Both of us nodded again and he ducked out of sight just as Jonah re-entered the room, eating a large ripened plantain.
We had four hours left. If Quaid could help us escape, we’d still have a chance to make it to the signal beacon before the helicopter was summoned by Lydia and Derrik, who’d presumably make it to the evacuation point on time.
My spirits were elevated and I could tell Jamie shared the same feeling. But we still needed to play the role of frightened captives. Jonah dragged the television over on a cart and started a teen serial drama called ‘Comet Garden’ that I’d seen a hundred times already. He retrieved the same chair Supervisor Bertrand had used and sat between us. I think he was lonely because he began to laugh and tell us gossipy stories about the most handsome of the star’s love life.
We waited and pretended to watch with interest but all I could see was the second hand of the wall clock overhead taking money from our pockets one second at a time.
It was over an hour before something substantial finally happened. Jonah had just started episode two and I was losing hope we’d get out on time when someone began to shout in the hallway. Jonah jumped to his feet, listened intently at the screams in French and said, “Sounds like one of the infected got lose. I’ll go help them wrassle it back to its bed and be back with some cream sodas. Watch this one without me,” he patted us on our arms like we were good friends and left the room.
As the doors swung closed, Quaid jumped over the window seal and into the room. His bio-suit was covered, head to toe, in fresh blood and he had a large black bag slung over his shoulder. He looked like a deranged Santa without the beard and hat. Once at our beds, he tore out the IV drips and began undoing the straps holding Jamie down.
The commotion in the hallway grew louder and we could see people running frantically past the fishbowl windows embedded in the doors. Then there was muffled gunfire and a couple of loud booms underneath us.
“Get up and dress fast. I freed a group of those zombies and cracked open all the doors. Turned it into a real cock-up down there! If those nancy’s don’t get things under control, the monsters will be up here in no time. I don’t know how but those things are bloody quick!”
“Is that your blood? Where’s Norris?” I asked as I pulled on my bio-suit over my hospital gown, ever mindful of my modesty.
“Nah, lass, this isn’t my blood. I poured this on me from pints I found in an icebox marked ‘clean’ to make myself more attractive to the zombies. Then I broke into their room and got them to follow me into the hallway to act as a diversion. They’ve been holding forty or so in a surgical theater downstairs. Man, they’re like zombies on crack, faster than a bloke lookin for a bint at last call! A couple of them almost got their choppers into my neck. One of them jumped onto my back and tried to bite through here and here,” he pointed to his shoulder and neck, “This bio-suit saved my life.
“What about Norris,” Jamie asked.
He shrugged, “I think they have him somewhere on this floor. Get your weapons and let’s find him, they’re over there under the counter. Hurry up, girls. We can escape out on the ledge below the windows. But first, let’s find my mate.”
While we got our act together, Quaid crept up to the doors and peer outside. Just then Jonah pushed through the swinging doors smacking Quaid in the head. He staggered back a bit and then fired a bean bag from the shotgun into Jonah’s breadbasket. He doubled over onto the floor, gasping for air as we jumped over him and into the hall. There were people in hospital garb and white medical coats running up and down the corridor in terror. No one paid the slightest attention to Jamie and me. However, everyone stopped to stare at Quaid; with all that blood, they probably assumed he was Berjalan penyakit because they turned and fled in a panic.
We could hear screams and echoes of weird groaning in the hallway as we ran down the corridor looking through the fishbowl windows into each room for Norris. Finally, near the end of the hallway by the stairwell we came to a locked door that was marked, ‘Do not open.’ Quaid took a few steps back and kicked the rather flimsy plywood door inward, splitting it in two. We rushed into the room and there was Norris lying strapped to a hospital bed hooked up to half a dozen machines, multi-colored tubes poking out of his arms, wires and nodes attached to his bald head. He was conscious and staring wildly at us. He winced each time there was another scream from outside his room. “Oh thank God you’re here,” he said when he realized it was us, and not zombies intent on eating him as he lay helpless.
