Zahrin slammed on the brakes and swerved left to avoid hitting the zombie. An instinctual move to avoid harming another human being, but in my opinion entirely unnecessary considering the old man was presently devoid of humanity. Zahrin should have just run him down as his evasive maneuver was pointless. The shuttle bus hit the thicker end of a fallen palm tree on the side of the road and our bus’s bumper clipped the infected old man. Like a water balloon, he burst over the windscreen and right side of the bus, covering it with greenish blood, guts and goo. Simultaneous to the splatter onto the bus, there was a loud bang as the left front tire hit the stump of a fallen palm and blew out.
Zahrin turned off the headlamps and shut off the engine and we sat there for a moment in stunned disbelief. He pulled a satellite phone from out of his bag and called Sheldon to inform him of their situation.
I was worried that we may be stuck in a jungle with an unknown amount of Berjalan penyakit wandering about amid the trees and ferns. If there was one infected out there, there were bound to be more.
We could hear Sheldon screaming through the phone, “Ai yo! You stupid piece of garbage! You’re costing us money, you reckless excuse of a man! Get that bus moving! There’s a lot on the line here and it’s your responsibility. If you don’t get back on the road posthaste, I’ll see to it you never work in this industry again!”
After that brutal butt chewing, sweat was now pouring from Zahrin’s brow. He cupped his hands against a small part of the windscreen glass that had narrowly avoided the slime and peered outside into the darkness, looking for signs of movement. He ordered Katek to get out and inspect the damage. Katek jumped at the chance. He wasn’t afraid of some ill people wandering around in the dark; this wasn’t one of those horror movies that were all the rage, these infected weren’t the undead. He pushed open the hydraulic doors and waited for the goop to stop dripping from the door frame and hopped over the mess of blood and guts and twitching limbs and onto the road.
We watched out the windows as Katek circled the front of the bus, turning back and forth, one of his shotguns off his back and at the ready. He looked down at the damaged wheel and we could hear him let out a whistle. He then backtracked to the door and hopped back in, taking care to avoid tracking in the bodily fluids onto the bus. “Cannot go, lah. Ty-ya punchek,” was his report to Zahrin.
“Well, see if we have a spare in one of the side compartments. I’m sure you know how to change a tire! Get on it!” Zahrin ordered, passing on some of the heat he’d just received over the phone.
Zahrin fired up the engine after Katek climbed back out of the bus and proceeded to back the vehicle up into the center of the gravel road so that if there were a spare tire, there would be enough room to manage a change.
We could hear Katek as he moved along the side of the shuttle bus opening and closing all the outside compartments looking for a spare. Of course, the spare was in the last compartment in the rear. He came back around to the door and whispered inside to Zahrin, “Found it, but gonna need help.”
Zahrin turned in the captain’s chair and addressed the teams. Appealing to the men’s sexism he said, “Hey, we need to change this tire quickly. I need the men to march on out there and assist Katek with the tire repair. Norris, Quaid, Derrik get a move on so we can get these ladies somewhere safe. We only have a couple hours of darkness left before we’re fully exposed.”
Quaid jumped up with bravado and Norris followed. I could see Derrik whispering to Lydia in the rear of the truck. She jerked him up and began pushing him down the aisle towards the door, “Men these days are wimps and pansies,” she said to us as she exited the bus, “We’ll both go, make the job much faster.”
The four of them eased out of the bus carefully as Katek instructed to avoid the still clinging fluids hanging from the door frame. I couldn’t believe Lydia had the cahones to go out into the darkness. I wasn’t leaving the bus for anything. Jamie and I held hands and watched Zahrin lean out the driver’s window squinting into the jungle.
The bus began to shimmy a bit as they worked the spare tire and jack out of the compartment in from the rear of the van. Jamie and I watched as Quaid and Norris carried the spare around to the busted tire, leaning it against the straighter side of the fender. Lydia came up behind them with a large heavy duty jack and tire iron in her arms. She dropped them on the ground in front of the shredded tire and they clanked together loudly. A simultaneous, “SHHHHH!” erupted from everyone who went still, looking around in the darkness for more zombies.
