Zombie Fever: Outbreak

by Hodges, B. M.

  Derrik and Ted were already far ahead and neck and neck.

  As soon as the race began, Ahmed began bragging to the rest of us spectators that Ted’s favorite hobby was go-karting. “Ted’s been racing nearly every weekend for the last two years around mini-tracks back in home. He even owns his own go-kart and keeps it at a private track for members only in Pasir Ris,” he boasted. It came as no surprise to me. I mean obviously Ted and Ahmed came from money. You could see the glow of privilege on them just by taking note of their branded clothes and expensive sporty man bags. And the grape vine confirmed it. A couple of days earlier, Kip had been in a gossiping mood at a luncheon after shooting webisodes and had told us that Ahmed was a successful investment banker and hit it off with Ted while helping to administer his trust fund a few years earlier. That’s why they’re such jokesters, I thought, I’d be telling jokes all the time too if my life were so carefree.

  Poor Yvonne didn’t stand a chance in this race of jackals. She was driving her kart around at half speed. Competitive racing was not her forte and it was a mystery to me why Tucker hadn’t chosen to race instead. He stood there a few meters away, gritting his teeth and trying to shout encouragement to his girlfriend above the howling din of the two-stroke engines.

  Quaid quickly passed Jamie in a roar of speed.

  I didn’t know if the producers had set it up intentionally but it looked as if Quaid’s go-kart was riding on twice the horsepower of the others. He rapidly caught up to Derrik and Ted even though they were going full throttle on a straight away. Quaid came whizzing up behind them. As an enthusiast for the pseudo-sport, Ted realized his kart was underpowered compared to the one roaring up his behind. Quaid tried to pass then but Ted played defense and blocked him from advancing by purposely remaining dead even with Derrik.

  And that was how they zoomed past the bleachers on the first lap with Ted and Derrik neck and neck, Quaid on their heels and Jamie about four kart lengths behind Quaid. Meng remained at a quarter of a lap back but was gaining and Yvonne continued putt-putting along at the halfway mark.

  It was during the second lap that the accident happened.

  Ted, Derrik and Quaid were recklessly flying around hairpin turns, nearly colliding on the straight-aways. They seemed oblivious to the three other racers. But when they came upon Yvonne it was in a straight-away they easily avoided hitting her. She knew they were coming and braced for impact, eyes tightly squeezed shut as they flew by. But the three daredevils failed to see Meng’s go-kart had again stalled at the apex of the next blind hairpin curve. Meng had undone his safety harness and taken off his helmet and was climbing out of the kart as the three approached. Everyone at the bleachers screamed at him to ‘Watch Out!’ If he climbed out, there would be no place for the other drivers to steer around him. The karts were like banshees screaming around the track. There was no chance he could hear us.

  The three racers turned into the hairpin.

  It was Ted who first saw the stalled kart. He jerked right and hit the steep incline of the shoulder, crashing through a barrier wall made of tires. A dust cloud erupted from the crash, obscuring our view of the impact, loose tires rolling down the hill and onto the track.

  Derrik, distracted by Ted’s sudden move to the right, didn’t see the stalled kart or Meng who was now standing next to it scratching his big meat head. Derrik’s kart careened into the right wheel of Meng’s kart and flipped completely over, skidding along some twenty yards, sparks flying off the roll cage as it scraped a long divot into the asphalt before coming to a grinding halt.

  Nearly too late but finally realizing the danger he was in, Meng leapt off the track using his powerful gluteus maximus and bounded over the tire barrier winding along the left side of the track. Quaid narrowly missed him by centimeters, squeezing between the tires and the dead kart, whooshing by Derrik’s upended vehicle and taking a deciding lead.

  Lydia and several roadies from the crew ran to Derrik’s aid. She was screaming at them, expecting the worst, “Turn the kart over! Turn the kart over!”

  They grabbed the side and flipped it over with Derrik still strapped inside.

  Due to the intense heat of the day, Derrik had decided to wear the minimum amount of clothes allowable for the production. He was wearing nothing but a helmet, t-shirt, Bermudas and trainers. Not much protection from accidents. So now Derrik’s legs and bare elbows were a bloodied mess of road rash from scrapping against the pavement when the upended kart had skidded along the tarmac.

