by B. M. Hodges
He saw metal rungs at regular intervals along the wall. When he counted four intervals, which he estimated was another half mile, he decided it was time to climb up to the surface streets. There was no way of knowing what was happening above, and the feeling was becoming too disconcerting to continue along the canal.
Tomas climbed out of the boat and waded in the now two-foot-deep slow-moving water and to the side, bringing the oar with him as a weapon … it was better than nothing.
Peering over the lip of the canal to make sure the coast was clear, Tomas drew a deep breath and heaved himself over the top, ready to swing the paddle at any oncoming attackers.
But the street was empty.
He had no idea what to expect in the streets considering he had never traveled to Singapore. And he couldn’t get his bearings as he was surrounded by high buildings that blocked most the star and moonlight, making it impossible to estimate direction.
I’m going to have to recruit a local, he thought, or at least find one who can give me decent directions.
Feeling exposed, he ran to the nearest building and crouched against the wall. His first thought was to try knocking on a few apartment doors to ask for assistance, but he abandoned that plan when he observed a figure emerge from the nearest doorway and strut down the sidewalk, breaking out into dance moves every few steps. No way he’s infected. Zombies don’t dance.
Another dark figure emerged from a clump of bushes, following the street dancer and quickly gaining ground. The second figure had a slightly stilted walk, similar to a marionette puppet, as though strings were pulling on its joints to make it walk. It was the familiar gait Tomas had observed during those final few hours in Kota Tinggi and his gut reaction was to attack.
The herky-jerky zombie fell into step with the dancer, even sort of mimicking his dance, so in synch the creature was with his prey.
Tomas trailed behind, staying close to the walls and shadows, trying to close the distance between them. He wondered whether the street dancer was worth saving. How ignorant and blind to your surroundings can you be?
He crept up behind the two as they two-stepped down the sidewalk.
The zombie was within reach of his prey: he started to crouch, getting ready to pounce.
Tomas swung the dragon boat paddle and whacked the zombie across the backside of his skull at its edge, sending the infected man careening across the gutter and to land face down on the road. He turned the paddle and smashed the top of the zombie’s head with the flat side of the wooden club, the sound of impact sloppy and wet.
The street dancer continued his jig down the street, oblivious of his near-death experience.
Just to be sure, Tomas pressed his heel down on back of the zombie’s neck, putting his full weight on the vertebrae and feeling a satisfying pop as the spinal cord separated from the head.
The dancer continued along the sidewalk and crossed the street towards the main avenue. As Tomas he got closer, he saw the dancer was a teenager around fifteen, of Chinese descent and dressed ready to hit the town.
Now only a few paces behind, he noticed the boy was humming as he walked. Fearful that the boy was making too much noise, Tomas looped his arm around his neck and put him in a sleeper hold, applying pressure to his carotid artery until he passed out. As he squeezed, an ear bud popped out of one of the boy’s ears and he could hear the steady thump of techno-punk blaring through the tiny speaker.
He dragged the unconscious boy behind a parked lorry and laid him down carefully. Seeing that the lorry’s window was rolled down a crack, Tomas forced the tip of paddle into the opening and applied pressure to the window, up and down, inch by inch, until there was enough room to reach his arm inside and unlock the door. He hefted the boy into the passenger seat and climbed inside, careful to remain low beneath the dashboard.
He closed his eyes and waited for the boy to come around.
Flashes of his father and his bloated infected face floating in the stasis chamber invaded his thoughts. To block out the image, Tomas searched the teenager’s pockets and found breath mints, a condom and a wallet with two hundred dollars and change, but no ID inside except for a library card with the name, “Ho Khai Meng.”
Impatient at the waste of time, he shook the boy.
The boy’s eyelids fluttered for a moment, then he said, “Huh?” and scrambled to sit up.
Tomas grabbed him by the jaw, put a finger to his own lips and mouthed, “Shhhhh.”
“What do you want?” the teenager whispered.
“Directions. Shouldn’t you be home? Don’t you know your country’s under attack?”
Attack? Who believes what the government says. I haven’t seen anything.” He flipped up his collar and smoothed back his soft-gelled hair, “It’s ladies’ night, man. I’m not going to let a bunch of nonsense stop me from picking up some chicks.”
Less than a car length away, inexplicably, a refrigerator hurled from one of the apartments overhead slammed into the pavement, exploding into thousands of metal and plastic fragments. The lorry rocked with the impact as fragments ranging from a size of a baseball to a tricycle slammed into the lorry’s cargo box, some of them embedding into the side like sprinkles on a birthday cake.
The boy covered his head with his arms and curled into a fetal position. Instinctually, Tomas lay over him. When the shock of the impact wore off, Tomas sat up and the boy said, “Killer litter. They’re going to get a huge fine for that one.”
