There really was no reason to object to this new arrangement. Our agreement with Sheldon was only to get footage of the teams at Petronas Towers and to get to the checkpoint in one piece. Everything else was superfluous.
So we climbed in to the passenger’s seat. Bob secured his rifle behind the driver’s seat next to our weapon’s bag that still contained our stun grenades, shotgun, ammo, cattle-prod and the flimsy facial masks we’d discarded on the drive to the towers earlier that morning.
I looked at my watch.
We had a little more than fourteen hours.
Bob started our SUV with a roar and we left the safe-zone, the soldiers at the gate saluting our bravery as we pulled away.
Bob was in a hurry to get this ‘adventure’ over with. He floored the SUV and the engine screamed, pushing out an astounding forty-three kilometers an hour. The streets within the first few kilometers surrounding the Towers were empty of people, Berjalan penyakit and, conveniently, abandoned cars that would have otherwise blocked our path thanks to the diligent efforts of those soldiers we just left in our rearview. Bob made a few right turns and then a left. He leaned over the steering wheel squinting ahead, not worried so much about finding his way to the drop off point but more concerned about streets that could still be clogged with abandoned cars, wandering infected and dead bodies. He silently calculated a few alternate routes in the event the shortest journey became impassible.
There was a cute little bubble compass built on top of the dash board of the vehicle that now pointed west. I knew from studying the map earlier that our solo journey started at a suburb of Klang Valley called, ‘Hulu Hengat’ on Jalan Hulu Lengat.
Sure enough, not more than three kilometers into our journey, a massive Malaysian Scania Fire Brigade Truck lay overturned as if it took a corner too fast and fell on its side and was blocking the roadway in front of us. Bob had to reverse and turn the SUV into an alley, backtracking to find a clear path. The windows of the SUV were sealed up tight and we had the air conditioning on recirculation, but the smell of the dead lying bloated and rotting in the morning sun still drifted into the compartment. Jamie leaned back and fished out our masks and we put them on but they did little to keep out the smell. As we got further from the city center into the suburbs, we began to see more and more Berjalan penyakit wandering around aimlessly. When the infected heard our vehicle approach, they would turn towards us and stand there in silent witness to our pilgrimage.
We passed the charred remains of a shopping center that had to have been quite an inferno when it was ablaze. Bob explained that the army had been setting fire to these building at dusk to attract the Berjalan penyakit away from the city center and pull the remaining wandering infected towards the outskirts of the city. It was an effort to keep all the people still hiding in the high rises safe from infection.
“Why go through all the trouble? Why not just kill them?” Jamie asked.
“These infected are our family, friends, neighbors and colleagues,” Bob replied with a look of sorrow, “The army is doing all they can to respect the living, even those who are infected. By drawing Berjalan penyakit away from the healthy into pockets of suburbs where they can live out their final days without spreading the contagion, we are saving them and their potential exterminators from a negligent form of murder. Negligent in that it’s truly a mistaken belief that you have to get blood on your hands during these harsh times. And for those who are entertained and get some sort of pleasure out of killing them ... well, they’re all going to burn in hell for treating this disease as sport. And then there are people like you.” He spit on the floor of the SUV and shifted into second gear, “You exploit and disrespect the dead and dying with your ‘reality show’.” He shook his head in disgust at the thought of sitting here in the vehicle beside us, “No, in ten minutes we’ll be at the drop-off point and you’re on your own. I’ll take my blood money and wipe my hands of the whole business.”
I wondered if he didn’t understand that was just as culpable as the rest of us by guiding us through the city and taking a pay-off. He’d also have to answer for his sins.
“But didn’t your colleague snipe an infected back there who was nowhere near posing a danger to us on the way to the towers? How do you justify that?” Jamie asked, a bit miffed at being accused of exploitation when she felt that, after the squirrel feed and now being thrown into the center of the quarantine zone, that we were the ones who were being exploited.