  But even after flipping and being set upright his little kart was still running.

  Lydia screamed at him, “Get going, you fool, you have to finish!”

  Derrik was used to Lydia ordering him around and took off just as Jamie navigated around them. After a couple of seconds, Derrik accelerated ahead of Jamie and was back on the track in second place behind Quaid.

  Yvonne was now in fourth, far behind Jamie.

  Ted, covered in a fine mist of sand and dirt from head to toe, was also back on the track. He picked up speed near the bleachers into the third lap and was in fifth place and then fourth as he easily passed Yvonne. Everyone had been so focused on Derrik’s accident that only Ahmed had seen what happened to Ted. After hitting the tires on the incline, his kart stalled then slowly rolled backward onto the track. Ahmed ran to help and was able to restart the kart going using the pull start, getting him back into the race.

  At the end of the competition, with Gemma waving them in with a checkered flag, a dusty and shaken Ted had managed to secure third place behind Quaid and Derrik who came in first and second respectively. Jamie came in as fourth place followed by Yvonne and Meng, his kart dead, finished last. Even though it was unfair and his loss due to mechanical error, Meng still had to spend an extra humiliating twenty minutes pushing his kart around the last lap and a half with Esther steering in the driver’s seat to make his finish official.

  With the teams standing around her, Gemma announced the outcome of the race and we filmed the obligatory final shots at the winner’s circle then she retired to the air-conditioned comfort of her trailer. We watched as her driver drove her RV out of the parking lot and into formation with Kip and half of the crew vehicles as they got a head start to the next event location.

  When the shooting of individual team interviews were wrapped up, we were starving so the teams and the remainder of the crew walked over to an open canteen across the road from the track. The canteen was sparse, consisting of an overhead awning, picnic tables and a partitioned area with a large butane stove, two large buckets of tepid water and a few stacks of colored plastic dishes and bowls, meant to serve as a kitchen. We waited while the cook filled green plastic bowls with a local version of mee rebus and we ate together in the heat collecting under the metal roof, our faces shiny with go-kart exhaust and sweat. The teams tried to engage in polite chit-chat while they ate; knowing that the next pit stop was an elimination leg and one of them would be going home.

  In hindsight, it’s rather interesting that none of the teams even thought to mention the contagion ravaging much of the country they were racing in. We were so hyper-focused on the competition we’d lost all interest in our surroundings and the current epidemic sweeping the countryside was far from our minds.

  “Yeah, it’s the friggin Ang Mohs’ fault,” Lydia’s voice could be heard rising in anger as she complained to Sheldon at the head of the table. “Look at his injuries, lah!” She nagged, pointing to Derrik’s bloody legs. “If the Ang Moh wasn’t so reckless, he wouldn’t be in such pain.” You could hear resentment in her voice as she protested. She was angry, but we all knew it wasn’t about the relatively trivial accident on the track earlier. She was angry about their third place finish in the race. She seemed to believe that if she yelled loud enough, they might receive special consideration considering this was a Singapore production, they were Singaporean and the Ang Mohs were foreigners and, in her opinion, undeserving to win the million dollar prize. I noticed that she
mentioned nothing about Tucker racing dangerously close to Derrik for half a lap, choosing to focus her complaints and anger on the white guy instead.

  Quaid and Norris were quite oblivious to her tirade. They sat in the far corner of the canteen laughing loudly, on an emotional high with their current first place performance. Those two weren’t so bad, I thought. They had a more innocent quality about them than your average expats. I’d read their team profile and knew that they were merely English teachers working in Singapore, not expat snobs on lucrative pay packages which was the picture Lydia was attempting to paint.

  “Lydia,” Sheldon sighed, “when you look at the tape you can see it was an accident. Quaid had absolutely nothing to do with the crash.” He was looking less than interested in the conversation as he texted on his business handphone in one hand and slurped up his noodles with chopsticks in the other.

