A large digital readout above a television monitor inside the limo’s passenger compartment read 1:25 am. We had thirty five minutes to make it to the evacuation point or be stranded here inside the quarantine zone.
The road was a narrow and long with jungle trees overhanging the blacktop as though attempting to reclaim the strip of road into its natural fold. We tried to look ahead into the night as Tomas drove with the aid of those night vision goggles, without which we were driving blind. Tomas seemed comfortable enough in the driver’s seat, every once in awhile veering the limo to the left or right to dodge an object or maybe zombie that only he could distinguish in the obscurity ahead.
We came over a crest and there, not more than ten kilometers ahead, was Kota Tinggi, our last destination in the Malaysian leg of the race before getting back to the comfort and safety of Singapore. I felt a release of internal pressure and let out a long sigh of relief as did the rest of the team when they saw the town in the distance.
The digital clock now read 1:51 am.
“Hold on tight. Seatbelts are advised. This is where it’s going to get bumpy.” Tomas yelled back at us as he hit the first unavoidable bloated corpse in the road and then the next and the next. We were closer to a populated area and the bodies were piling up, literally. I rolled down my window slightly as the painted over glass of the windows made it impossible to see the growing number of Berjalan penyakit standing idle in the ostrich fields and among the fruit trees of the farms on the outskirts of town, staring up at brightness of the moon.
“We’re in luck you know,” Tomas yelled back, “the only reason those brain dead viral incubators aren’t clogging the roadway is because of the heat radiating off of the tarmac from the day’s sunshine. Zombies may not have any reasoning abilities but they do know to get out of the frying pan.”
Quaid rolled back the moon roof and stood up out into the night air, holding onto the sides of the opening tightly as the limo continued to run over body after body, “Look!” he yelled, pointing to two red lights flashing alternately together in the sky and moving towards town, “It’s the bloody helicopter! We’re too late!”
The three of us poked our heads up into the night to get a better look, my hair flying wildly in the wind.
Quaid was right.
There was our ride and we weren’t even close to the evacuation point.
The helicopter swooped low against the night sky less than a kilometer distant and I could make out the whump whump of the Boeing CH-47 Chinook twin blades cutting through the air.
“Get down!” Tomas yelled back at us, “I’ll get you there or die trying!” He was heroic, burying the pedal into the floor, trying to milk as much power out of the Cera limo’s overtaxed engine as possible. The limo shot towards the town’s central shopping center, four stories of concrete; the only cluster of businesses in the area that rose above the rest of the one and two floor shop houses and industrial buildings like a sentinel of civilization.
We lost sight of the helicopter as we raced into town and the cluster of streets and alleyways.
The electrical grid in the area was no longer functioning, but the streets were glowing by a crazy backdrop of burning cars, intentionally lit barrels of junk and flickering shadows. The contagion must have only recently hit the town as there were still healthy people out on the streets battling the infected. We saw townsfolk with various makeshift weapons beating back the zombie horde from their homes and businesses. On one side street we drove by, I saw a man with a machete and handkerchief wrapped around his face hacking his way through four swollen, lumbering Berjalan penyakit that were trying to enter his eatery. As we swerved around a pack of infected closing in on some poor lady, I caught a glimpse of someone sprinting along the sidewalk ahead, trying to match the speed of our car. When we came along side of him, he veered towards the street and jumped in front of our car, smashing up against the hood and jolting us onto the floor from the impact.
“Holy Cow! That was one of those mutated zombies! They must have spread down from the northern towns,” Tomas shouted back at us, turning on the wipers on high to clear off some of the green splatter from the windscreen, “Quaid! Norris! You’re going to have to get your hands dirty. Get up through that moonroof and hold off those kamikaze mother ef-ers! If you don’t, we’ll be walking the rest of the way and I doubt your helicopter will wait for us while we dilly-dally in the streets.”
Quaid was already poking his head out the moonroof, his shotgun in hand and Norris squeezed out beside him with a large stone in one hand and an unlit Molotov cocktail in the other.
Boom
!
Boom
!
