Two ambulances decorated with red cross signs drove along the road and headed toward the direction of Windhoek.
Two large off-road jeeps went along with them, each assuming its position at the front and back of the ambulances respectively. They were the escort and security forces for the ambulances.
The four vehicles drove along the barren road, drawing closer to the center of the pandemic with every passing second. As they began drawing closer to Windhoek, villagers fleeing the plague began to appear on both sides of the road.
These people left their homes to get away from the terrible plague. Little did they know, in the process of fleeing to faraway villages, they were bringing the same calamity to the places they were heading to.
At noon, the fleet had arrived at the farthest known location afflicted by the pandemic – Bergland Village.
However, the village was drowned in a dreadful silence. Looking across the road in the village, puddles of grotesque black substance could be spotted lining the road. They gave off a rank stench periodically.
In addition, several villagers were spotted lying in the middle of the road. There were no longer signs of life left in them.
They could also hear moaning filled with anguish coming from the houses on both sides of the road.
“Click.”
When the door opened, Herbert and his colleagues stepped out of the vehicle. He walked toward the middle of the road and beheld the scenery in the image through the polyethylene masks as his stomach began to stir.
Corpses. Corpses everywhere…
Although they were the medical staff dispatched by Eco Science City, this was the first time they had witnessed such a dreadful scene.
Trying his best to look past the uneasy imagery, Herbert began approaching a corpse by the side of the road. The footsteps of his colleague trailed behind him.
Herbert turned around and noticed two security armed with rifles following him. They seemed ready to protect him from any harm.
Word was they were the security forces of Eco Science City which also doubled as the bodyguards for the medical staff on the current mission. For some reason, Herbert could not quite put his finger into, they looked dead to him.
Their expression was all but a blank sheet, their movements were rigid and gave off a mechanical impression.
Overall, they resembled robots more than humans. An apt description should be walking corpses.
Still, regardless of how much Herbert detested them, it brought him a sense of security to have two dedicated bodyguards with him in a hellish pandemic red zone such as this.
Herbert took his mind off of these things as he approached a nearby villager lying face down flat on the ground. He flipped the villager over.
Herbert was immediately greeted with the sight of the face of a dead person covered in bloody blisters and oozing blood from all available sockets.
With a deep breath, he suppressed the urge to throw up then and there. He gently felt for the pulse of the villager, needless to say, there was no saving this villager.
Next, Herbert began to inspect the lower half of the body. He noticed that the lower half of the body was covered in a puddle of filth, a great amount of blood had congealed with an unknown liquid substance. They continued oozing long after the villager had died. It would appear that they had fused with the organs.
Herbert took the camera strapped around his neck and snapped two pictures of the corpse. He then proceeded to inspect another corpse.
“Herbert, what’s the situation on your end?”
It was then when he heard Carl’s voice, his fellow colleague who had hopped out of the vehicle to investigate with him.
“It doesn’t look good. I’m not seeing any surviving villagers.”
Shaking his head, he began inspecting the corpse of another recently deceased villager as he asked puzzlingly, “How come we’re not seeing any survivors?”
“That’s normal. These villagers can either stay locked up at home and wait for the plague to claim them or flee and spread the disease to farther places,” Carl commented numbly, “the government took too long with their response here.”
“Eh…”
Midway through Carl’s sentence, he suddenly switched to an alert tone. “Herbert, come take a look over here. I found a villager who’s still alive!”
Herbert immediately rushed over and got down to inspect.
It was just as he said, the villager collapsed on the ground was not dead yet, his chest was still moving, albeit weakly.
“What do we do?”
Herbert’s colleague, Carl looked at him seeking advice. “Do we take him into the ambulance?”
“Do it, I’ll prepare the isolation cabin…” Herbert said as he got up and made for the ambulance.
“No need.”
It was then when Lawrence, the leader in charge of the current mission stopped the two of them. “There’s no point helping these patients who are nearing their death. What we need here are patients who are only displaying initial symptoms.”
“But…”
Just as Hebert was about to raise his objection, the door of a nearby house suddenly opened. They instinctively looked over and saw a frightened young black man poking his head out.
The young man’s eyes were ignited with a spark of hope when he saw the crew fitted in full isolation protective suits.
Ambulance!
The red cross could be said to be the most universal symbol in the world. Even these villagers were familiar with the symbol. The young man immediately charged out of the house toward them as if his life depended on it.
Herbert instinctively stepped backward.
