This unnamed assistant turned to us and said, “Girls ah, just in time. I explain to others that this is legit race. The gahmen say can finish competition here under condition that we obey all liao. Sheldon oso wants you to know that when you get to the final checkpoint many people milling around with questions about your trials and tribulation in the Malaysian quarantine zone. You must not forget the confidentiality clause you have signed hor? Divulge any information about the race and Tua Kee Media will sue you and your family in perpetuity lah. Dat’s all, best of luck. Remember two of you boleh millionaires later today lah!” This new assistant was kind and very green and he smiled at us as though we were friends when he finished speaking.
Sheldon had his eye on us and noticed that his new assistant had finished the briefing so he waved us over to the set. The production must have been on a tight schedule because Sheldon and a couple of crewmen began positioning us for the shoot. There was no time to look around or even get our bearings. He handed each of us fake passports and said, “Here’s the deal. Take your passport, give it to the ‘immigration officer’ who’ll stamp it then run to your cars over there,” he pointed to the curb nearer to the real checkpoint but far enough away not to disrupt the heavy flow of traffic entering from Malaysia, “your clues will be sitting on the dashboard. Make today count. Don’t forget, literally millions of people will be watching this opening scene live today and most of the final shots when you arrive at the finish line, that is except for who actually wins. It will be the greatest teaser for the greatest reality show of all time! Now go and do me proud!”
With passports in hand, we stood there and waited for someone to yell action. I glanced over at the other teams and did a bit of a double take. Derrik and Lydia must have spent the morning in a beauty salon because they were dressed to the nines and were made up to look like superstars. But that wasn’t the most shocking thing I saw. If you could see the state that Norris was in, you would have called off the race then and there. He was drenched in sweat, soaking through the red CARS t-shirt he was wearing from a goody bag he’d received earlier in the week. He was swaying back and forth, moaning, while Quaid steadied him with one hand. He noticed I was staring, shrugged and mouthed, “Hangover.” And that was when I remembered the free flow of Merlyon beer I’d seen him consume the night before.
For a third time, I sighed in relief.
Norris had a hangover, not zombie fever.
There was a second or two there when I thought Norris might be infected with IHS and was ready to bolt away. But that was impossible, he hadn’t been bitten and he’d received the vaccine in Mersing, hadn’t he? I looked at his arm where we’d all seen that long scratch. There was an ace bandage wrapping his forearm concealing the wound.
And just like that Sheldon yelled, “ACTION!” and we were off.
Jamie and I ran to the desk where three ‘immigration officers’ were ready to inspect our passports. Ours was a washed-up funnyman who, after a lifetime of being overexposed and overworked, still occasionally got bit parts on shows like this one. He dramatically stamped it with a giant ‘SINGAPORE’ chop and said with nostalgic flourish, “Chop, Chop! Don’t play play!” and end scene and we ran to our car. Two crewmembers we’d never met before, one with an ultra-expensive looking HD camcorder, the other with a boom microphone on an extendable arm climbed into our backseat.
Now that I was fully trained in the shooting of ‘reality scenes’, I knew to wait until they were settled inside and for the cameraman to give me the ready signal before I grabbed the clue from the dash, tore it open and read it for the audience whom I assumed may still be watching on the live feed.
The clue was a poorly crafted riddle that said:
Mr. Clarke needs help selling his durians. Your key to the next leg of the race will be given after you find his famous stand and feed the tourists one of his sumptuous spiky melons in its entirety.
Jamie listened and shouted in full acting mode, “I know where the durian stand is, Abi! Clarke is Clarke Quay. Strap yourself in! We have a bit of a hectic drive ahead of us.”
I was feeling a bit out of sorts and having a camera poking into my face wasn’t helping. It was as though my consciousness hadn’t absorbed the craziness of the last four days. We had been through so much that going back to pretending we were excited to be in a reality show seemed an impossible task. But it wasn’t just that, the whole encounter with the zombie menace had left me with a strange disconnect with the mechanical civilization that was my life in Singapore. All I could muster was a half-hearted, “Gurrrl Power!”