  “Then why is their go-kart so much faster than mine? You guys in cahoots?” she yelled, waving her finger at Sheldon then at Quaid and Norris who were still laughing, enjoying their win. “You fix the winners of the race oledy is it?”

  Sheldon stiffened at this, little bits of noodles expelling from his open mouth as he let out an angry laugh. He couldn’t allow a contestant to talk to him in front of the cast and crew in this way, berating him with accusations of fixing the results of the go-kart race. His authority needed to be clear. Every reality show director knew that sometimes you had to tweak events a bit to make the show interesting. Only this time he’d done no such thing. He couldn’t be under suspicion from the very first event. It would make it that much harder to use such tricks later in the competition. He had to shut her down now.

  Sheldon slammed his hand down on the table and everyone snapped to attention, “Do you want to be disqualified?” Is that what you want?” Sheldon’s voice rose so that everyone could hear. All eyes were on him, “Read your contract, Lydia, we can disqualify participants for any reason. Even for complaining too much. Back off!”

  There was a momentary silence as we watched Lydia’s reaction to being told off. She got this sour look on her face, turned away and slinked back to Derrik, lighting a cigarette and dabbing a moist towel on the scrapes blazing trails across his right knee.

  Unconcerned about the argument, Norris guffawed in the corner as Quaid whispered and motioned towards me and Jamie, making some crude gestures that no doubt carried a sexual connotation. The cameramen went back to their conversations in Malay, comparing their assignments and arguing, which one was working with the best team, with Felix the focus of envy for getting to travel with the two young beauties.

  We finished our noodles and waited for Sheldon to start the next` event.

  Like before, the teams gathered in front of the rally cars and were handed envelopes for the next race. I was going to drive the next leg, so I got to read the instructions from the large cardboard card into the lens of the camera, “You will now proceed to the Gunang Ledang Rendezvous Retreat and take part in a series of physically strenuous competitions. You’d better hurry, though. The last team to finish the events will be eliminated. For now, practice the art of patience and wait for your departure time to be called.”

  Jamie gazed at me lovingly for the imaginary audience and gave me a big camera hug.

  “You drive,” She kissed my cheek, “I’ve been to Gunang Ledang Rendezvous Retreat before. My family used to holiday there when I was in primary school. Don’t you worry, I’ll plot a course. You just put that pedal to the metal.”

  Felix gave us the cut signal.

  Now there was nothing to do but wait for our turn.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Tucker and Yvonne kissing intimately for the benefit of their cameraman’s camcorder with slow caresses and loving stares into each other’s eyes. I nudged Jamie and she stuck her finger in her mouth and made gagging sounds.

  Derrik had about twenty little plasters stuck to the scrapes on his legs. What a wimp, I thought. Lydia was beside him, now smoking an extra long menthol cigarette, puffs of smoke drifting out of her obnoxious mouth over the hoods of the remaining five cars awaiting their turn as the Ang Moh’s sped away.

  “Look!” Ahmed gasped and pointed to departing Rally Car 4, “They’re going the wrong way!”

  Ted chuckled, hacked up a wad of phlegm and spat on the ground, “Stupid Ang Mohs. They know nothing.”

  On the contrary, the Ang Mohs knew exactly where they were going.

  Norris had purchased literally dozens of maps of Malaysia the day before the race and had been studying the roadways of the Johor state late into the previous night. In fact, all day he’d taken advantage of every opportunity to sneak away to study various routes and roadways. Even when he went to the toilet, he’d slip in a few minutes of road revision within the confines of a bathroom stall. Norris’s plan was to anticipate each day’s events beforehand and study potential areas in a radius around where they’d possibly drive on the next event. It was a solid plan considering the other teams had no plan at all. Quaid and Norris hid their maps well, deciding the night before that their best strategy would be to pretend they didn’t really care about the competition, and open and friendly with the other competitors but in reality take every advantage they came across. After all, it was a million dollars.

