Zombie Fever: Evolution (3 page)

The three entrances to the MRT underground train station were packed with rowdy CARS fans. The bus stops and taxi stands in the area were the same. Zombie fans were packed like sardines, many of them ignoring sudden headaches and cramming on buses and into taxis, unaware that they were spreading a plague across that would consume their country.

Jamie would comment, “Look at that,” every time one of the spectators stumbled to the ground or sat down and began to shake their head in an unnatural way.

They had seen Norris behave similarly and knew what was coming.

The ambulance arrived.

It was a Gleneagles Hospital ambulance. Gleneagles was the most expensive private hospital in Singapore. Tua Kee Media was giving them the star treatment. Only wealthy expats, celebrities, government officials and millionaires who lived in the Orchard area(Singapore’s version of Beverly Hills) sought treatment at Gleneagles.

Abigail couldn’t decide if they were trying to buy their silence with the royal treatment.

The paramedics checked Jamie’s ankle and one said in Singaporean English - aptly called Singlish - “Ai yo, looks broken, lor!” They gave her an injection for the pain and gingerly set her on a stretcher. Abigail climbed into the rear of the emergency vehicle.

Since it was a nonemergency, the paramedics didn’t switch on the siren and lights. They crawled along in the sluggish traffic like everyone else trying to leave the hotel casino area.

“Why don’t you turn on the siren and get out of this traffic?” Abigail asked.

“Procedure. Cannot deviate from procedure,” was the reply.

But it didn’t take long before they were cruising up Orchard Road toward Gleneagles Hospital.

Several police cars, fire trucks and motorbikes rushed by the ambulance in the opposite direction back towards Marina Bay.

Then several more first responder vehicles zipped by.

Since their ambulance was a non-emergency vehicle from a private hospital, the paramedics were unaware that all hell was breaking loose behind them. If they had tuned in to the government’s emergency line, reserved for public emergencies, they would have dumped the girls on the side of the road and turned back to the resort to help.

If they had been tuned in to the emergency line, they would have heard that rioting and violence had broken out in the Marina Bay district. Every emergency responder who had heard the call was racing straight into ground zero without proper safety gear for a biological emergency.

Meanwhile, the ambulance pulled into Gleneagles’ driveway and the paramedics dutifully delivered Jamie and her companion to an examination room on the eighth floor. A nurse came in, made a few notations on a tablet, gave Jamie another injection and left them to wait for the attending physician.

“So here we are in a hospital again, waiting for others to help us. And we’ve lost the race and Sheldon has silenced us with a bag full of money. I feel like we’re always getting the short end of the stick. I’m really tired of being the victim, Jamie. Maybe we should meet Tomas tonight and go with him to Canada. At the very least, we can help stop zombie fever. We can do something good for the world. Besides, I’ve never been to North America. If we’re successful, maybe we could settle down there, like in New York and live the American Dream.”

“Sounds good, Abi -that makes a lot of sense.” Jamie’s eyes were glazed and she began drifting in and out of consciousness. The injection that the nurse gave her must have been a powerful painkiller. “But I’ve really messed up my foot. It hurts so much. I’m not sure whether I’ll be going anywhere, let alone to Canada.”

“Don’t say that! It’s the painkillers and coming off a week of racing talking. It’s only four o’clock. We’re supposed to meet Tomas in eight hours. I’m sure the doctor will be in soon to set your leg. Remember when I broke my foot during that football match against Raffles Girls School? I still went to the victory dance that night and we sat out with Romero and Shaun until dawn. You’ll be fine. We can do this.”

But Jamie wasn’t responding. She had fallen fast asleep.

Abigail sat for another hour waiting for someone from the medical staff to begin prepping Jamie for an x-ray, examine her ankle, and maybe ask them questions. Anything.

But nothing happened.

Abigail waited another ten minutes, then went out into the hallway in search of some assistance.

Their floor seemed deserted.

Abigail walked down the empty corridor, her footsteps and her breathing the only sounds. “Hello?” she called, her voice echoing down the hallway.

She glanced in a few doors and saw that patients were still in their rooms, some of them angry for disturbing their solitude, others asking her if she was a nurse.

She found the bank of elevators and decided to go down to the ground floor.
There must be people on the main floor of a hospital,
she reasoned.