Jamie and I freed his legs and then his arms while Quaid unceremoniously ripped the tubes out of his arms and tore the wires from his head. Norris yelled a bit as the thick needles were jerked from his flesh, but he also smiled a little as he appreciated the bluntness and matter of fact way Quaid took care of business. He sat up, wearing only a hospital gown, and rubbed his arms where the tubes once protruded.
“These mother cussers were planning on infecting me with IHS intentionally! They already supposedly gave me a vaccine before sticking all these things into my arms. Said I was going to be one of the final clinical trials before beginning full production. What is going on here? Am I in some sort of alternate universe? Who are these people?”
Jamie spoke up, “We got the vaccine too. On the bright side, being turned and becoming one of the eaters is now out of the equation for us. That is except for our courageous hero here,” she said, pushing against Quaid affectionately, trying to sound less terrified than she actually was; the thought of one of those infected tearing into the soft parts of her flesh flashed through her mind.
I began to explain what Supervisor Bertrand had told us, but Quaid shushed me, ran over beside the crushed door and shut off the room’s interior lights.
There was someone ascending the stairwell just outside the room.
The footsteps were loud and irregular, pausing, then taking two or three steps, then pausing again.
We sat in silence.
Quaid, with his finger pursed to his lips, leaned over the splinters of door, peering into the hallway.
Whoever it was had stopped and was standing at the top of the stairwell.
We could hear sniffing noises and then someone screamed a few yards up the corridor. There was a rush of movement as, we could only assume, one of those Berjalan penyakit born from the new mutant strain of virus sprinted past our doorway towards the screams of terror. The screams turned to gurgling sounds of someone drowning in their own fluids. I crept up to the door and saw an infected straddling Jonah and tearing at his throat with his hands.
Quaid wasted no time; he grabbed Jamie’s and my hand and ran into the stairwell heading up to the third floor. Norris was right behind us. Quaid pushed at the door but it was locked and there was one of those hired paramilitary thugs with a gun on the other side shaking their head in denial of entry.
We ran to the fourth floor door, which was, thankfully, unlocked. The door opened into a large room that was probably once a cafeteria. It had been converted into a research/command center for Vitura Research personnel. The remaining Vitura staff and a couple of mercenaries dressed as WHO paratroopers were scrambling to pack gear, stuffing important papers into boxes and wiping hard drives from dozens of laptops lining the walls. A few scientist-looking fellows in white coats were doggedly continuing their research in a corner of the room that had been converted into a laboratory. They were so focused on their work that they didn’t even notice us as we ran into a unisex bathroom beside their setup, slamming and locking the door.
There were showers, lockers and a couple of toilets and sinks inside the rectangular restroom.
Norris turned to Quaid, pulling a face, he said, “Dude, you have to get the blood off of you before we do anything. So gross. Get in that shower and spray down before I barf all over the floor.”
Quaid was a bit vain and didn’t need to be told twice. He stepped into a shower stall and turned the pressure on high. The blood was already crusting , but it came off the slick
rubber of the bio-suit easily, swirling and disappearing into the drain in the center of the floor.
I remained as far away from the shower as possible to avoid any splash back and Jamie riffled through the lockers looking for some functional clothes for Norris. She found a lab coat and some casual shoes that were a couple sizes too small. He pulled the coat on over his hospital gown and jammed his bare feet into the loafers, grimacing as his toes cramped up against the tips.
We were only inside the bathroom for about five minutes, but when we opened the door to go, all of the Vitura Research personnel had vanished and the room echoed eerily with our footsteps.
“If they went downstairs, they were most likely dead or being eaten,” Quaid said. “But I have a hunch they probably have an escape route pre-planned for this type of contingency. As for us, we need to find our way out of this building. I have a plan to get us to Kota Tinggi before our time runs out. Follow close.”
