Tomas listened, but really he was only concerned about his present situation and getting out of WHO’s grasp. He would promise them the moon if they would let him go. Inwardly, he was focused on finding a way to locate Abigail and her friend Jamie in Singapore and get them to Qual pharmaceuticals to synthesize a vaccine. He knew the WHO wasn’t interested in curing the vaccine so much as controlling it. This bureaucrat, his superiors and the rest of the organization didn’t have the best of intentions in mind. Why would they? Because of zombie fever, they had become the most powerful institution on the planet. The general public was fascinated by the prospect of zombies but also terrified of the contagion. As a consequence, the WHO had every single government under their thumb, with their promises of prevention, dreams of cures or, at the very least, immediate containment with minimal casualties. If they had any idea that the IHS virus was engineered by a secretive multinational corporation, they kept it under wraps.
There’s no way they’re getting our research.
“I’ll do whatever you say, sir.” Tomas stood and saluted the Director General-in-Charge, mistakenly with his left hand then his right, and then he bowed. Having never served in the armed forces, he didn’t know what gesture was required of him. “Thank you for this second chance. I won’t let you down. Can your people take me to the airport so that I may carry out your orders? I’m exhausted and worried that I’ll pass out before I can get on the next flight to Canada. Oh, and I’ll need to take my files and the head, too.”
The Director General-in-Charge began to turn purple again. He typed away for a few moments on his desk and the door opened. Two MP-looking types escorted Tomas through the front entrance of the building. They walked him to an underground garage where a pickup truck was waiting with his equipment, files and the head sealed in a bio-bag and conveniently strapped to the truck’s bed. An MP handed over a key and said, “You’re to leave the vehicle in long-term parking at Senai International Airport, Terminal One.”
Tomas was pleased.
WHO may not have the world’s best interest in mind when it came to the zombie fever epidemic, but at least their commanders were efficient … and gullible.
Shifting the small truck into fourth gear, Tomas weaved around the slower vehicles on the Senai Selatan interchange en route to Senai International Airport. He glanced at the rearview mirror and watched as a dark sedan followed.
I’m going to have to make this look good,
Tomas thought.
He pulled into long term parking as instructed by the soldiers and stuffed his equipment, files and the severed head into a large pack with WHO paratroopers emblazoned on the side. Slinging the bag over his shoulder, Tomas covertly scanned the parking lot and spotted the sedan a few rows back.
A group of Vietnamese tourists were piling off a bus a few yards ahead. Tomas hunched his shoulders and attempted to crowd in with their group as they walked towards Terminal One.
The group swarmed into the terminal and Tomas veered off towards the Canada Air’s ticket counter.
As he stood in line, he again glanced back. It was easy to spot the two soldiers in plain clothes keeping tabs on him.
He approached the counter, took out his passport and said, “I need a ticket on the next flight out to Vancouver, please.”
The travel assistant’s eyes brightened as soon as she saw that there was a handsome young man at her counter. But then a look of distaste flashed across her features as she caught a whiff of his body odor from six days in the Tropics without a proper bath. Breathing through her nose, she tapped on an old-fashioned keyboard behind the counter. “The next flight leaves in two hours. A coach ticket will run you RMB $6,000 and first-class RMB $14,000. You’ll have to check your bag. It’s too big to use as a carry on.” She pointed to the idle conveyor belt beside the counter.
“Can I buy a coach ticket, then come back and check the bag? I need to get a change of clothes out and freshen up before the flight.”
She nodded and Tomas handed her the Qual Pharmaceuticals’ credit card he had stuck inside the back of his passport for these types of emergencies.
After he bought the ticket, Tomas walked towards security and shifted the files and laptop in the bag to make them more secure.
The two soldiers shadowing him were not far behind.
He made his way to security and calmly began counting backward from one-hundred to soothe his nerves. Airport security was on high alert for any sign of zombie fever. The first layer of security was a thermal scan to check body temperature as the first line of defense against spreading the contagion.
