Of course, I wasn’t aware of the time and when someone began banging on the front door of the flat, I realized that the glare of the sun outside my window was at the full strength of an equatorial afternoon. I leaned over and picked up the alarm clock that had been brushed onto the floor when my sisters were setting down the tea tray.
The time said 12:55 pm.
Sheldon said filming of the final day’s episode began at 2:00 pm.
I jumped out of bed, grabbed a towel to wrap around my otherwise nude body and ran to the front door. My little sisters weren’t in on the reason for my panicked behavior and were caught off guard by my frenetic movement, one of them tumbling off the bed onto the floor.
Jamie was standing there at my door. She was wearing the sexy schoolgirl outfit we’d put together for the show but then left at home because there wasn’t enough room in our bags. And she was livid, “You’re not even dressed? Didn’t you get my messages? Oh wow, and you stink! You didn’t take a shower? You realize you could be contaminated, don’t you? What if you pass the virus onto your family? Oh, god, we’ve got to hurry! Get showered and put on your schoolgirl outfit. Sheldon says we have to be at the Tuas border checkpoint at two.” She pushed her way into the flat and began shoving me towards the bathroom.
An icy chill ran down my spine as I thought about my family sitting on my bed, the residue from the night before no doubt clinging to the sheets and on the floor where I’d walked in those rubber-soled boots.
I pulled away from Jamie and ran to the bedroom and screamed for my family, “Get out! You’re all in danger!” I scooped my little sisters into my arms and into the bathroom and stripped off their clothes, throwing them into rubbish bin and then set them onto the floor of the shower where I sprayed them down with hot water, scrubbing fiercely with soap and disinfectant. My mother watched from the door. I think she got the hint because I heard the shower in her bathroom come on and saw the noticeable decrease in water pressure as she washed away any potential contaminants.
By the time I was finished with their scrubbing, my sisters were bawling from my harsh actions and the overwhelming panic they’d seen in my eyes moments earlier. Jamie took them to their room to comfort them and help get them dressed and I grabbed the rubbish bin and ran to my room, took that rubbish bin and set them both onto the small ledge where our air-con hung outside the kitchen window.
Whew, I let out a sigh of relief and then proceeded to give myself one hell of a disinfecting shower. I scrubbed the skin on and around my hands until it was raw, figuring that would be where most of the virus would be hiding if it were still clinging to my skin and still lying dormant in the pores.
By the time I dressed in my matching sexy schoolgirl outfit, which somehow didn’t feel like me anymore, and said my goodbyes to my family after briefly explaining we still had some shooting to do, it was already one thirty. We’d never make it to the Tuas border checkpoint, even if we could get a taxi at lunch hour. And even if traffic was light, we’d be lucky to make it there in forty-five minutes.
But we didn’t have to worry after all. The same driver who’d dropped me off the night before was waiting at the bottom of the lift when we stepped out. Without saying a word, he turned and led us to the car he’d parked illegally next to the garbage chute. We climbed inside and I let out the second sigh of relief that day.
Our driver was masterful, taking the correct side streets and entering and exiting the intermittently clogged expressways full of weekend commuters like an F1 driver. Jamie and I worked on our make up with little compacts in the backseat while he negotiated the streets and traffic. I gazed into the small mirror in front of me and felt entirely out of sorts in the overly feminine costumed get-up. It was if the experience of the last week had drawn a veil from my eyes.
We pulled up in front of a vacant field about two blocks from the Tuas border checkpoint at exactly ten after two. Well, not quite vacant. There were about forty Tua Kee Media cast and crew members milling around an elaborate set that, when filmed from certain angles with the border checkpoint in the rear, would look as if it were an extension of the ICA buildings in the background. It was quaint to see familiar Tua Kee Media artistes dressed as immigration officers standing inside a kiosk complete with a counter and gate that was made to look like one of the border entry points.
