“Yeah!” I gave a half-hearted shout in reply as she put the SUV into first gear, pulling away from the city and leaving the kind soldiers and good people behind the safety of the green zone surrounding the Petronas Towers and the remaining infected as they shuffled through the last remaining hours of dehydration, starvation and heat related misery. At least they didn’t know they were dying, right? They didn’t have the capacity to know, did they?
Jamie drove the SUV down a slope through the tunnel-like greenery. Our journey towards Kota Tinggi began smoothly and, aside from a few cars abandoned along the side of the road, it was carefree enough to imagine the two of us were on a casual road trip through Malaysian backcountry.
I opened the map to get our bearings. Up ahead, there was supposed to be a large reservoir where we were supposed to turn at a T-junction and head due south. Jamie had to practically floor the heap of junk to get us up to the near highest speed of forty kilometers an hour. She expressed some concern to me about the petrol situation, considering in that short trip through the Klang Valley, Bob had drained about a fourth of our petrol. So she did her best to let the vehicle drift along whenever we hit a down slope. I did some calculations and assured her we had plenty of fuel. But I was actually a bit concerned. At the rate of our travel and the kilometers per liter we were currently using, we would have barely enough to reach our destination.
It took about a half hour to reach the reservoir and in my estimation we were making good time. It was one o’clock, which meant we had thirteen hours before our time ran out. I looked over the hillside towards the tranquil waters. The scenery was breathtaking. Emerald forestry made way for the deepest blue water of the reservoir. I could make snow white cranes skirting the water, searching for a meal. Overhead the sun blazed and there was a layer of shimmering as the reservoir’s water was drawn into the humid overly saturated air.
I mentioned to Jamie that without the infected wandering about and all able-bodied Malaysians retreating to the south, it was as if we were in our own Eden built just for the two of us, explorers and survivors in a lush paradise.
I picked up the camera and intermittently filmed Jamie, the road, myself and the gorgeous vista below. We approached a road sign that told us our current road was about to branch north and south into the B19 roadway. I made a point to film the sign and say, “We’re approaching the junction, Jamie, be sure and take the south branch, we need to get to that signal beacon, hopefully before the other teams.”
“Righty ho, my little doe, head south, check-a-roo.” Jamie replied for the shot.
I set the camera down and took a pull from the nozzle hanging from my bio-suit’s collar. The water was warm and rubbery tasting. “Have you tried this yet? It tastes like crap. Good thing we haven’t had to rely on it. I’d probably prefer dehydration.”
Jamie smiled, took a sip of her own water bladder and, shaking her head, pulled a long face of disgust.
I laughed.
We were feeling good again. The surrealism of Kuala Lumpur under siege by the strangest of contagions was fading in our dust. If we kept up this speed, we’d make it to Kota Tinggi in less than seven hours, just after sunset when the temperature cooled and the country Berjalan penyakit folk became more active in their search for an evening meal.
We came to the T-junction and Jamie turned south as instructed, but soon we realized we had a problem. According to our map, we were to head along B19 for another twenty or so kilometers and then take a hard right towards a tiny town called ‘Broga’. But the road began to clog with abandoned cars and lorries from those who tried to head south after the quarantine in the state of Kuala Lumpur had been imposed by WHO. I could only guess that the congestion backed-up from here all the way to the E2 some thirty kilometers to the south where, as we’d seen earlier had been commandeered and sealed off by WHO paratroopers a few days earlier.
Jamie stopped the SUV behind what had become an impassable tangle of vehicles and began hitting the steering wheel, “Damn it! Damn it! Damn it, Abigail! When can we catch a break! We’re never going to be able to drive around all these damned cars. And look,” she pointed ahead, “look at all those Berjalan penyakit standing up ahead just waiting for us to make a move. Lazy zombies. Can’t even be bothered to come after us. Just standing there waiting.” She rolled down the window and through the protective wire mesh yelled at the fifty or so Berjalan penyakit amid the tangle of cars, “Yoo-hoo! Wake up, sillys! We’re healthy and tasty!”