Obviously, the boy still didn’t get the severity of his country’s plight.
Maybe he thought it best to talk some sense to the kid or maybe he needed to sort the events in his head, but Tomas decided to tell the boy exactly what was happening, “It’s not just hooligans and litterers, it’s a zombie outbreak. It’s a new form of the contagion from the strain that’s been devastating Malaysia. These infected are extremely vicious and bloodthirsty.” He pulled out Abigail’s picture and showed it to the boy, “I need to find this girl.” He flipped the photo over. “This is her address.”
The boy looked at the handwritten scrawl on the back of the photo to humor his attacker. “That’s not far from here. You see the avenue there?” he nodded to the road ahead. “That’s Avenue 7. You need to get to Avenue 11 that way,” he pointed beyond the road in front of them, “then turn left and it’s a straight shot into Bishan. If you want, I could show you for, say, a hundred dollars. I ain’t afraid of no jacked up zombies and I need the scratch to spend on my ladies.”
Chapter Ten
Jamie’s Apartment Building Rooftop
Bishan, Singapore
The report Jayden had read over earlier had listed the building they had landed on as Jamie Ong’s residence. Her apartment was on the twelfth floor, eight stories below. As he descended the stairwell, he could hear residents arguing loudly behind their barricaded doors. There were a few screams and a few people stumbled by him in the darkness as he pressed up against the wall, watching their panicked faces through the infrared setting on his visor. He was careful not to be seen or intrude as he was wearing a combat bio-suit and may have been mistaken for someone who gave a damn about their plight.
Before exiting the stairwell, he scanned the hallway to make sure it was free of prying eyes -then crept to the door marked #12-371. After listening quietly for a few minutes for movement behind the door, he pulled out a set of lock picks that would make short work of the residential deadbolt. After a few minutes tinkering with the lock, he silently pushed the door open and, like a shadow, merged with the blackness of the hallway.
On the far side of the living room, Jayden saw slow exhalations of heated air puffing out of a young female Singaporean lying fast asleep on the sofa. He stole his way to the sofa, flipped his visor to night vision and stared down at the sleeping girl, letting his visor check the girls face against its identification program.
To his surprise, the display came up as a positive identification of Abigail Tan -not the resident he was expecting to fin
d but her reality show teammate.
Deciding that the sleeping girl on the couch was minimally dangerous, Jayden took off his helmet and gloves and set them on the table, failing to notice Abigail’s note in the gloom. He searched the rest of the apartment and after finding no one else inside, set down the assault rifles, Eli’s bio-sample kit and his pack and placed them beside the front door in case he needed to make a hasty retreat.
He went to Abigail and shook her,.“Hey. Wake up.”
“Wah? Tomas?” Abigail muttered, then sprang to a sitting position when she realized this was an intruder in front of her. She immediately thought of the shotgun leaning against the wall in the kitchen and mentally kicked herself for not keeping it beside her.
“Calm down. I’m not here to hurt you. Where’s your partner? I’m under orders to evacuate the two of you.” Jayden replied in his commanding baritone. It would make the extraction much easier if the girls believed he was helping them escape, not taking them prisoner.
“What? Who sent you? Is Tomas with you?” Abigail asked, relieved that help had arrived and that she may get out of Singapore with Jamie after all.
“Yes, Tomas sent me to retrieve the two of you and take you to our ship waiting off shore. Where’s your friend? I’m here for both of you.”
“I knew he would find me.” Abigail had stars in her eyes and Jayden recognized the look of infatuation.
His heartbeat raced at the thought of capturing Overstreet, “Tomas sent me, but we’ve lost contact. I was supposed to rendezvous with him but haven’t been able to pick him up on my com. Do you know if he’s found his way into Singapore?” He held his breath, hoping for a positive answer.
“What time is it?” Abigail squinted at the wall clock, “I’m supposed to meet him at midnight with Jamie and he’s flying us to Vancouver to make the vaccine for the zombie virus. Who did you say you were again?”
She’s quite trusting and naive, he thought. She had made the assumptions Jayden was hoping for. But he found her response puzzling. Had the girls been given the vaccination in Mersing? He had assumed that Bertrand merely wanted to get them back to the ship for debriefing about what they knew about Tomas. If they’d been given the latest vaccine for his, then their elimination was inevitable. They’re too much of a liability to Vitura, especially if a competing pharma is planning to use them to synthesize a serum. “Where’s your friend?” he asked again.
“She should be here any minute.” Abigail squinted at the wall clock across the room. “Hey, is it past midnight? Shit!” But she knew he was lying. She regained her composure and the worried expression on her face shifted to an expression of rapt attention with a hint of coy admiration. Her time on the television show made acting that much easier. “You’re handsome! Are you a scientist? What’s with the military fatigues? It’s very brave of you to come for us, what with all the zombies running around. What’s it like on the street? Still crazy, yes?” She leaned forward and gave him her most trusting smile.