Sheldon yelled at us to get the hell over to briefing, pointing at the other two teams standing around his new assistant, a recent ITE graduate whose speech was thick with Singlish. The assistant was holding a clipboard, explaining the terms and conditions of the final day’s race. As we approached, he was wagging a finger at the Ang Mohs, “Hao Lian eh! Under no circumstances can break traffic laws here in Singapore. Your days of crazy racing are over. You must keep your rally cars under the speed limit. You have many crewmembers accompanying you today; two will film inside the car and a cadre more will trail you in one of those camera trucks over der. Your crewmen oso can call us if you break any traffic laws and you will be immediately eliminated.”
This unnamed assistant turned to us and said, “Girls ah, just in time. I explain to others that this is legit race. The gahmen say can finish competition here under condition that we obey all liao. Sheldon oso wants you to know that when you get to the final checkpoint many people milling around with questions about your trials and tribulation in the Malaysian quarantine zone. You must not forget the confidentiality clause you have signed hor? Divulge any information about the race and Tua Kee Media will sue you and your family in perpetuity lah. Dat’s all, best of luck. Remember two of you boleh millionaires later today lah!” This new assistant was kind and very green and he smiled at us as though we were friends when he finished speaking.
Sheldon had his eye on us and noticed that his new assistant had finished the briefing so he waved us over to the set. The production must have been on a tight schedule because Sheldon and a couple of crewmen began positioning us for the shoot. There was no time to look around or even get our bearings. He handed each of us fake passports and said, “Here’s the deal. Take your passport, give it to the ‘immigration officer’ who’ll stamp it then run to your cars over there,” he pointed to the curb nearer to the real checkpoint but far enough away not to disrupt the heavy flow of traffic entering from Malaysia, “your clues will be sitting on the dashboard. Make today count. Don’t forget, literally millions of people will be watching this opening scene live today and most of the final shots when you arrive at the finish line, that is except for who actually wins. It will be the greatest teaser for the greatest reality show of all time! Now go and do me proud!”
With passports in hand, we stood there and waited for someone to yell action. I glanced over at the other teams and did a bit of a double take. Derrik and Lydia must have spent the morning in a beauty salon because they were dressed to the nines and were made up to look like superstars. But that wasn’t the most shocking thing I saw. If you could see the state that Norris was in, you would have called off the race then and there. He was drenched in sweat, soaking through the red CARS t-shirt he was wearing from a goody bag he’d received earlier in the week. He was swaying back and forth, moaning, while Quaid steadied him with one hand. He noticed I was staring, shrugged and mouthed, “Hangover.” And that was when I remembered the free flow of Merlyon beer I’d seen him consume the night before.
For a third time, I sighed in relief.
Norris had a hangover, not zombie fever.
There was a second or two there when I thought Norris might be infected with IHS and was ready to bolt away. But that was impossible, he hadn’t been bitten and he’d received the vaccine in Mersing, hadn’t he? I looked at his arm where we’d all seen that long scratch. There was an ace bandage wrapping his forearm concealing the wound.
And just like that Sheldon yelled, “ACTION!” and we were off.
Jamie and I ran to the desk where three ‘immigration officers’ were ready to inspect our passports. Ours was a washed-up funnyman who, after a lifetime of being overexposed and overworked, still occasionally got bit parts on shows like this one. He dramatically stamped it with a giant ‘SINGAPORE’ chop and said with nostalgic flourish, “Chop, Chop! Don’t play play!” and end scene and we ran to our car. Two crewmembers we’d never met before, one with an ultra-expensive looking HD camcorder, the other with a boom microphone on an extendable arm climbed into our backseat.
Now that I was fully trained in the shooting of ‘reality scenes’, I knew to wait until they were settled inside and for the cameraman to give me the ready signal before I grabbed the clue from the dash, tore it open and read it for the audience whom I assumed may still be watching on the live feed.
The clue was a poorly crafted riddle that said:
Mr. Clarke needs help selling his durians. Your key to the next leg of the race will be given after you find his famous stand and feed the tourists one of his sumptuous spiky melons in its entirety.
Jamie listened and shouted in full acting mode, “I know where the durian stand is, Abi! Clarke is Clarke Quay. Strap yourself in! We have a bit of a hectic drive ahead of us.”