Katek stood guard, shotgun at the ready.
Derrik stood behind Lydia and swiveled his head back and forth at the tiniest sound from the jungle, real or imagined. After a minute or two the van began shaking up and down as Lydia furiously worked the jack, raising the bus a centimeter at time. Quaid took the tire iron slotted in the first nut and began kicking at the iron bar to loosen it. He repeated the process until they were all loose then Lydia jacked the bus up further until the shredded tire was off the ground. I suppose the protection of the rubberized bio-suits was a plus when changing a tire; the gloves protected their hands from all that gross dirt and oil and it was easy enough to drop to your knees without worry of scrapes and cuts.
“It looks like we’re going to be on our way in no time,” I told Jamie under my breath as she pressed her face against the window looking for movement.
That’s when I had one of my flashes of brilliance. I picked up the camcorder sitting next to me and, yep, sure enough, there was a button for night vision. It was a bit hard to press with those stupid gloves which were not very dexterous, but soon the screen began to glow a bright green. And yes, I had the presence of mind to hit the record button as well.
Just as I began to scan the forest around our bus, I gasped at what I saw.
There were at least two dozen Berjalan penyakit about ten meters ahead and about an additional eight meters into the bush. They were bumbling along a dirt track towards our bus that led out from a rubber tree plantation and they were closing in on our location fast … well … maybe not fast, but quick enough to be a threat if we didn’t get a move on.
I didn’t say a word to Jamie for fear of making her panic and I took the camera and rushed up to Zahrin sitting comfortably in the captain’s chair overlooking the repairs below. I leaned over him and out the window where they were changing the tire underneath. With the camera still recording I whispered down to them as loudly as I dared, “Hey! A bunch of zombies are approaching on your six, you’d better get that tire on quick or do something about them before they surround us.”
The boys and Lydia began to frantically yank on the busted tire, pulling it onto the ground and making even more noise. I turned my camera down to the track where I spotted the approaching party of infected. They had all stopped at the clang of steel against steel and they were standing there, immobile, facing towards the clamber, perhaps trying to decide in their brain-damaged way if there was a meal to be had up ahead.
That’s when Derrik, that useless piece of crap standing out there doing nothing but jumping at the sound of bugs flying near his ear, had a fit of smoker’s cough.
Now, by all accounts Berjalan penyakit were supposed to be cartoonishly slow. Every news broadcast mentioned that outrunning them wasn’t the problem. Being caught off guard, that was really the greatest danger while in the infected zone.
This group of infected must have been hungry. When Derrik began to cough, even with their swollen limbs and pea-sized brains they managed to increase their pace to that of a slow jog.
They were closing fast … well … maybe not fast … but, you know...
“Katek, they’re approaching from back there,” I pointed behind him ahead of the bus and slightly to the left where there was a bit of a gap in the forest where the path met the graded road. Katek positioned himself between the path and the bus, double checking his gun to make sure there was a shell in the chamber and the safety was off.
Quaid and Norris pushed the spare tire onto the bolts and began fastening the nuts by hand, but Norris had a devil of a time with those gloved hands and the fine work of screwing and he kept dropping the nuts onto the ground. Quaid gruffly pushed him aside and finished screwing on the fifth and sixth nut.
Lydia and Derrik abandoned the scene and ran around to the open door, rushing up and into the back of the bus, hiding behind the seats, probably hoping the Berjalan penyakit would fill up on the rest of us before they found them.
The approaching infected were now within a couple of meters of Katek and closing.
Katek could finally see them lumbering along in the shadows and he fired the shotgun. That little dwarf may have looked rough and tough, but really he was just a stage hand who had been hired to assemble sets for the show and the recoil of the twelve gauge knocked him on his ass. Truth be told, he’d never fired a gun before and came along with Zahrin because he had a sister living in Kuala Lumpur and knew a trip in the shuttle bus was his only hope of getting to her.
I was taping through the window and could see everything in the display of the camera. I caught him on film firing and after the flash of white on the night vision screen dissipated, I was able to see the closest of the zombies topple over with half its head missing. Not that it mattered to the other zombies; they weren’t deterred in the least. They stepped over their fallen comrade and swarmed towards Katek who was struggling to pick up the shotgun and back away at the same time.