“I don’t answer for others. I never said there haven’t been great atrocities to both healthy and infected since the fever invaded our land these last few days. It’s all quiet at present in the city. You missed the initial looting, murders, robberies of the first two days when the electrical grid went down and anarchy ruled the streets. Many of the infected still roaming about are those fools and criminals who tempted fate and ran around amid the infected as if they were immune to the disease. But most of those criminals got what was coming to them. Those idiots tried to take advantage of a tragedy and strode boldly among the infected and dying, not realizing that when you crush a man’s skull or run him over with your car, there is back splatter that gets into the nooks and crannies, door handles and in your fingernails. Rub your tired eyes, touch your face, eat with your hands even after a day of robbing gold watches and pearl necklaces off the dead and you’ve bought your ticket on the slow train to hell. You’ll see. Do you really think the six of you will make it out of here without coming down with the infection? Your fancy bio-suits won’t save you after you’ve slipped and fallen into a pool of goo left by an infected leaking from its splitting skin, and then decide to, say, take a sip from one of those drinking tubes on your suits.”
Jamie put up a hand in front of his face and said, “Alright, alright, gloom and doom. Just s.t.f.u. and get us where we need to go.”
Bob turned onto a one-way street that looked clear for some distance. We were getting further away from the tall buildings of the city and into the sprawl of suburbia, Malay-style, full of crumbling two-story shop houses and neglected government flats. More and more Berjalan penyakit began to appear as well as the number of bodies lying in the streets and on the sidewalks. Bob had to slow down and zigzag around the corpses, trying his best to respect the dead by not treading over them with our oversized truck tires.
The infected came from all walks of life, but for me, seeing the children and teenagers of those suburbs in that condition, meandering along with the rest of the condemned still haunts me to this day. My heart reached out to the little girl staring blankly at our grotesque SUV as we skirted two fallen Berjalan penyakit lying on the ground and flailing their arms and legs as though they were treading water instead of air, unable to find the strength to stand up and continue their quest to satisfy their primordial hunger. The girl was wearing a silk dress that was the color of twilight. It looked as if she had been dressed for her death bed by her loved ones, expecting the coma brought on by the fever to be the end.
A few minutes later and the buildings and shop houses were thinning the nearer we got to the outskirts as were the amount of wandering infected. I was imagining what that girl’s life was like before the virus took over when Bob stopped the vehicle at a road leading into the rainforest ahead.
Bob leaned over the wheel and gave us one last hard look. He sighed and said, “Hey, a word of advice. Don’t trust those WHO paratroopers or any international authorities you may encounter. They’re here for their own reasons and it’s not to help us.” He reached back, took his gun from behind the driver’s seat and got out, slamming the door behind him. We felt the SUV shake as he pulled the scrambler from the rack attached to the rear bumper. There was the high pitch whine of the two stroke engine as he revved the motorbike. I looked back through the side rearview mirror and saw him weaving back the way we came then vanishing around a corner back into the infected city.
Jamie put her hand in mine and stared into my eyes, trying to read if we were on the same page.
“Alright, then. I guess we’re on our own. You have the map and camera ready? We have a performance ahead of us and there’s a hefty sum of cabbage on the table that could lead to a comfortable future.” She slid over into the driver’s seat and put on her seatbelt, “Let’s get to that signal beacon and our ride back to Singapore.” Her beauty was a sharp contrast to the crumbling neighborhood and dead bodies strewn every which way outside our SUV. I picked up the camera, turned it on and pointed at her as she started the engine. What a little trooper. She let out a battle cry, raised her fist into the air and yelled, “Let’s hear it for Gurl Power and Cera Motors!”
“Yeah!” I gave a half-hearted shout in reply as she put the SUV into first gear, pulling away from the city and leaving the kind soldiers and good people behind the safety of the green zone surrounding the Petronas Towers and the remaining infected as they shuffled through the last remaining hours of dehydration, starvation and heat related misery. At least they didn’t know they were dying, right? They didn’t have the capacity to know, did they?
Jamie drove the SUV down a slope through the tunnel-like greenery. Our journey towards Kota Tinggi began smoothly and, aside from a few cars abandoned along the side of the road, it was carefree enough to imagine the two of us were on a casual road trip through Malaysian backcountry.