Jamie gave me an irritated sideways glance that the camera couldn’t see. She pulled the car onto the road and into the stream of traffic. Her head was still in the game.
She began yapping about how great it was to be back in our motherland. I tried to banter back and forth for the camera, but my mind kept flashing back to the night before in Malaysia; the vaccination, mutated zombies running wild and brave Tomas fighting his way through a town teaming with infected to get us to our helicopter and his failed quest to get us to some laboratory in Canada to create a serum to stop a global conspiracy of surgically planned zombie outbreaks.
Jamie entered the AYE expressway and we drove east towards Marina Bay. A few times, the cameraman cleared his throat and pointed to the speedometer when Jamie exceeded five kilometers over the posted limit. The other two teams must have been right behind us, but I didn’t even bother to look back. Like I said, my conscious mind hadn’t processed everything that had happened to Jamie and me and, subconsciously, I was beginning to understand that I no longer cared about the million dollar prize and my dream of a condo with Jamie in Holland V.
We took the Lower Delta Road exit, just before the AYE gave way to the ECP expressway. Clearly, the other two teams thought this was a bad idea because they continued towards the ECP, their trailing camera crews filming our rally car as we curved away on the exit towards the side streets of Bukit Merah. But Jamie must have been prophetic because the roads were clear and we hit every green light. Soon, we were passing through Chinatown and then the Havelock road intersection and Clarke Quay came into view ahead; its gaudy buildings painted as though a child had chosen the bright kaleidoscope of colors and planted tacky alien umbrellas above for shade.
Just over the bridge and around the corner, we parked the car on Canning Lane, a side street next to one of the twenty-four hour nightclubs.
As we got out of the car and ran down one of Clarke Quay’s touristy side streets, the realization that I didn’t care anymore that a million dollars at stake and a life with Jamie chasing boys was nothing but an immature fleeting dream bowled me over like a punch in the gut. I cramped up and plopped down on a bench in front of a shuttered shisha bar.
Jamie stopped and turned back. I could see the glow on Jamie’s face, flushed with the excitement of being a television star and how close we were to winning the competition. She was a vision. It hit me that this very moment was quite possibly the pinnacle of her otherwise mundane existence here on this tiny island. I had to do this for her. I resolved that no matter what was going on in my mind I would ignore it and run my buns off, not for myself, but for Jamie. Before she could ask me what was wrong, I straightened up, put on a big smile for her and the camera and yelled, “I love you, Jamie! We are going to win this thing!” She smiled back, her energy swelling when she saw I was finally back in the game. She grabbed my hand and we ran together swinging our arms and laughing like we did when we were in primary school.
We ran into Trader’s Market in the center of Clarke Quay zigzagging our way around the growing number of gawking tourists and rich housewives with their designer shopping bags who’d just finished their luncheons in the pricey restaurants along the river. There was a bridge that crossed the waterway and right next to it, stinking up the area with the durian’s smell of rotting flesh, was a stall that sold the spiky fruit. The durian stall had survived every incarnation and rebuilding that Clarke Qua
y had been through since the early 1960’s. We ran up to the stall keeper who turned out to be none other than Aaron Penang. He was an über popular Tua Kee Media artiste who could mainly be seen in high intensity courtroom dramas. He gave us his award winning smile and asked, as if he didn’t know, “What can I do for you two beautiful ladies?”
“One of your juiciest, smelliest durians, please,” Jamie replied holding up one finger.
He leaned down and came up with a gargantuan specimen and chopped it in two with a machete, handing each of us a spiky half.
My heart sank.
The clue said we had to feed this durian to tourists. The putrid smell wafted off the white fleshy edible bulbs in the center. It would take forever to convince enough of them to eat this.
We took our durian halves and ran to the bridge to get a better view of our potential ‘customers’. As we scouted the area, Quaid and Norris came over the bridge and ran passed us. Norris was trailing behind Quaid by some distance and was grunting and staggering along like a drunken sailor, but he still seemed in the game.