Norris came up behind Katek and grabbed him by those ammo belts that were slung over his shoulders, and in a pendulum-like motion, picked him up and literally threw him up and through the open doors of the bus and jumped in behind him.
Zahrin closed the bus doors with a hiss and started the bus, revving the engine.
The zombies began pounding on the bus doors and moaning in anticipatory ecstasy of the feast inside.
Quaid, however, was still outside hidden from zombie view on the opposite side of the bus, trying to release the jack and drop the bus back down on all four tires. But the darned jack wouldn’t release, so he began pumping the handle down a centimeter at a time. He’d never make it before the infected discovered him, I thought. He looked up at Zahrin through the window and said, “Bloody Hell! Go! Go! Push off from the jack and go! I’ll catch up to you. They’re too slow to get me.”
Zahrin put the bus into second gear and the bus rocked forward. There was a loud screech and then a bang as the bus came off the jack and hit the ground. We were off and accelerating out of reach of the frenzied Berjalan penyakit now behind us looking surprised and mildly disappointed.
I ran to the rear of the bus where Lydia and Derrik were crouched on the floor with their heads in their hands and filmed Quaid as he sprinted away from the zombies, swiftly out distancing them with those muscular fitness trainer legs.
Zahrin stopped the vehicle, threw open the doors and Quaid jumped inside and we sped off towards the expressway.
“Whew hew! That was exciting, yeah?” Quaid yelled out and punched Zahrin in the arm in a manly gesture, “Did you see that, girls? That’s what a real man can do!” He started kissing his biceps.
I turned off the recorder and sat back down next to Jamie who I’d largely ignored during the entire ordeal. She was still sitting in her seat looking out the window her face motionless but pale. I put my head against her shoulder and she silently cried in the darkness.
Chapter 9
IT wasn’t long before we were chugging up an on-ramp towards a squad of WHO paratroopers standing behind a make-shift barrier of overturned cars and barbed wire. One of the paratroopers who was marching atop a lorry in militant fashion motioned us forward towards a gap in their barrier and then jumped down in front of our bus before we could pass through, causing Zahrin to hit the brakes hard, everyone sliding in our seats, smacking against the backs of the bench seats in front of us.
They were clearly WHO paratroopers with their insignias and metals hanging from the same type of enviro-suits we were sporting. The only difference was they had full on helmets and oxygen tanks slung on their backs, whereas we just had plastic eye shields and flimsy filter masks hanging from rubber bands around our necks.
This particular soldier had gold bars on his lapel and the attitude of authority. He walked up to Zahrin’s window and pressed an SAR-21 assault rifle against his temple, “This is a restricted thoroughfare for military personnel only. All civilians are to take surface streets south for evac. Turn your vehicle around and head south now or you’ll be deemed a threat and barbequed zombie style.” He motioned towards two of his men standing a short distance away. They were carrying flamethrowers and they flicked a switch on their electrical ignition systems, igniting the tips of the barrels of their weapons, little flecks of fire dancing in the night like malevolent eyes.
Zahrin leaned away from the gun at his head and slowly pulled a card out from an envelope from inside his suit, he handed it over to the soldier and seconds later handed him another envelope that, I guessed, was stuffed with cash. The soldier took the envelopes and disappeared into a tent on the other side of the barrier, presumably to scan the card for clearance details. He came back with just the card, the envelopes notably absent, handed it back to Zahrin and, without another word, waved them forward towards the gap between the cars and barbed wire. Zahrin slowly drove the bus through the barrier and up onto the expressway, the soldiers staring at us through their helmets expressionlessly as we proceeded north into the hot zone.
It was nice to be on the flat surface of asphalt again, with the shuttle bus humming along at thirty or so kilometers an hour. Zahrin kept the headlamps switched off as it was easy to see the road from the halogen lamps overhead. We were back on the E2 on the one empty lane cleared of cars and surrounded by a safe and reassuring web of razor wire.