When the doors opened, the contrast to the silence on the floor above couldn’t have been starker.

Doctors, nurses and interns rushed back and forth along the hallway, shouting medical terms, dour looks on their faces. Down the hall towards Emergency, Abigail saw four policemen, guns drawn and guarding the doors. A doctor burst through one of the doors, his white coat smeared with blood. He was clutching his left arm and four nurses rushed to his aid, one tying a tourniquet above a seeping wound that had the distinct look of a bite. There were screams inside the emergency room as the policemen quickly pushed the doors closed.

The hallway swooned for a moment as Abigail realized what was happening.

Zombie fever had been unleashed in Singapore.

An intern rushing by tripped on the corner of a rubber mat, careening off an empty gurney and onto the floor in front of Abigail. Abigail reached down to help him up. “It’s the fever, isn’t it?” she asked the shaken intern.

“No, no. Nothing like that. It’s something even stranger. People have been attacking each other for no good reason, running around biting and screaming like animals. They’re out of control, running around like crazed lunatics. But it’s definitely
not
zombie fever. There are no swollen zombies bumbling about looking for food.” The intern paused, catching his breath. “Why would you ask if it is zombie fever? Are you a patient here? If you are, you should get to your room. If you’re visiting, go home. The government is advising citizens to lock themselves in their flats, preferably in their bomb shelters for the time being and until everything is under control.” He hurried off and disappeared around a corner.

More inhuman shrieks emanating from the emergency room echoed through the hallway.

Abigail returned to the elevators and ascended to the eighth floor.

She suspected that the only people in Singapore who really knew what was happening were the reality show racing teams. They’d seen zombies infected with the new strain.
What did Bertrand call it? The Hawk? IHS-2?

She ran down the hallway towards the front of the building and looked down at the street below. Orchard Road below was the center point of Singapore life. It was a materialist’s paradise, with shopping center after shopping center filled with designer labels and five-star restaurants. The buildings were flash and modern, the architecture cutting edge. It was a dynamic and exciting place.

But what she saw in the fading light made her realize that she and Jamie had to get away from the town center as quickly as possible.

There were lines of police in full riot gear marching in rows down the middle of the road. Large armored buses with water cannons were pushing back ordinary citizens and tourists alike off the main road and down the side streets. Apparently, the authorities believed that getting people off the streets was the most pragmatic use of their police power.

Directly below the hospital, Abigail saw a man in shredded clothing and makeup, undeniably one of those line dancers from the TV show finale, run head long into the riot police, arms flailing, bouncing off their long plastic shields.

The nearest officer beat his head into a bloody smear on the blacktop.

Abigail turned and ran to Jamie’s room.

She was fast asleep.

Abigail shook her repeatedly, “Jamie! Wake up! Jamie!”

“Huh? Wah? Is the doctor here?” she asked, her voice thick with opiates.

“The doctor’s not coming. Jamie, Norris must have turned zombie as we suspected. Somehow the virus has spread to those crowds of dancers we ran through on the way to the finale. There are riot police everywhere downstairs. We have to get out of here!”

Jamie fought through the haze of sedatives and painkillers. She shook her head and took a drink of water from the plastic cup at her bedside and whispered, “Abigail, I’m not going anywhere with this broken leg.” She swallowed. “My family. You have to get home and get our families out of Singapore. You saw what was happening in Kota Tinggi. Please, go to Bishan and get our families to safety!” She grabbed Abigail’s hand. “I’ll be alright here. See? There’s a lock on the door. I’ll be safe until the authorities get here. I’m in the most prominent hospital in all of Singapore. I’m sure evacuating the patients here is high priority. In fact, isn’t a Brunei prince having a heart procedure done here? Take the money and stash it in your house and get our families out before the virus spreads island wide. You remember what that Vitura guy told us: this form of the virus has an incubation period of less than an hour. By morning, the island will be crawling with infected.”

Tears welled in Abigail’s eyes.

She knew Jamie was right.

Supervisor Bertrand had been proud of his new bioengineered IHS-2 virus and bragged about its potency with a perverse pride. She didn’t know when the authorities would quarantine the entire city-state. It wouldn’t take long before they realized they were dealing with an epidemic. She had an hour, maybe two, to get Jamie’s family and hers on a boat or plane before they shut down all avenues of escape.