“Right, just like I trusted you to mess with our SUV’s throttle,” Norris replied as we walked back to the stairwell. “Did he tell you what happened to us? We left Kuala Lumpur and headed north east just as our route said. Then this goof ball here decided to tinker with our engine. Sure he got us enough horsepower to hit sixty kilometers an hour, but at what cost? We gained a couple of hours of daylight, but our engine blew about thirty kilometers north of Mersing. Luckily, there was a shack nearby with a couple of rusted pre-war bicycles with adequate tire pressure to carry our weight. Anyway, we biked a couple of kilometers looking for another car or truck we could boost that would get us to the signal beacon. But then we came across a couple of ‘paratroopers’ scooping up corpses of Berjalan penyakit into a large mass grave on the side of the road. I approached them to ask for help. I don’t think they spoke English, maybe French or something, but those a-holes drew their guns and took me captive while Quaid high-tailed it into the forest, retreating like a frightened bee-och.”
“Bloody hell, Mate! What did you want me to do? They had machine guns! Should I have tried to shoot them with my useless bean bags?” He held up the shotgun and made a cocking motion, “I’m here now, aren’t I? Saving your roly-poly arse!” They were griping a bit at each other, but you could tell they were both happy to be reunited for the time being.
“So how are we getting out of here?” Jamie asked.
Quaid had spent some time studying the hospital compound before attempting our rescue. As a London police officer, he had received training in hostage rescue which included building evacuation. Not that we knew this at the time, of course. “We go back down to the second floor to your room. There’s a ledge lining the building just below the windows. We can shimmy around to the west side and jump across to one-storey utility building. Then it’s just a matter of swinging down some cables and we’re safe on the ground to find our way to the shoreline and docks about a half a click to the east. There’s a sweet speed boat I found,” he pulled some keys attached to one of those puffy floating key chains and dangled them in the air, “I ‘commandeered’ the cutter from the local tourist hut. It’s all gassed up and ready to race us down the coast to this resort I know outside Kota Tinggi. Then it’s just a simple matter of finding some wheels to get us to the beacon before time runs out. I was only expecting to rescue my partner. But since we aren’t currently competing against each other for the ‘big prize’, I supposed you can catch a ride with us. I think with what we’ve just seen, it’s best to stay together if we want to make it back to Singapore alive and virus free.”
We followed Quaid with confidence; his authoritative and upstanding British presence making him the presumptive leader.
The stairwell was still lit and as we descended to the second floor. We tried to avoid stepping in the streaks of blood and crimson footprints smeared on the second floor landing on down to ground level. The door to the second floor was shut and Quaid tried to check the hallway for any immediate danger through the narrow rectangular window. Other than the mutilated corpse of a male nurse, the corridor was empty. Quaid quietly clicked open the door and we sneaked inside. Norris guarded our rear with our shotgun that he’d politely taken from me in the bathroom earlier. The hallway light switch was next to the door and Quaid had the presence of mind to shut off the overheads to minimize our chances of being spotted and attacked, either by remaining personnel or one of the mutated infected he’d let loose earlier.
We stepped over male nurse’s body. His glazed eyes stared up at us with a questioning, surprised expression on his ghostly pale face and we eased into the infirmary where Jamie and I had been held captive earlier. Those five helplessly sedated patients who’d been strapped to beds were in different states of mutilation. The two in the beds nearest the door had their stomachs ripped open, half-eaten entrails were snaking down onto the linoleum floor. The next patient in the middle of the room was now lying horizontal off the bed, his legs dangling out of view and his head hanging from a visible sinewy backbone, his eyes, lips, tongue and cheeks also missing and presumably devoured. But we barely noticed these scenes of horror because the remaining two patients lying beside the windows we had to use for our escape were still alive. They were conscious and squirming against their restraints, gagging at the oxygen tubes in their throats as four mutated Berjalan penyakit tore and chewed at their legs and groin, groaning in ecstasy. One of the patients locked eyes with mine just as his life energy drained away from his body through his punctured femoral artery. At that point, he was beyond pain as he crossed over into death.
