“Cepat! Gather around, please, we don’t have much time. The weapons you see here are your protection from Berjalan penyakit. We’ve decided against giving you real guns or explosives because of the potential of friendly fire or contamination from blood splatter. Besides, you folks may be hesitant when killing these infected as they still look like normal people. Make no mistake that any hesitation can be a fatal blunder. It’s been decided that it will be more prudent if you are equipped to incapacitate and get clear of the Berjalan penyakit before they can pass on their deadly disease.
Be cautious, we’re going straight into their territory so our chances of close encounters are significantly greater than you’ve experience these last few days. But I think these defensive tools will adequately resolve any situation you may have should you stumble upon a zombie or two.”
He reached over and picked up one of the three meter long hot-shot cattle prods and pulled the trigger. Electricity arced between two contact points at the head making a crackling sound, “Each team gets one of these beauties. Touch someone with one of these, infected or not, they will move quickly away and think twice before approaching again. They have high amperage alkaline batteries that should give you enough juice for a couple hundred zaps. Have you seen someone get hit by a taser? They stiffen up and drop to the floor all rigid like for a couple of minutes. These cattle prods are different. They only shock someone at the point of impact and don’t cause the stunning effect, just a great deal of pain to get a person or animal moving. See how easy it is to use,” He jabbed the arching head into Norris’s ribs and pulled the trigger. Norris screamed and jumped back grabbing his side and doubling over where he was zapped.”
“Bastard,” Norris muttered under his breath, holding his side and looking as if he wanted to beat the hell out of Zahrin in retaliation. He probably would have if it weren’t for the cattle prod in Zahrin’s hand that kept flicking on and off as if daring him to attack.
Your team also gets one of these 12-gauge shotguns here, but we’re only supplying you with twenty bean-bag rounds. You can also take two of these flash-bang grenades in the event there is a mob of Berjalan penyakit coming down on your head. But take cover if you use them or you’ll be incapacitated and blind for at least five seconds making you vulnerable to assault.
I think it is wise for you to split the duties, one of you carry the cattle prod and grenades for crowd control and the other stay behind and use the shotgun if one of them enters your comfort zone.
The cattle prod and shotgun have shoulder straps and the flash grenades and spare bean-bag shells can be attached to these belts here.”
He clapped his hands together.
“That’s it, gather your weapons and let’s get on the road. Use the toilet now and fill up your suit bladders with reserve water as there won’t be another chance till we reach Kuala Lumpur. Leave your bags and clothes in the room, we need to travel light. Only bring the clothes on your back, your digi-cam and your team’s weapons and ammo.”
We grabbed our allotted gear and went down to our rooms to prepare for departure.
I was amped from the meeting and ready to go. As soon as Jamie and I reached our room, she took her mini-handphone out from her back and began furiously texting.
“Jamie, someone could be watching,” I whispered looking around again for a hidden camera in the room.
“I don’t care, I need to say goodbye to everyone. We don’t know if we’re going to make it back and I need to tell my mom about the new deal. In the event we don’t make it, at least they can press for our share of the prize money.”
She sent the text, but her phone beeped immediately afterward with the message, “Failure to send, try again.” She pressed again and again with the same results. Then she actually tried to dial her home back in Singapore, but there was nothing but that disappointing beep-beep of failure.
“It says I have a signal but I can’t seem to call out or send a message. Someone must be blocking our signal or something,” She flipped the phone closed and slid it into the front of her bra, which was all she was wearing underneath the bio-suit besides her pair of black stretchy pants.
“Sheldon was talking on a satellite phone earlier. The whole telecom network is probably down. We need to get going anyway, the rest of the teams are probably already downstairs.” I opened our door and we strode down the empty hall and down the hotel’s lift for the last time.
We agreed that Jamie would be the ‘point man’ and I’d be the primary cameraman for our journey. I took the camera, slung the shotgun over my shoulder and secured the belt with a satchel full of bean bag rounds. Jamie grabbed the cattle prod and attached the two flash grenades and her cosmetic bag to her belt. Our vague plan was this: if there was any serious trouble and Jamie couldn’t handle with the cattle prod, like if there was a crowd of hungry zombies encroaching on our space, I’d drop the camera and shoot the hell out of them with the gun.
