“Oh come on, Mate!” Quaid yelled out over the engine noise, “What a load of crap! You can’t believe all of that nonsense. That’s not how governments function. They’re not hand-in-hand with ‘evil’ corporations out to cull the population! Ridiculous! These birds are daft for even thinking that guy at the hospital was telling the truth. I’m sure their research was much more benign and he was feeding them misinformation so that if they did go to the media with their story, they’d be discredited as conspiracy nuts! I think at this point, all you can believe is that they gave you three injections and called it a vaccine. It could have been coconut juice for all you know.”
Norris brought everything back into perspective, “I don’t think I need to remind you why we’re in Malaysia in the first place. Let’s get to the helicopter, finish the race tomorrow, beat the remaining team, and if we’re still alive then worry about all that other nonsense. We have near an hour left to dock the boat, find a suitable vehicle preferably with the keys inside, and drive the last thirty kilometers into town and find the signal beacon.”
We agreed that in the grand scheme of things, what we saw in Mersing was not as important as getting to our destination and winning the race. If either of our teams came in first in the reality TV show and won the million dollars, then we’d be in a better position with the extensive media coverage to blow the lid off Vitura’s plans.
We were getting close, so we decided to clam up and keep an eye out for the resort.
According to the tachometer, we’d traveled ninety kilometers. The hum of the engine and the slow beat of the water on the hull had lulled Jamie and me into a half sleeping stupor. During the journey south, Norris and Quaid alternated between keeping the boat at an even keel with the shoreline and staring at the large ball compass sticking out on the dashboard above the steering wheel. No one was were wearing a watch, so we didn’t know exactly how much time we had left for evac.
Jamie and I agreed to hand over our shotgun and remaining flash bangs to the guys. We got the two electric shockers to keep the zombies in the event the Ang Mohs couldn’t keep them back.
The shoreline started to draw in into an inlet of sorts. Quaid eased the throttle into the shallower water and we slowed down under wake speed to lessen the noise of the taxed outboard, lest we draw attention from anyone or anything roaming the shore.
Quaid leaned back and said under his breath, “That’s it up ahead.”
We could see shapeless unlit buildings along the ridge line of the shore in the moonlight. According to Quaid, the resort was a great romantic retreat in less troubling times. Quaid steered towards the dock and as we got closer we saw someone standing on the end of the wooden planks waving a green glow stick, directing us in for landing.
After the harrowing escape, it was a relief to see another uninfected human. We pulled up alongside the dock and the stranger helped moor us down and then gave us a hand off the speedboat before introducing himself.
The young man looked to be in his mid-twenties. He was wearing a bio-suit similar to ours that was zipped open and tied by its arms around his waist, his upper body exposed except for a thin white tank-top barely covering his ripped chest and abs. He was a true specimen of a man, breathtaking really, that rare breed of tall and lanky with the chiseled looks of a runway model. Even in dim light of the night, you could see the angular cheekbones and dimpled chin under a bushy mop of hair. But most captivating of all, even in semi-darkness, was the penetrating gaze of his light brown eyes. When he grabbed my hand to help me out of the boat, his touch was electric and my knees buckled a bit, causing him to put his arm around my waist to steady my feet on the dock. Our eyes locked for a moment in time that seemed to last forever. Is there such a thing as love at first sight and if there is, could it happen in such dangerous and distressing circumstances? I noticed Jamie staring at me out of the corner of my eye with a look of irritation and, was that envy?
The dock swayed back and forth. When he spoke, he kept his voice low for obvious reasons. He had a Canadian American accent and I could see Norris leaning forward, warming up to him almost immediately once he heard the familiar cadence of someone from his side of the world.
“I’ve been tracking the four of you since your escape from the Mersing Hospital,” he said in a deep resonating voice. “The name’s Tomas Overstreet. I’m with Qual Pharmaceuticals. Let’s get inside where it’s safer. I did a sweep of the property at dusk but a straggler from town could have made his way onto the grounds.”
