by B. M. Hodges
Abigail tried her best to calm them, “Wait! Don’t open the door yet! I’ll help you, but you need to hear me out first!”
But either they didn’t hear or didn’t care. They pulled the door open and began tumbling out of the carriage on to the ground beside Abigail in a flurry of Hokkien and Hindi cuss words.
Abigail backed up a few paces and waited while the more timid folks gingerly made their way off the train.
So much noise.
Abigail fretted about attracting zombies further in the tunnel or from the Newton Station platform, which couldn’t be more than a few hundred yards ahead.
Now there were fifty plus sweaty bodies blocking her path and she was on the wrong end of the group to lead them to safety. She pushed her way through the crowd and there were exclamations of “Little girl with helmet?” “Where are the rest of you?” “Are you police or transit authority?” “Don’t you have a flashlight?”
When she was clear of the tightly packed group and their groping hands, Abigail turned and waved for them to follow. She decided against telling them about the outbreak for the time being. She didn’t want to cause a panic and thought it best to get them out of the dirty dank tunnel and onto Newton Station’s platform before letting them in on the terror above.
The first of the crowd began trailing behind her and, fearful of being left behind, the rest followed, complaining loudly about the lack of proper light and the need for more personnel to help with the evacuation.
Once clear of the remaining five abandoned train cars, the tunnel grew brighter from the glow of the station ahead. As a safety precaution, all the underground train stations had a series of thin LED tubes embedded in the walls, ceiling and floor that activated when the power was disrupted. The blue lights gave off an eerie iridescence.
So far, the tunnel was devoid of infected or healthy people. It was a relief, but at the same time disconcerting. Abigail was good with numbers and could do the math. If the epicenter of the outbreak was Marina Bay, and Orchard had already been overtaken a few hours later, and now, six hours later, Bishan central was overrun with infected, rioters and looters, then the surface streets of Newton District above must be a living nightmare.
They were almost to the station and still not a soul in sight.
Yet, Abigail couldn’t shake the notion that there was something wrong.
She could see the glass safety doors of the platform and the comfort of litter-free tile floors and stainless-steel benches beyond.
Her group became impatient and rushed passed her towards the platform.
They hoisted one another up to the doors, forcing them open and climbing into the deserted station.
Abigail stayed back, figuring she had done her duty. She could tell them about the dangers on the streets above, but what if they didn’t believe her? Could such information put her in danger and jeopardize rescuing Jamie? Besides, she was continuing through the tunnel, so there was really no need to stir up unnecessary trouble.
She waited until they finished climbing onto the platform. She waved goodbye as she started towards the adjoining tunnel.
One of the rescued passengers screeched.
Abigail stopped and flipped the visor down and stared up at the platform, dreading what she would see.
At first, it looked innocent enough.
Hundreds of Chatsworth International students from their boarding school beside the station were charging down the escalators in waves towards the group of passengers. They were in their late teens and wearing their full school uniforms - the boys in their pressed tan trousers, powder blue checked shirts and matching ties, the girls in powder blue blouses and tan miniskirts.
They looked harmless, until they got closer and Abigail saw the rage and hunger etched into their faces. Their eyes were flat and shiny.
The students swarmed towards the group of passengers without a word, their footfalls the only sounds they made.
There were at least three hundred of them.
The students pounced, biting, clawing and tearing into flesh, consuming and raging on the passengers.
Abigail could only guess that sometime during the evening, one or two students granted with a rare weekend day pass must have come into contact with an infected during their excursion and brought the infection into the boarding school on weekend lockdown. The virus must have spread rapidly through the dorms and study halls.
It wouldn’t have taken long until everyone in the schools compound was either dead or a raging zombie lunatic. Abigail imagined one of the staff probably tried to find a discreet exit only to be discovered and devoured. And now zombie schoolboys and schoolgirls roamed the street above, moving in cycles of attack and hunt with common purpose.
This group of students must have been drawn into the station by fleeing prey, or maybe they were trying to get out of the rain.
And Abigail had brought these infected a feast: a buffet of succulent, ignorant meat.
The screams didn’t last long.
Abigail ducked down and began to crawl towards the adjoining tunnel, praying that none of the zombie students had seen her standing there in the middle of the tracks frozen while they attended to their evening meal.
Almost to the end of the glass doors and the safety of the shadows.
