The bus slowed while Zahrin handed Katek the satellite phone to make contact with their compatriots in the city ahead. It was evident by the look of relief on Zahrin’s face that we were getting close to the compound. We hadn’t heard a landmine explode for some time and there were less and less living Berjalan penyakit entangled in the razor wire the closer we got to those gargantuan Petronas Towers looming overhead like black angels in the seeping purple pre-dawn light.
The expressway began to rise up and curve around an ancient looking mosque that required engineers to get creative in their road design. The razor wire stopped near the crest of the curve as it was quite unnecessary so high off the ground. When we reached the apex we saw someone with a flashlight waving at us to stop. Zahrin and Katek got out of the shuttle bus and excitedly hugged the stranger, greeting him warmly.
After a few moments of reunion, Zahrin peeked back in to the bus and whispered, “Let’s go people, look lively. There’s about twenty minutes of darkness left before we are sitting ducks in the light of dawn.”
We shuffled out of the bus in single file and huddled around the stranger. He directed us to the concrete barrier at the outer lip of the overhead bridge where three ropes were professionally knotted around the horizontal steel safety beam bolted along the top. There was an oversized duffel bag full of nearly identical harnesses the teams had used for the Gunang Ledang waterfall event on the ground in front of the ropes. The stranger and Katek silently handed out the harnesses Without a word we slipped them on over the crotches of our bio-suits. We were all so scared that no one thought to complain about the prospect of rappelling five stories down into the darkness below. We had that collective herd mentality of creatures being led by their shepherds to safety from an oncoming storm.
The stranger gathered all of our weapons and set them inside the now empty duffle bag. He then pulled up one of the ropes, tied it to the end with Katek and Zahrin’s bags and lowered them down into the abyss. When he finished he motioned the group over to prepare for our descent.
Katek was the first to slip over the ledge and disappear into the darkness below. He whistled once when he reached the ground below and unstrapped himself from the rope. Next, the stranger motioned to Derrik, Norris and Zahrin who hooked on, climbed up over the ledge and disappeared into the blackness like Katek. There was a whistle and then it was Jamie, Lydia and my turn to climb over the ledge. I wasn’t afraid of falling, but I think my state of daring was due to exhaustion and running on hours of adrenaline draining primal fear.
We slipped down the ropes with the quiet whizzing sound of expert rapellers. Before we hit the pavement, about two meters off the ground, thick knots purposely tied in the ropes brought us to a neck jerking halt. There were two other strangers below dressed in black who unbuckled each of us, one at a time, and set us down on our feet.
We grouped together in the street with the rest of the team members waiting for hordes of infected to attack while Quaid and the stranger came last down the ropes. But the street was silent and abandoned save for a calico with a genetically clipped tail that began to weave in and out of our legs purring and mewing.
We left the ropes dangling and crept over to the sidewalk where we pressed against a building. One of the strangers led while the other two took up rear guard. We were guided down a series of empty streets and alleyways strewn with trash and the infrequent rotting corpse. For a few minutes, we had to huddle behind a dumpster while a pack of dogs tore at the bared legs and face of a deceased IHS victim awaiting the signal to move forward from our nameless leader.
It was getting bright enough now to see a block or two away in every direction. There weren’t any infected moving about in the area but I think I heard a few moving inside some of the abandoned cars, their ability to open the doors burned away by fever from their conscious thoughts.
Finally, the stranger up ahead pulled open a large steel gate of a walled compound that held a repair shop for heavy machinery next to a bus depot and we slipped inside.
There were half a dozen ancient looking public buses parked along the left wall of the compound. In the center, there was a garage the size of an airport hangar with large bay doors. And on the right side, a service shop that housed inventory and a lounge for employee breaks. There were four men sitting around a card table in front of the service shop playing cards, drinking tea and watching us intently. They were smeared with grease and grime from twelve hours of modifying our vehicles, which were sitting there in the pale morning light. They’d really gone to town on the vehicles, which were now hardly recognizable as Cera SUVs.
The SUVs had been transformed into mini-tanks that had been painted white with large black UN letters on the sides, hood and top. One of the mechanics left the table and took us on a tour of our transformed SUVs. They had torn out the headlamps and grill, welded sheet metal on the front, then attached steel pipes that looked to have been taken from road signs and flag pole. At first glance, it was those unsightly bumpers made out of welded pipe covering the entire front of the vehicles that caught our interest. But then the mechanic drew our attention to the wire mesh that had been welded to the windshield and front side windows. Then he directed us to examine the impenetrable back windows that had been sealed up with more metal plates cut from one of the abandoned buses and showed us how they had sealed the rear door and rear passenger doors by welding them shut. He was very proud of the escape hatch cut out of the roof that could be accessed with a handy lever from inside.
But that was just the exterior shell, the mechanics had also removed the original axels and wheels, lifted the SUVs high off the ground with improvised metal struts and added heavy duty tires and rims and axels that looked like they’d been pulled from construction diggers. The change in weight distribution with the addition of those monster tires sapped much of the horsepower from the already underpowered Cera SUV engines designed with the modern housewife in mind. So the mechanics also tweaked the engines to give them more power. But now petrol consumption was severely compromised. To solve that problem, the mechanics had stripped out the rear seats and installed auxiliary petrol tanks taken from the row of buses and welded them inside to the chassis with long metal strips.
