Zombie Fever: Outbreak

by Hodges, B. M.

  One of the assistants opened the cage door and Team A was pushed through into the swirl of sixty or so squirrels who were flinging around the room in terror at the lights, drum beat and these monsters with their nets. Sensing the danger they were in, most of the squirrels scurried to the back of the barn away from the team members and began to dig at the baseboards, hunting for an exit by means of burrowing a hole in the floorboards or a crack in the barn’s wooden frame big enough to squeeze through.

  Meng was the first to capture a squirrel. He ran up and stomped at the squirrels until he finally trapped one underneath his boot by its tail. The furry rodent made a high pitched squeal in pain. He then reached down and picked it up by its neck and shoved it into his net. The assistants led him out of the cage. The rest of the squirrels went into a frenzy of jumping, leaping and running in panicked circles.

  While there were worse scenes of horror filmed in reality shows, the frenetic rush of this scene compounded by the boom of the drums and squeals of terrorized squirrels really gave this one an edge of suspense. Web viewers leaned closer to their screens, those with 3D leaning back to dodge squirrels flying towards them out of their flat screen televisions and mobile devices.

  I watched as Jamie tried to club one of the critters that had climbed up the chicken wire with the handle of her net. She got lucky and struck it on its noggin, knocking it unconscious. It stuck there with its little claws holding onto the wire and she scooped it off and into her net, raising her hand to be let outside. I tried to give her an encouraging grunt through the gag and retched a bit, the gag doing what it was intended to do, gag me.

  Watching Quaid try to capture one of the squirrels was actually quite hilarious. He swung his net like a golf club into the mass of squirrels squirming against the wall. Squirrels were flying through the air as they were scooped up into his net, but they were smart little critters and instead of getting trapped, they grabbed onto the sides of the netting and leapt out. He almost clubbed Lydia in the back of her head when she accidentally dropped her net and decided to crawl around on the sawdust trying to grab squirrels with her gloved hands, but they were too fast for her and squeezed out of her grip.

  Neither Quaid nor Lydia could capture a squirrel and kept getting in each other’s way.

  Lydia was becoming hysterical at the thought of coming in last at this event. I could hear her cursing up a storm as she futilely grabbed at those cuddly yet nimble bodies.

  It took about ten minutes until each of them had one of the squirrels squirming in their nets. Fortunately for both of their teams, they’d captured their squirrels at exactly the same time.

  “Great job, Teams,” Gemma’s disembodied voice crackled through the loudspeaker as the boom of the drum faded away, “Now, hand over your squirrels so that we can test them once more for contagion before they are humanely euthanized. And, yes, as you may have guessed, your team member will be eating your catch for lunch after you’ve prepared it in the CARS cooking event, ‘A Squirrel a Day Keeps Zombie Fever Away’ featuring the great Makan King Julian Ng!”

  We could hear an applause track through the crackling speaker overhead.

  With cameras still rolling, Team A were stripped of their aprons and gloves, sprayed down with a disinfectant, scrubbed with brushes on long poles by the retro-masked crew and rinsed with a fire hose. They yelled in protest as the force of the water and rough bristles of the brushes nearly took off their skin along with sawdust and squirrel fur.

  Once they were finished with the power wash, we heard Sheldon yell, “Cut!” and the live feed went to black. Everyone cheered at the completion of the event and patted Sheldon on the back. The production crew reported that the preview audience had grown from that initial six hundred thousand viewers to over five million streaming all over the world and everyone cheered some more.

  I expected the crew to free us from our S&M-like restraints, but that wasn’t the case. Instead, members of the crew wheeled us outside and propped us up next to the four stainless steel tables at the cooking scene set facing the stage and the huge green screen.

  It was nearing one o’clock but the heat wasn’t as bad as when we arrived as the wind had shifted and there was a mild coastal breeze. With the gentle wind coming off the water of the Straits of Malacca, Port Dickson was less humid than Singapore and I could feel the cool air though the back straps of the strait-jacket and the bars of the dolly were cold against my bare legs.

