by Keith Taylor
I look down at my notes, but can’t find the right page. Paul’s claims would later seem accurate, according to Twitter and Facebook archives reconstructed in the days after the outbreak and reported by Al Jazeera and the BBC. The first social media reports came from the Silom area at Sala Daeng, a station on the BTS line in Bangkok’s central business district, at 14:32. Seventeen minutes later tweets began to flood in from around the stations further to the north and south. They radiated out along the BTS and MRT lines (the overhead and underground train lines that served central Bangkok) for a little more than twenty minutes before the cell networks became overloaded with traffic and the 4G signal dropped out.
Songkran is too crazy for me this year. Lots of fights on Silom Road. Heading home.*
*Text translated from the original Thai. The tweet was accompanied by a blurred photo that appears to have been taken through the window of the McDonalds at the south end of the road, around fifty feet from the bulk of the crowd. The photo clearly shows a teen boy biting a middle aged woman on the thigh.
“I didn’t even want to be there, to be honest. I was too old for water fights two decades ago, and the idea of getting doused with dirty water by a few thousand drunk kids didn’t sound like my idea of a fun Saturday. You ever spend time in Bangkok during Songkran?”
I shake my head. I'd left Thailand two weeks before the outbreak to work on a story on illegal logging up in Vientiane, Laos.
“It’s a bloody disgrace. It used to be traditional to wash your shrines and images of Buddha with fragrant water during Thai new year, but over the years that nice little tradition somehow turned into a drunken week long water fight. Every year hundreds die in drink driving accidents, and already there’d been a few murders in the city. Just drunk fights getting out of hand. It gets worse every year.” He shakes his head with disgust.
“Now Sala Daeng, that’s Songkran ground central in Bangkok. They shut down a section of Silom Road, everyone loads up on cheap booze and for days the whole street becomes a huge party. Thousands of people chuck buckets of water at each other, spray each other with water guns and throw around a ton of minty chalk shit. Not sure what it is, but that was what started it.”
I frown, confused. “How do you mean?”
“It was the powder they throw at each other. It’s like... what do you call it, talcum powder, but it smells like mint. They love to soak you with water then cake you with the stuff. Nasty shit at the best of times, but this stuff was different. This was bright yellow, like turmeric. Nobody else was throwing yellow shit, and from where I was standing up on the flyover I could see exactly what was happening. There was this weird little group of people in the middle of the action, white folks dressed like they’d just come from church, with heads shaved clean like Buddhist monks. They were the ones throwing the yellow stuff, and everywhere they threw it people started acting like they’d been hit with tear gas, trying to blink it out of their eyes. It was like the stuff was burning their skin. A few people fell to the ground, and the rest tried to pour water in their eyes to clear them. Too late, of course. It all went to shit pretty quickly after that. Thank you, my dear.”
These last words are to the waitress, who sets down two fresh bottles wrapped in foam coolers (beer condoms, as Paul describes them). He hands over a wad of cash, tipping the waitress heavily, and lifts his bottle unsteadily. He’d been drinking for hours before I arrived, and after taking a long pull on the ice cold beer he excuses himself, pushes back his chair and stumbles unsteadily towards the men’s room.
At 1,000 baht (around $35) a bottle, Paul is one of the few who can still enjoy the dwindling supply of Thai beer here in the interim capital of Hua Hin. He’s done the rounds on the morning shows, popping up via satellite on news broadcasts around the world to support the official story of the Thai government, a job for which he’s been paid extremely well. Not a day has gone by in the last two months without this handsome, square jawed Australian appearing on our screens to rail against the Iranians, telling the same story of a massive terrorist attack; of white vans roaming the streets, spraying down the sidewalks with a fine mist. He spoke of masked ‘Arabs’ (his word, not mine) throwing what he described as tear gas canisters into crowds of civilians.
The new military junta has used Paul as a tool, hailing him as a hero for his escape from the dead city. He fought bravely through a million-strong crowd of the walking dead to bring word of the Islamic terrorists to the wider world, and his story has served to bolster support for the new government both at home and abroad, allowing it to award itself ever more emergency powers in the name of national security. The junta now has complete control of Thailand from this coastal stronghold, and few knowledgeable commenters really believe the promises of a return to democratic elections by next summer.
For our part the western media is captivated by the spectacle. Of the nine million Thais who lived in the capital city almost half were wiped from the face of the earth in the space of just a few hours. Of those not a single man, woman or child made it out alive from the Silom area, the origin of the outbreak, apart from this man who could, conveniently, be played by Hugh Jackman in the movie. When it’s inevitably made it will save Hollywood the effort of convincing western audiences that Jackie Chan came from Bangkok.
Paul wobbles back to the table, and as I see him approach I steady our bottles to make sure he won’t upset them as he sits. At these prices I can’t afford to spill a drop.
“I’ve only gone and broke the seal,” he says, landing heavily in his chair. “Five hours without a piss, and now I’ll be up and down every ten minutes.”
“Paul, why don’t you walk me through what really happened?” My tone is a little impatient. I’ve been waiting for two hours now while he rambles aimlessly, dropping hints here and there that the story he’d peddled on TV had been as scripted as any soap opera. He’d been the one to reach out to me, not the other way around, and I’m quickly running out of money while he struggles with his conscience.
