For Jamie and I, this was all good news.
“At least we could eliminate northern Malaysia from our list of potential race destinations during the competition,” I reasoned, “but I do wonder how Sheldon is going to get us back across the border to Singapore when filming is wrapped up.”
“I’d guess by boat or plane,” Jamie said.
The waitress brought us a couple of cans of warm, generic isotonic beverage and straws.
“On the house,” she mumbled and went back to her table to finish her noodle lunch.
Slowly the rest of the teams trickled in. First Quaid and Norris and then Derrik and Lydia after another ten minutes, then Ahmed and Ted a bit later and after another thirty minutes, Meng and Esther joined the rest of us at the tables.
We were all safe and everyone was in a jovial and victorious mood considering we’d made it through the first day of events. We laughed. Tucker and Yvonne were doomed. They hadn’t even arrived at the resort yet and Ted joked at their misfortune, ‘Let’s shed some crocodile tears for the lovey-doveys.’ We wiped away fake tears, crying ‘Boo-hoo’ and then breaking out in hysterical laughter, the zombie reports on the television overhead now forgotten.
Kip, Sheldon’s assistant came into the restaurant, announcing to the teams, “Stay put until the last team has completed the waterfall event and crossed the finish line to Gemma.” Kip explained, “Even though they’re going to be eliminated, they still have to be filmed doing the scene for editing later.”
Sure enough, right in the middle of Kip’s announcement, there was a screeching of tires and roaring of a red-lined engine. We got up out of our seats and rushed over to the railing to watch Rally Car 2 racing across the lot towards us, hazard lights flashing and horn honking.
“Brace yourselves! They’re going way too fast!” Norris shouted as they careened across the pavement, then over the manicured bushes. The out of control sedan screeched by our parked cars, narrowly missing our vehicle and drove right up the disabled ramp and into the hotel lobby, ricocheting off one of the building’s support columns and smashing into an artsy cement structure in the center of the lobby, defacing a mural of hand painted rainforest critters.
We couldn’t tell who was driving through all the engine smoke and steam and because the driver’s side was now crumpled against the cement structure.
There was stunned silence.
We stood frozen until Sheldon and some crewmen came rushing through the lobby towards their car.
The passenger door swung open and Tucker climbed out of the smashed sedan. He then turned and helped Yvonne climb over from the driver’s side` and steadied her beside him.
They both looked shell shocked.
Yvonne swooned, barely remaining standing as Tucker went to the rear of his auto and opened the back door.
Obviously, their heads were no longer in the race.
We expected to see their cameraman get out, but instead Tucker lifted out an unconscious Malay boy in his arms. Yvonne came up behind him, doing her best to provide assistance. Their cameraman followed the boy out of the backseat and, like the professional reality TV cameraman that he was, continued filming.
“Someone help!” Tucker croaked carrying the limp body through the lobby.
But there would be no help from the resort staff.
Staring at the boy, the hotel receptionist behind the tall desk picked up the telephone and whispered into it. She then turned and vanished into the backroom. The waitress and cook disappeared through the swinging kitchen door clicking and clacking against the doorstop in their wake. There was no sign of any other staff.
Tucker set the child down on a lounge sofa in the reception area. The boy couldn’t have been more than nine years old. He was covered in a thick coating of perspiration and dried blood. He seemed to be grinding his teeth and in a deep comatose state.
Yvonne ran into the restaurant’s kitchen and came back with icepacks and linen napkins. Yvonne set the icepacks around the boy’s head and neck then took a napkin and began wiping the sweat from the boy’s arms and bared chest.
We stood together some distance away watching those two with the boy.
I glanced over at Jamie and she had fear in her eyes.
I knew what she was thinking.
This boy was infected.
We watched as Yvonne wiped perspiration and blood off his body, taking the cloth napkins and mopping at the wetness until they were fully saturated. We could see the boy’s sweat mingling with her own as she unconsciously wiped her brow with one of the napkins, running it over a fresh scratch on her forehead.