  The tables were lined side-by-side. I could hear Norris hollering through his mouth gag to my right, something about how he’s going to sue the show and didn’t sign up to be tortured.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Jamie standing beside me and looking a bit peeved. I didn’t know what else to do so I winked and nodded. She had, along with the others in Team A, changed into chef’s uniforms complete with ridiculously puffy chef hats with CARS plastered on the front in bright red letters. Her mascara had run and her hair was soaked from the drenching by fire hose, but I figured it was better than being filmed with matted sawdust and squirrel fur in her lovely brown hair. She still looked beautiful to me.

  I took a closer look at the cooking utensils on the wooden chopping block. The knife set consisted of a 12-inch chef’s knife, a yo-deba double edged blade used for chopping bones and cutting through joints and a 16-inch curved scimitar for cutting large cuts of raw meat into cutlets.

  On the stainless steel table there were six small bowls holding your typical Asian seasonings of salt, MSG, chili powder, ginger root, soy sauce and oyster sauce wrapped in cellophane. Completing the ensemble was an oversized dinner plate with a fork and knife on a flowery placemat. There was also a sausage grinder attached to the side of the table.

  If this was a cooking segment, where are the ovens and cookers?

  There was a lot of commotion around the raised stage in front of our tables. Sheldon kept waving his arms frantically in the air. But in due course, the production team cleared the set and climbed into an RV with a gargantuan satellite dish on its roof and thick black cables stretching out from underneath it to the green screen.

  Suddenly, the screen began to flicker.

  Wow, I thought, Sheldon must have got some serious funding for this part of the show. That was no ordinary green screen. It was the Xayatron 5000GS that not only acted as a green screen when filmed but also doubled as a monitor when set up with a sister 5000GS in another location. Confused? Don’t be, it’s simply a teleconferencing screen with amazing special effects qualities. In any event, with the screen turned on, I was now staring at an open field somewhere on Tua Kee Media’s property in Singapore filled with hundreds of spectators obediently sitting on the grass of a rising slope in a large semi-circle. The effect of the screen was seamless. It was as if the live Singapore audience was here in Port Dickson, crowded together in the field in front of me. Conversely, the audience was viewing us safely in Singapore as if it were a live event unfolding in front of them. They were clapping those maddeningly noisy stick clappers together and holding up homemade posters covered in handwritten slogans and glitter announcing their support for their favorite teams.

  Oh my, how embarrassing! I could see my mother, father and sisters, as well as Jamie’s family sitting in front. They were holding signs that read, ‘Gurl Power!’ ‘We love you, Jamie and Abigail!’ ‘We’re counting on you!’ ‘$$$$’ and ‘You can do it!’

  Next to our family, there were a dozen or so bodybuilders cheering in unified support for Meng and Esther. Beside the bodybuilders were a bunch of spiky haired, surly thirty-something men shouting, “Ly-D-ya! Ly-D-ya!” and ignoring Derrik. And finishing off the front row and loudest of all, were a group of Ang Mohs, probably fellow teachers and work colleagues, shouting and hooting for Norris and Quaid. Behind the team’s friends and relatives were a couple hundred Cera motor heads, zombie fans and curious netizens who’d queued all week for the opportunity to sit in on the show.

  Little did we know, the CARS television commer
cials, billboards, bus and MRT ads, web teasers and real time (but actually heavily edited) clips were creating a snowball effect unlike anything that had ever been shot before by Tua Kee Media. In the last three days, Singapore had ‘caught’ zombie fever from our reality show and it was spreading throughout the rest of the world via the web. Sheldon was well aware of the viral explosion, which was why he had fired Kip. He wasn’t going to share the fame as producer of possibly the biggest media event of all time with an assistant who’d become increasingly critical of his so-called glorification of the IHS outbreak. He knew his hard work was paying off in spades and he felt like he was king of the world.

  The crowd began to cheer louder as Julian Ng ran down the center aisle of the Singapore audience to the stage. Shouts of “We love you, Makan King!” could be heard from housewife groupies in the audience who had fallen in love with his dreamy eyes and artful finesse with the spatula.