We followed Tomas to a boathouse just above the docks and I did my best to stay as close to him as possible. My three companions were nearly invisible to me now. He led us inside and bolted the door shut. After making sure all of the windows were fully covered, he lit a couple of lanterns and flopped down on a lounge chair that looked to have been dragged from the pool area.
The tiny room was a mess. There were two laptop computers running lines of data and some odd looking electronic gadgets hooked up to a long strip of plugs snaking to one contact point next to a coffee maker. A two-way radio and scattered papers were lying on the large teak table in the center of the room. Photos of the Vitura ship, Mersing and the hospital were tacked onto a cork bulletin board. Empty bags of crisps and candy wrappers were overflowing out of two garbage bins in the corner.
Tomas sat in the chair quietly for a moment, his eyes flicking back and forth from the data on the two computer screens then to me and back again. He got up and went to one of the computers and began typing, saying he needed to relay a message to his superiors and anyhow, we probably needed a few minutes to settle down.
But Quaid was impatient; we had less than forty minutes to get to the evacuation point. Maybe he also felt threatened by another alpha in the room, because he barked rather loudly at Tomas, “Who the bloody hell do you think you are? We don’t have time for this. We need to get going now!”
Tomas ignored him and typed a bit more, then shut the notebook before we could see what he was doing. He got up, took a drink from a half-full cup of orange soda and, speaking directly at me but to everyone in the room, said, “Calm down, old man. I’m the last of a team whose been trying to infiltrate Vitura since the outbreak began. We were using this resort as our base because Kota Tinggi is the last place the virus will be allowed to spread before it is stopped and WHO swoops in for clean-up and decontamination.”
I piped in, “We know all about the Vitura and Qual pharmaceutical war being waged. One of the Vitura employees let us in on the whole shebang.”
Tomas smiled and said, “I know all about your conversation with Bertrand. I have it recorded on that laptop there. And I know why you’re here.” He picked up a large envelope from the table, opened it and threw the contents across the table towards us. We were surprised to see our studio photos and press releases of Cera’s Amazing Rally Showdown.
“I’ll help you get to your evacuation point, but first let me explain why I’m here and how important you now are to the rest of the world. Like I said, we were sent here to, well, spy on Vitura. Everything was going swimmingly and then two nights ago, we were raided by Vitura’s hired thugs who captured the rest of my team. I was patrolling the grounds at the time and managed to escape capture. Since then, I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out my next move. Most of my people who were captured are those ‘test subject’ mutated zombies in that hospital. In fact, most of the patients in the infirmary where you were held were my remaining colleagues who hadn’t succumbed to the virus. Fortunately, one of my teammates managed to grab a two-way radio and somehow managed to stash it in the infirmary and I’ve been eavesdropping ever since. Everything I’d picked up was mostly useless until their field leader, that Bertrand guy, came in to brag about their experiments on you. I know the three of you have been recently inoculated with Vitura’s latest IHS vaccine and I’ve reported this information to my superiors.”
“So now you want to use us to take over the world like Bertrand?” Jamie interrupted, more to get him to stop staring at me than anything else.
Tomas shook his head. Still continuing to stare into my eyes, he said, “Unlike Vitura, we’re not out to blackmail countries into paying for the vaccine before unleashing the zombie fever onto their countries. We want to stop the horror of IHS now before it brings on the end of days.”
“Yeah right,” Jamie mumbled, unhinged at her inability to draw Tomas’s attention away from me and onto her like she always did with the cute ones.
“It is of utmost importance that we evacuate the three of you safely,” he motioned towards Norris, Jamie and me, “and get you to our headquarters in Vancouver so that we can synthesize a serum from your blood and ship it worldwide before Vitura unleashes IHS-2. There’s no telling how a new strain of virus will spread or if it can even be contained for that matter. They’re relying too much on data from the original strain to evaluate whether or not IHS-2 can be controlled.”
Quaid was tired of all the talk and the subconscious interplay between Tomas and the girls. Time was bleeding away and it was thirty kilometers to get to where we needed to be and we didn’t even know where the evacuation point was located within Kota Tinggi. “Listen, Mate,” he said through gritted teeth, leaning forward, his arms flexing from anger and adrenaline, “Right now, I wouldn’t care if you’re married to the Queen of Siam or if we could avert nuclear war with our urine. We need to find a vehicle and get the hell out of here now. So shut the hell up and help us or the only thing you’ll be seeing are your intestines when I shove your head up your arse.”
