by B. M. Hodges
“No, no. Nothing like that. It’s something even stranger. People have been attacking each other for no good reason, running around biting and screaming like animals. They’re out of control, running around like crazed lunatics. But it’s definitely not zombie fever. There are no swollen zombies bumbling about looking for food.” The intern paused, catching his breath. “Why would you ask if it is zombie fever? Are you a patient here? If you are, you should get to your room. If you’re visiting, go home. The government is advising citizens to lock themselves in their flats, preferably in their bomb shelters for the time being and until everything is under control.” He hurried off and disappeared around a corner.
More inhuman shrieks emanating from the emergency room echoed through the hallway.
Abigail returned to the elevators and ascended to the eighth floor.
She suspected that the only people in Singapore who really knew what was happening were the reality show racing teams. They’d seen zombies infected with the new strain. What did Bertrand call it? The Hawk? IHS-2?
She ran down the hallway towards the front of the building and looked down at the street below. Orchard Road below was the center point of Singapore life. It was a materialist’s paradise, with shopping center after shopping center filled with designer labels and five-star restaurants. The buildings were flash and modern, the architecture cutting edge. It was a dynamic and exciting place.
But what she saw in the fading light made her realize that she and Jamie had to get away from the town center as quickly as possible.
There were lines of police in full riot gear marching in rows down the middle of the road. Large armored buses with water cannons were pushing back ordinary citizens and tourists alike off the main road and down the side streets. Apparently, the authorities believed that getting people off the streets was the most pragmatic use of their police power.
Directly below the hospital, Abigail saw a man in shredded clothing and makeup, undeniably one of those line dancers from the TV show finale, run head long into the riot police, arms flailing, bouncing off their long plastic shields.
The nearest officer beat his head into a bloody smear on the blacktop.
Abigail turned and ran to Jamie’s room.
She was fast asleep.
Abigail shook her repeatedly, “Jamie! Wake up! Jamie!”
“Huh? Wah? Is the doctor here?” she asked, her voice thick with opiates.
“The doctor’s not coming. Jamie, Norris must have turned zombie as we suspected. Somehow the virus has spread to those crowds of dancers we ran through on the way to the finale. There are riot police everywhere downstairs. We have to get out of here!”
Jamie fought through the haze of sedatives and painkillers. She shook her head and took a drink of water from the plastic cup at her bedside and whispered, “Abigail, I’m not going anywhere with this broken leg.” She swallowed. “My family. You have to get home and get our families out of Singapore. You saw what was happening in Kota Tinggi. Please, go to Bishan and get our families to safety!” She grabbed Abigail’s hand. “I’ll be alright here. See? There’s a lock on the door. I’ll be safe until the authorities get here. I’m in the most prominent hospital in all of Singapore. I’m sure evacuating the patients here is high priority. In fact, isn’t a Brunei prince having a heart procedure done here? Take the money and stash it in your house and get our families out before the virus spreads island wide. You remember what that Vitura guy told us: this form of the virus has an incubation period of less than an hour. By morning, the island will be crawling with infected.”
Tears welled in Abigail’s eyes.
She knew Jamie was right.
Supervisor Bertrand had been proud of his new bioengineered IHS-2 virus and bragged about its potency with a perverse pride. She didn’t know when the authorities would quarantine the entire city-state. It wouldn’t take long before they realized they were dealing with an epidemic. She had an hour, maybe two, to get Jamie’s family and hers on a boat or plane before they shut down all avenues of escape.
“Okay, I’ll get our families to safety. But I’m not leaving Singapore without you. I’ll come back for you and we’ll race out of here together, just like during the show.” She hugged her best friend fiercely.
Jamie hugged her back and whispered hoarsely, “Be careful, Abi.”
Abigail kissed her on the cheek, walked to the door, turned back and said again, “I’ll be back for you.”
“I know you will. I’ll be right here waiting. Now go. Save our families before it’s too late.”
Chapter Three
WHO Mobile Command Center
Johor Bahru, Malaysia
The Director General-in-Charge’s face was violet with rage. He slammed the phone on his desk and addressed Tomas. “Overstreet! You know your crew wasn’t authorized for any study in the Malaysia Outbreak zone. Explain to me why I shouldn’t arrest you.”
After decontamination and what seemed an endless seven-hour wait in a holding cell, Tomas had been transported in a nondescript travel trailer to the WHO Mobile Command Center in Johor.
Before the trip, he had managed to convince the soldiers manning the fence that he needed to retrieve his equipment, files and the severed head from the SUV.
His equipment and files were no trouble.
But the head was another matter.