  To make every movement look like one shot, Gemma also ran up onto the stage and green screen from our side to meet him. She was wearing nothing but a fur bikini and beach sandals. Her attire was Sheldon’s idea. He was less concerned with his conservative Singapore audience and playing up to the global audience. Everyone knows that a pretty woman in a bikini sells.

  “Whoo hoo! Hey, Everybody!” Gemma shouted into a microphone while facing the audience. She then walked up ‘beside’ Julian in the virtual sense, “Welcome to CARS ala mode! We’re here with famous chef Julian Ng whose culinary skills have been called upon to make a meal of zombie proportions!

  Here’s the scoop: Our Teams are concerned that their teammates may be coming down with zombie fever. We have it on good authority that, like the hair of the dog, a bit of squirrel meat may ward off the infection. As my granny used to say, ‘feed a cold, starve a fever’. But I have my own saying, ‘When the fever turns you into a zombie, feed it, starve it, do anything you can to find a cure!’”

  The audience laughed and laughed.

  “But that isn’t all. We have a special, yet tearfully tragic surprise for you. Crewmen, please!”

  The cameras on our side panned over to the barn, on the Singapore side they zoomed in on the audience to capture their reactions. Inside the RV, Sheldon licked his lips as he stared at the monitors. His eyes were bugging out of his head as if he was trying to force the events through telepathic telekinesis.

  I craned my neck as far to the left as possible and could barely see what was happening in my peripheral vision.

  Two men in hazmat suits creaked open the double doors, taking their time for optimum effect. Standing in the center of the archway and looking befuddled was Tucker and next to him was Yvonne in the Team B strait-jacket with a ball gag in her mouth and strapped to a dolly. Tucker pushed the dolly forward toward the stage. You could hear the wheels creaking as he struggled with it through the high grass.

  The crowd was a ball of excitement.

  Jamie gasped as she watched an exhausted looking Tucker push Yvonne up the ramp and onto the dais next to the large preparation table, tenderly propping Yvonne up so that she faced the screen and the audience on the other side.

  “Yvonne …Yvonne … she’s not well,” Jamie whispered in my ear.

  It was then that I realized what I was witnessing.

  Yvonne was Berjalan penyakit.

  Yvonne’s head twisted slowly in aimless movements. I couldn’t get a good look at her but the bloated legs bulging out from her torn pants were a dead giveaway that she was teeming with infection.

  The crowd grew silent as they pointed, whispered and stared at the unnatural way her eyes rolled around and the uncontrollable nodding and chewing at the ball gag.

  Members of the crew brought orange bio-bags now marked with a large ‘NEGATIVE’ sticker on their sides and set one on each of our preparation tables. Gemma reached down from the dais to take a bio-bagged squirrel and she set it down on the table in front of Tucker who looked as if he’d been pumped full of powerful tranquilizers. He stared off into the distance.

  I could imagine the scene from the perspective of the audience and cameras facing us from the other side. The stage was set up in such a way so that Julian Ng stood in front of the stainless steel table and chopping block that was on our side of the screen. Zombie Yvonne was set next to the chopping block, facing the audience for maximum gross out factor. Tucker in his chef whites and Gemma in her fur bikini stood behind the table. Behind them were our four tables lined across the grass at the perfect angle so that the audience’s view was unobstructed.

  Gemma lowered her voice and spoke into her microphone, “Ladies and Gentleman, as you can see we have a special guest. Not only have we brought back one of the eliminated teams; we’ve also brought with us the very scourge spreading across Malaysia, the Berjalan penyakit!

  Now don’t feel sorry for creature you see here today because Yvonne, the woman it once was, is already gone. However, Tucker still has hope that she can be saved and has sworn to keep Yvonne alive until they find a cure for IHS. In the meantime, he’ll need to keep her fed, otherwise she won’t be just a zombie, she’ll be a dead zombie!”

  The crowd laughed at the irony.

  “Julian Ng will teach Tucker how to care for his love with the fresh meat she craves. And what if one of the other team members gets infected? Their partner may also need valuable instruction to help their team member survive. Teams,” She looked back at us standing beside our tables, “follow Julian’s instructions carefully. You’ll want to make those squirrels good and edible because when you’re finished, you must feed the raw meat to your bound partner.”

