Zahrin drove out from towards the gate. In the darkness I could see the silhouette of someone leaning on the gate facing out into the darkness. Zahrin stopped the bus and gave a little bleep on the horn and then he leaned out the window and yelled, “Gemma! Don’t just stand there! Open the gate for us!”
Gemma didn’t move and continued to stand there with her back to us looking out into the street.
Zahrin turned to me, as I was seated closest to him and the door, and said, “Will go you help her with the gate? We’re on a tight schedule here.” He flashed his watch at me as he pulled a lever and the hydraulic bus doors opened with a hiss.
I climbed down and approached Gemma, her back now bright with the glare of the headlamps.
Unease brushed against the nape of my neck.
“Gemma,” I asked quietly, “you alright?”
She didn’t move or say anything.
I lightly tapped her on her shoulder to get her attention and must have knocked her off balance as she slid to the ground in a heap. Her face was drained of all color and her lips were grey. Her right arm had been chewed to the bone up to her elbow and her left hand was missing. It was as if she had reached through the gate at some point earlier and been attacked. I couldn’t understand how this had gone down silently in the night. If she had screamed, no one had heard. She must have been rendered immobile while Berjalan penyakit chewed into her fingers and forearm, stripping them bare of meat and consuming those cute star tattoos that I admired so much.
Zahrin and Katek were immediately at my side. Katek began jumping around in front of the gate, shotgun at the ready, looking for someone or something to shoot. Zahrin pulled me away from Gemma’s body and led me back to the bus. He whistled to his crewmen who were still standing back at the hotel lobby. They ran across the gravel drive and one took stills of Gemma’s mutilated carcass while the other slowly circled around the body with a high-def 3D camcorder, zooming in on the bone jutting out of the stump of her wrist. When they got enough footage, they picked her up and carried her body away. Once Katek decided it was clear, he unlocked the gate and we watched it swing open, the last barrier between us and the chaos of suffering and death that the virus had unleashed while we were snoozing in our rooms above.
Everyone on the bus was silent with fear and trepidation as we strained to see beyond the glowing perimeter of the headlamps.
Zahrin flipped off the lights and inched us out onto the street, turning left towards town, moving directly into the hot zone. He kept the van under ten kilometers per hour as we drove towards that small grouping of townsfolk huddled under the street lamp that I’d seen from my hotel window earlier. There were seven of them, all bloated and freshly turned. They were just standing there under the light staring up at the incandescent bulb. Large winged bugs swirled around, landing occasionally on their faces and in their eyes. The bus crept closer to them, and I had a moment of inspiration, I had Jamie lean up against the window and, as we drove by, I filmed the group of infected through the window with her in the foreground looking concerned and scared. As we got closer, I could see smears of blood on the mouths of two of them and wondered if it was from Gemma.
They didn’t move as the bus passed them by, oblivious to us as we blended in with the darkness.
That is until Zahrin tapped on the brakes and the rear of the bus began to glow red from the brake lights. Four of the zombies nearest to our retreating vehicle turned towards the red glow and began lurching along towards us. But then they stopped and looked confused when Zahrin released the brake and the red light disappeared. Instead of continuing towards us, they turned back towards the street light overhead, staring upward.
“Fish in a barrel,” Norris whispered, looking back as we drove along the two lane road.
We continued on and came to a downward slope and I gasped at what I saw. At the bottom of the hill about another two kilometers away, nearly the entire town of Port Dickson was burning. Two unusual military-style helicopters circled overhead. They were dropping what we assumed to be low intensity ordinance that made a whooshing sound on impact and spread long fingers of flame through the streets. Billows of black smoke blew out to the sea. As the bus descended towards the hill, Lydia started shouting at Zahrin, “We can’t go down there! We’ll be killed.”
He ignored her and kept driving towards the town. When we were down the hillside about halfway, the smell of the burning city wafted through the vents and into the bus interior. Smoldering rubber, scorched metal and the even stronger smell of burned hair permeated the air. I pulled on my thin face mask, but it wasn’t made to filter air and the smell of smoldering remains was just as intense.