Speaking of sailors, as luck would have it a group of U.S. marines on furlough were standing on the bridge taking photos of each other and any cute girl that crossed their path.
Jamie walked up to them, hips swaying, the cameraman right on her tail and the boom microphone dangling over our heads to get premium sound, its furry tip fluffing in the breeze.
“Hey, Boys,” Jamie put on her cutest, sexiest pout and come hither eyes. When the group of marines turned and saw the two of us in our schoolgirl outfits and pigtails with a camera crew, they fell right into character, snapping away with their cameras and wolf whistling.
“Can you all help us? Do you dare eat the ‘stinky fruit’?” she asked coquettishly. “If you eat it all up, the two of us will show you a night on the town you will never forget!” She said making a promise she knew we wouldn’t keep.
“Oh, I’d eat anything you want to put in my mouth,” one of the marines countered, coming forward and scooping a handful of the white fleshy meat into his mouth. He gagged and we all laughed for the camera. Maybe he was their leader, a corporal or something, because when he swallowed enough to get a chance to speak, he said, “You heard the ladies. Men, eat their fruit. That’s an order. Let’s show them we aren’t afraid of new experiences.”
Obediently they stepped forward, only pausing for a second or two when they got a whiff before tucking in to the creamy stink. In no time, the durian was finished. We thanked them profusely, even hugging a couple and Jamie gave their leader a fake number. We ran back to Aaron Penang with our empty husk. Quaid and Norris were nearby trying to coerce a group of Japanese tourists to eat their durian, but the language barrier was getting in the way and it looked as if some of them were put off by Norris’s pale, sweaty face and bloodshot eyes.
Aaron Penang handed us our last clue which, thankfully, was very straightforward. Jamie read it out for the camera:
By land and now by sea, take a river taxi to the Tai Ko Heng Resort & Casino integrated resort, chose one of the three towers and ascend on foot to the AirGarden where riches await … for the winning team that is.
“Out of my way!” Out of nowhere, Lydia appeared behind us and pushed Jamie to the ground as she finished reading the clue, practically walking over her, reaching out to Aaron and yelled, “Give me my durian!”
With the three teams finally together in the middle of Singapore, people began to recognize who we were from the billboards, commercials and bus wraps blanketing Singapore. There were screams of recognition and the tourists and looky-loos changed into grasping and needy figures that began to press forward towards us in that star struck haze of admirers and fans normally reserved for the super famous.
Those closest to us booed at Lydia when they saw her push Jamie onto the ground and a couple of them helped her back to her feet. Jamie brushed dirt off her knees and raised her fist into the air in a sign of resistance and the crowd cheered. Smiling we waved and pressed our way through the throngs of fans to the bridge and, once free from the madness, we ran along the channel towards the river taxi pick-up point that our cameraman helpfully pointed towards when he saw we were beginning to lose our way.
There were hundreds more tourists milling around the river taxi pick-up point waiting for their paid tours to begin. The wall of flowered shirts and panama hats seemed impenetrable, until I saw a Cera flag fluttering high overhead a blocked out area for the Cera teams to get to their boats. We ran between the velvet ropes cordoning off the area and onto an awaiting river taxi docked against the side of the cement bank. I yelled to the captain, “Go, Go!” but he ignored me as we had to wait for our trailing camera crew to load up onto another boat beside us so they could film as we rode up river to the three looming towers of Tai Ko Heng Resort & Casino. Jamie stomped her feet in frustration on the wooden planks as we pulled away from the now teeming bank of gawking tourists because, by the time we got moving, Quaid and Norris were already loading into their river taxi behind us.
The river was choppier than I expected it to be and the going was rather slow. We were now racing in slow motion. The cameraman kept directing us around the boat to get different shots of us facing towards our destination and then worriedly, back at the boys who were within shouting distance of our putt-putting hull.
We passed underneath the iconic glistening white Merlion statue as it spewed a jetty of water from its gaping mouth, making for great Singapore television. The river opened up to a large area of the bay and the waters noticeably smoothed.