She turned to look up and back to see if they noticed her escaping, but the oversized helmet with its visor display that had been so helpful along the way fell over her face. She grabbed the side and must have hit an earlier undiscovered button or switch because the visor flashed to night vision and the glow from the station became a hundred times brighter and blinded her.
Her eyes felt as though she had stared into a thousand suns.
Impulsively, she stood and tore the helmet off her head, a giant starburst in her sight preventing her from seeing anything.
Abigail watched the white star burst fade from her vision. When it was mostly gone, she carefully put the helmet on, making sure not to press too hard on any lump or edge for fear of setting it off again.
She secured the strap and the visor lit to a mellow evening light.
And in that light, she saw the hundreds of students in gore-stained school uniforms now standing in front of her in the tunnel, blood and chunks of flesh trailing off their gaping mouths, silently staring at her in the semi-darkness with their flat shiny eyes.
Chapter Twelve
Bishan Central
Bishan, Singapore
Tomas ran across the street and through the gaping doors of the shopping complex. The boy had been clear in his instructions: go straight until you reach the midpoint atrium in the center of the mall, turn right and walk down the closest escalator to Basement Three. Once in Basement Three, reverse direction and walk another hundred yards. The entrance to the train station should be on your right.
The darkness inside was punctuated by the moon breaking out of the clouds and filtering down through the skylights overhead.
There were more people inside the mall than he had anticipated.
And most of them were either nursing wounds from being savaged or fending off zombies who craved their flesh between their gnashing teeth.
Tomas tried to stay out of the skirmishes around him; it was too dangerous to help. But not more than a hundred feet into the mall he had to interfere. A young man covered in bites, his arms bleeding profusely, his head drenched in sweat as he fought the onslaught of the fever, battled against two zombies trying to get to his three children huddled together behind him.
Tomas had to do something.
He set down his homemade spear, plucked up a garbage bin over his head and hurled it at the two infected.
It bounced off their backs and they turned and rushed him in a mad fury.
They were on him so fast that he couldn’t grab his spear.
Tomas hooked the first one around its neck and whipped it sideways across the hall into the cement wall, crushing his skull. The other one began gnawing into the denim of the jean
jacket he had found in Jamie’s apartment, digging and ripping with its incisors into the material.
He slid arm around the zombie’s neck and squeezed until it hung limply and lifeless against his chest.
“Get them to safety, please,” the man whispered as Tomas released his grip and the body slid to the floor.
Tomas crouched down and took a closer, clinical look at the man succumbing to the fever. He watched as the man’s eyes rolled erratically around behind his eyelids and micro-seizures took hold of his body. Then he became still as though in a deep restful sleep.
He took hold of the youngest child and said to the eldest, who looked to be around eleven, “I’ll get you outside but you’ll have to find your way from there. I can’t take you any farther than that.”
They made their way back through the corridor into the humid night air.
“Do you live nearby?”
The girl nodded and pointed up the road.
A woman shouted nearby. “Evelyn!”
The girl ran into her open arms. “Mommy!”
Tomas came up behind them. “Ma’am, you’re husband is inside and is very ill.” He handed off the little boy in his arms, “There’s a zombie infection in Singapore and he’s infected. If you see him after I go, run.”
The woman nodded. She seemed to understand what was happening and that this was not an unreasonable request.
On the fourth-story balcony overlooking the entrance of Bishan Central, Jayden watched the scene unfold through his rifle scope with baited breath.
Could it be? He was hunting little girls, but had he spotted his white whale? Was that Tomas Overstreet?
He wrestled with what he was seeing through the scope, trying to match it his memories of Overstreet’s photos in the dossier he had reviewed hours ago.
The photos inside the file were taken throughout the last four years since Tomas began his crusade against Vitura, interfering in their projects, sabotaging equipment, and attempting to expose Vitura in a failed media campaign that instead gave him a public reputation as a crackpot conspiracy nut. Tomas wasn’t afraid of the spotlight and there were hundreds of photos in the file. Jayden had flashed through every one, analyzing his facial structure and overall appearance. Most people in the retrieval business rely solely on facial recognition tech, but Jayden was old-fashioned and believed his senses were just as effective. He always took it upon himself to study his targets with intensity.