Even with the windows tightly shut, we could hear the sounds of explosions and gun fire and people screaming.
We leaned forward in our seats, squirming in anticipatory dread at what we were approaching.
Katek stared at the GPS device in his hand. He leaned over and said something to Zahrin. Zahrin cranked the wheel and the bus turned onto a small road inlet and began lumbering back up in a diagonal path on the hillside in a northeastern direction, away from the blazing mayhem of the formerly sleepy township along the shore.
It was slow going and it didn’t take long driving in the inky black of the rainforest foliage until Zahrin realized he had to turn on the headlamps to continue along the muddy, sloppy tract that wound up the hillside. He wiped the perspiration from his brow brought on by the pressure of knowing he had about three and a half hours of nightfall left to get to Kuala Lumpur. If we were to have any chance of making it to our destination, the cover of darkness would essential. Our safety was predicated on making it there before the light of dawn made us easy targets for thousands upon thousands of freshly turned infected rumored to be roaming the capital’s streets.
The glow of the headlamps splashed onto the rubber tree farms and the ferns and palms of the forest as the bus rocked up and down on the rutted uneven surface, casting phantom pale faces and grasping arms that reach out from our imaginations towards the bus.
Jamie peered out the window and, in an attempt at levity, Quaid sang, ‘Wheels on the bus’ off-key. Lydia and Derrik shared a tobacco spliff and blew the smoke out a half centimeter gap they’d opened up in the rear window. I kept my eye on Zahrin and Katek who were squinting out the windshield, trying to the vehicle at a decent speed while anticipating and surveying the land ahead for zombie sign.
Thirty minutes later, the long stretch of dirt track smoothed out to a drier grated gravelly surface. Zahrin doubled our speed to about twenty kilometers an hour and we began to make good time. Everyone relaxed a bit, thinking communally that we must have lucked out with this short-cut to the expressway that was devoid of Berjalan penyakit and hostile trigger-happy WHO paratrooper who were no doubt deployed in the area. We were fortunate that the road served no useful purpose for fleeing residents since it didn’t make a practical artery to the southern contagion-free states.
It wasn’t long until the street lamps of the E1 snaking along in the distance could be seen in the distance. Zahrin got a bit excited that we were getting out of the jungle soon and picked up speed.
And that’s when it happened.
An old man in jeans and a flowery silk shirt, but now Berjalan penyakit, stumbled onto the road about ten meters ahead of the approaching shuttle bus, no doubt attracted to the bouncing headlamps. His arms and legs were encased in his clothing, taunt and balloon-like with viral puss. He was obviously a few days into the sickness as he looked bone-dry dehydrated and his skin radiated with sunburn and blisters from boiling away the days in the equatorial sun’s rays.
Zahrin slammed on the brakes and swerved left to avoid hitting the zombie. An instinctual move to avoid harming another human being, but in my opinion entirely unnecessary considering the old man was presently devoid of humanity. Zahrin should have just run him down as his evasive maneuver was pointless. The shuttle bus hit the thicker end of a fallen palm tree on the side of th
e road and our bus’s bumper clipped the infected old man. Like a water balloon, he burst over the windscreen and right side of the bus, covering it with greenish blood, guts and goo. Simultaneous to the splatter onto the bus, there was a loud bang as the left front tire hit the stump of a fallen palm and blew out.
Zahrin turned off the headlamps and shut off the engine and we sat there for a moment in stunned disbelief. He pulled a satellite phone from out of his bag and called Sheldon to inform him of their situation.
I was worried that we may be stuck in a jungle with an unknown amount of Berjalan penyakit wandering about amid the trees and ferns. If there was one infected out there, there were bound to be more.
We could hear Sheldon screaming through the phone, “Ai yo! You stupid piece of garbage! You’re costing us money, you reckless excuse of a man! Get that bus moving! There’s a lot on the line here and it’s your responsibility. If you don’t get back on the road posthaste, I’ll see to it you never work in this industry again!”