The mechanics were quite pleased with the transformation until they discovered one drawback to all the modifications, because of the new tires and weight distribution the SUVs had to be permanently engaged into the four-wheel drive low gear. So now the vehicles were only capable of accelerating to around a maximum speed of forty kilometers an hour.
“On the bright side, forty kilometers an hour is much faster than any of those zombies can run, so your drive to Kota Tinggi should be relatively safe, provided you stay inside your vehicles at all times,” the mechanic added, finishing his briefing.
The stranger who brought us to the compound had crept up next to the mechanic was showing off their work. He directed us to the bus driver’s lounge and suggested we rest up and eat something because we’d be leaving the compound to continue the competition in an hour’s time.
The lounge was dingy and everything inside was yellowed with age. There was a decrepit row of vending machines along the wall that reminded me of the tombstones back in Malacca. They had been pried open, so we helped ourselves to candy bars, chips and sodas and sat in the stuffy room on worn vinyl sofas and threadbare chairs, contemplating the day ahead and tracing the hands of the office clock that ticked away our final moments of security within the well-guarded bus compound.
After about an hour and a half of waiting, we were getting antsy to go, sensing the seconds ticking away towards the twenty-four hour deadline Sheldon imposed on us approximately eight hours earlier. Quaid and Norris, not able to take sitting around any longer, goaded the rest of us off our chairs and out to the courtyard to demand that we leave now.
Quaid had a whole theory behind why he thought he could demand action now, “It’s only fair. They mentioned Kota Tinggi. I know where that town is and I’d reckon
if those SUVs can only crawl at a snail’s pace we’d be lucky to make it to that little town before midnight. That is, if we leave posthaste,” Quaid argued before we finally got up, shoring up his case to force start this last leg of our Malaysian race.
When we came out of the shop, we spied the mechanics mounting the last of three scramblers, a.k.a. off-road motorbikes, onto the rear bumpers of the SUVs. Zahrin acted as if he were back in charge of the Malaysian crew. He had a handful of papers and maps in one hand and was talking into the satellite phone and this time doing the yelling at, presumably Sheldon, on the other end.
“No! No! You listen to me! They get escorts out of greater KL or the deals off and we sit here and wait this thing out! They’ll never make it without … yes … I know what your bloody saying … but you’re an armchair warrior right now and we’re in the thick of it! Yes, okay, we’re planning on different routes after the Petronas Towers scene. Just let me do my job and you do yours! One escort with a high powered rifle, scatter rifle and a couple grenades will do the job nicely. We’ve already mounted the scramblers for their return and, no, you can’t see the bikes on the back if we film the SUVs from the front, yes, well hidden I promise. Okay…you to.” Zahrin clicked the satellite phone closed and approached us.
“Good, you’re ready to go, so are we. Change of plans, we’re caravanning the SUVs to the lobby of Petronas Towers and you’re going to interview some of the refugees holed up inside. We’re taking the footage. Then,” he held up his handful of maps, “each team will get a map marked with a unique route out of the city. They’re all equidistant; there will be no favoritism and you will draw straws for the maps to minimize any disagreement. And you’re each getting an escort who will sit atop your vehicle and clear the road ahead of any potential threat from Berjalan penyakit. After you reach the city limits, you will be on your own to drive to the checkpoint and activate the signal beacon. Then, I can wipe my hands of the whole business. So girls you’re in the SUV on the left, white dudes in the middle and you two hommies, the right. Let’s get this show on the road.”
Our escorts climbed up onto the SUV roofs and I took one last look around the compound before jumping into the passenger seat of our vehicle. Jamie started the engine, which sounded low, throaty and industrial from all the mods. Zahrin stood next to the metal gate and gave a low bow as we drove out onto the abandoned street. Our escort banged on the roof, once for left, twice for right and we made our way down the deserted arteries towards the looming towers ahead. There was a crack of a rifle from the Ang Moh SUV behind us. I guess their escort spotted an infected wandering around or he was testing his sights on a bird overhead. Either way the sound of a rifle set me further on edge than you would expect from travelling through a major capital devoid of inhabitants with the potential for zombie attack at every turn.
Jamie took care to swerve around the occasional body splayed on the ground in front of us. I pulled out our camera and began filming the drive through the streets, making sure I got Jamie and the Petronas Towers up ahead in as much of the footage as possible.
Neither of us had much to say. I think we’d run out of trite comments for the reality show. We were still filming a reality show, right? I mean this is why we were in Kuala Lumpur’s city center driving towards the iconic towers in a state declared a quarantine zone, trying to avoid running over bodies every few yards, risking our lives in a dreamlike horror supposed to be a television show with competitions and events that culminated in a race for the grand prize, isn’t it? Am I right? Isn’t that what we are supposed to be doing? I started giggling hysterically, under my breath, but hysterically.
