by B. M. Hodges
Pasir Gudang Bay
Straits of Malaysia
There was enough petrol in the containers to spread liberally across the deck and down the stairs into the galley of the creaky derelict fishing trawler.
Tomas splashed flammable liquid along the walls in rainbow patterns. It should only take seconds for the flames to engulf the cracked and bent planks of the fifty-year old vessel, he thought.
He splashed the high-octane fuel across the peeling surface, making sure to douse the controls and captain’s chair in the interior of the wheelhouse. When the last can was empty, he stepped out into the night air to take a final count of the patrol boats in the area. He had been lurking on the dock on the Malaysian side for the last two hours, carefully monitoring the steady and predictable patterns of the three Singapore Coastal Patrol vessels canvassing this portion of the strait.
Tomas could hear the steady hum of the closest patrol’s engines as it cruised along the exact center of the territorial waters, careful not to stray onto the Malaysian side.
He recalled his last conversation with Dr. Greer, “Tomas, Singapore has been quarantined. Please be extremely cautious. There’s word out that people are going crazy and there are stories of cannibalism. They haven’t reported it as zombie fever because the symptoms are unlike anything seen before.” She leaned into the camera. “It must be IHS-2. I don’t know how you’re going to do it, but you must get inside Singapore, find those girls and get them here. You can’t afford to fail. This virus has been unleashed on a population of five-million people. The odds of it spreading globally are now astronomical. Our sources tell us that within the last few hours, a quarter million Singaporeans have been infected.”
And that was two hours ago.
At the current rate of transmission, it’s now closer to a half million zombies roaming Singapore’s streets, parks and rain forest, mindlessly hunting, ruthlessly driven to find victims to host and spread the virus.
Vitura Pharmaceuticals has opened a Pandora’s box when they tampered the original strain of the zombie fever virus.
Tomas sat behind the ancient craft, picked up a socket wrench and ball-peen hammer, and tooled around with the small shiny new outboard he had mounted on the rear; the sleek battery-powered thruster a stark contrast to the knotty, barnacled hull. He lightly tapped the handle of the socket wrench against the bolts of the rigging, making sure it was secure. He was slightly concerned that the thrust of the tiny motor wouldn’t be enough to push the trawler across the divide before one of the Typhoon MK 25 millimeter stabilized naval guns mounted on the patrol boats blew it out of the water.
He glanced at his watch, the luminescent dial reading 10:38 p.m.
Still too early to cross.
According to the smuggler who had sold him the craft, the optimal time to cross the kilometer-long Johor strait was right after eleven when the large container ships were scheduled to set out towards the open waters of the South China Sea and the Singapore Coastal Patrol began its crew rotation at the naval dock a few clicks east.
Tomas sat against a post beside the motor, shielded from view of the infrared scopes mounted atop the patrol boats. His mind started to race so he leaned onto his stomach and began doing push-ups to burn off the excess energy.
As he briskly pumped out eighty push-ups, his thoughts drifted to Abigail. He felt an instant connection to her. Abigail seems different, he told himself, she’s nothing like Jan. Not that he knew anything about Abigail, other than what he had read from the CARS reality show press releases and the few hours he had in her company. Of course, during that time, he was mostly focused on driving her and her companions to the center of a zombie hot zone to be evacuated by helicopter.
Tomas faltered at one hundred twenty push-ups. He paused on one knee, perspiration dripping from his shaggy hair on the corrugated metal dock.
At two hundred push-ups, Tomas’ arms started to give out. He sat back behind the post, away from the water’s edge and glanced at his watch.
Five minutes had ticked by.
It was time.
He pulled out a small canister of oxygen, scuba mask and a large black garbage bag, stripped to his briefs and strapped the canister to his back, securing the mask around his neck. Then he stuffed his clothes inside the trash bag along with a small pouch containing his passport, some cash and Abigail’s promotional headshot.
Tomas pulled back his hair and secured it with a rubber band behind his head so it wouldn’t hinder his sight. His muscular frame was slick with perspiration. It was hot. Even though it was close to eleven at night, the temperature was close to ninety-three degrees and the humidity level hovered near eighty-four percent.
He glanced over the side of the trawler at the patrol boats heading east towards the dock and, right on time, a nearby container ship inched away from the dock towards the open water.
Tomas slid over the side of the boat and unmoored the old wooden vessel for her last voyage.
The container ship was close to the center of the causeway. It pulled perpendicular to his craft, its thousand feet of steel good cover against alert coastal guards on a nationwide emergency alert. He started the tiny electric outboard and the boat crept towards the hull of the freighter.
When about two-thirds of the cargo ship’s hull passed his position, Tomas climbed onto the boat’s railing, picked up the garbage bag filled with his clothes and tied it around his torso with a piece of rope.