After that brutal butt chewing, sweat was now pouring from Zahrin’s brow. He cupped his hands against a small part of the windscreen glass that had narrowly avoided the slime and peered outside into the darkness, looking for signs of movement. He ordered Katek to get out and inspect the damage. Katek jumped at the chance. He wasn’t afraid of some ill people wandering around in the dark; this wasn’t one of those horror movies that were all the rage, these infected weren’t the undead. He pushed open the hydraulic doors and waited for the goop to stop dripping from the door frame and hopped over the mess of blood and guts and twitching limbs and onto the road.
We watched out the windows as Katek circled the front of the bus, turning back and forth, one of his shotguns off his back and at the ready. He looked down at the damaged wheel and we could hear him let out a whistle. He then backtracked to the door and hopped back in, taking care to avoid tracking in the bodily fluids onto the bus. “Cannot go, lah. Ty-ya punchek,” was his report to Zahrin.
“Well, see if we have a spare in one of the side compartments. I’m sure you know how to change a tire! Get on it!” Zahrin ordered, passing on some of the heat he’d just received over the phone.
Zahrin fired up the engine after Katek climbed back out of the bus and proceeded to back the vehicle up into the center of the gravel road so that if there were a spare tire, there would be enough room to manage a change.
We could hear Katek as he moved along the side of the shuttle bus opening and closing all the outside compartments looking for a spare. Of course, the spare was in the last compartment in the rear. He came back around to the door and whispered inside to Zahrin, “Found it, but gonna need help.”
Zahrin turned in the captain’s chair and addressed the teams. Appealing to the men’s sexism he said, “Hey, we need to change this tire quickly. I need the men to march on out there and assist Katek with the tire repair. Norris, Quaid, Derrik get a move on so we can get these ladies somewhere safe. We only have a couple hours of darkness left before we’re fully exposed.”
Quaid jumped up with bravado and Norris followed. I could see Derrik whispering to Lydia in the rear of the truck. She jerked him up and began pushing him down the aisle towards the door, “Men these days are wimps and pansies,” she said to us as she exited the bus, “We’ll both go, make the job much faster.”
The four of them eased out of the bus carefully as Katek instructed to avoid the still clinging fluids hanging from the door frame. I couldn’t believe Lydia had the cahones to go out into the darkness. I wasn’t leaving the bus for anything. Jamie and I held hands and watched Zahrin lean out the driver’s window squinting into the jungle.
The bus began to shimmy a bit as they worked the spare tire and jack out of the compartment in from the rear of the van. Jamie and I watched as Quaid and Norris carried the spare around to the busted tire, leaning it against the straighter side of the fender. Lydia came up behind them with a large heavy duty jack and tire iron in her arms. She dropped them on the ground in front of the shredded tire and they clanked together loudly. A simultaneous, “SHHHHH!” erupted from everyone who went still, looking around in the darkness for more zombies.
Katek stood guard, shotgun at the ready.
Derrik stood behind Lydia and swiveled his head back and forth at the tiniest sound from the jungle, real or imagined. After a minute or two the van began shaking up and down as Lydia furiously worked the jack, raising the bus a centimeter at time. Quaid took the tire iron slotted in the first nut and began kicking at the iron bar to loosen it. He repeated the process until they were all loose then Lydia jacked the bus up further until the shredded tire was off the ground. I suppose the protection of the rubberized bio-suits was a plus when changing a tire; the gloves protected their hands from all that gross dirt and oil and it was easy enough to drop to your knees without worry of scrapes and cuts.
“It looks like we’re going to be on our way in no time,” I told Jamie under my breath as she pressed her face against the window looking for movement.
That’s when I had one of my flashes of brilliance. I picked up the camcorder sitting next to me and, yep, sure enough, there was a button for night vision. It was a bit hard to press with those stupid gloves which were not very dexterous, but soon the screen began to glow a bright green. And yes, I had the presence of mind to hit the record button as well.