“Okay, I’ll get our families to safety. But I’m not leaving Singapore without you. I’ll come back for you and we’ll race out of here together, just like during the show.” She hugged her best friend fiercely.

Jamie hugged her back and whispered hoarsely, “Be careful, Abi.”

Abigail kissed her on the cheek, walked to the door, turned back and said again, “I’ll be back for you.”

“I know you will. I’ll be right here waiting. Now go. Save our families before it’s too late.”

Chapter Three

WHO Mobile Command Center

Johor Bahru, Malaysia

The Director General-in-Charge’s face was violet with rage. He slammed the phone on his desk and addressed Tomas. “Overstreet! You know your crew wasn’t authorized for any study in the Malaysia Outbreak zone. Explain to me why I shouldn’t arrest you.”

After decontamination and what seemed an endless seven-hour wait in a holding cell, Tomas had been transported in a nondescript travel trailer to the WHO Mobile Command Center in Johor.

Before the trip, he had managed to convince the soldiers manning the fence that he needed to retrieve his equipment, files and the severed head from the SUV.

His equipment and files were no trouble.

But the head was another matter.

The commander had denied his request due to contamination risks.

However, one of his lieutenants had had a run-in with a mutated zombie earlier in the day and it had shaken him up quite a bit. He was on a routine inspection of the perimeter about a mile east of the gate. There were a dozen bloated zombies from the original strain piling up against the fence in a gully near a feeder road. The fence was weak in that area and there was concern that the weight of the zombie corpses could weaken the section they were pressed against. The lieutenant and his crew were talking about how to remove the bodies from the barrier when they heard a cold-blooded shriek. The soldiers watched in amazement as a naked man ran across the field in a full sprint, screaming in that inhuman off-key. The soldiers raised their rifles, but the lieutenant hesitated before giving the order to fire, waiting to see if this person needed their help.

The naked man ran into the gulley and charged up the bloated backs of the dead zombies piled against the fence. He leaped into the air and grabbed the razor wire on top of the fence, trying to climb through and filleting himself in the process. The telltale greenish blood flowed from his wounds.

The lieutenant had plenty of experience with zombies and knew this behavior was out of the ordinary. He was still formulating a way to explain the event to his superiors when Tomas arrived at the gate. So he argued for Tomas and the commander gave in. “Take the head, but share what you discover with WHO,” the commander ordered.

Tomas agreed, knowing that the WHO would take months to digest any information he provided them … and a couple more months to suppress it.

The Director General-in-Charge rocked forward in his chair and leaned across his desk, staring through Tomas’ eyes, trying to elicit a response through sheer will alone.

“My authorization to conduct research inside the quarantine zone was given at the zero hour, sir,” Tomas lied, trying to be as deferential as possible to the soldier-bureaucrat barking at him. “I’m sure if you check with WHO headquarters you’ll find that we were given entry permits and field passes to conduct our studies during the final phases of the outbreak. Unfortunately, my permit was left behind when my crew was overrun by a horde of infected earlier in the day. I was the only one to make it out alive, sir.”

Unconvinced, the Director General-in-Charge replied, “The UN is going to come down heavy on our division if something isn’t done about your rogue operation. My superiors are in a tizzy over your behavior and your utter disregard for quarantine protocols.” He paused, his purple face fading to a more even shade of pink. Looking down, he briefly clicked away on a keyboard projected across the surface of his desk. He seemed to calm a bit more and clicked away for a few more minutes before continuing, “Nevertheless, the order has come down on high to give you one last chance. We have been tracking your outfit’s progress and know that your studies have paid off in certain breakthroughs that have been beneficial in our quest to find a cure for zombie fever. But we want the rest of your research. We’ll stay your arrest on the condition that you report to WHO headquarters in one week with all your research regarding the IHS virus. Then you are to shut down operations and personally remove yourself from the entire IHS affair. Your colleague, Dr. Greer, will be assigned to WHO headquarters to supervise the transition and assist our team. We can’t have two-bit players like you withholding data from us. The zombie fever pandemic will never be stopped unless we consolidate all information into a central location.”