Tomas finally looked away from me towards Quaid. He held up his hands, “Hold it, friend. I know you’re in a time sensitive situation and I know where to find your evacuation point. I picked up a signal from an ADF emergency beacon transmitter just before sundown and tracked this Cera team,” he pointed to Derrik and Lydia, “to the roof of a shopping complex in the center of town. I have a car prepped and at the ready and can get you there in less than twenty minutes, so long as the Berjalan penyakit are properly distracted and kept away from our car. That helicopter of yours is the fastest way out of the quarantine zone and I plan to go with you to Singapore where a non-stop flight to the laboratory in Vancouver awaits at Changi.”
“Whatever, ‘Dude’,” Quaid said turning towards the door, mocking Tomas’s Canadian accent, “let’s get the shooow on the roood.”
Charged up by Quaid’s aggression, Jamie chimed in, “Yeah, we don’t care about your bullcrap, we have a race to win.”
Tomas stood there for a moment in silence with a look of disbelief in his eyes. How could they be so unfazed by the global importance of the situation they were in and their roles in it? He thought. He reached beside one of the computers, grabbed a leather satchel and attached it to his belt, brushed aside some papers and picked up some keys and stuffed them into his pocket. Then he unhooked the laptop he was working on, shoved it and a bunch of papers into a cardboard box from under the table and stuffed it all under one arm. He let out a sigh and said, “Let’s go.”
Our new leader led us from the boathouse to the hotel portion of the resort. Out in front and parked around the curved crushed gravel driveway were cars, minivans and trucks of various makes and models used to transport guests to and from the resort to the airport that was about a two hour drive away in Johor Bahru. Parked at the foot of the stairs leading to the hotel lobby was a late model Cera D’lugé stretch limousine that had its taillights and headlamps broken out and the entire body, including hubcaps and rear windows, were painted a flat mat black with spray paint; the empty canisters discarded around the bottom step beside some jugs of water.
Tomas opened the rear door like a chauffeur and ushered us inside. When it was my turn, he made a point to take my hand and gently eased me in. When we were secure, he leaned over and said, “A few hours after we were raided and all of my colleagues were abducted, I decided it was best to get the heck out of here so I found this car and began packing my things. I opted for the limousine instead of something more practical because it was only one with a full tank of petrol and newer tires. It wasn’t until the shock of the ambush wore off when I realized I had nowhere else to go until the contagion ran its course. Better the devil you know and all that … so I stayed put.”
He pointed to the large moon roof and using an electronic switch opened and closed it as he spoke, “Closer to the driver’s seat you’ll find an assortment of Molotov cocktails and some of the biggest throwing rocks I could find. Along with your grenades you have there, I think we should be able to clear a swath through the zombie horde milling around in town. Just open the moon roof and use them as needed if we get into any sticky situations on the way to your chopper.” He paused and looked at each of us carefully, making full eye contact with each of us, “Remember, the price for my services is a ride to Singapore and out of this nightmare.”
Tomas gave me a wink as he closed the door. Jamie saw it and shoved me a bit.
Norris and Quaid both laughed, knowing exactly what she was giving me a hard time about.
We watched Tomas as he rounded the limousine and climb in and we saw him strap on a pair of night vision goggles he must have had sitting in the passenger’s seat.
The limo started and we were off. There was some jostling as Norris and I tried to grab the loose Molotov cocktails rolling towards us on the floor as Tomas ran over the curb trying to make the turn towards the main gate with the elongated car, “Sorry!” he yelled back at us and then ran over another curb. Tomas reached above his head and pushed a button and the main gate swung open as we approached. When we got onto the main road he floored the old car and we sunk into the large backseat from the torque of the monstrously huge V-8 engine supercharged twin turbo to a dangerously high speed along the pitch black road. Tomas wasn’t wasting any time as he now had a stake in getting to the helicopter as well.