Striking a match, he paused at that moment before no return, then tossed it into the wheelhouse and leapt into the water.
Flames raced across the deck, into the wheelhouse and into the galley. As the trawler cleared the freighter, the wheelhouse exploded, hurling charred wood and fire into the night sky. The concussion of the explosion ripped across the water.
Tomas rose to the surface and tested his air regulator, then turned and watched the trawler through the murkiness, now a flaming beacon of distraction as was his plan. The electric motor continued to hum along, clearing the freighter and pushing the burning vessel in the direction of the Singapore dock where the three coastal patrol boats were now approaching at full speed.
The smuggler had advised him to drop to at least three meters in depth below the surface before crossing to the Singapore side. “They have some pretty sophisticated automated heat sensors along the ridge of the shoreline on constant lookout for swimmers trying to enter their precious country illegally,” he rasped. “But if you’re deep enough, you shouldn’t have any problems.”
“What about a gun? I’m going to need something to protect myself,” he had asked the old man. Tomas was never comfortable with firearms; however, he was a practical man and knew there were times that called for them.
But the smuggler laughed. “Son, if you get caught with a gun in Singapore, zombie infestation or not, those bloody Singaporean bastards will kill you on sight. No, the last thing you want to do is bring a gun. If I were you, I’d do my best to secure an item that’s non-ballistic and less threatening to the authorities, like a cane or cricket bat. Even in the best of times, Singaporeans are ultra-paranoid about weaponry. I’d hate to think of how they’d react to a gun-toting Caucasian during a national emergency. And I’d stay away from blades, too.”
Tomas’ watch beeped at three meters and he took two long deep breaths from the oxygen tank before he began swimming across. Wish I had some flippers, he thought, knowing that the next quarter mile would be taxing. Every few yards, he glanced at the compass dial on his watch to make sure he was heading in the right direction.
Swimming three meters below the surface in the lukewarm water must be similar to lying in a deprivation tank while on hallucinogens, he pondered as he swam perpendicular to the undercurrent pulling him towards the South China Sea. The sensation of floating merged with swimming as the water temperature remained at a steady seventy-four degrees Fahrenheit. Visibility was less than a foot in front of his facemask and his hearing was restricted to the intake of air thro
ugh the regulator and the regular motion of his underwater breaststroke. It was hypnotic. As though in a waking dream, he kept picturing the grotesque features of a half-starved infected he had seen and killed earlier in the week that had seemed familiar at the time, and he swore he saw body parts floating in the water in the periphery of his limited vision.
The swim should have lasted twenty minutes, but every few minutes Tomas had to pause and check his watch for depth and to focus on something real.
After thirty minutes, he crawled out of the water and stretched out on the heavily littered, rocky shore, tilting his head to observe the Singapore coastal patrol boats and his still flaming fishing trawler. The electric motor had given out about one hundred yards from the shore. The three patrol boats were lined in front of the trawler, beaming high-watt halogen spotlights on the craft and creating a line of defense halfway between the burning vessel and their motherland.
Two military helicopters were stationary overhead.
Tomas lay there another ten minutes, watching as the Singaporeans tried to figure out what to do with the burning craft.
The entire military apparatus of the island country had been mobilized once the realization set in that zombie fever had infiltrated their borders. And while Singapore’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention had been running mock outbreaks and dutifully preparing its citizens for a possible zombie fever epidemic, it had prepared for the kind of zombie that the world had grown accustomed to seeing in news reports and entertainment venues. They were expecting the lumbering, swollen and distended, near catatonic, brain dead infected shuffling around, on a creeping and easily avoidable hunt for living flesh.
But that’s not the zombie they should have been preparing for.
No, their military wasn’t prepared for a half million of its own people transforming into crazed flesh eating lunatics in less than a day. This was an attack from within and by their own infected citizens. These mutated zombies were agile and nimble on their feet.
It wasn’t a scenario any military commander had envisioned.
So, when it was reported that there was an unauthorized vessel crossing into Singapore waters, well, that was something they could sink their teeth into.
The coastal patrol boats unleashed the full power of their Typhoon MK 25 millimeter stabilized naval guns, obliterating the trawler.
Tomas stood and brushed the sand from his legs. He tore open the garbage bag and pulled his clothes on over his wet skin.
Once he was dressed, Tomas got his bearings and began hiking west along the rocky coastline. There was a biking path above the beach, but every twenty yards there was a bright halogen lamp. He wasn’t sure whether there were any infected in the area and he didn’t know if anyone had spotted him crossing the strait.
It’s best to stay out of view for now.