The sound of the shotgun reverberated in the passenger compartment as Quaid shot at some unseen attackers. But unfortunately, the blasts from the gun only attracted more attention. We could see the dopey Berjalan penyakit in the streets turning towards our speeding car and, wouldn’t you know, just then Tomas had to decelerate to nearly a dead stop in order to thread his way between a burning lorry and smashed pieces of a granite bus bench. A couple of mutated Berjalan penyakit leaped onto the hood of the car and began scrabbling up the windscreen towards the fresh meat dangling out of the top of the car that was Quaid and Norris. Norris threw the stone then the unlit Molotov cocktail at them, grazing one in the head with the bottle but otherwise accomplishing nothing. Quaid was a bit calmer in his reaction, having been conditioned through training to control rioters back in the UK as a police officer. He took aim at the closest infected and put a so-called nonlethal beanbag right through one eye, killing it instantly. But he was a bit of a softy at heart when it came to the ladies and as the other zombie leaped on to the roof, he hesitated, thinking about how the zombie used to be a lovely young lass around his wife’s age. Balancing atop the car now, the zombie took one more step and grabbed Norris, targeting his shoulder with her snapping jaws.
“Ouch! Ouch!” We heard Norris cry out as he wrestled with her. Quaid pulled her off by the nape of the neck and flung her down onto the ground and Tomas picked up speed again.
The digital clock now read 1:54 am.
Norris slipped down into the passenger compartment and pulled back the doctor’s robe and hospital gown from his shoulder to check for injury. There were plenty of teeth marks but no punctures and we all sighed in relief. While the Vitura staff at the Mersing hospital claimed he’d been given a vaccination, there was no telling if it was the more effective inoculation or one of the others still being tested or even a placebo given as a control subject.
“Mate,” Quaid said down through the moon roof, “your other arm.”
Norris looked at his wrist just above the hand and there was a thin scratch that had taken off the top layer of skin like the scratch from a cat’s claw. It was red but not bleeding.
Norris looked at it for a moment then quickly covered it up with the sleeve, “Nothing to worry about. It happened when I came in against the edge of the moonroof,” he said, blowing it off.
Quaid popped back up through the opening and back to shooting at zombies with his bean bags. When he was out of shells, I handed him the other gun and reloaded with the remaining three we had left. He shot a few more times. I guess he accidentally hit a civilian because I swear I heard someone yelp out in pain.
As we got closer to our destination, more and more of those gross, bloated, walking bags of puss blocked our passage.
Norris tried a new tactic. He took a flash bang grenade off of Quaid’s belt, which was dangling in front of our faces and after pulling the pin on the grenade, yelled for Tomas stop the car and duck down. Then he threw it ahead of the limo. We all scrambled for cover except for Quaid who just turned his head and covered his ears. The grenade went “Crack!”, scattering the zombies and clearing about a fifty meter gap in the road ahead, that is aside from oozing corpses that happened to be too close to the detonation.
The digital clock now read 1:57 am.
We were almost there.
The shopping center was looming up ahead and we could see the helicopter on the roof, its blades rotating slowly as its engine idled. I could make out Derrik and Lydia’s white Cera SUV abandoned and half inside the display window it had smashed through. For some reason, the Berjalan penyakit blocking our path had moved off and there was a clear road ahead.
One last time, Tomas yelled, “Hold on,” and gunned the engine so that the limo would gain some momentum. It bounced over the curb and bashed through the plate glass display window full of formal wear mannequins in a mock wedding ceremony beside the display where Derrik and Lydia’s SUV had found its final resting place.
He shut off the engine.
Silence.
We struggled to open the doors but they were wedged shut by the debris and the mannequins pressing between the limo and the display walls, still looking elegant in their torn suits and shredded dresses.
Quaid said, “This way,” and climbed out through the moon roof. Norris grabbed me and practically shoved me up and out of the car and then Jamie was pushed out behind me. We slid down the front of the limo, green blood and goo smearing in our gloved hands and on the sides and backs of our bio-suits. We waited a couple of moments for Tomas and Norris who then flanked us, each armed with an electric cattle prod, our only weapons left.
And that’s when things got crazy.