Even from the far side of the reservoir, it was obvious the grounds of Tai Ko Heng Resort & Casino had been taken over by the production. There was gigantic mob the likes of which I’d never encountered before in any Singapore celebration on the walkway between the dock and the towers, most of whom were dressed in tattered clothes and zombie make-up. Even in the midday sun, the spotlights and choreographed special effects lighting set up by the CARS team dazzled the eye and enhanced the monolithic fascist quality of those imposing monuments to materialistic greed and chance lurching awkwardly into the sky. The three towers were linked at the top by the exclusive boomerang shaped park lying precariously on their roofs. A half a dozen helicopters from Tua Kee Media and newscasters swirled and swooped around the buildings capturing the crowds thronging the area and the approach of our boats.
Sheldon was correct. Our reality show had struck a nerve with the global audience. And it had a fine tuning effect on that morbid fascination born from the zombie fever epidemic, turning it into a spellbinding hum of frenzied thrill the likes of which a television production had never realized before.
When we were halfway across the lagoon, I looked back behind the Ang Mohs and spotted Lydia and Derrik about ten minutes back. I pointed this out to Jamie, laughing at how far back they were and she joined in and together we shared in the joy of their misfortune. There was no way they would be able to catch up now. If we didn’t win, at least the boys would take the prize, depriving that undeserving witch and her idiot savant of the first place.
I was on a racing high, breathing in long deep draughts of victory and hubris.
Everything about the Berjalan penyakit and the vaccine had vanished from my mind.
We were going to win this thing.
As we approached the integrated resort, we could hear the booming of music and the high pitch vocals of what sounded to be the ancient hit from the 1980’s by the former pop king called, ‘Zombie Shuffle.’
So this must have been Sheldon’s brilliant plan for the finale. The closer we got, the music became louder and I realized I was looking at thousands of line dancers in zombie costumes and makeup doing the zombie shuffle in front of the towers. Sheldon and Tua Kee Media had organized a very un-spontaneous ‘flash mob’ of sorts. Singaporeans of all ages and races had headed the clarion call of the zombie shuffle, arriving before dawn to get the best spots in the synchronized spectacular. They were dressed as real Berjal
an penyakit and fictional zombie undead and performing the dance routine again and again throughout the morning, perfecting their moves for the film crews circling overhead. I saw at least fifteen different teams of cameramen perched atop hastily constructed metal towers, on commandeered riverboats and deep inside the dancing spectacle getting those steady shots the six helicopters circling around Tai Ko Heng Resort & Casino’s towers filming our arrival and the manifestation of so many nut jobs participating in an outdated dance wouldn’t be able to capture.
When we were within about one hundred meters of the dock, huge volcanoes of blazing white fireworks began to shoot out of the AirGarden above and along the marina. Three gigantic Cera’s Amazing Rally Showdown banners were unleashed from the tops of the towers. They rolled down the front of the hotel turning the entire integrated resort into an advertisement for Cera cars and the reality show. At least we knew which tower we had to climb to get to the AirGarden above. There was a giant picture of Jamie and me posing in CARS racing outfits on the banner draped across Tower Two and a crewmember was there trying to get our attention and waving a cardboard arrow at its entrance.
We jumped off the river taxi before it came to a stop and ran up the dock and up the stairs into the organized chaos of the line dance.
Wow, those dancers did not make it easy to get to the tower. They kept turning and bobbing and weaving around in tight, well-rehearsed circles but we slowly we made our way through. The boys were having the same sort of trouble. Norris seemed to be in almost a trancelike state and he kept tripping over the dancing zombies and Quaid would have to backtrack and pull him to his feet. To make matters worse for them, from the looks of the banner with their shiny, white bald heads emblazoned on it, they had to run to Tower Three about another fifty meters further than ours. We reached the entrance and Jamie ran through the glass doors first, following a path of boney footprint stickers that were conveniently placed on the floor leading to the stairwell.
Zombie Fever: Outbreak Page 26
