Actually I'm not too sure about the civil war part. The story was published and all of us has a copy, but I didn't read it. Got bored. Well, conspiracy storyline is just too derivative from movies and other books... But here's my chapter! The unedited version! My chapter was edited by this lady writer called Stephanie, but I haven't got my edited version back from Max, one of the organizers. So forgive me for any mistakes or long-windedness.
I present to you: The Zombie Conspiracies: Chapter 2
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Light
in the office had finally turned to a shade of orange and Peter knew it was
time to leave this dirthole. Another wasted day, he thought as he threw away
the memo. No scoops came in, no articles went out. Damn, Micky's gonna be
pissed.
Earlier
that day at the editorial meeting, Peter sat there with folded arms and listened
to his colleagues pitching in their stories to Micky, the senior editor. His
eyes were fixated on whoever was speaking, but his mind was miles away from the
table discussions. When it was his turn to contribute a story, he sat up and
opened his mouth, but no words came out. The silence stifled the room, as all
eyes were on Peter. He looked around at the many vacant faces of his
colleagues, cleared his throat and raised his head to Micky, who was standing
at the front of the long table.
“I
have nothing to use,” claimed Peter. He thought he might have caught Micky's face
muscle twitched a bit.
“You
know, we have potential stories lined up for the new millennium and we need
capable writers-”
“Mick,
guys,” he addressed the whole room of journalists. “You
know me. I don't do lifestyle stories.”
“We
need capable writers, and-”
“And
you have them.”
“We
just need you to start writing again.”
Micky
had just struck Peter reality with his words. He kept quiet and had
a quick flashback in his mind.
When was the last time I
submitted an article? Was it last week? Three weeks ago?
He
blinked, realizing he had indeed hit the dry season of his successful
journalism career.
After
the meeting, he went straight back to his office and spent a long time admiring
the streets below outside his large window. The low rumbles of vehicle engines
and random street noises filled the void of the proletariat, as they walked to
their destinations. All that movement but nothing was going on. Where are the
scandalous bastards when you need them?
Peter’s
research on potential political dirt came up nil and his reliable sources
hadn't phoned up with anything substantial. Even with the regular dosage
of coffee into his system every hour did not help much to keep his sanity in.
He was fighting a losing battle without the proper gear and equipment. Micky
had even left him a memo through his secretary, stating: “If you don’t produce
anything by tomorrow’s meeting, I will have to let you go.”
He
chucked a few pieces of papers of no importance into his black briefcase and
headed out into the corridor. He made a quick turn around the corner and dashed
for the closing doors of the empty elevator. Now Peter really felt that he was
descending into Hell.
--------------
The
walk back home was an uncomfortable one. Peter could have taken a bus home, but
he wanted to be alone and not surrounded by crowds with body odour and botched
perfume smells. His apartment, now just a few blocks down the road, was located
in the heartlands of Tiong Bahru.
Peter
had always loved Tiong Bahru. He always saw the area as a forgotten relic in
Singapore’s history. The worn-down, 15-storeys HDB flats surrounded the central
area, which mainly consists of the Tiong Bahru Mall and other smaller
establishments. And under these residential blocks housed coffeeshops, which
were usually patronized by collective groups of people who had nothing much to
do. After three years in hectic offices of Straits Times and meeting deadlines,
Peter had grown to appreciate the slow and simple life and found comfort in his
neighbourhood.
The
hunger pangs had started to go off, but Peter was not in any mood to eat
anything. He was too deep in his thoughts, pondering about the possibilities of
his future when he loses his rice bowl tomorrow. At the same time, the
fragrance of the dozens of dishes from the nearby coffeeshops incited his
hunger even more.
A
terrible, high-pitched scream came out of nowhere and shattered the evening’s silence.
Peter looked around, frantically sourcing the sound. He knew it belonged to a
woman. The scream attacked again, this time it was more of a cry rather than a
scream. For some reason, he was genuinely excited. It sounded like a murder was
taking place.
His
journalistic instincts kicked in. He took out his Dictaphone and bolted in the
direction of the scream. While running, he checked the battery on his recording
device.
Peter
need not be reminded of the “Nathan Incident” earlier that year, in which he
forgot to hit the “Record” button when he was doing an interview with the newly
elected President. He breathed a sigh or relief when the President told him
they had a transcriber on the spot and he was willing to provide the transcript
for his article.