When Tomas reached the back of the line, he waited another thirty seconds. Then, leaning over behind the family in front of him, he looked down at the ground and screamed, “BERJALAN PENYAKIT!” the popular term in Malay for zombie, loosely translated as the walking infection.
Panic rippled through the terminal.
Tourists and airport staff alike screamed and ran for the exits.
Tomas pressed against the wall while the crazed throng rushed by.
The soldiers disappeared amid the horrified passengers and airline employees.
Even the so-called security officers were rushing towards the emergency doors.
Tomas was concerned that people were getting trampled in the melee, but he tried to focus on the big picture. With the added dangers of this new engineered strain of IHS on top of the already highly contagious and fatal original virus, it was imperative that he get away from his escorts. He had to get to a safe location and send brain samples back to Dr. Greer, then find Abigail and her friend in Singapore.
If there were casualties along the way -well, it would be unfortunate, but not unforeseen.
Tomas headed deeper into the terminal and found an abandoned corridor with an emergency door to the runway. He pushed his way through the door and mounted a three-wheeled trolley used to tow luggage carts. It was a simple matter to follow the painted lines on the tarmac towards Terminal Two, which was still operational, and sneak through the milling passengers and find a taxi.
“Klamas Veterinary, across from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.” Tomas told the taxi driver. He slunk back in his seat and closed his eyes. He hadn’t slept for two days and the lack of shut-eye was taking its toll.
Vehicles whizzed by as he drifted in and out of sleep during the ride to the safe house his colleagues had set up in Johor earlier in the month when there was confirmation of an outbreak in the northern states.
The veterinary blended in well with the medical supply stores, stem-cell injectors, cord blood banks, cryogenic sales departments and privateer cloners in the row of shop houses once reserved for hairdressers, household goods and pirated DVDs in a more innocent time.
Tomas tossed the driver a twenty ringgit note and rushed the steps into the vet’s reception.
There were two dog owners holding empty leashes and an old woman with a caged song bird sitting in the tiny waiting room. The nurse at the counter was busy writing on a clipboard. When she saw Tomas enter, she hastily retreated through a beaded archway into the rear of the building. Less than a minute later, she reappeared, ushered him behind the counter and practically shoved him through the open door.
“You’re supposed to call before coming here!” Lucinda put her arms around Tomas’ neck, pressed her breasts up against his chest and gave him a sloppy but passionate kiss. “My boss would have my head if he knew you were here. Lucky for you, the vet and his assistant are in surgery removing a cyst from a Doberman’s spine. They’ll be in there for at least another two hours. If they see you back here, they’re sure to call the authorities.”
Dr. Greer had recruited Lucinda when she was reconnecting with her colleagues in Australia after she had used Tomas to steal vitally important IHS research from Vitura’s San Diego compound four years ago. Greer was a pro at setting up locales for those times when on-the-fly research was required. Each time there was a zombie fever outbreak, a phone call was made to Lucinda who took the next flight into the hot zone, creatively finding a business or housing estate where the two crates of laboratory equipment following close behind wouldn’t garner suspicion. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Lucinda was rumored to have connections with the ancient Chinese gang known as the Triads.
The problem for Tomas, however, was that Lucinda had a mad crush on him and always assaulted him with sloppy open mouthed kisses whenever they crossed paths. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the effort she put in - and she was attractive. But post-op transsexuals weren’t his type.
Tomas pulled away and smiled at him, “Same old Lucinda. Dear, I need a shower and use of the lab, then I’ll be out of your hair. Your ‘employees’ will never know I was here.”
“I can’t help you with the shower, but the lab is ready to go. The equipment has been sterilized and the computers are on a secure line with the Vancouver lab. If you’d have let me know you were coming, I could have closed shop and assisted. But as things are, I’ll need to stay up front until closing time.”
Lucinda led Tomas down a narrow hallway.
On the left side there was a large room housing twelve cats, four dogs, a cockatoo and a goat – all in cages. On the right there were four doors, the first one marked with the Malay term for examination ‘Peperiksaan’, the second recovery ‘Pulih’, the third surgery ‘Surgeri’, and the last, the important one, supplies ‘Bekalan’.