Not that Jayden was a technophobe. He flicked the tab on the side of the scope and it zoomed in on his target’s face, capturing the frame and enhancing it as clear and bright as a professional’s portrait. Aquiline nose, check. Dimpled chin, check. Brown eye, check. Wavy, shoulder-length chestnut hair, check. And let’s face it, Caucasian. What are the chances that some other Caucasian male with the same build and facial structure as Overstreet would be in this Singapore heartland mall where Caucasians were a rarity on a regular busy shopping day? And where one of my other targets, supposedly in cahoots with him, was on the move? Not likely.
Tomas reentered the mall; and when he passed beyond the point where he might see his adversary above, Jayden slung the rifle onto his back, climbed over the railing and swung down to the third floor landing. Then he did the same for the second floor and dropped to the first behind a row of artificial palm trees, following Tomas at a discreet distance.
Tomas was quick to avoid the rest of the skirmishes in the hallway as it seemed foolhardy to risk his life for thieves.
He found the escalator and slid on his behind down the slick metal between the now frozen ascending and descending stairs. He did it again for the next two floors and, on the last slide down, managed to slam both feet into the torso of a bloodied zombie at the bottom, his arms held out as though to catch him. The zombie fell back to the stone floor of Basement Three. Tomas leapt over him before he could scramble to his feet, turned and ran down the hallway to the entrance of the train station.
Aside from the random body parts and a half dozen or so feverish infected lying on the tile in different stages of fever, the train platform was empty.
He didn’t hesitate.
Tomas jumped into the tunnel and began to jog along the train tracks into the inky darkness, the spear at his side. He felt a sense of urgency as he felt time ticking away. He knew the longer Abigail and Jamie were out there in the hot zone, the greater the chance they were exposed to life-threatening danger.
Jayden watched as Tomas disappeared into the tunnel. He shook his head in disbelief. Who does this guy think he is? No matter how great a fighter he was, even if he was capable of fighting off a large group of men, he would be no match against a horde of zombies. What if there were a bunch of ‘em stuck in the tunnel in the darkness and Overstreet ran into them? How long would it take until he was cut to ribbons?
He jumped into the tunnel when he was sure Tomas was too far ahead to spot him and followed into the darkness, checking the passage every twenty yards with the scope’s night vision for any zombie sign.
Tomas had slowed to a fast walk and Jayden could hear him breathing up ahead. He closed the distance between them to less than ten yards, in the event Overstreet ran into trouble. His corpse would make a fine trophy, but bringing him in alive would definitely mean a promotion and an extension to his six figure security contract.
The zombie in the tunnel that Abigail had snuck past was still standing in the center of the tracks and Tomas was forging ahead in a kamikaze path towards the infected now facing the oncoming footsteps in the darkness.
Jayden hissed in frustration as he watched Overstreet beeline towards the zombie, now reaching out with his clawing hands, swiping the air at the approaching noise of breathing and hurried footsteps.
Jayden flipped a switch on the rifle stock to silent and dropped the zombie with a bullet aimed at its left knee, knocking him away from the tracks just as Tomas came within reach. A millisecond later another, he put one between the eyes before the wounded zombie dropped to the dusty ground.
Tomas stopped in his tracks and blindly crouched into a fighting stance, his spear swinging in arcing paths in front of him tasting nothing but air.
Jayden waited and watched Overstreet, grinning as his near-mythical nemesis, the thorn in the side of Vitura, bumbled around helplessly in the dark.
Tomas stopped swinging and remained motionless, silent for a few minutes while he waited for a perceived threat that had already been taken out of play.
Jayden’s arms began to grow tired from holding the rifle up to his head to watch Tomas through the scope. He decided to take Overstreet down and continue his hunt with him as a captive. But then Tomas stood up and continue his sightless jog along the tracks.
He sighed, slung his rifle and followed.
*****
It was all in the eyes.
Abigail stared back into the crowd of zombie school children. Their eyes are the giveaway; they reflect the light.
Instinct took over.
Abigail turned and fled, not realizing that she had turned into an adjacent maintenance tunnel that led to a dead end.
The maintenance tunnel was more of an alcove than an actual corridor and she realized her error right after the main tunnel became out of reach by a sharp dividing corner.
She could hear the clomping of dress shoes as the zombie students gave chase.
The dead end came fast.
She ran for her life towards the cement wall ahead and the maintenance railcar parked idle on the tracks against two large rubber fence posts attached to the wall.