Paul visibly sobers in front of me. He sighs, reaching for his bound bundle of acrid, hand rolled Indian beedis – the only thing, he says, that blocks out the smell of the undead. He lights one with my fake Zippo and offers the bundle to me. I shake my head and reach for one of my own Marlboro Lights from what must surely be one of the last packs in Thailand.
“OK, here’s the truth. It started near the containers of yellow powder. A few of the kids rubbing their eyes, they just went crazy. One cop was helping pour water into the eyes of a little boy, a tiny kid no higher than your waist, and I was staring right at them when the little one launched into him with his fists. The cop slapped him hard and he went down, but by then a few more around him were turning. Poor fucker never stood a chance.”
I glance at my notes. “And you were on the flyover at the time, above the street? What about Ogi?”
Paul visibly flinches at the mention of his wife of four years.
“Yeah, I was well out of it. I was up on the pedestrian walkway above the street, armed with nothing but a fucking camera. Ogi wanted to get in amongst them and get wet, but I was recovering from a broken rib so I didn’t want to get jostled. I lost track of her the moment she got down to street level.” He stares intently at his beer, once again peeling the label. “Only spotted her once after that.”
I wait patiently for Paul to continue, sensing he won’t respond well to further prodding.
“Anyway... Once the first couple of guys turned the people around them started to notice. They were right on the edge, near the blockade at Soi Convent, and for a moment even the guys closest to them didn’t know what to make of it. They just watched as a group of people launched themselves at the cop. I think they were more surprised than anything else. In Thailand, even drunks don’t dare attack cops. That’s the quickest way to earn yourself a trip to the hospital.” He takes a swig from his beer and lets out a soft, bitter chuckle.
“You want to know why people took a few seconds to get th
e picture? There was no biting, not at first. We’ve seen too many zombie movies. We think these things are just teeth on legs, groaning and biting chunks of flesh out of anything with a heartbeat. Zombies – yeah, I know I shouldn’t be calling them that – they only bite when they’re hungry. That’s why most of Bangkok ended up dead rather than infected. Zombies will sooner beat you to death than eat you for lunch.”
He falls silent for a moment, pulling angrily on his cigarette. “I tell you, George Romero should be shot. People were taken by surprise, acting like they were up against movie monsters. I saw a lot of people try to stand their ground with improvised weapons, expecting to give these fuckers a quick crack on the head when they lumbered in. They must have had the fright of their lives when the undead came sprinting, throwing their fists just as hard as real people.”
“How did they attack?” I know the answer already. I’ve seen the snatches of shaky, low-res video a few people around the city managed to upload before the signal dropped out.
“The truth is they’re not so different from us. The only real difference is that regular humans have a little switch in their head that tells them to stop punching when the other guy goes down. The infected don't. It's like their anger is turned up to eleven. These bastards attacked like they were on PCP, fucking vicious, like a beaten wife who’s had enough after years of taking the belt. They used everything they had. Fists. Feet. Fingernails. By the time they were finished with the cop there wasn’t much left. Even his eyes were gouged out. Nobody was eating him, though. I guess they weren’t peckish.”
“Had people started panicking?”
“No, not at first. It only started to go crazy when the group backed away from the cop. That’s when people saw it wasn’t a regular fight. No way you could make that mistake, not after seeing the body.” He stops for a moment as a young family walks by the table, then leans in and continues with a low voice. “You ever seen a riot? A real one, I mean. Not just a protest, but a full on riot? You wouldn’t believe it until you saw one. You just can’t imagine how much power there is in a crowd. You’d think you could just slip out and get to the edge, but it doesn’t work like that. As soon as those things turned towards the crowd, that’s when people started to panic. There were enough of the things to block the street, so there was only one way to run: back into the crowd. As soon as that happened, everyone was doomed.”
I think I understand what he means. I remember watching footage of the Hillsborough disaster as a child. 96 people died and almost 800 were injured when crowds at a British soccer stadium crushed forward against crowd control barriers during a cup semi-final. The people at the back of the crowd had no idea they were killing people. There was no way they could have known.
“The problem with Sala Daeng is that you’ve got a few thousand people packed into a tight space. There’s music, laughter, yelling. No way anyone could hear the screaming over the noise. People started to push and shove desperately into the crowd, but what else is new? The crowd just pushed right back and threw their water. It wasn’t until someone knocked over the big speakers at the side of the street that the music cut out, and suddenly everyone could hear the screams.”
For a moment Paul seems to drift away. His eyes lose their focus, and when he continues it’s with an odd tone, as if he’s reading from a script.
“A scream is... it’s a strange noise. You’ve been hearing them all your life in the movies, but real screams don’t sound like that. Actors can’t do ‘em justice. It’s like the difference between a fake laugh and a real one, you know? You can’t mistake it. What I heard that day I pray never to hear again. People were screaming so much their voices gave out, but it still wasn’t loud enough to drown out the pleading. People were begging for mercy even as their bones broke.” He shivers despite the close heat.