Tomas glanced through the little window in the door marked ‘Surgeri’ and saw two men in full surgical gowns hunched over a large black dog.
Lucinda unlocked the number padlock on the ‘Bekalan’ door and motioned for Tomas to step inside the tiny broom closet filled with medical and janitorial supplies. When he was inside, she locked the door and Tomas flicked the light switch down two times. There was a click behind him. He turned and stepped into the hidden laboratory that was formerly the vet’s office. The room was cramped, but Lucinda had done a bang-up job on equipping the tiny lab. Along the length of one wall was a stainless-steel table crowded with, among other things, test tubes, beakers, graduated cylinders, hot plates, goggles, tongs, Erlenmeyer flasks, Petri dishes, magnifying glasses, and dissecting needles. There were analytical balances, hybridization ovens, centrifuges, thermal cyclers, pipettes and a stereo zoom microscope on the next wall. A large stainless-steel sink, a locker full of aprons and protective bio-suits, and a computer hooked up with an encrypted VPN line directly to Qual Pharmaceuticals were packed along the wall to Tomas’ left. And there was a large examination table in the center with an array of surgical equipment including bone chisel, bone cutter, a mallet, clamps, dissecting forceps, probe, Crile retractor, Tracheal hook, rip spreader, scalpels, Metzenbaum scissors, tissue expander, scale and - finally - an electric surgical saw.
Tomas set the duffel bag on to the table and went straight to the computer. First, he tried to contact Dr. Greer at the lab, but she wasn’t available; so he left a short message that he was going to send her some samples of a new strain of the IHS virus. Then he googled a map of Singapore and studied it for a few moments. He needed to find a rendezvous point where he could meet up with Abigail and her friend. He had never been to Singapore, but thought he found a convenient spot to the north of the island that was secluded and easy to find. He preferred meeting them as close to the border as possible since he had to swim or take a boat across the strait as Singapore had closed its borders earlier in the week.
He checked the website for CARS reality television show and saw that the reality show finale was being held at a casino resort in Marina Bay, Singapore. So he wrote a quick email to the hotel concierge of the resort, in care of Abigail and Jamie, that said:
Made it to Johor in one piece. We must get you to our lab in Canada a.s.a.p. It’s imperative you meet me at the Punggol Jetty @ midnight tonight. Bring your passports.
-Tomas
He thought about those few hours he had spent with the reality show teams and remembered something that kept bothering him … that scratch on that Norris guy’s arm. He had noticed the wound after they had smashed into the shopping center display window and couldn’t help but wonder whether some of the gore from the zombies who had exploded across the front of the car had seeped into that cut.
He finished the note with:
P.S. Get Norris checked out. He may be infected.
It was unlikely that they would get the message. But if they did, he wouldn’t have to search for them in that densely populated city-state.
When he finished with the computer, he went to the sink, took off his shirt and did his best to scrub down. He put on a bio-suit, taking great care to ensure that it was sealed tight. Then he donned a surgical mask with an eye shield and removed the head from the sealed orange biohazard bag. Immediately, he regretted not breathing through his mouth as the rotten cheese stench from the decomposing tissue infected with the virus made him wretch.
He clamped the head to the table with leather straps, switched on the electrical surgical saw and made quick work of sawing around the upper part of the skull. Then he took the bone chisel and mallet and
tick, ticked
a few deft taps on the cut line. The skull cap rose on its own off the top of the severed head from the release of pressure as the swollen brain expanded. It reminded him of watching bread rise in the oven. He removed the piece of skull and marveled at what he saw. The brain matter had lines of green sprouting through the pink as though an invasive plant had taken root inside this woman’s head. It was a curious sight, and Tomas took photos and recorded some video before proceeding.
After removing the brain and weighing it, he set to work cutting horizontal slices from the brain itself and sandwiching them between slides. He wasn’t much of an expert in molecular biology, but knew enough to handle a microscope. When he put one of the slides under the microscope, he inhaled sharply. The green shoots were still teeming with live virus, as though the actual death of the woman six hours earlier had never occurred.