She was full of questions much to Jayden’s irritation. He was not much of a talker and didn’t want to cloud the mission with irrelevant information. It wasn’t difficult to see that she was a very attractive young woman under the scarves and hat and he was usually awkward with pretty women. But her dark-brown eyes drew him in, and he found himself picturing what she may look like beneath all the clothing. He coughed and said, “You should take off those rubber gloves. They can’t be good for your skin.”
Abigail looked at the gloves as though noticing them for the first time and hastily pulled them off, examining her sweaty hands and raisin fingers. “Wow, good call. It looks like I’ve been swimming for hours. I wasn’t planning on falling asleep on the couch. I thought Jamie would be back by now and we’d be off to meet Tomas. I hope she’s okay.” She continued to rattle on while trying to come up with a plan to get away from this stranger in military fatigues. “Her parents were supposed to bring her back from Gleneagles Hospital down in Orchard. She’s got a broken ankle, you know. And I had to give away all our prize money to a ferry boat captain to take our brothers and sisters and my mom and her grandma. Do you think we’ll be okay in Canada without money? I mean, Tomas didn’t say anything about what we would need for the journey. I kind of figured his company was footing the bill, considering we’re the valuable ones and all.”
Jayden held up his hand, “Wait. You said your friend’s in a hospital with a broken ankle?” Shit, the difficulty of this assignment just grew tenfold. “Which hospital? We should go get her.”
“I doubt we would get there alive. It’s clear down on Orchard in the center of the rioting. Do you think Jamie’s okay? I mean, her parents will protect her, won’t they?” Abigail’s concern for her friend was distracting and her eyes were mesmerizing. She seemed so vulnerable. He wanted to protect her. How does she see me? Does she only see a battle-scarred soldier aged beyond his thirty-six years? He shook his head. The mission is the sole priority. Everything else must be set aside.
“Are you thirsty?” Abigail got up from the sofa and stretched, “I’m so dehydrated. I just finished racing in a reality show competition, you know. Did you catch any of the show? It’s really popular. Cera’s Amazing Rally Showdown? Heard of it?”
She went into the kitchen and Jayden watched through the entryway as she took out a water jug from the fridge and poured up two tall glasses. She turned and walked back into the living room, slipped and dropped one of the glasses. Water and broken glass splashed across the floor.
“Holy crap! I’m so clumsy.” Abigail crouched down on the floor and began picking up the pieces of glass, shaking her head. Jayden went to her aid, plucking up the biggest pieces. “I’ll grab a towel. Can you get that piece of glass? The big one under that shelf?” She pointed to the shelf against the wall. He helped her to her feet and she held onto his arm to steady herself.
Jayden got down on his knees and peered under the shelf, unsure as to why they were bothering to cleaning up the spill, considering the current situation. Maybe it was because it felt like the “normal” thing to do in the midst of abhorrent circumstances.
He saw a glint and slid his arm under the shelving to pick it up.
Abigail bashed the butt of the shotgun against the back of his head with all the force she could muster. Jayden slumped against the shelves, dazed but not unconscious.
“You move one inch and I’ll blow your head off, Vitura scum. You don’t think I know who you are? I’ve seen that stupid fascist symbol on your lapel before. Just recently as a matter of fact. And the people wearing it were purposely turning people into zombies! Assholes!”
He leaned against the shelf, his head clearing, his left hand reaching for his stiletto concealed in his waistband.
Abigail pressed the barrel against his head. “I don’t know what you’re doing there, but you’d better stop. I’ve been through way too much this past week to let some old man soldier-for-hire take me down. Put your hands behind your head and lie flat on the floor. My finger is on the trigger. You do anything I don’t like and I’m pulling it. I’ve had a tough week, what with us causing this outbreak in my own country and all. I’m at the end of my rope.”
Jayden did as he was told, the water on the floor soaking into his pants. When she pulled the barrel away from his head, his hand shot out, gripping her ankle, trying to drag her down to his level.
Abigail nearly went down, but she happened to catch the shelving with her free hand and yank it forward. The top heavy shelving crashed down on top of Jayden. He shifted underneath, still conscious. The shelves hadn’t taken him out as Abigail had hoped, but she knew he would have a difficult time recovering - precious minutes that she could use to escape.
She backed up towards the front door, leaned down and picked up the two assault rifles by their straps. Then she put on his helmet. The visor blinked on, and after reading the room’s dim lighting, adjusted to a low density vision setting. Abigail could see a clear outline of Jayden underneath th
e bookshelf, his hands still on top of his head. “Cool.”