I was correct. The other teams were assembled outside beside the shuttle bus.
Zahrin was standing in front of the bus, bugs swirling around his head in the glare of the headlamps, talking to a couple of his crewmen. He pulled aside a gentleman of small stature, a dwarf to be precise, and the two of them escorted us into the bus. While we had nothing but defensive weapons the dwarf, on the other hand, was equipped with an arsenal. He had two shotguns strapped across his back and ammo belts slung across his chest in an X, bandito style. A strip of grenades and two huge revolvers in leather holsters were attached to his belt. In his hands he carried a machete in his left and a GPS device in his right. But what really stood out was his big handlebar mustache and his thick black wavy hair swept back in a greasy bouffant.
“This is Katek. Don’t be fooled by his small demeanor. He’ll keep those Berjalan penyakit at a safe distance. I’ve relied on his defense skills in the past and can tell you he can kick a little ass. He’s also from this area and is going to show us the way through the back roads of Port Dickson to the expressway.
“Let’s get dis show on da road,” Katek said as he climbed into the bus behind us and threw down a large knapsack full of guns and ammo and took his place next to Zahrin in the oversized captain’s chair behind the wheel. “Sit back n enjoy da lide. We are takin a slip road dat’s far from peoples, k. 1 hour, we will be in spressway so dun worry hor. We shoon’t see any WHO until E2 and No Berjalan penyakit cause got only rubber tree n durian farms dere. Dey say Berjalan penyakit will attack movin lights, so got to run fast until we hit de E2.”
Zahrin drove out from towards the gate. In the darkness I could see the silhouette of someone leaning on the gate facing out into the darkness. Zahrin stopped the bus and gave a little bleep on the horn and then he leaned out the window and yelled, “Gemma! Don’t just stand there! Open the gate for us!”
Gemma didn’t move and continued to stand there with her back to us looking out into the street.
Zahrin turned to me, as I was seated closest to him and the door, and said, “Will go you help her with the gate? We’re on a tight schedule here.” He flashed his watch at me as he pulled a lever and the hydraulic bus doors opened with a hiss.
I climbed down and approached Gemma, her back now bright with the glare of the headlamps.
Unease brushed against the nape of my neck.
“Gemma,” I asked quietly, “you alright?”
She didn’t move or say anything.
I lightly tapped her on her shoulder to get her attention and must have knocked her off balance as she slid to the ground in a heap. Her face was drained of all color and her lips were grey. Her right arm had been chewed to the bone up to her elbow and her left hand was missing. It was as if she had reached through the gate at some point earlier and been attacked. I couldn’t understand how this had gone down silently in the night. If she had screamed, no one had heard. She must have been rendered immobile while Berjalan penyakit chewed into her fingers and forearm, stripping them bare of meat and consuming those cute star tattoos that I admired so much.
Zahrin and Katek were immediately at my side. Katek began jumping around in front of the gate, shotgun at the ready, looking for someone or something to shoot. Zahrin pulled me away from Gemma’s body and led me back to the bus. He whistled to his crewmen who were still standing back at the hotel lobby. They ran across the gravel drive and one took stills of Gemma’s mutilated carcass while the other slowly circled around the body with a high-def 3D camcorder, zooming in on the bone jutting out of the stump of her wrist. When they got enough footage, they picked her up and carried her body away. Once Katek decided it was clear, he unlocked the gate and we watched it swing open, the last barrier between us and the chaos of suffering and death that the virus had unleashed while we were snoozing in our rooms above.
Everyone on the bus was silent with fear and trepidation as we strained to see beyond the glowing perimeter of the headlamps.
Zahrin flipped off the lights and inched us out onto the street, turning left towards town, moving directly into the hot zone. He kept the van under ten kilometers per hour as we drove towards that small grouping of townsfolk huddled under the street lamp that I’d seen from my hotel window earlier. There were seven of them, all bloated and freshly turned. They were just standing there under the light staring up at the incandescent bulb. Large winged bugs swirled around, landing occasionally on their faces and in their eyes. The bus crept closer to them, and I had a moment of inspiration, I had Jamie lean up against the window and, as we drove by, I filmed the group of infected through the window with her in the foreground looking concerned and scared. As we got closer, I could see smears of blood on the mouths of two of them and wondered if it was from Gemma.