I don’t know if I can describe to you exactly what happened in those next few seconds, but we were attacked by those mutated infected from all directions. Quaid fired the last beanbag and then began using the shotgun as a club, slamming the attacking zombies in the head with the stock, a pile of unconscious flesh eaters twitching at his feet. Jamie and I crouched down onto our hands and knees as Tomas and Norris zapped a half dozen zombies leaping towards us from the sides. The infected made this weird ‘Ewww’ whiney screechy sound when they were hit by the electric voltage meant to stop a charging bull.
The attack stopped as quickly as it began.
Norris and Tomas grabbed the two of us by our arms and we were off, running through the department store towards a sign overhead pointing to the payphones and the stairwell. Attracted by the noise and flashes from the arching electricity, a few bloated infected townsfolk somehow squeezed through the gap the SUV had made and shuffled towards us, but it was an easy matter to push them aside or give them a zap and jog past.
Tomas gripped my hand tightly and heroically fought off an infected teenage boy in a Megadeath t-shirt and trucker hat who had leaned out from the depths of a clothes rack and tried to grab me around my waist.
Quaid, Norris and Jamie pushed through the emergency exit door into the stairwell ahead of us and an alarm began blaring through the entire building. Tomas pulled me into the stairwell and shut the door, looking for something to wedge against it, but coming up empty handed. Quaid took the stairs two at a time with the rest of us right behind him. Norris had dropped back with Tomas and they were right on our heels courageously protecting our rear. Quaid shoved his way through the door onto the roof and we spilled out onto a blacktop covered in air con exhaust tubes and electrical boxes. Near the center of the roof the helicopter began to come to life, the blades spinning faster and faster. We saw the rear door of the Chinook drawing closed with an electric hum. And there, sitting inside were Derrik, Lydia, a small camera crew and Sheldon with a huge grin of frantic excitement on his face. We sprinted towards the Chinook, waving our arms frantically and shouting, “Stop! Wait! Wait!” as the rear door closed tightly and the heavy lifter began to rise off the roof.
It was Tomas, that beautiful specimen of a man, who saved us. He pulled a strange looking gun from the leather satchel on his belt and fired it towards the helicopter as it hovered in the air above. It was a flare gun and it shot an orange flaming ball across the bow of the helicopter and we could see the Chinook jerk away as the bright light searing past the windscreen caught the pilot by surprise.
That got their attention. There was Sheldon, Derrik, Lydia and the rest of the passengers peering down and pointing at us through the round portal windows along the fuselage.
The chopper lowered down onto the rooftop, shaking the building, cracks forming in all directions in the cement structure as the flying beast set its weight on the roof for the second time. The rear door eased open, setting on the ground. Sheldon and two of the film crew slinging machine guns in one hand and cameras in the other came down the ramp.
“And here we were already congratulating the remaining team as the winners of the million dollar prize!” Sheldon shouted over the
whump whump
of the rotating blades, “Fantastic! Fantastic! Now that you’re all here, we don’t have to abandon the finale I’ve painstakingly put together for tomorrow!”
Jamie and I embraced him and then embraced the two crew members. We couldn’t help ourselves. We were going to make it out of there alive.
“Wait a second,” Sheldon held up his hand when he noticed we had a companion. The two crew members pointed their guns at Tomas, “No stowaways. We only have clearance to bring our people back to Singapore. I’m afraid you’ve just put yourself in a hurt box, my friend. Go back to whatever hole you crawled out of.”
“But you don’t understand! I have to go with you! The entire world population is in danger and I have to get back to my people to stop a pandemic!” Tomas shouted in exasperation.
“Pandemic? World in danger?” Sheldon looked at his two cronies and laughed, “Who gives a hoot? That’s none of my business, friendo. You’re on your own.” And to prove his point, he pointed at Tomas and a third crewman who’d crept up behind him fired a taser, the two wired prongs penetrating Tomas’s bio-suit and lodging into his back. Tomas flopped around on the ground for a few moments as the electricity coursed through his nervous system and then lay still.
The two crewmen we’d just hugged affectionately roughly grabbed me and Jamie and hauled us onto the chopper. Norris and Quaid followed Sheldon into the chopper, neither of them standing up for Tomas, even after all that he did to get us to the evacuation point on time. They each gave Sheldon a manly fist bump in quick succession.