Tomas rounded a hill and, not more than half a mile away, saw the Punggol Jetty with its privately owned docks. There was a row of bay front restaurants lining the harbor, brightly lit for an absent Saturday night clientele.
The world around him was anything but silent: water lapping on the shore, music floating across the water from the restaurants ahead, eerie and echoing, gunfire in the distance and occasionally a shrieking scream deep within the jungle growth beyond the shore.
Okay, I admit it, I’m afraid. People often mistook Tomas for a man of courage and iron will. What people didn’t understand when meeting Tomas was that beneath the surface he was a gentle, introverted soul who preferred whiling away the hours in an engrossing book or devoting his days to research in the confines of a laboratory. He saw himself as more pragmatic than brave. He knew his involvement in the zombie fever pandemic was unique. If it hadn’t been for the events surrounding his father’s death, he never would have gotten into the “save the world” business. He wasn’t a hero. Fate had drawn him in.
Yet, here I am, on the other side of the world, standing on the shoreline of a country being ravaged by a mutant strain of engineered virus the likes of which could destroy mankind. And my team is the only one searching for a cure. The corporate research facilities, government disease centers and international health organizations able to do something about the disease were thwarted by the flow of wealth and power into the hands of those in charge.
And it didn’t help that Vitura Pharmaceuticals was waging an invisible war against those attempting to find a cure. The temptation to let the contagion take its course and alter the demographics of problem countries--eliminating the lower classes, reducing the numbers within each country and slowing the inevitable depletion of the world’s natural resources--and turn back the environmental destruction of an overpopulated world was too great for many of them.
After all, Vitura’s plan to travel to one country at a time, inoculate the wealthy, then unleash the virus on the rest its population to alter the mankind’s unchecked population growth was a tempting solution to the inevitable result of a world with too many and not enough food or energy to sustain them without destroying the planet’s ecosystem.
Dr. Greer was right: it was more imperative than ever to get Abigail and Jamie to the laboratory in Canada. The serum inside their veins may be the last chance for humanity.
He pushed forward and began jogging towards the brightly lit restaurants of the jetty, knowing he was exposing himself to an unknown number of dangers. But his message to the girls said, “Meet me at Punggol Jetty at Midnight” and he had five minutes to get there on time. If everything goes according to plan, I’ll find the girls waiting for me. We’ll commandeer a boat and race back across to the Malaysia side to safety.
Even from a distance, Tomas could see that the expanse of interconnected outdoor dining patios was deserted. Chintzy strings of colored Christmas lights hung from the latticework above the decking. Tables covered in pink plastic material, favored by the restaurateurs serving messy cauldrons of seafood, were surrounded by empty chairs. Canto pop blared from speakers at a deafening level. While the patio looked to have five restaurants, each blending with the other, only banks of fish tanks with today’s catch separated them.
As Tomas carefully walked along the creaking deck, scanning the interiors of the restaurants for signs of life, he noticed that as he passed each restaurant that they gradually became smaller and the resin chairs and plastic covering the tables changed to actual wooden chairs and table cloths and then to fine dining glass tables and sculptured chairs. The further in, the more exclusive the restaurants became.
It was when he was checking the interior of the fourth restaurant, a chic five-star affair, that things got interesting. On the white tile floor under the glaring fluorescents swarming with insects was a long streak of blood. There were no footprints or body, only a streak of blood in the aisle between the tables, disappearing behind the bar.
Tomas looked around for a weapon and the best he could come up with was one of the wooden chairs. Holding the chair in front of him, he made his way into the eatery and stopped for a moment next to the bar. He wasn’t sure if he could hear anything because of the obnoxious music, but he thought he sensed something. Setting the chair down, he picked up a barstool made from metal tubing. He counted to three and stepped around the bar, already swinging the barstool towards his unseen foe.
But there was nothing there.
The blood streak stopped behind the bar, but there was nothing else.
Tomas let out a sigh and set the bar stool down. He grabbed a glass, filled it full of water with the bar’s drink gun and pounded it back.
Clink.
There was the sound of dishes being knocked together in the kitchen.
A thin paring knife used to cut limes sat next to the beer taps. Tomas picked it up, then wrapped a towel around his left hand - the idea being to shove his left fist into the zombie’s mouth, then shove the knife through its eye.
He crept up to the kitchen door and peered through the crack.
There was someone inside. It was a waiter in full uniform
facing in the other direction, so it was hard to tell if he was infected. He seemed hard at work, his busy hands out of view in the industrial sink. Tomas watched through the slit in the door as the waiter got all twitchy for a minute then continued with whatever it was he was doing in the sink. Suspecting that the waiter wasn’t in his right mind, Tomas backed away from the door and retreated to the deck. He pulled down a string of lights hanging from the ceiling and cut off a three-foot length with the knife.