“No,” Haroon says. “Please, no.”
Three more baby cries issue from the cribs.
“Don’t tell me that’s for real.”
He steps toward the cribs. He doesn’t want to, but it’s too much for him to accept without seeing it with his own eyes. He’s never heard of the virus infecting infants before. It’s got to be something else.
When he gets to the first crib, all he sees is a pile of clothing inside, covered in shadows. But then he sees movement. He takes out his flashlight and shines it on the shapeless mound.
When the light hits the baby, a hole opens up in the brown flesh and bawls. Haroon doesn’t believe it’s really an undead infant. Even though it is crying, it is just a pile of fabric. His mind has to be playing tricks on him. But on closer inspection, he sees that it is an infant. Its arms and legs have molded into the sides of its body, its back fused to the mattress of the bed, its eyes and nose sunken into its hollow skull where half of its brain had been eaten out. It’s now just a blob of meat with a crying mouth.
Two more zombie infants begin to cry, and Haroon backs away. He runs out of the room, pries open the exit with the monkey wrench, then runs across the roof to the helicopter pad. He doesn’t care about the vow that he made to stay behind. He wants to get out of there. Right now. He isn’t even sure if his Nemy is in the contest at all. He can’t rely on the hope that he’ll find her. He’s going home.
Near the helicopter, there’s a large wooden plank with a red target spray-painted on it. He goes to that. Below it is a two-way radio and three words written above the target: “Call for rescue.”
“Hello?” Haroon says into the radio.
No reply.
“I’ve made it,” he said. “Am I the first one? Or am I too late?”
A camera ball floats down below his shoulder, filming his call.
“Hello?” he cries.
Then a voice comes on the other end. “Congratulations. You’re the first contestant to arrive safely. We’ll pick you up in ten minutes. Just hold on.”
“Ten minutes?” Haroon yells. “Pick me up now, damn it. I want to leave RIGHT NOW!”
But they do not respond. He punches the sign over and yells into the radio.
A figure steps across the roof toward him. When he turns around, his anger freezes on his face. The naked woman comes closer, holding a double-bladed S-shaped sword.
His eyes brightened. It was her. It was really her. She was really on the show as he thought. He tossed the radio over his shoulder and stepped toward her. He didn’t care about the helicopter anymore. He had her. As long as he had her, that’s all that mattered. Because he loved her more than anything in this world.
After two months of visits, Nemy and Haroon had fallen in love. They didn’t talk much when he came to visit her. They spent their time in bed together, making love, caressing each other’s bodies, kissing one another with ferocious passion. Until the day it all ended.
One night, he had not propped the door open with his shoe correctly. The door had closed and he was locked in. Haroon jumped out of bed and went to the glass.
“It’s outside,” Nemy said, pointing at his shoe on the other side.
He rubbed at the tension building in his forehead.
“Come back to bed.” She pulled him to her and pressed their ears together.
Haroon shook her away.
“Do you know what this means?”
She didn’t.
“If I get caught in here I’m not going to be allowed to see you again.”
Her eyes widened.
Haroon banged on the glass, calling out for Terry. But he knew his friend wasn’t there. Terry was disgusted with hearing their lovemaking and started to clean up earlier, before Haroon got off work. Still, he kept banging on the glass until his fists were red.
“Stop,” Nemy said.
He kept banging.
“Stop.” She grabbed his fist. Her grip was so strong that resisting was like trying to bend steel. “We still have now. We should make the most of it.”
Then she wrapped her arm around him and kissed his neck. Tears flowed down his eyes. He wished he had the strength to pull his fist out of her fingers so he could punch the glass one more time, but she pulled his arm down around her body. He released his anger by kissing her with all the power he had in him. He grabbed her around the waist and picked her off the ground, taking her into the bed.
They made love with more passion than they ever had before, because they knew it would likely be their last chance. They tried to put a lifetime worth of lovemaking into a single night, and when all of Haroon’s energy was spent they lay together in each other’s arms. Haroon’s neck pressed against her smooth glistening cheek, Nemy’s finger tip snuggled inside of his belly button.
In the morning, Haroon awoke to a knocking on the glass door. When he looked up, there were a crowd of people gathered outside. A group of ten security guards and five doctors. The man in front was Dr. Chan, a hunched over Asian man with small eyes that sunk deep into their sockets. Haroon grabbed his clothes and put on his pants.
“I was wondering how Specimen #5 had become pregnant,” said Mr. Chan. “I was worried that she was able to reproduce asexually.”
Haroon paused when he heard that, then looked at Nemy. Her eyes narrowed at him.
“I’m sorry,” Haroon said, putting on his shirt. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Didn’t mean to what?” Chan asked. “Fuck my specimen?”
Haroon and Nemy stepped out of the bed and went to the door.
“It wasn’t my intention to mess with your work. I just—
“Get him out of there,” Chan told the security officers. “He’s under arrest for committing an act of high treason.”
“What?” Haroon cried. “High treason?”
Five of the men came into the cell. Haroon backed away. They surrounded him. The two in front grabbed him and pulled him out of the cell.
“No,” Nemy said to Chan.
“No?” asked Dr. Chan, concerned by the disobedient tone in her voice.
“Don’t take him from me,” she said, with wide eyes. “I love him.”
The doctor was not pleased with her statement. “You what?”
“I love him!” she cried.
Haroon looked back. It was the first time she ever put emotion into her voice. A tear was coming from one eye.
Then she jumped at the door and reached her arm through the crack before it closed. She grabbed one of the guards who was trying to take away her love.
“Bring him back!” she cried, then she ripped off the guard’s arm.
As she fell back with the severed arm in her fist, the cell door slammed shut and the glass sprayed with blood. The armless guard dropped to the ground, screaming.
“You’ll never see him again,” said Dr. Chan.
As they dragged Haroon away, he looked back at her eyes wider than they’d ever been. Tears flowed down her face.
“Come back!” she yelled at Haroon. “Come back to me!”
She tossed her bed at the glass and pulled the sink out of the wall.
“We’ll see each other again some day,” Haroon told her. “I promise.”
Nemy dropped to the ground, reaching in his direction with her arms.
“We’ll be together again,” he yelled, as they took him out of the lab and dragged him down the hall.
And he was right. They are together again.
“Nemy!” he cries.
He runs to her.
He can’t stop smiling at the sight of her. They finally found each other. They finally can be together. He doesn’t think he even wants to go back to the island. He wants to find someplace else, where they can live alone together for the rest of their lives. Even if they barricade themselves in a building right here in this city, it would be like they were in her prison cell again. Together. Only he would be the one trapped in the cell and she would come and go, to get food and supplies. Then she can have her baby and they can all live together as one beautiful perfect family.