She was just trying to be funny, I know, and was frustrated by the situation but I felt it was disrespectful just as Bob lamented earlier.
Her taunting did get them moving. They began shuffling towards us, bumping into fenders and each other, pushing at each other with their bloated arms, jaws opening and closing.
I don’t think Jamie expected such a response. But I think those Berjalan penyakit were still rather fresh, like only a day old, abandoned by their loved ones in their pilgrimage out of the hot zone and so they still had some strength left in them.
I turned the camera on and said to Jamie as I filmed her and the approaching zombies, “Back up, back the f-up! They’re coming and the weapons we have are crap.”
Jamie put the SUV into reverse and we began slowly backing away from the approaching infected. I filmed them as they tried to keep up, picking up speed to almost a slow jog, faster than we had all seen in previous newscasts. Perhaps the virus strain was mutating. Maybe it knew that it was burning out so it was giving its current hosts a boost of adrenaline speed. Jamie backed up into half a three point turn, stopped and applied the handbrake. I filmed her and the zombies through her window jogging up the road towards us. “Let’s try something,” she said. She leaned back behind her seat and began fishing around in the weapons in the backpack. She pulled out one of the flash bang grenades and grinned at me and the imagined future audience viewing the footage that I was currently filming.
However, I was feeling rather sensitive to the Berjalan penyakit’s plight. Maybe I was being more sensitive because I was getting closer to my menses, but all I wanted to just leave them alone and get a safe distance away.
“Set the camera on the dash towards them, duck down, close your eyes and cover your ears,” she ordered as she pulled the pin.
I quickly complied.
She opened her door a crack and threw the flash bang grenade towards the zombies and we ducked down on onto the floor.
I could hear the grenade rolling along the pavement towards the approaching infected.
Bang!
The SUV rocked with the impact and my ears began to ring.
I glanced over at Jamie, who had her fingers in her ears, eyes squinting closed and a huge silly grin of mischief plastered on her face.
We sat up and looked down the road.
Where there was once a group of zombies shuffling towards us, there was now a pile of goopy arms, legs and heads in a gelatinous mess of green slime and torn clothes. About four or five of the infected were sluggishly running back towards the abandoned cars and lorries and scrapping at their ears, confused and maybe terrified, as if that part of their brain where primal fear was located hadn’t been completely burned away by fever.
A quick count of the heads and limbs and I guessed that Jamie had just killed at least forty infected with what was supposed to be a non-lethal defensive tool. Because of the tautness of the Berjalan penyakit’s skin, the ‘bang’ concussion of the device had torn them to shreds, like insects hitting the windscreen of an oncoming car driving at a high rate of speed. Some of the mortally wounded Berjalan penyakit lying on the ground were still trying to get away from the concussive force, crawling on their belly’s as their green and black intestines dragged behind them.
The horror.
I burst into tears.
For the first time, I felt a disconnect with Jamie as she sat there reviewing the tape and laughing, replaying the explosion again and again, watching body parts, and green and black gore fly into
the air. She had a truly evil look of satisfaction on her face. I couldn’t help but wonder if we could continue our relationship if we survived the next forty-eight hours. I didn’t know this person cackling at those ailing folk who were alive only a few minutes earlier and now slaughtered for amusement.
Jamie glanced up from the camera view screen and seeing the open disgust on my face, threw it down on the seat and crossed her arms.
“Oh give me a break, Abi! You’re not siding with Bob in this are you? Respecting the infected, what a bunch of poppy cock! They want to EAT US, Abi, EAT US! You can’t go soft when it comes to your own survival. They’re condemned anyways. What, they have maybe another two or three days left before dying of exposure? If anything what just happened was the most humane thing we could have done!”
