallowed. She continued feeding me in this way and in no time my plate was clean.
Julian paced back and forth between the teams and the audience and cheers erupted from our supporters when he held up my clean plate.
The other teams weren’t having the same kind of luck with their meal. Quaid was trying to monopolize the scene and was lobbing pieces of meat from across the table at Norris’s gaping mouth. Norris was doing his best to catch, chew and swallow them down, but you could see he was getting a bit annoyed with Quaid’s antics. Lydia was yelling at Derrik and shoving piece after piece of meat into his mouth causing him to puke up some stringy bits down his strait-jacket. But Meng was having the most difficult time of all. Esther refused to eat any of the squirrel meat, apparently petrified that she would catch the fever and become like Yvonne.
Norris finished his meal and then Derrik, but Esther still refused to eat the squirrel regardless of Meng’s pleas and screams of ‘Kiasi’, coward in Singlish, from the audience.
It became apparent that Esther’s refusal to eat the squirrel was contrary to Sheldon’s plan with the show. There was a point when the cameras panned away from Meng and Esther and onto Gemma in her bikini as she was forced to adlib an interview with Julian so that Sheldon could huddle with her and try to talk her into eating the meat. There wasn’t supposed to be an elimination today. Even if he shot additional post interviews back in Singapore and stuck in a bunch of extra footage of Berjalan penyakit, so far he only had six hour-long episodes in the can. If Esther didn’t eat the squirrel, three of six teams would be eliminated and that was one too many this early in the show. He’d lose at least two full episodes of the twelve contractual episodes he’d promised his superiors.
But Esther refused to cooperate. She looked tough and ready for difficult challenges with that body building figure, but underneath she was really just a nervous housewife with a fitness addiction. She’d decided that she was through with the whole shebang and kept repeating, “I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home.”
Defeated, Sheldon signaled to Julian and Gemma that it was time to announce Team 3’s elimination. Gemma walked to the center of the screen and faced the audience, “Ladies and Gentlemen, Cera fans and zombie freaks, we have a situation. Esther,” she pointed back at Team 3, “refuses to tuck into her fine bush meal, prepared under instruction from one of the greatest chef’s to ever come out of South East Asia.”
Boos and jeers were thrown from the audience in Esther’s direction.
Gemma got down and dirty with her monologue, loving the attention as it gave her a chance to show her verbal spontaneity skills honed as a radio DJ. “Ladies and Gentlemen, for Esther’s failure, her utter lack of competitive spirit and teamwork, yes, and her kaisi attitude to complete the simplest of tasks, we are forced to eliminate Team 3. Please, take her out of my sight. You make me sick!” She ended in a shriek of derision.
The crowd vented their rage at the events happening on the green screen in front of them as Meng was led and Esther dragged along on her dolly out of frame. They spit and cursed and pulled at their hair.
“Special thanks to Julian Ng for his participation,” Gemma pointed with her long painted nails to Julian who waved to the audience, “Three teams. A growing zombie threat. Mass hysteria in Malaysia. Who will be eliminated? Who will win the million dollar prize? Who will be the next one to catch zombie fever? We’ll see you for the next episode of Cera’s Amazing Rally Showdown!”
The audience cheered and shrieked and clapped their clappers.
“CUT!” Sheldon yelled.
The screen went blank.
Crewmen slapped each other on the back cheered Sheldon for successfully masterminding an event with a live Berjalan penyakit and a live audience. Sheldon thanked everyone and climbed into his mini-bus to get a little thinking time. His head was swirling at the heady prospect of short clips and commercial outtakes he could pull from the cooking segment. But thanks to that ungrateful bitch Esther, he’d have to think of some more events on the fly. If only he hadn’t used a live audience, he could have re-filmed the ending and have Meng stuff some bakkwa into his teammate’s whiney little mouth.
Events, events. Hmmm. How about Malay events?
There it is.
He could pad the show with a culturally exploitive event. There was still a half a day of sunlight left, plenty of time to throw together a few competitions. What if he used the beach as a backdrop, some cheap indigenous items for props and a few gift certificates as prizes, then slot it in to the show as an episode before today’s elimination? Ha, that was it.