Kip and Sheldon were trying to find out what happened from Tucker. It was clear that Tucker was shaken from what they’d witnessed but he still had enough of his senses to tell them what had happened. He backed away from Yvonne and the boy and began whispering, sometimes jumbling up his words when he was interrupted by hitching sobs that shook him to the core.
According to Tucker, and confirmed later by their cameraman’s tape, they were driving along the expressway towards the resort knowing they were behind the rest of the teams but still hopeful they could catch up. The expressway was nearly completely jammed up with traffic heading south. We didn’t see any of that and must have barely missed the beginning of the mass exodus of Malaysians heading away from the contagion. Just as they were nearing the exit, a pick-up truck approaching from the opposite direction smashed into the centre concrete barrier and jumped the median, rolling three or four times in their lane towards their rally car.
Yvonne, who was a sub-par driver to say the least, had the good sense to swerve out of the way of the rolling pickup. But instead of driving on, she braked and reversed to where it had stopped rolling and sitting upright, leaking fuel and oil underneath its flattened wheels. Tucker got out and ran to the truck to see if he could help the passengers inside.
There were four bodies jammed against the dashboard. The back seat was now empty because at impact with the cement barrier the rear passengers had flown over the seat and hit the windshield nearly as quickly as the passengers in front. It looked like a family; a mother, father, daughter and grandmother. They were a tangled mess of broken arms and exposed leg bones and dashboard. The father had been driving as evidenced by the steering wheel jutting into his neck and now empty jugular vein.
At first glance, it seemed as if no one had survived that initial impact with the cement barrier, considering the brutal carnage inside. Then Tucker saw that the mother was still moving. He couldn’t believe she was alive, he could see the whiteness of her collar bone glistening in the balmy afternoon heat. He didn’t realize he was putting himself in a vulnerable position as he leaned into the window to get closer, as it looked as if she were trying to tell him something. Tucker leaned even further forward over the dead grandmother, trying to make out what the woman was saying.
He had his face next to her lips and it took a moment for him to realize that she wasn’t speaking, but chewing. Tucker jerked back as the mother turned her head away from him towards her dead husband and tore the fleshy knob from his ear with her broken teeth and continued to dine. That’s when he finally saw that her wrists and feet were bound with nylon cord and there was a gag hanging loosely around her neck that had come free in the accident.
‘Berjalan penyakit,’ Tucker whispered, the blood draining from his face as the full impact of where he was and what he was witnessing just a hair’s breadth away hit home. He took a step back from the pickup and looked around the wreckage for some sort of weapon to put the infected woman out of her misery. There was a hefty golfer’s umbrella on the ground among the debris. Tucker picked it up, tested its weight and went back to the truck window where he proceeded to jam the pointy end into the zombie woman’s eye, the signature green goo running down her face. He pushed and pushed on the umbrella until she quit squirming and lay as still as the rest of her family. “They must have been trying to get her help in Johor,” he said. A futile effort, because, as we all knew, the infected could never recover from the brain damage from the fever. The mantra from the television ‘experts’ reminded people of this on a daily basis; while the infected were still technically alive, they were no longer the people you knew and could never be cured.
Tucker staggered back to his rally car and sat heavily in the passenger seat and their cameraman pulled the camera back through the window, having filmed the entire scene from the safety of their rally car. Cars were swerving around the vehicle, flying by at expressway speed, narrowly avoiding collision, again and again.
Tucker finally spoke, “Let’s go before the authorities arrive. We can’t afford to wait around to give statements. We’re in a race.” Yvonne waited until there was a gap in the speeding traffic and slowly pulled around the wrecked truck.
“Don’t look inside,” Tucker told her. But she couldn’t help looking into the cab. Tears welled in sympathy when she saw the battered faces of the dead. Yvonne wiped the tears on her sleeve and, out of the corner of her eye, noticed a little boy standing beside the road, almost invisible as he blended in with the shadows of the overhanging vegetation. His clothes were torn and bloody. He must have been inside the truck and was ejected through an open window when it rolled.
