Let’s see, I wrecked the limo when I slammed through the display window earlier. Hmm. I could try to steal one of those cars peppered through the lot below. But the chances of them having keys, let alone, being unlocked were slim. Shit. With all the roamers down there, there isn’t enough time to break a window and attempt to hot wire one without those half a dozen infected skulking around in the darkness noticing.
For the first time since he became involved in the zombie fever pandemic, Tomas was afraid that he might not make it out alive. It wasn’t the multitude of grotesquely swollen zombies infected with the original strain he was worried about. No, it was Vitura’s bio-engineered second generation of infected that frightened him. There were too many of those quick-on-their-feet mutated zombies in the vicinity for him to expect an escape on foot. From what he had observed on the hectic drive into town, there was at least one mutated zombie for every five zombies infected with the original strain.
I’ll never make it to the fence before they ripped me to shreds. I need, at a minimum, several large caliber guns, a grenade belt and a protective bio-suit like the ones Abigail and her friend were wearing for the show. So I guess the SUV is my only chance to get out of here in one piece.
It was a long shot, but he decided that his only nearby means of escaping the quarantine zone was the abandoned SUV that the reality show team had left behind. That is, if it had keys and enough fuel to get him back to Johor. If it was locked, keyless or empty of fuel, it would mean certain death.
Tomas readied to shimmy down the power pole and sneak across the lot to the other side of the shopping center but froze when he heard a scraping sound of metal sliding along on pavement.
He leaned down and peered into the darkness below.
It was next to impossible to see anything, but his ear told him the sound was a couple yards to his east.
There was another noise, more like a clang, from an alleyway across the street and a burning tire rolled out, which wasn’t surprising as most the town surrounding the shopping center was ablaze. The tire bumped into a nearby car and settled on the ground, casting enough light for Tomas to make out the herky-jerky movements of a zombie pulling the carcass of a shopkeeper by a length of purple intestines.
During his four years fighting against Vitura and tracking the contagion, this was the first time he’d seen a zombie do anything other than meander around looking for an easy kill. It was as if this zombified schoolmarm had a purpose in her actions other than the instant gratification of the feed.
Tomas had never come across zombie behavior that didn’t have a direct causal link to the hunger. Even while searching for a cure with Dr. Greer in the Vancouver laboratory and in the field studies he had covertly assembled during the initial outbreaks in Guangzhou, Hetang Island and Phnom Penh, there was no indication that an infected had even a rudimentary mental capacity other than pure instinctual urges. The original strain of zombie fever destroyed too much of the cerebrum for this type of behavior.
It’s as if this zombie is saving some of her meal for tomorrow.
The metallic scraping continued as the zombie lurched along with its catch.
Tomas noticed a glint of steel in the hand of the half-eaten corpse being dragged along.
The dead shopkeeper still had a parang, an Indonesian machete, secured to his wrist with a leather strap. The parang was sliding along the blacktop with a sound as irritating as nails on a blackboard.
Tomas wanted that blade.
The infected woman shuffled underneath his position, continuing towards the rear of the lot.
Tomas shimmied down the pole, jumped to the ground and crouched low, making sure there weren’t any other infected nearby. He found a half a cinderblock with a nice heft in the weeds beside the derelict parking lot.
The infected woman continued pulling the carcass along, the tip of the parang scraping a thin line in the soot blanketing the pavement.
With only a couple of feet between them, Tomas made his move. He hurled the cinderblock and it smacked into the zombie’s head. She collapsed on the ground, unconscious from the blow.
Tomas knew he would be negligent in his duties as a self-described ‘bad ass, zombie fighting crusader’ if he didn’t get a sample of mutated zombie fever for Dr. Greer before he got out of the quarantine zone. And this specimen’s conduct … well, something was going on inside its head unlike anything that had been observed in the preceding strain of infected.