The commander had denied his request due to contamination risks.
However, one of his lieutenants had had a run-in with a mutated zombie earlier in the day and it had shaken him up quite a bit. He was on a routine inspection of the perimeter about a mile east of the gate. There were a dozen bloated zombies from the original strain piling up against the fence in a gully near a feeder road. The fence was weak in that area and there was concern that the weight of the zombie corpses could weaken the section they were pressed against. The lieutenant and his crew were talking about how to remove the bodies from the barrier when they heard a cold-blooded shriek. The soldiers watched in amazement as a naked man ran across the field in a full sprint, screaming in that inhuman off-key. The soldiers raised their rifles, but the lieutenant hesitated before giving the order to fire, waiting to see if this person needed their help.
The naked man ran into the gulley and charged up the bloated backs of the dead zombies piled against the fence. He leaped into the air and grabbed the razor wire on top of the fence, trying to climb through and filleting himself in the process. The telltale greenish blood flowed from his wounds.
The lieutenant had plenty of experience with zombies and knew this behavior was out of the ordinary. He was still formulating a way to explain the event to his superiors when Tomas arrived at the gate. So he argued for Tomas and the commander gave in. “Take the head, but share what you discover with WHO,” the commander ordered.
Tomas agreed, knowing that the WHO would take months to digest any information he provided them … and a couple more months to suppress it.
The Director General-in-Charge rocked forward in his chair and leaned across his desk, staring through Tomas’ eyes, trying to elicit a response through sheer will alone.
“My authorization to conduct research inside the quarantine zone was given at the zero hour, sir,” Tomas lied, trying to be as deferential as possible to the soldier-bureaucrat barking at him. “I’m sure if you check with WHO headquarters you’ll find that we were given entry permits and field passes to conduct our studies during the final phases of the outbreak. Unfortunately, my permit was left behind when my crew was overrun by a horde of infected earlier in the day. I was the only one to make it out alive, sir.”
Unconvinced, the Director General-in-Charge replied, “The UN is going to come down heavy on our division if something isn’t done about your rogue operation. My superiors are in a tizzy over your behavior and your utter disregard for quarantine protocols.” He paused, his purple face fading to a more even shade of pink. Looking down, he briefly clicked away on a keyboard projected across the surface of
his desk. He seemed to calm a bit more and clicked away for a few more minutes before continuing, “Nevertheless, the order has come down on high to give you one last chance. We have been tracking your outfit’s progress and know that your studies have paid off in certain breakthroughs that have been beneficial in our quest to find a cure for zombie fever. But we want the rest of your research. We’ll stay your arrest on the condition that you report to WHO headquarters in one week with all your research regarding the IHS virus. Then you are to shut down operations and personally remove yourself from the entire IHS affair. Your colleague, Dr. Greer, will be assigned to WHO headquarters to supervise the transition and assist our team. We can’t have two-bit players like you withholding data from us. The zombie fever pandemic will never be stopped unless we consolidate all information into a central location.”
Tomas listened, but really he was only concerned about his present situation and getting out of WHO’s grasp. He would promise them the moon if they would let him go. Inwardly, he was focused on finding a way to locate Abigail and her friend Jamie in Singapore and get them to Qual pharmaceuticals to synthesize a vaccine. He knew the WHO wasn’t interested in curing the vaccine so much as controlling it. This bureaucrat, his superiors and the rest of the organization didn’t have the best of intentions in mind. Why would they? Because of zombie fever, they had become the most powerful institution on the planet. The general public was fascinated by the prospect of zombies but also terrified of the contagion. As a consequence, the WHO had every single government under their thumb, with their promises of prevention, dreams of cures or, at the very least, immediate containment with minimal casualties. If they had any idea that the IHS virus was engineered by a secretive multinational corporation, they kept it under wraps.
There’s no way they’re getting our research.
“I’ll do whatever you say, sir.” Tomas stood and saluted the Director General-in-Charge, mistakenly with his left hand then his right, and then he bowed. Having never served in the armed forces, he didn’t know what gesture was required of him. “Thank you for this second chance. I won’t let you down. Can your people take me to the airport so that I may carry out your orders? I’m exhausted and worried that I’ll pass out before I can get on the next flight to Canada. Oh, and I’ll need to take my files and the head, too.”
The Director General-in-Charge began to turn purple again. He typed away for a few moments on his desk and the door opened. Two MP-looking types escorted Tomas through the front entrance of the building. They walked him to an underground garage where a pickup truck was waiting with his equipment, files and the head sealed in a bio-bag and conveniently strapped to the truck’s bed. An MP handed over a key and said, “You’re to leave the vehicle in long-term parking at Senai International Airport, Terminal One.”