  The orange bio-bags were waiting on the tables.

  “Let’s begin by taking the squirrels out of the bag, my apprentices,” Julian pointed at us with his thumbs, his signature move. “Teams, you must follow my instructions closely or I’ll kick you out of my outdoor kitchen and you will be eliminated from the rally. Now, place your squirrel on the chopping block, belly down.”

  I watched Jamie pull our squirrel out of the bag and place the squirrel on the block as instructed.

  “Get behind the squirrel, placing the palm of your hand on its back legs. Hold the tail up with one hand, that’s it. Quaid! Don’t start cutting until I say! Now take the chef’s knife with the other hand and cut upward from under the tailbone.”

  Yvonne had caught the scent of the fresh squirrel carcass in front of her. The audience snickered uncomfortably at the comical, almost sexual way she was moaning for the gamy meat.

  “Now insert the knife between the meat and the skin of the squirrel and cut a couple of inches forward, moving the knife from side to side. Turn the squirrel over. Remove the internal organs before cutting off the head and back feet. Remove the intestine, that’s it. Cut off both back feet and the head, and you're done. Now hold up your squirrels so that I can see the finished product.”

  Jamie and the rest of Team A held up their squirrels in the air.

  “Tucker, please show the audience and the teams how you like to prepare your lover’s meal.”

  Mechanically following instructions, Tucker took the 16-inch scimitar blade and began cutting large chunks of meat off the squirrel carcass.

  Two members of the crew came up on stage and removed Yvonne’s gag. She let out an incomprehensible string of moaning gibberish.

  Tucker continued to chop until there was nothing left but a plate of raw meat. He took a pair of thick rubber gloves and pulled them on, carefully picked up pieces of bloody meat and delicately held them in front of Yvonne’s gaping mouth.

  The audience was deathly silent.

  As she tore into the squirrel meat, I could hear the smacking and chewing clear from back where we were about fifteen meters distant. It didn’t take long until the feeding was over and the crewmen wheeled Yvonne off the stage and out of sight, Tucker trailing behind.

  Sheldon yelled, “Cut” and the techies did a quick recalibration of the screen to focus it directly on us.

  “Ac
tion!”

  We were now front and center with the audience, Julian paced back and forth on the Singapore side as if he were directly in front of our preparation tables.

  “You have exactly ten minutes to season the meat with spices and herbs provided and serve it to your partner on the exquisite dining set provided by our sponsor, Kuerningware.”

  Jamie took the carcass and stripped it of meat and started cranking it through the sausage grinder into one of the bowls. I could see beads of sweat forming on her brow as she worked. I glanced to my left and saw Meng tearing at their squirrel carcass with his bare hands. Further on, Lydia was dipping strips of meat for Derrik into a soy sauce and oyster sauce combination.

  I looked to my right. Quaid had made little squares out of the meat and had stacked them up in a neat little pyramid on the plate. They seemed to be the only ones enjoying the cooking segment. I could see that Norris jiggling about, laughing behind his gag at Quaid’s artful display.

  Jamie ran the meat through the grinder one last time and added some ginger.

  Julian said, “Five more minutes, chefs.”

  There was a buzzing alarm warning we were getting close to running out of time.

  “Chefs, take off the gags and please feed your companions. Make them clean their plates. I have a special announcement that will make the raw meat much more palatable. There will be no elimination today as long as your partner can finish their meal!”

  The crowd went, “Ooooooh!”

  Starting at Quaid’s cooking station, Julian began a virtual walk in front of each table, having the teams explain their dishes and what they used for preparation while they stuffed their concoctions down their partner’s throats. This got a lot of laughs from the audience who were sadistically enjoying the feeding.

  Jamie unbuckled the ball gag from behind my head and gingerly pulled it out of my mouth.

  I flexed my jaw a few times. Even with Yvonne’s disgusting semi-conscious feed still on my mind, I had to admit I was a bit hungry.