I think Dr. Greer would agree that the best sample would be from brain tissue, not merely a blood sample,
Tomas decided. If there was one thing his experiences in the field had taught him, it was to make do with what you had. And what was a better travel container for a brain but the human skull.
He slipped the parang off the shopkeeper’s wrist and tested its weight in his hand.
Then he set to work obtaining his tissue sample.
It took a few swift chops to the back of the infected woman’s neck with the sharp blade and the head was severed from its body. He watched in the firelight as the greenish blood oozed out of the headless corpse, pooling on the ground in front of him.
Tomas felt no remorse for ending the woman’s life in such a manner. He knew she was doomed to a death from exposure to the elements or from the flame-throwers of the WHO paratroopers descending on the small town in the morning. The way he looked at it, he may have saved a few uninfected townsfolk from her rabid bites.
If Tomas could have felt even an ounce of remorse for killing the infected, that sort of empathy had died long ago with the death of his father.
With the severed head in one hand and the parang in the other, Tomas ran towards the shadows surrounding the shopping center. He didn’t know if there would be a surprise awaiting him in the gloom, but he felt naked standing in the open parking lot.
Tomas leaned against the cement building. The walls were still warm from the tropical sun. He slid along the wall towards the front of the mall where his D’luge limo and the armored SUV were jutting out of the display window.
Tomas peered around the corner and was heartened to see that there were still some people left fighting against the infected. The remaining bloated zombies in the area were being hacked and bludgeoned to death by a dozen townsfolk armed with kitchen knives and garden equipment. He tiptoed past the crowd and made it to the broken display window.
He slid in between the limo and SUV and sunk to his knees. Pausing to catch his breath, he took a closer look at the severed head in his left hand. Disgusted, he pulled the jellied tangled mass of hair off the back of his hand and arm; the bloody strands were beginning to solidify on his skin in a webbing of gore.
He crawled to the middle of the vehicles and popped his head up to look into the SUV interior and saw the keys dangling from the ignition.
Thank God,
he thought,
but before I go, I need to get my belongings.
Tomas set the severed head on the limo’s hood against the windshield. When he had crashed the limo earlier, he had made it a point to leave the driver’s door open in the event he had to retreat back inside if he found that the shopping center was infested with zombies. He climbed into the front seat to retrieve the cardboard box he had hastily packed with files and his laptop. Then he took the box and went around to the SUV, its white exterior covered in swaths of dried green goo. He opened the passenger’s door and dumped the contents of the cardboard box on the seat, then went back around the limo, placed the schoolmarm’s head in the box and set it carefully on the floor of the backseat.
There was a twisted mess of female mannequins lying underneath the car in flowing robes and headscarves. He wiped the stickiness from his hands and arms as best he could on their dresses, reminding himself not to touch his face until he found some disinfecting soap and scalding hot water.
Sensing trouble, Tomas sprang up and jumped into the seat of the SUV, slamming the door shut behind him. Two crazed infected appeared from the dark interior of the department store. They scrambled onto the SUV, clawing and gnawing at Tomas through the windshield.
These mutant zombies were faster, more agile and aggressive than their predecessors. If his theory was correct then the IHS-2 virus wasn’t entirely burning out its host’s reasoning capabilities. But watching these two infected try to grab at him through glass, Tomas noted that they hadn’t retained all their reasoning skills. They still didn’t remember how to open a car door.
Tomas laughed the stressed laugh of someone who narrowly avoided death, knowing he had only just evaded the horror of being eaten alive.
He fumbled around for a few moments, taking stock of the meager supplies inside the vehicle. The team driving the SUV must have made a pit stop at a gas station. There were packs of menthol cigarettes lying on the floor, and bags of chips, candy bars and sodas strewn across the dashboard. Tomas popped open one of the warm colas and chugged it down.
The zombies beat on the windshield, making strange mewling noises of frustration at their lack of progress.