Tomas was pleased.
WHO may not have the world’s best interest in mind when it came to the zombie fever epidemic, but at least their commanders were efficient … and gullible.
Shifting the small truck into fourth gear, Tomas weaved around the slower vehicles on the Senai Selatan interchange en route to Senai International Airport. He glanced at the rearview mirror and watched as a dark sedan followed.
I’m going to have to make this look good, Tomas thought.
He pulled into long term parking as instructed by the soldiers and stuffed his equipment, files and the severed head into a large pack with WHO paratroopers emblazoned on the side. Slinging the bag over his shoulder, Tomas covertly scanned the parking lot and spotted the sedan a few rows back.
A group of Vietnamese tourists were piling off a bus a few yards ahead. Tomas hunched his shoulders and attempted to crowd in with their group as they walked towards Terminal One.
The group swarmed into the terminal and Tomas veered off towards the Canada Air’s ticket counter.
As he stood in line, he again glanced back. It was easy to spot the two soldiers in plain clothes keeping tabs on him.
He approached the counter, took out his passport and said, “I need a ticket on the next flight out to Vancouver, please.”
The travel assistant’s eyes brightened as soon as she saw that there was a handsome young man at her counter. But then a look of distaste flashed across her features as she caught a whiff of his body odor from six days in the Tropics without a proper bath. Breathing through her nose, she tapped on an old-fashioned keyboard behind the counter. “The next flight leaves in two hours. A coach ticket will run you RMB $6,000 and first-class RMB $14,000. You’ll have to check your bag. It’s too big to use as a carry on.” She pointed to the idle conveyor belt beside the counter.
“Can I buy a coach ticket, then come back and check the bag? I need to get a change of clothes out and freshen up before the flight.”
She nodded and Tomas handed her the Qual Pharmaceuticals’ credit card he had stuck inside the back of his passport for these types of emergencies.
After he bought the ticket, Tomas walked towards security and shifted the files and laptop in the bag to make them more secure.
The two soldiers shadowing him were not far behind.
He made his way to security and calmly began counting backward from one-hundred to soothe his nerves. Airport security was on high alert for any sign of zombie fever. The first layer of security was a thermal scan to check body temperature as the first line of defense against spreading the contagion.
When Tomas reached the back of the line, he waited another thirty seconds. Then, leaning over behind the family in front of him, he looked down at the ground and screamed, “BERJALAN PENYAKIT!” the popular term in Malay for zombie, loosely translated as the walking infection.
Panic rippled through the terminal.
Tourists and airport staff alike screamed and ran for the exits.
Tomas pressed against the wall while the crazed throng rushed by.
The soldiers disappeared amid the horrified passengers and airline employees.
Even the so-called security officers were rushing towards the emergency doors.
Tomas was concerned that people were getting trampled in the melee, but he tried to focus on the big picture. With the added dangers of this new engineered strain of IHS on top of the already highly contagious and fatal original virus, it was imperative that he get away from his escorts. He had to get to a safe location and send brain samples back to Dr. Greer, then find Abigail and her friend in Singapore.
If there were casualties along the way -well, it would be unfortunate, but not unforeseen.
Tomas headed deeper into the terminal and found an abandoned corridor with an emergency door to the runway. He pushed his way through the door and mounted a three-wheeled trolley used to tow luggage carts. It was a simple matter to follow the painted lines on the tarmac towards Terminal Two, which was still operational, and sneak through the milling passengers and find a taxi.
“Klamas Veterinary, across from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.” Tomas told the taxi driver. He slunk back in his seat and closed his eyes. He hadn’t slept for two days and the lack of shut-eye was taking its toll.
Vehicles whizzed by as he drifted in and out of sleep during the ride to the safe house his colleagues had set up in Johor earlier in the month when there was confirmation of an outbreak in the northern states.
The veterinary blended in well with the medical supply stores, stem-cell injectors, cord blood banks, cryogenic sales departments and privateer cloners in the row of shop houses once reserved for hairdressers, household goods and pirated DVDs in a more innocent time.
Tomas tossed the driver a twenty ringgit note and rushed the steps into the vet’s reception.
There were two dog owners holding empty leashes and an old woman with a caged song bird sitting in the tiny waiting room. The nurse at the counter was busy writing on a clipboard. When she saw Tomas enter, she hastily retreated through a beaded archway into the rear of the building. Less than a minute later, she reappeared, ushered him behind the counter and practically
shoved him through the open door.