I opened the map to get our bearings. Up ahead, there was supposed to be a large reservoir where we were supposed to turn at a T-junction and head due south. Jamie had to practically floor the heap of junk to get us up to the near highest speed of forty kilometers an hour. She expressed some concern to me about the petrol situation, considering in that short trip through the Klang Valley, Bob had drained about a fourth of our petrol. So she did her best to let the vehicle drift along whenever we hit a down slope. I did some calculations and assured her we had plenty of fuel. But I was actually a bit concerned. At the rate of our travel and the kilometers per liter we were currently using, we would have barely enough to reach our destination.
It took about a half hour to reach the reservoir and in my estimation we were making good time. It was one o’clock, which meant we had thirteen hours before our time ran out. I looked over the hillside towards the tranquil waters. The scenery was breathtaking. Emerald forestry made way for the deepest blue water of the reservoir. I could make snow white cranes skirting the water, searching for a meal. Overhead the sun blazed and there was a layer of shimmering as the reservoir’s water was drawn into the humid overly saturated air.
I mentioned to Jamie that without the infected wandering about and all able-bodied Malaysians retreating to the south, it was as if we were in our own Eden built just for the two of us, explorers and survivors in a lush paradise.
I picked up the camera and intermittently filmed Jamie, the road, myself and the gorgeous vista below. We approached a road sign that told us our current road was about to branch north and south into the B19 roadway. I made a point to film the sign and say, “We’re approaching the junction, Jamie, be sure and take the south branch, we need to get to that signal beacon, hopefully before the other teams.”
“Righty ho, my little doe, head south, check-a-roo.” Jamie replied for the shot.
I set the camera down and took a pull from the nozzle hanging from my bio-suit’s collar. The water was warm and rubbery tasting. “Have you tried this yet? It tastes like crap. Good thing we haven’t had to rely on it. I’d probably prefer dehydration.”
Jamie smiled, took a sip of her own water bladder and, shaking her head, pulled a long face of disgust.
I laughed.
We were feeling good again. The surrealism of Kuala Lumpur under siege by the strangest of contagions was fading in our dust. If we kept up this speed, we’d make it to Kota Tinggi in less than seven hours, just after sunset when the temperature cooled and the country Berjalan penyakit folk became more active in their search for an evening meal.
We came to the T-junction and Jamie turned south as instructed, but soon we realized we had a problem. According to our map, we were to head along B19 for another twenty or so kilometers and then take a hard right towards a tiny town called ‘Broga’. But the road began to clog with abandoned cars and lorries from those who tried to head south after the quarantine in the state of Kuala Lumpur had been imposed by WHO. I could only guess that the congestion backed-up from here all the way to the E2 some thirty kilometers to the south where, as we’d seen earlier had been commandeered and sealed off by WHO paratroopers a few days earlier.
Jamie stopped the SUV behind what had become an impassable tangle of vehicles and began hitting the steering wheel, “Damn it! Damn it! Damn it, Abigail! When can we catch a break! We’re never going to be able to drive around all these damned cars. And look,” she pointed ahead, “look at all those Berjalan penyakit standing up ahead just waiting for us to make a move. Lazy zombies. Can’t even be bothered to come after us. Just standing there waiting.” She rolled down the window and through the protective wire mesh yelled at the fifty or so Berjalan penyakit amid the tangle of cars, “Yoo-hoo! Wake up, sillys! We’re healthy and tasty!”
She was just trying to be funny, I know, and was frustrated by the situation but I felt it was disrespectful just as Bob lamented earlier.
Her taunting did get them moving. They began shuffling towards us, bumping into fenders and each other, pushing at each other with their bloated arms, jaws opening and closing.
I don’t think Jamie expected such a response. But I think those Berjalan penyakit were still rather fresh, like only a day old, abandoned by their loved ones in their pilgrimage out of the hot zone and so they still had some strength left in them.
I turned the camera on and said to Jamie as I filmed her and the approaching zombies, “Back up, back the f-up! They’re coming and the weapons we have are crap.”