They didn’t move as the bus passed them by, oblivious to us as we blended in with the darkness.
That is until Zahrin tapped on the brakes and the rear of the bus began to glow red from the brake lights. Four of the zombies nearest to our retreating vehicle turned towards the red glow and began lurching along towards us. But then they stopped and looked confused when Zahrin released the brake and the red light disappeared. Instead of continuing towards us, they turned back towards the street light overhead, staring upward.
“Fish in a barrel,” Norris whispered, looking back as we drove along the two lane road.
We continued on and came to a downward slope and I gasped at what I saw. At the bottom of the hill about another two kilometers away, nearly the entire town of Port Dickson was burning. Two unusual military-style helicopters circled overhead. They were dropping what we assumed to be low intensity ordinance that made a whooshing sound on impact and spread long fingers of flame through the streets. Billows of black smoke blew out to the sea. As the bus descended towards the hill, Lydia started shouting at Zahrin, “We can’t go down there! We’ll be killed.”
He ignored her and kept driving towards the town. When we were down the hillside about halfway, the smell of the burning city wafted through the vents and into the bus interior. Smoldering rubber, scorched metal and the even stronger smell of burned hair permeated the air. I pulled on my thin face mask, but it wasn’t made to filter air and the smell of smoldering remains was just as intense.
Even with the windows tightly shut, we could hear the sounds of explosions and gun fire and people screaming.
We leaned forward in our seats, squirming in anticipatory dread at what we were approaching.
Katek stared at the GPS device in his hand. He leaned over and said something to Zahrin. Zahrin cranked the wheel and the bus turned onto a small road inlet and began lumbering back up in a diagonal path on the hillside in a northeastern direction, away from the blazing mayhem of the formerly sleepy township along the shore.
It was slow going and it didn’t take long driving in the inky black of the rainforest foliage until Zahrin realized he had to turn on the headlamps to continue along the muddy, sloppy tract that wound up the hillside. He wiped the perspiration from his brow brought on by the pressure of knowing he had about three and a half hours of nightfall left to get to Kuala Lumpur. If we were to have any chance of making it to our destination, the cover of darkness would essential. Our safety was predicated on making it there before the light of dawn made us easy targets for thousands upon thousands of freshly turned infected rumored to be roaming the capital’s streets.
The glow of the headlamps splashed onto the rubber tree farms and the ferns and palms of the forest as the bus rocked up and down on the rutted uneven surface, casting phantom pale faces and grasping arms that reach out from our imaginations towards the bus.
Jamie peered out the window and, in an attempt at levity, Quaid sang, ‘Wheels on the bus’ off-key. Lydia and Derrik shared a tobacco spliff and blew the smoke out a half centimeter gap they’d opened up in the rear window. I kept my eye on Zahrin and Katek who were squinting out the windshield, trying to the vehicle at a decent speed while anticipating and surveying the land ahead for zombie sign.
Thirty minutes later, the long stretch of dirt track smoothed out to a drier grated gravelly surface. Zahrin doubled our speed to about twenty kilometers an hour and we began to make good time. Everyone relaxed a bit, thinking communally that we must have lucked out with this short-cut to the expressway that was devoid of Berjalan penyakit and hostile trigger-happy WHO paratrooper who were no doubt deployed in the area. We were fortunate that the road served no useful purpose for fleeing residents since it didn’t make a practical artery to the southern contagion-free states.
It wasn’t long until the street lamps of the E1 snaking along in the distance could be seen in the distance. Zahrin got a bit excited that we were getting out of the jungle soon and picked up speed.
And that’s when it happened.
An old man in jeans and a flowery silk shirt, but now Berjalan penyakit, stumbled onto the road about ten meters ahead of the approaching shuttle bus, no doubt attracted to the bouncing headlamps. His arms and legs were encased in his clothing, taunt and balloon-like with viral puss. He was obviously a few days into the sickness as he looked bone-dry dehydrated and his skin radiated with sunburn and blisters from boiling away the days in the equatorial sun’s rays.