“One girl, some skinny blonde tourist with a long ponytail, panicked and tried to run through the pack to get back to Soi Convent. One of them grabbed her hair, easy as you like, and just tugged it right off her head. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. Fucker just pulled and pulled until her whole scalp just slipped off. Someone must have bit her in the crowd, because she was back on her feet a minute later and joining in the fight for the other side, that ponytail still hanging by a strip of skin halfway down her neck.”
I cringe with disgust at the image. I’ve seen a few walkers with horrific injuries, thankfully on TV rather than up close, and it’s all I can do not to wonder how they’d come by them. I thank God I’d never had to watch as someone was turned, or killed.
“Everyone else, of course, pushed right into the crowd. Once the music was gone and people started to hear the screams they all started to shove, but when you’ve got a few thousand people crowding down half a mile of narrow street it’s impossible to get everyone moving as one. Hundreds were trampled. The unlucky ones at the back... well, they were torn to shreds pretty quickly. The really lucky ones, those at the other end of the street, some of them must have managed to get away, but it was the people in the middle who lasted the longest. They were squeezed in by the crowds. Some of them managed to stay on their feet. Maybe some even managed to slip away into the shops along the street. That’s what I hoped Ogi had done.”
“You said you saw her again? In the crowd?”
Paul falls silent for a moment. He stubs out his beedi on the surface of the wooden table, ignoring the ashtray by his bottle.
“Yeah, I... I think so. Seems stupid to say this, but I can’t be sure. You know how people say all Asians look alike? Well, it’s bullshit. Ogi was Mongolian, looked more Korean than anything else. She definitely didn’t look Thai. In that crowd, though, I couldn’t have picked her out if she’d been wearing a big sign. Almost everyone had black hair, and I was looking down from above. Everyone was moving too much, squeezing, pushing, pulling. The whole crowd moved like the ocean, waves of movement pulling people this way and that. Some people tried to scramble over the top of the scrum, only to fall down and get trampled beneath thousands of feet.
“I think I saw her dress. She was wearing this long, flowing blue floral thing I’d bought for her a couple of weeks earlier in Cambodia. She loved that dress. Said it made her feel like a Parisian, whatever that means. I think I saw it. I saw a figure clambering up on a big ceramic planter at the side of the street, and I saw that flash of floral blue for just a second or two. Whether she fell, jumped or was pulled I have no idea. I just know she vanished backwards behind the plants, and that was the last I saw.”
“Did you try to call her phone?” I ask.
Paul shoots me a withering look. “Of course I tried to fucking call,” he snaps. “I called, I sent texts. I called her sister. I called all of our friends. The network was busy every time. Of course that was later, after I got out of Silom. When it all started I had my own problems to deal with. There’s another thing I’d like to speak to Romero about. These things are quick as hell. As long as they haven’t injured their legs they’re just as fast as you and me. It’s only later that they slow down, when their joints dry out. When it all kicked off, though... shit, they could move.”
“You were chased?”
Paul nods. “I was chased. I made the same stupid ‘movie zombie’ mistake as everyone else. I assumed I was safe up on the walkway above the street. It never occurred to me that these things could climb stairs. I didn’t think they could think. I wasn't all that worried about my own safety until I heard a scream to my right, and I turned just in time to see a young Thai woman tip over the railings as she ran to escape a small group that had managed to climb the stairs. She landed down on the street with her legs straight, feet first, just behind the pack. I probably imagined it, but I'd swear I heard her bones snap. I don't know. All I know is that she was still alive and awake as they began to close in on her. I didn’t have time to watch what happened next, even if I'd wanted to.” Paul plays with his bundle of beedis for a moment, but doesn't light one.
“One of
the group that made it up the stairs locked eyes with me. Just stared me down from fifty feet away. For a moment – and I know this is stupid – I wondered if I could just slowly back away, no sudden movements, as if I was dealing with one of those crazy soi dogs that run around the city. No chance. The second I twitched he started sprinting at me. You know, people who’ve seen the movies will tell you there’s nothing more terrifying than a zombie shambling towards you, groaning all the way like Frankenstein’s monster. Film critics say there’s something about the slow, unrelenting pace that taps into our primal fear, but if you’re ever unlucky enough to meet a freshly turned fucker you’ll know it’s bullshit. I’ll see your groaning zombie and raise you a pair of my damp trousers that there’s nothing more terrifying than one of them silently sprinting at you full pelt. Fortunately mine hadn’t been too quick on his feet when he was alive. He was a little heavy, and he seemed to have trouble running in his sandals. I kicked mine off my feet and shot off down the walkway, towards the MRT station at the end of Silom Road.”
I glance down at the hastily sketched map in my pad. “Isn’t that where the rest of the infected were heading, too?”
“Yeah, but I had the advantage that I wasn’t stopping along the way to tear thousands of people to pieces. The walkway was almost empty, and I soon passed over the crowd. Before long the one chasing me peeled off, too. I risked a look behind me and saw him throw himself over the railing back down to the street, where he landed right in the middle of a group of kids trying to escape. That’s one thing that came in handy. They’ll always go for the easiest target. If you can run them in the direction of a limping granny you’ll probably get away safe.”
Paul notices my expression.