The open window Quaid had entered earlier was just beyond the four feasting Berjalan penyakit. We had no choice by try to sneak by.
Really though, it wasn’t that difficult to slip by those zombies. We crept along, careful not to make any noise or sudden movement. They were in the throes of a primal gratification we would, hopefully, never understand; the virus lighting up the pleasure centers of their brain as they chewed on healthy flesh.
Quaid slung the shotgun over his shoulder and slipped over the window seal into the night. Norris kept his gun trained on the nearest of the zombies as Jamie and I followed. We shimmied along to give Norris enough room to get down onto the ledge, which, incidentally, was less than half the width of my rubber boot. Inside Norris’s loafers, his toes were curled into a ball and when he put pressure on his feet and tried to remain steady on that small ledge, pain shot up his legs making him reflexively bleat out a few curses under his breath.
I looked back into the room to see if the infected had heard him and saw that one of them was now squinting towards the window, sniffing the air.
“Go, go, go!” Norris whispered with urgency.
We started shimming along the ledge towards the west corner. As we got further away from the open window, I looked back and saw the Berjalan penyakit’s head sticking out into the night air, his feverish eyes reflecting the moon’s light. Then, the new and improved zombie climbed out onto the ledge and began shimmying towards Norris.
Quaid didn’t know what was happening behind us. He was intent on getting around the tight corner to the utility shed about a three meters leap below. He disappeared around the corner and we shuffled as quickly as possible to where he had disappeared.
Norris was right behind me, crowding against me saying, “Move your ass! It’s getting closer!”
His jostling made me slip and I almost fell, but he grabbed my arm and saved me from multiple broken bones had I fallen onto the hard cement walkway below.
Jamie disappeared around the corner and then it was my turn and then Norris.
Once we are all about midway along the west side wall, Quaid turned, faced the open air and leapt across the gap onto the flat cement roof of a shed, which housed an electrical transformer, back-up generator and power conduits for the hospital. I could hear the undulating hum of the amperage from inside.
Jamie didn’t hesitate, she turned and jumped across and Quaid sort of caught her like a father would their child from a slide at a playground.
I jumped next just as the zombie came around the corner and then Norris leapt, tucked and rolled across the tiny building like a pro. He jumped to his feet, flipped the shotgun around from his back and fired two beanbag rounds at the Berjalan penyakit who was readying to take the leap. The zombie lost his footing and fell, arms flailing as he plunged to the pavement below. We heard snap snap crunch sounds as his legs broke in several places. That zombie was intent on his next meal. He rolled over onto his stomach and began pulling himself towards the utility shed with his hands. But we weren’t worried about him now. He was no longer a threat so we walked to the opposite side.
“Firing that gun was a real cock-up.” Quaid told Norris. The sound of Norris’s shotgun had drawn the attention of the remaining Vitura Research personnel hiding below in the yard. The infected chased them as they all came running towards the utility shed.
“Help us, help us!” A lab technician yelled as two infected tackled her from behind.
Quaid grabbed one of the flash grenades and shouted, “Duck and cover!” to us and the remaining two survivors fighting for their lives down below. He pulled the pin and tossed the grenade off the roof near the half-eaten lab tech and crouched down next to the three of us lying on the roof with our hands over our ears.
Even with my ears covered, the bang was loud enough to set off a high pitched whine that faded into a dim ringing that lasted the rest of the night. It was like when you’ve been to a rock concert and stood next to the stage speakers for the encore.
The infected closest to the explosion had taken full impact of the flash grenade, but unlike the bloated infected that were ready to pop at the slightest bump, these zombies didn’t explode. They reacted more like your average human would if hit by a flash bang, they were blinded and dazed, wandering around in random circles.
After concluding that there were no threats directly below, the Ang Mohs slid down the thick electrical cables, holding their ground while Jamie and I followed. Norris gathered up the two surviving pharmaceutical employees wearing their official-looking lab coats and we ran towards the open gate of the drive entrance.
Zombie Fever: Outbreak Page 22