She slammed on the brakes. Their cameraman had been leaning forward filming her reaction. He was flung forward into the back of Yvonne’s seat, smacking her in the head with the camcorder, opening a gash of crimson on the side of her head as the edge of the camera’s lens scraped along her scalp just above her ear.
Yvonne barely even noticed the wound to her head. She was transfixed by the small boy covered in blood, staring back at the wreckage they’d just passed. This time, it was she who jumped out of the car. She got out so quickly that Tucker had to reach over, jam on the emergency brake and set the still moving car into park.
When she reached the boy, he collapsed in her arms.
Tucker and the cameraman helped Yvonne lay the boy in the backseat.
“And now we’re here,” Tucker finished.
The boy began to moan and convulse on the lounge chair.
Sheldon gave Kip an order under his breath. Kip went into the café, took a table cloth from a table and began tearing off long strips. Ignoring Yvonne’s protests, he tied the boy’s arms and legs together and when he was finished he rushed to the toilet to scrub his hands and arms.
Sheldon turned to the teams who were gaping at the unfolding scene near the café’s open doors, “Okay, people. I have your room keys,” he held them up and gave them a jingle, “Get your luggage from your cars and go to your rooms for now. We need to take care of this situation.” He thought for a moment, “Team interviews are cancelled for the time being. You can change out of those soiled clothes into more comfortable attire. If we need you for re-shoots in the morning, we’ll inform you tonight. For your own safety, please remain in your rooms for the time being.”
We stood there frozen until Quaid called out authoritatively, “You heard the boss, get moving!”
That broke the spell.
We made our way around the totaled rally car, now a fixture in the interior of the hotel lobby, trying to skirt around the area of lounge that was now possibly teeming with the virus. We retrieved our bags and followed Kip to our rooms.
The rooms were sparse but clean. I was disappointed to find two twin beds in our room, preferring to cozy up to Jamie in the same bed. But she was happy, preferring as usual to sleep in separate beds, claiming I had the ‘jimmy legs’ and would kick and knee her tushy throughout the night when we slept together.
I sat at the foot of my bed, took the remote and turned on the television to see what stations we could pick up. There was nothing but fuzz and when I called down to the reception desk to complain there was no answer. Bored, we rummaged through the cabinets below the TV and found a DVD player and some Hong Kong action movies and Malay serial dramas. I was already getting antsy being locked up and we’d only been in the hotel room for twenty minutes.
I looked at my watch, it was only 4.30 pm.
“Let’s do some exploring.” I suggested.
We took a couple of bottles of water from the mini-fridge and opened our door. But there was Felix, across from our room on a folding chair reading a newspaper and eating an apple. He looked up from his paper as I opened the door and firmly shook his head, ‘No’.
I closed the door.
Crap.
Jamie flopped back onto one of the beds, “I guess we nap,” was all she said, closing her eyes.
But I wasn’t tired so I put in one of the Malay dramas and tried to follow along without English subtitles.
The hours ticked by.
Around six thirty, there was a knock on the door. Felix was standing there holding our ‘dinner’ which consisted of polystyrene containers crammed with bee hoon noodles, bits of boney chicken and stir fry veggies. “Looks like we’re confined to quarters for the night,” I told Jamie who was still lying on her bed feigning sleep. Felix nodded and shut the door.
It was very frustrating to be locked away like prisoners. And both of us were going through withdrawals from lack of internet and mobile devices. It was a complete lack of social media, period. I tried the front desk again to check on the television but there was still no answer from reception. I called half a dozen times just to see if someone would answer, letting the phone ring for five minutes at a time. Then I opened the door to see if Felix had anything to say, but he wasn’t talking to us either. After I closed the door, we could hear him and the other cameramen guarding the other team’s doors down the hall, chatting away in Malay, laughing and gossiping, oblivious to our needs.
We were so bored we went to sleep around eight when we, the chattiest of girls, ran out of things to talk about.
Crack!
Deep into the night a loud noise woke the two of us.
It was a loud blast ringing out from the darkness.
“What was that?” Jamie whispered from her bed.