Peter
came to a halt at the dark alleyway. He could not make anything out of the
darkness at first. He breathed heavily and wiped his moist forehead. As his
vision became clearer with his pupils growing accustomed to the darkness, he
could not believe the situation that was taking place in front of him.
Two
men wrapped in large pieces of dirty cloths were squatting near a bleeding
middle-aged woman. She was seen sitting in her own blood with her back against
the wall. The creatures continued their sickening gnawing and failed to notice
that they had a “visitor”. The woman seemed almost dead, but she had felt
Peter’s presence and turned her head around slowly. Their eyes connected for a
moment, his gripped with terror and hers with imminent death.
The
woman slowly raised her arm towards him and he could have sworn she mouthed the
words “Help me.” One of the men saw her pleading face and spun his head to see
who she was looking at. Peter’s face lost its color once he saw the grotesque
façade of decaying flesh and blood looking back at him. Its mouth dripping with
menace and blood that was not its own.
No, it can’t be zombies.
Cannibals, perhaps?
Journalism
would have to wait. A human life was at stake and there was no one else nearby
to help her. He brought his briefcase up with both hands and charged towards
the deformed creatures. The cannibals stood up and roared in indistinguishable,
animalistic voices.
Peter
swung his briefcase to the nearest to him across its head. The brute impact
threw it off balance and it fell on its back. The other one growled in
retaliation and attempted to strike Peter’s face with a backhand slap, but he
had brought his briefcase up just in time to block its attack. He gritted his
teeth and struggled to keep the briefcase between him and the monster pining him against the wall.
Peter
then looked down and glanced an opening between the creature’s legs. Without
any hesitation, he decided to give it a try and shot his right leg upwards. There
was a loud squishing thud. The creature howled in pain, followed by an English
swear word and grabbed its own crotch.
What the hell? These
things can talk?!
The
first creature Peter attacked jumped on him. In the midst, he had dropped his
briefcase and he was now lying on the floor, desperately pushing the snappy
face away from his. From this distance, he could barely make out the shape of the
disgusting facial features. It looked like something that his nightmare would
manifest from his darkest fantasies.
Several
voices from afar shouted things like “Hey! Is anybody hurt? What’s going on?
Where are you?” Both Peter and the creature looked to the voices’ direction. Peter
began to shout and struggle, but the creature went straight for his neck and
squeezed it.
Peter
felt his windpipes being crushed by sticky sausages. His blurry view of the
world was now being slowly engulfed by the darkness in his eyes.
“Leave
him! The humans are reaching. We can’t have two dead bodies.”
“He
saw our faces!”
“No
one will believe him! They’ll see the woman’s one and assume he did it.”
“Screw
it, let’s go. The treaty’s ending anyway.”
Peter
choked back to life and broke into violent coughs. His vision still blurred,
but at least he could make out that the creative was standing over him,
smirking. He felt his head jerked to the right and a searing pain on his left
cheek began to intensify.
“That’s
for kicking me in the balls,”
“Come
on, we gotta go!”
And
with that, the creature disappeared from view. he quickly got up on his feet
and checked the woman’s pulse. Yup, she’s
definitely gone.
Peter
picked up his briefcase and ran away from the voices that were getting nearer,
for he had only enough time to escape from the manslaughter crime scene. The
creatures were right, though. Which seemed more like a logical situation: A cannibalism
ritual conducted by two bloody, deformed monsters? Or a psycho journalist with
a penchant for hardcore crime news stories? He did not stay to find out the
answer.
Instead,
Peter decided quickly to follow them into the darkness of the alley. He was not
trying to be brave. His instincts had kicked in again: Follow the leads at all
costs. He followed the bloody, mushed footsteps and with each step, there was
lesser and lesser blood. Please let me
strike the gold pot before it disappears.
The
footsteps only ended when it reached the main streets of Tiong Bahru Road.
Passer-bys were staring at him as if he was a zombie, because of his disheveled
and insane, yet vacuous, expression. He gave a sweeping view around, for any
signs that these creatures would try to blend in. No dirty cloths in sight, no
blood on any bodies.
As
Peter began to calm down from his near-death experience (every scoop he had was
a near-death experience anyway), he realized something was amiss with his arm.
His left forearm felt a tad lighter and weird. He turned his arm around and saw
teeth marks on them. His eyebrows furrowed in uncertainty. He did
not remember getting bit in that bloody fight. He looked up and saw society
moving, as though nothing had happened.
What the Hell are you?