  As for driving in the wrong direction, Quaid was actually driving to a newly constructed strip mall that wasn’t on any map except for a recently published report on vanishing Johor marshlands that Norris had pulled off the net. Buried within the report was a small aerial map of the strip mall and surrounding neighborhood on the second page. The engineers designing the infrastructure of the strip mall had wisely built a thru-way connecting Jalan Kota Masai with Jalan Keris which led to Tebrau Highway, which intersected to the J1 Expressway, the main artery to the north. The strip mall was about five kilometers east and required Rally Car 5 to back track to a little known slip road, which was why it looked as if they were traveling in the wrong direction.

  Once it was our turn to get on the road, three rally cars had already left. But it was a short ten minutes before we were right behind Rally Cars 6 and 1 who were stuck in yet another all-too-common Malaysian traffic jam. Jamie and I laughed and I said, “Ai yo! It didn’t matter that they’d had head starts.”

  Up ahead, the four lane road was being diverted down to a one lane bottleneck where both sides of traffic had to take turns going around a horrific crash involving a large lorry, three sedans and a scooter. One of the sedans was jammed under the trailer of the lorry and the front end of the scooter was stuck in the windshield of another. The third sedan was lining on its side in the culvert, fire engulfing the rear. The scooter driver was lying on the ground immobile and most likely dead, his torso twisted in an unnatural position. Around the body were secondary students in pressed powder blue uniforms gawking at the finality of death. The fate of the other drivers and car passengers were unknown as they had already been rushed away by two ambulances with ‘Kecemasan’ printed on their sides, which meant ‘Emergency’. Meanwhile, we sat in our rally cars watching the temperature gauges slowly rise as the cars sat idling with the air-conditioning blasting on high to keep the interiors cool enough to hold back the constant perspiration.

  By the time we were clear of the accident, Felix was out, snoring in the back seat.

  Jamie squeezed my leg and put a finger to her lips quietly whispering, “Shhh.”

  She reached into the waist of her red daisy dukes and pulled out a tiny handphone the size of my thumb that she’d concealed in a hidden pocket she’d sewn into her shorts and began typing a text message. My eyes kept darting back at Felix through the rear view mirror, making sure the cameraman still sleeping. My blood started to boil as I watched Jamie risk our chance at a million dollars. We’d be automatically disqualified if Sheldon found out we were using mobile technology. One of the Felix’s duties was to watch us and report any cheating. They were even paid a bonus if they caught their team being deceitful
or using mobile tech for any reason.

  I was fuming but I still had my head in the game and knew at this point I couldn’t make a big deal out of it, lest I throw off our luck. Thinking Jamie was trying to find a quicker way to the expressway, I mouthed, “What did you find out?”

  Jamie shifted the phone so I could read her text.

  Her message said, “Miss you! See you soon! XXOXXOO”

  She was sending a mass text to her boyfriends.

  I slapped her leg hard and she giggled.

  I couldn’t believe she’d risk our chance for a million dollars to send that stupid message. She shut the phone off and slipped the phone back into the hidden pocket and gave me a wink.

  “Just in case, just in case,” she whispered.

  There was a snorting sound in the backseat. It was Felix waking from his nap.

  “Did you have a good rest?” I asked as he yawned and stretched.

  He smiled back at me. I’m not sure if he understood any English at this point. I mean, he could even participate in a little small talk, couldn’t he? It’s what makes the civilized world go round.

  There were dark clouds forming on the horizon.

  We were headed into a storm.

  Small droplets began to hit the windscreen and then larger ones until it was an all out deluge, making it impossible to see more than a few meters ahead. I flipped the wipers on high with little effect.

  Continuing to speed along Jalan Stulang Barhu at a solid eighty kilometers, I paid no heed to the lack of visibility and sliced through the deepening puddles of rain water. I passed many slower moving lorries and Protons, which were crawling along trying to avoid hydroplaning on their bald tires on oily rain slick covering the street. The two rally cars up ahead also continued at a high rate of speed, trying to keep us in their rearview. Our three rally cars formed a mini Cera convoy with our flashy racing strips and huge numbers on the doors and we continued driving that way onto the sidewalk on the left-hand side of the road, oblivious to Malaysian traffic laws. It wasn’t long until we came to a T-junction. Our group made a quick right, left, then right again and we were finally racing up the onramp and onto the J1 expressway.