Just as the young man was about to reach them, several rifles were immediately pointed at him. However, the young black man who was overwhelmed with emotion continued charging forward while mumbling something incoherently.
“Don’t shoot. He’s speaking Swahili, he’s saying that he just wants us to save his mother.”
Herbert promptly explained as he stepped forward and tried to calm the young man down in Swahili.
When the young man began to settle down, Herbert exchanged a look with his leader, Lawrence.
The leader returned him with a nod. “Carl, quarantine the patient.”
With that, Carl quickly returned to the ambulance and pushed out a stretcher. There was a transparent negative pressure isolation chamber positioned on the stretcher. This was a device used to enclose the source and effectively isolate the patient from the general population.
While conversing with the young man, Herbert stepped into the young man’s house and saw his mother on the bed clinging on to her dear life.
Similar to the corpses outside, the woman’s body was covered in blood and vomit substance. She was on the brink of losing her life.
“Leader, this…”
Seeing the young man’s ardent expression, Herbert reluctantly looked at the leader.
Lawrence nodded. Carl and another medical staff promptly pushed the negative pressure isolation stretcher inside and put the young man’s mother inside it.
“Tell him that he has to go inside as well,” Lawrence instructed.
Fortunately, the young man was very cooperative and ducked into the isolation cabin without a word. To be on the safe side, Herbert made sure to inject them with a tranquilizer before sending them into the ambulance.
“Alright, just need to find two more.”
The leader, Lawrence instructed, “You guys check out front, try to find patients displaying lighter symptoms.”
“Understood.”
Just as they were going forward, the door of a house far away was abruptly thrown open. A villager covered in blood stepped out and immediately roared upon seeing the crowd and started rabidly charging toward them.
“Blasted, make him shut up!”
The leader’s expression turned and he immediately urged. “If he alerts a large number of villagers, we won’t be able to get away!”
However, it was too late. As the villager continued shouting, the doors of the houses on the side of the road burst open one after another. Groups of villagers with blood-painted faces howled and cried as they came over like a surging tide!
“What do we do?”
Herbert and the others were frozen in place. They were dead meat if they were surrounded by the villagers and would have their protective suits ripped apart!
Just as they were all at a loss, the bodyguards who had kept their silence all this time stepped up. One of them raised the Czech CZ805 rifle in his hand and unloaded it into the sky without hesitation!
“Bang bang bang bang bang!”
The tense and threatening atmosphere left behind by the round of gunshots brought the villagers back to their senses. They looked at Herbert and the others with fear in their eyes.
The leader, Lawrence sighed with relief when he saw what had happened. He pointed at two children in the village and had them climb into the isolation cabin on their own. With the help of his crew, they carried the isolation cabin into the other ambulance.
“Alright, let’s get out of here before they start rushing at us!”
After the four infected villagers were brought onto the ambulance, the rest of them quickly entered the vehicle and shut the door, ignoring the desperate pleading of the remaining villagers.
The bodyguards waited until all of the medical staff had entered the ambulance before returning to the Jeep one after another.
When the villagers saw the ambulances preparing to leave, they could not contain themselves any longer. They charged forward, crying out as they slapped the car with bloodied hands. Their voices filled with sobs were unlike that of a regular human.
“Let us in!”
“Don’t go, please I beg you, save us!”
“I don’t want to die…”
The villagers crowded themselves around the vehicles in an attempt to prevent them from leaving.
“What, what do we do?” The crew on the ambulance were panicking. There were simply too many people surrounding the ambulance. If they were to stomp the pedal, they would run over at least a handful of them.
Just as they were drenched in a cold sweat from the shock, they heard yet another round of gunshots coming from the two Jeeps up ahead. Instead of shooting warning shots into the sky, they were shooting directly at the group of villagers!
All Herbert saw was one of the bodyguards prying himself out of the window and taking aim at the villagers before pulling the trigger. In a split instant, a cloud of bloody red mist erupted amid the pack of villagers surrounding the Jeep. The villagers shrieked in terror as they fled!
“Are they crazy, they’re shooting civilians!” the leader, Lawrence exclaimed.
However, the effectiveness of this method could not be denied as the villagers in front of the vehicle immediately dispersed. With the roar of the engine, the four vehicles took off, running over several more villagers while leaving the village…
Even after they had left the vicinity of the village, they could still see villagers chasing after them from the rearview mirror.
The despair shone through their eyes as they cried and screamed at the back of the fleet of vehicles until they got farther and eventually out of view…