I was feeling a bit out of sorts and having a camera poking into my face wasn’t helping. It was as though my consciousness hadn’t absorbed the craziness of the last four days. We had been through so much that going back to pretending we were excited to be in a reality show seemed an impossible task. But it wasn’t just that, the whole encounter with the zombie menace had left me with a strange disconnect with the mechanical civilization that was my life in Singapore. All I could muster was a half-hearted, “Gurrrl Power!”
Jamie gave me an irritated sideways glance that the camera couldn’t see. She pulled the car onto the road and into the stream of traffic. Her head was still in the game.
She began yapping about how great it was to be back in our motherland. I tried to banter back and forth for the camera, but my mind kept flashing back to the night before in Malaysia; the vaccination, mutated zombies running wild and brave Tomas fighting his way through a town teaming with infected to get us to our helicopter and his failed quest to get us to some laboratory in Canada to create a serum to stop a global conspiracy of surgically planned zombie outbreaks.
Jamie entered the AYE expressway and we drove east towards Marina Bay. A few times, the cameraman cleared his throat and pointed to the speedometer when Jamie exceeded five kilometers over the posted limit. The other two teams must have been right behind us, but I didn’t even bother to look back. Like I said, my conscious mind hadn’t processed everything that had happened to Jamie and me and, subconsciously, I was beginning to understand that I no longer cared about the million dollar prize and my dream of a condo with Jamie in Holland V.
We took the Lower Delta Road exit, just before the AYE gave way to the ECP expressway. Clearly, the other two teams thought this was a bad idea because they continued towards the ECP, their trailing camera crews filming our rally car as we curved away on the exit towards the side streets of Bukit Merah. But Jamie must have been prophetic because the roads were clear and we hit every green light. Soon, we were passing through Chinatown and then the Havelock road intersection and Clarke Quay came into view ahead; its gaudy buildings painted as though a child had chosen the bright kaleidoscope of colors and planted tacky alien umbrellas above for shade.
Just over the bridge and around the corner, we parked the car on Canning Lane, a side street next to one of the twenty-four hour nightclubs.
As we got out of the car and ran down one of Clarke Quay’s touristy side streets, the realization that I didn’t care anymore that a million dollars at stake and a life with Jamie chasing boys was nothing but an immature fleeting dream bowled me over like a punch in the gut. I cramped up and plopped down on a bench in front of a shuttered shisha bar.
Jamie stopped and turned back. I could see the glow on Jamie’s face, flushed with the excitement of being a television star and how close we were to winning the competition. She was a vision. It hit me that this very moment was quite possibly the pinnacle of her otherwise mundane existence here on this tiny island. I had to do this for her. I resolved that no matter what was going on in my mind I would ignore it and run my buns off, not for myself, but for Jamie. Before she could ask me what was wrong, I straightened up, put on a big smile for her and the camera and yelled, “I love you, Jamie! We are going to win this thing!” She smiled back, her energy swelling when she saw I was finally back in the game. She grabbed my hand and we ran together swinging our arms and laughing like we did when we were in primary school.
We ran into Trader’s Market in the center of Clarke Quay zigzagging our way around the growing number of gawking tourists and rich housewives with their designer shopping bags who’d just finished their luncheons in the pricey restaurants along the river. There was a bridge that crossed the waterway and right next to it, stinking up the area with the durian’s smell of rotting flesh, was a stall that sold the spiky fruit. The durian stall had survived every incarnation and rebuilding that Clarke Quay had been through since the early 1960’s. We ran up to the stall keeper who turned out to be none other than Aaron Penang. He was an über popular Tua Kee Media artiste who could mainly be seen in high intensity courtroom dramas. He gave us his award winning smile and asked, as if he didn’t know, “What can I do for you two beautiful ladies?”
“One of your juiciest, smelliest durians, please,” Jamie replied holding up one finger.
He leaned down and came up with a gargantuan specimen and chopped it in two with a machete, handing each of us a spiky half.
My heart sank.
The clue said we had to feed this durian to tourists. The putrid smell wafted off the white fleshy edible bulbs in the center. It would take forever to convince enough of them to eat this.