I sat there and listened to her justify what I saw as murder. In all the stories and news reports of the IHS outbreak, they never discussed the fact that these wandering infected were semi-conscious people caught in an unfortunate set of circumstances. It was always the sensational side of the contagion, like about zombies walking the earth and the end of days and eradication by the heroic WHO paratroopers. Never about a middle-aged schoolmarm crawling across the pavement towards the cool grass to bleed out from stumps where her legs used to be after your best friend decided to have a little fun.
I cried and cried some more.
We sat there for quite a while with our SUV running for the air-con on the hillside road above the reservoir, facing the glassy surface of the water. A fish jumped just off shore and the ripples dissipated in widening circles.
Jamie offered no comfort. She sat there staring ahead with her arms folded in defiance, feeling she was in the right and perhaps rethinking the nature of our relationship as well, “Well, we need to figure out what to do. We only have twelve hours left before the chopper leaves. They gave us all different routes to get to Kota Tinggi, one of those roads has to be clear. Give me the map, stop boobing and let’s take a look-see.” When I didn’t respond she reached across my lap and snatched the map out of the glove box, making it a point not to touch me in the event I misinterpreted it as a sign of sympathy.
She unfolded the map across the steering wheel, pressing her lips together with her finger.
“We know the E2 expressway is not an option, what with all the barbed wire and gun-toting paratroopers who may not understand our mission. We could backtrack north above the reservoir and then east towards Mersing,” she traced her finger along a route across the map that went to the Malaysian east coast. “It’s quite a distance, but this road south from Mersing to Kota Tinggi looks like a main artery and I’ll be it’s a four-laner. If we try to stick to our assigned route, I’m positive these tiny back roads going south are as jammed as this one here.”
I looked at the map and where she was pointing. She continued, “We’d still have to go through a jumble of smaller roads before hitting Route 11, which heads directly east, then after another diversion north we’d be in Mersing, then, see, it’d be a straight shot on the 3 expressway right to Kota Tinggi.”
I listened to her while she made a plan, but Jamie was the worst at reading distance. I could see that Mersing was at least three hundred kilometers away and then it was another one hundred forty kilometers to Kota Tinggi. Even if we pressed this SUV to its limit of forty kilometers an hour and were blessed with clear roads and didn’t get lost it would take approximately eight hours to reach Mersing then another hour or two to make it to Kota Tinggi, then we’d only have a couple hours to spare to find the signal beacon. Not only that but we’d be extremely lucky to make it to Mersing before running out of petrol. We would be not only risking our place in the reality show, we’d be risking our lives if we got stranded in the middle of the infected zone off our appointed route and after dusk.
But if we wanted to get to the signal beacon in time, I couldn’t see a better option.
I explained to Jamie what I was thinking and said, “We’ll need to get petrol in Mersing, if we’re going to do this, you’ll have to drive like you’ve never driven before. There’s no time to waste.”
Instead of answering, probably still fuming at how I reacted to what she thought was a comical and fun scene filmed for the world audience, she fired up the SUV and jammed on the gas and we roared away from the carnage we caused along the hillside and towards the northern tip of the reservoir. I crossed my fingers and hid them under my legs for luck as the road curved towards the north east.
We decided that since we were straying from our designated route the camera would stay off for the time being. It was better to lose some potential TV time than to be disqualified indiscriminately. Although it wasn’t as if we had a choice. I kept the map open on my lap and redid my distance calculations with a more exacting eye. If we had stayed on our assigned route and it remained clear, we would have made it to Kota Tinggi in approximately seven hours. As it stood now, so long as Jamie kept the SUV at maximum speed we’d make it down to our final destination just after midnight.
Sheldon had told us that the first team that made it to the evacuation point needed to turn on the signal for the helicopter that was planning to make the pick up at two o’clock under the cover of night. Even with a couple hours leeway, it felt as if we had a razor thin margin and that wasn’t even taking into account our petrol situation. The fuel gauge now pointed to just above half a tank. I took out a small pencil out of the glove box and made use of my only honors grade in mathematics. When I was done I let out a long breath and told Jamie my findings.