Just as I began to scan the forest around our bus, I gasped at what I saw.
There were at least two dozen Berjalan penyakit about ten meters ahead and about an additional eight meters into the bush. They were bumbling along a dirt track towards our bus that led out from a rubber tree plantation and they were closing in on our location fast … well … maybe not fast, but quick enough to be a threat if we didn’t get a move on.
I didn’t say a word to Jamie for fear of making her panic and I took the camera and rushed up to Zahrin sitting comfortably in the captain’s chair overlooking the repairs below. I leaned over him and out the window where they were changing the tire underneath. With the camera still recording I whispered down to them as loudly as I dared, “Hey! A bunch of zombies are approaching on your six, you’d better get that tire on quick or do something about them before they surround us.”
The boys and Lydia began to frantically yank on the busted tire, pulling it onto the ground and making even more noise. I turned my camera down to the track where I spotted the approaching party of infected. They had all stopped at the clang of steel against steel and they were standing there, immobile, facing towards the clamber, perhaps trying to decide in their brain-damaged way if there was a meal to be had up ahead.
That’s when Derrik, that useless piece of crap standing out there doing nothing but jumping at the sound of bugs flying near his ear, had a fit of smoker’s cough.
Now, by all accounts Berjalan penyakit were supposed to be cartoonishly slow. Every news broadcast mentioned that outrunning them wasn’t the problem. Being caught off guard, that was really the greatest danger while in the infected zone.
This group of infected must have been hungry. When Derrik began to cough, even with their swollen limbs and pea-sized brains they managed to increase their pace to that of a slow jog.
They were closing fast … well … maybe not fast … but, you know...
“Katek, they’re approaching from back there,” I pointed behind him ahead of the bus and slightly to the left where there was a bit of a gap in the forest where the path met the graded road. Katek positioned himself between the path and the bus, double checking his gun to make sure there was a shell in the chamber and the safety was off.
Quaid and Norris pushed the spare tire onto the bolts and began fastening the nuts by hand, but Norris had a devil of a time with those gloved hands and the fine work of screwing and he kept dropping the nuts onto the ground. Quaid gruffly pushed him aside and finished screwing on the fifth and sixth nut.
Lydia and Derrik abandoned the scene and ran around to the open door, rushing up and into th
e back of the bus, hiding behind the seats, probably hoping the Berjalan penyakit would fill up on the rest of us before they found them.
The approaching infected were now within a couple of meters of Katek and closing.
Katek could finally see them lumbering along in the shadows and he fired the shotgun. That little dwarf may have looked rough and tough, but really he was just a stage hand who had been hired to assemble sets for the show and the recoil of the twelve gauge knocked him on his ass. Truth be told, he’d never fired a gun before and came along with Zahrin because he had a sister living in Kuala Lumpur and knew a trip in the shuttle bus was his only hope of getting to her.
I was taping through the window and could see everything in the display of the camera. I caught him on film firing and after the flash of white on the night vision screen dissipated, I was able to see the closest of the zombies topple over with half its head missing. Not that it mattered to the other zombies; they weren’t deterred in the least. They stepped over their fallen comrade and swarmed towards Katek who was struggling to pick up the shotgun and back away at the same time.
Norris came up behind Katek and grabbed him by those ammo belts that were slung over his shoulders, and in a pendulum-like motion, picked him up and literally threw him up and through the open doors of the bus and jumped in behind him.
Zahrin closed the bus doors with a hiss and started the bus, revving the engine.
The zombies began pounding on the bus doors and moaning in anticipatory ecstasy of the feast inside.
Quaid, however, was still outside hidden from zombie view on the opposite side of the bus, trying to release the jack and drop the bus back down on all four tires. But the darned jack wouldn’t release, so he began pumping the handle down a centimeter at a time. He’d never make it before the infected discovered him, I thought. He looked up at Zahrin through the window and said, “Bloody Hell! Go! Go! Push off from the jack and go! I’ll catch up to you. They’re too slow to get me.”
Zombie Fever: Outbreak Page 16