It was just another lazy Sunday morning. The light flitted through the windows as I got out of bed and packed my gear to go out for my ice skating lessons at the rink one hour away. Everyone in my family was still asleep catching up on their sleep as I left the house. The malls opened later every Sunday as usual and the sun was shining brightly, enticing everyone to make full use of the day. If I had known what was to happen, I would have never left the house that day.
I would normally take the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) train to get to the rink, and it was peacefully quiet and perfectly conducive for sleeping with the lack of human traffic for that hour. As the train went underground though, there was a disruption. Disruptions were normal as the trains were getting so old so I missed the announcement by the train driver at first. My sleepy mode in the cool air-conditioning of the train received a rude awakening when the train doors swooped open, and a wave of hot air hit my face.
There was only one person sitting in the same train cabin as me and we looked at each other in alarm and anxiety. She looked like a busy corporate woman, early thirties and dressed in a black pencil skirt, simple white blouse and black blazer, with a phone in her hand that she had been constantly typing on. She probably had missed the announcement too.
We stared at each other, frozen in our seats, unsure and shocked about what to do next. The announcement finally came again a few seconds later, jerking us out of our reverie. “Please leave the train and proceed to walk along the underground tunnels escape routes. There has been a situation that we cannot verify..."
Immediately, we stood up and by tacit agreement exited the same door. In my mind, I was both curious and worried about walking along the emergency escape routes as I had never used them before. We walked silently together, in the same random direction, wondering what was happening. To our relief, a hundred metres later, we saw a group of people heading in our direction.
They were arguing in hushed whispers as to whether they should stay underground or go up the exits. Upon hearing our approach, they stopped abruptly and flashed their phones' torchlights at us, blinding my eyesight momentarily. "Hey!” the business woman shouted at them. "What's going on?” she asked. I shielded my eyes from the glare of the lights to look at them.
The group had a total of seven people, with four teenagers, two elderly and the train driver. To our confusion, they all started to talk at the same time. We glanced at each other and smiled. This was ridiculous, and their chatter made us feel at ease.
The train driver, in the standard uniform that they were all required to wear, cleared his throat loudly. Twice. When the group did not mellow down, he got impatient. He seemed to suck in a breath from his slightly bulging belly and boomed over the noise, "Let me explain!” Silence filled the air. “Our power shortage was cut for some strange reason that I am trying to figure out” That seemed reasonable. An elderly woman standing behind the group, stepped forward to show us news on her phone. I could barely believe it.
EGYPT GRAVE DIGGERS CAUSES OUTBREAK! The headline screamed. Two weeks ago, a group of archaeologists discovered a new, small pyramid which had a huge, deep underground tomb. Delving underground, they caught five grave robbers stealing red handed from the tombs. That was all that was reported in the article then. Apparently, one of the robbers have since claimed to have been bitten by a weird, unknown species of insect, similar to the common mosquito, that was living and feeding on the decayed tomb which caused him to have murderously high fever for three days, after which he passed on. To everyone’s horror, he came back to live and started to attack his doctors and nurses. Details of his attack are unclear but it has been rumoured that he bit them and they all took ill after that. Soon enough, Egypt was closed off to the rest of the world to be quarantined before this new strain of illness could spread.
Yet by some miraculous means, the “virus strain” had reached Singapore! I thought of the countless zombie movies I had watched, the silly survival guidebooks. Guns were banned in Singapore! Singapore was so tiny! Egypt was way too far away! Where could we escape to? Was the public already all affected? What about my family? Was someone here already infected? I looked at the group of people who were observing my reaction…
YOU ARE READING
Surviving in Chaos
Romance"I liked small children too but this one was a little odd. Her eyes were bloodshot and the colour of her eyes were dulled as if the life had gone out of them. That wasn’t the worse part of it, as she ran, it was obvious she was unstable on her legs...