When he was finished with the soda, he reached inside the glove compartment and found a pencil. He picked up a paper sack discarded on the floor and began writing detailed observations of the zombies with the detachment of the scientist he had become. He noted iris dilation, their reactions when he pressed a finger against the glass and he counted the number of biting motions in a minute. Then he tried to freehand a general impression about the odd jerky motions they made when they turned their heads and gauge the time between seeing and reacting. He concluded that those infected with this new strain acted as if their host bodies were under a delayed control, like the brain was giving instructions and, like a puppeteer, the limbs would follow but with a slight delay and lack of accuracy.
I don’t think they have the fine motor control required to pick up small objects with their fingers, turn doorknobs, etc.
, he told himself.
However, as he finished writing this thought, one of the zombies on the hood grabbed one of the windshield wipers, tore it off, then began banging it against the windshield. The other zombie saw what the first had done and ripped the other one off the vehicle and began using it to pound against the windshield.
Before stuffing the note-covered bag into the pile of files on the passenger seat, Tomas finished his notes with a final thought:
These new infected seemed to have the ability to learn and adapt to new situations
.
He reached for the car keys dangling in front of him, saying a little prayer under his breath, turned the ignition and the SUV fired to life, its engine roaring in a guttural tongue, blue smoke billowing out of the exhaust in the rear.
Perhaps the zombies on the hood sensed they were about to lose their meal. They began frantically clawing and pounding on the windshield. The windshield cracked under their frenzied assault then it began to fracture in circular patterns where their fists holding the wipers continued to pound.
Tomas threw the gearshift into reverse and gunned the engine.
The SUV jerked, then accelerated out of the display window into the parking lot, dragging helpless mannequins underneath and flinging the two zombies back into the store.
Fearing the commotion would attract more infected lurking in the area, Tomas stomped on the accelerator, whipping the SUV around and raced out of the parking lot.
He raced down the street he had driven the teams along to the shopping center less than an hour ago in the limo, the SUV rumbling over corpses and the occasional zombie who got in his way.
Tomas glanced down at the fuel gauge and pinched his lips grimly together when he saw it was well below the empty mark.
Doesn’t matter,
he reasoned,
my only chance of getting out of this pocket of infestation is to clear the town limits. If I don’t make it to within a couple miles of the fence with the gas I have, I’ll end up as zombie breakfast.
Fifteen minutes later and the SUV continued to race along even when Tomas was sure there shouldn’t be a drop of fuel left in the tank. He briefly wondered whether it was due to his prayer, before he noticed the fuel line snaking between the two front seats. When he hit a clear spot on the road out of town, he flipped on the interior light and looked back. In his rush to get away from the shopping center, he hadn’t noticed the large drum of reserve fuel rigged in the rear of the vehicle. There was a gauge on the valve stem that read a quarter full.
Of course, the reality show producers would have given their teams enough fuel to make it to the checkpoint
.
They weren’t trying to kill the team members after all.
Abandoned cars made it difficult to maneuver along the road. Tomas had to back up every few hundred yards and find a way around. Overhead, the moonlight shone on the road and surrounding fields of guava and starfruit.
After about an hour of driving, Tomas could see the spotlights on the hastily erected quarantine zone fence. Zombies were attracted to bright lights. These lights were intended to draw any stray infected in the area to the more heavily fortified parts of the fence and keep them away from weaker, unmanned stretched along the perimeter. As he drew closer, he could see they were doing their job. Hundreds of bloated bags of virus-filled corpses lay scattered in an arcing pattern in front of the gate.
There was a lot of movement along the fence as he approached. He could see WHO paratroopers scrambling along the top and in sentry towers in preparation for the approaching SUV.
Tomas decided it was best to show he was a friendly. When he approached to within two hundred yards of the gate, he began flipping the headlamps on in an S.O.S. Morse code pattern: three short, three long, three short. He slowed to a crawl and continued signaling, crunching over bodies in his path, their taunt limbs bursting fluids onto the SUV undercarriage.