“According to my calculations, at this rate of fuel consumption we’ll make it to Mersing with just under a liter or two to spare. I remember visiting Mersing for my cousin’s wedding when I was fourteen and we stopped at a petrol station just to the south of the small fishing town. These places never change. There’s a roundabout and it’s just a few meters beyond a large Malaysian restaurant.”
Jamie nodded silently, keeping her attention on the road. The large tractor tires made a high pitched whiney sound on the black top. They weren’t meant for these speeds. I imagined what a blow-out would look like with those giant axels and tires. The center of gravity was way high. We’d skid about for a second or two as Jamie tried to gain control and then we’d flip for sure, probably rolling a few times before catching on fire from all the sloppy modifications to the fuel system and dying an excruciating death in a fiery explosion. I put on my seat belt and Jamie, perhaps sensing what I was thinking, did the same.
The winding road towards Country Road 1 was unexpectedly deserted of cars and wandering zombies, I took a few deep breaths and tried to relax a bit. We’ll make it, we’ll make it.
It didn’t even occur to me how we’d get petrol if Mersing was under siege from Berjalan penyakit and there was no electricity to work the pumps.
An hour went by and then another. I suggested to Jamie that I could relieve her for a while and let her take a break, but she just laughed under her breath and stared at the road ahead. Finally, the road merged into Country Road 1. She seemed to relax, took one hand off the wheel and gave me a wink.
The SUV began to cough and lurch a bit as the tank ran empty and the auxiliary pump welded to the side of the petrol tank behind our seats began to siphon fuel in a hose under our seats, bypassing the stock fuel system, directly into the injectors. It was a tense few minutes as the SUV adjusted to the new and untested system. The hum of the engine changed a bit and we even gained a few horsepower, which was good news considering the mechanics never had a chance to adjust the mixture.
However, when I did my calculations earlier I was basing fuel consumption on our distance traveled from the Petronas Towers safe zone and what had been drawn from the SUV’s stock fuel tank. I hadn’t taken into consideration that perhaps our fuel economy would suffer when the auxiliary system kicked in. And there was no way to measure our current rate of consumption because the mechanics hadn’t thought there would be a need for a fuel gauge on the
new tank. I decided to keep my concerns to myself. She had enough on her mind trying to maintain top speed and swerve around the occasional vehicle or Berjalan penyakit staring at us blankly on the road ahead as we approached, no doubt attracted to the whine of the quickly balding tractor tires.
I could feel the tires now giving a bit as Jamie swerved past an infected gentlemen wearing nothing but a sarong and one sandal; his bloated pregnant stomach, his neck and chest were glistening with a gooey substance leaking from his gaping mouth. Jamie felt the slippage and her brow furrowed as she struggled with the natural tendency to play it safe and slow down.
Markers at kilometer intervals counted down towards the end of the country road, 247, 246, 245 ...
With nothing else to do, I went through my calculations again and again as the sun began to set behind us. We’d be fine I thought, we’ll make it to Mersing and maybe even get some chips and snacks at the petrol station. I imagined myself heroically holding back hordes of infected with the shotgun’s bean bags and the cattle prod while Jamie pumped fuel and ran into the station, throwing money down on the counter so we wouldn’t be stealing and running back to the vehicle with armloads of candy bars, crisps and fizzy drinks.
It was a nice fantasy, but that’s not how it happened.
Instead, we ran out of petrol just short of Mersing city limits as the sun sank behind the hills. I could see the bridge up ahead that led to the roundabout in the fading light, picturing the quaint town just beyond and the fuel needed to continue our journey.
“We lost. There was no way we’ll make it to the evacuation now,” I moaned in defeat. I took the weapons from back seat, gave the cattle to Jamie, loaded the shotgun with five bean bag shells, strapped the flash bang grenades to a couple of hooks hanging from Jamie’s belt and we climbed down from the vehicle.
Zombie Fever: Outbreak Page 20