“You need to turn off the camera, you’re talking aloud,” Jamie whispered and I realized I was looking out the window with the camera in my lap recording as I unconsciously voiced my despair. I heard another crack of rifle shot and saw in the distance a body fall motionless to the ground. I picked up the camera and positioned it in such a way that it filmed ahead of us and also the two SUVs behind us, not realizing that all of this footage would have to be scrapped considering I was capturing footage of our escorts when we were supposedly alone according to the storyline we were in the process of creating.
We came to the drive out front of the Tower’s and that’s when I recalled what Zahrin had said about the towers when I was eavesdropping; they had become the refuge for city dwellers who hadn’t been able to make it out of the city before containment. There was a Malaysian army contingent who’d secured the KLCC park which surrounded the towers, a seventeen acre green space with fountains, pools and walking paths. And now with a barrier made of cars and lorries tipped on their sides surrounding the entire area. There were, I’d guess about three hundred armed soldiers guarding the perimeter from infected and from intruders who were potentially infected and trying to sneak in without getting their temperature taken at the front gate.
We rolled up to the entrance and a soldier with an electric thermometer gun zapped our foreheads and then waved us through. The city of Kuala Lumpur wasn’t abandoned after all. Thousands upon thousands of refugees filed in and out of the doors of Suria KLCC, the gargantuan shopping center at the foot of the towers that, in four short days, had become the nexus of city life; the hospital, living quarters, city hall and mess hall of those left behind. I noticed the sheer amount of elderly and infirm in the crowds who’d been left to fend for themselves in the rush and panic of evacuation wandering around and surrounding the wading pool, filling buckets, tins and bottles with the rapidly diminishing supply of chlorinated water.
The escorts had jumped off the roofs of our SUVs and were walking ahead of our vehicles, continually looking up at the towers, consulting on positioning and where to park to get full advantage of the towers in the backdrop of the film. Finally, they ordered us to stop on a small knoll just past the shopping center, angled the SUVs just so and had us get out to snap some stills and footage of us with the towers in the background and the refugees and madness carefully out of frame. We put on our best smiles, smiles that were shell shocked and forced, but smiles all the same.
One of the soldiers on duty approached our party as we finished the photo shoot and invited us to sit for a meal. Word had spread fast through the regiment that we were actually filming a TV show in the middle of an outbreak. So like sideshow freaks we were gawked at and pointed at as we made our way down the small knoll across the lush landscape around the wading pool and into the front doors of the shopping center.
The first thing I noticed was the wave of cool refreshing air conditioning wafting through the great hall of the shopping mall’s first floor and the overhead fluorescents blazing above our heads. The soldier accompanying our party saw our surprised looks and explained that deep underneath the Petronas Towers and shopping center there was a back-up power plant that kicked in when the power grid overloaded two days ago and has been running ever since with little supervision. Once my eyes were adjusted to the indoor lighting, I was again a bit taken aback by the cleanliness and organization of the soldiers and refugees. It looked as if everyone had been assigned a role. Some of the refugees were sweeping, others were cleaning the windows, yet others were on rubbish detail. We were ushered into the shopping center’s main food court and we took our seats near an Indian food stall. The food court was about two-thirds full and everyone was eating as if it were any other normal day. If I didn’t know any better, I wouldn’t have known there was a plague just outside those doors. There were four food stalls open, a Malay, Chinese, Indian and, curiously, Western. The only thing out of the norm was people carrying in buckets of water from the wading pool outside. Running water was the main problem right now, the soldier explained, but they were managing and should have enough water from the outer pools to last at least another week when the virus should have burned out and clean up of the infected corpses would begin.
“So you all actually have a plan?” Derrik asked the soldier.
“Of course,” the soldier replied, “T
here’s a three point plan currently in play: First, evacuate the main populace. Second, hole up and wait for burn out. Third, clean up and disposal of infected corpses. See the virus needs a host. Once the hosts have died of starvation, dehydration or exposure it’s just a matter rounding up the bodies for incineration, then we can lift the quarantine order and repopulate the city and, just like that, right back to normal. Why be afraid of Berjalan penyakit if it can be managed and casualties minimized? At the most we’ve lost a quarter million citizens to the disease out of seven million.” He paused for a minute, lowered his voice and continued, “It’s never going away you know. It’s god’s punishment for our immorality and pride. Can’t you see it spreading across Asia slowly like the hand of god? Soon it will be in your hometown, my friend. I hope your family is prepared both for evacuation and for salvation if they succumb to the disease.”
“But where are your protective suits?” Jamie leaned in, interrupting the sermon, “aren’t you afraid of infection? WHO says IHS has gone airborne, you know.”
“What a bunch of hooey,” the soldier replied, “Not one of my colleagues have been given a suit and only one of us has been infected and that was from kissing his wife on her death bed before she turned. No, all you need is to keep your distance from the infected and stay away from anything that looks like green sticky goo.
Now, go ahead and get some chow. The menu’s are limited but thankfully there are two grocery stores in the basement that are keeping this place stocked for the time being and we haven’t even tapped the fast food restaurants yet. It’s all free, of course, and canned and bottled beverages are over there. Bottled water is in short supply, but the double boiled wading pool water isn’t so bad,” he finished with a smile.
Zombie Fever: Outbreak Page 18