[ NARRATOR ]
They left the nursing home men with more than most people would have.
Theo-3 had insisted on this without quite saying he was insisting. He had simply continued after the bandaging and the zip-tying, moving through the nursing home's supply rooms with the systematic efficiency of someone who had been managing limited resources for five months and knew exactly what a person needed to survive a few hours of being restrained in a room.
Water. Two bottles each. Nutrient packs from the supplies the men had themselves stockpiled on the first floor. A basic first aid kit within arm's reach of the Indian man whose hand would need attention beyond what had already been done for it.
And a knife. Set on the floor three meters from the nearest man, positioned so that someone motivated enough could work their way to it and use it to cut their zip ties. Not immediately. It would take time, enough time for Damian and Theo-3 and Reuben to be somewhere else entirely before anyone got free.
Damian had looked at the knife on the floor for a moment before they left.
Then he had looked at Theo-3.
Theo-3 had already moved to the door.
They brought the roof guard down last. He woke up groggy in the stairwell, looked at Theo-3 carrying him over one shoulder, and made a sound of profound confusion before Theo-3 set him down carefully in the room with the others and zip-tied his wrists with the same careful tension as everyone else.
"You will be able to free yourselves in approximately two to three hours," Theo-3 told the room. "The knife is on the floor near the window. The water is beside each of you. The first aid kit is within reach of the man against the left wall." A pause. "I would recommend staying in this building until the infected density in the surrounding area reduces. It is safer than it looks from the inside."
None of the men said anything.
Theo-3 closed the door.
[ DAMIAN ]
The CPIB carpark smelled the same as when we had left it.
Echo was at the level two barrier when we came up the ramp, sitting exactly where she had been sitting since we left her, ears forward, tail beginning its movement when she saw us come through the door. She stood and walked to me and pressed her head against my hand and I held it there for a moment and didn't say anything.
"She didn't move from that spot," Reuben said from behind me. He was looking at her with the particular expression of someone who had been around animals enough to know what that meant. "The whole time you were gone."
I looked at her.
She looked back at me with those eyes that read everything and filed it and didn't make it complicated.
"Yeah," I said. "She's like that."
We gathered what we had left. The remaining supplies, the bicycles we decided to leave, the frequency devices that Theo-3 reattached to his belt with the careful attention of someone handling things that could not be easily replaced. Damian's pack, Echo's makeshift kit, everything that had been theirs since SGH and was still theirs now.
The infected at the fence had thinned further during the hours we had been inside. Eight remaining, drifting without purpose along the perimeter, none of them oriented toward the building.
Reuben stopped at the top of the ramp and looked at the fence line.
"You said the key," he said.
Theo-3 produced it. The key taken from the dead man in the nursing home stairwell, the one I had thrown into the herd. Small, worn, the kind of key that fit a vehicle rather than a building.
"Those men had a car," Reuben said. "I heard them talking about it after they first caught me. A Toyota. They were proud of it. Went on about it for a while." He paused. "They parked it in the street behind the nursing home. Jalan Bukit Merah side."
Theo-3 and I looked at each other.
"That would explain the key," Theo-3 said.
"Try it," I said.
[ NARRATOR ]
The Toyota Land Cruiser was where Reuben said it would be.
It sat on Jalan Bukit Merah with its nose pointed west, hulking and dark against the overgrown road verge, visibly different from every other vehicle on the street. Where the other cars were standard civilian EVs, dead and useless since the grid died on Day Three, this one had the specific presence of something that had been worked on deliberately. Maintained. Modified.
The 2060 Land Cruiser was already a different machine from its predecessors, hydrogen fuel cell primary with a backup battery system that could run independently for forty eight hours, the body reinforced from the factory for rough terrain, the suspension system adaptive and self-correcting. This one had been taken further. The front bull bar was custom, heavier than standard, welded rather than bolted at the mounting points. The windows had additional wire mesh fixed to the interior frames. The roof rack held two sealed containers. The tyres were oversized, the kind used for military logistics.
Theo-3 pressed the key to the door sensor.
The locks disengaged.
Damian walked around the exterior slowly, running his hand along the modifications, reading them the way you read a document written in a language you know.
"They knew what they were doing," he said. "The bull bar alone, that's not amateur work. Someone who knew vehicle modification did this."
"The men at the nursing home," Reuben said. "One of them was an engineer before. He talked about it. Seemed proud."
Damian looked at the mesh on the windows. At the containers on the roof. At the general logic of a vehicle that had been systematically prepared for exactly the world it was now operating in.
"I want to drive," he said.
"No," Theo-3 said.
The word arrived with no preamble and no flexibility.
Damian looked at him.
"Your sutures have been under significant stress today," Theo-3 said. "You have a possible internal contusion from the stomach impact. You have a head strike from earlier that I have not had the opportunity to properly assess. You need to be in the passenger seat, sir. Not the driver's seat."
"I'm fine."
"You coughed blood approximately three hours ago."
A silence.
Reuben raised his hand slightly. "I can drive."
Damian looked at Reuben. Looked at Theo-3. Looked at the driver's door.
He walked to the passenger side and got in.
Theo-3 got in the back with Echo, who had already assessed the vehicle, found it acceptable, and settled onto the back seat with her chin on her paws.
Reuben started the engine.
The hydrogen cell turned over smooth and quiet, the particular near-silence of a well-maintained fuel cell vehicle that was somehow more present than the complete silence of a dead EV. The dashboard lit up. Fuel cell at sixty three percent. Battery backup fully charged. All systems nominal.
Reuben looked at the dashboard for a moment with the expression of someone who had been getting around Singapore on foot and bicycle for five months and had forgotten what a working vehicle felt like.
Then he put it in drive and they moved.
[ DAMIAN ]
I got on the walkie talkie as Reuben navigated around the stopped cars on Jalan Bukit Merah.
"We're coming," I said. "Reuben's with us. We have a vehicle."
A pause on the other end. Then: "A vehicle."
"Toyota Land Cruiser. Modified. Fuel cell."
Another pause. Longer this time. "Where did you get a vehicle."
"The men at the nursing home had it."
The silence that followed had a specific quality to it.
"Are they," he started.
"Alive," I said. "Bandaged. Tied up. They have water and food and a knife they'll eventually get to. They'll be fine."
The pause again. Then, quieter: "Reuben."
"I'm here," Reuben said from the driver's seat, loud enough to carry to the walkie talkie.
Whatever happened on the other end of the line after that I couldn't fully identify. Just a brief sound and then the man composing himself back into the voice I had first heard through the police band receiver. Measured. Careful. But underneath it now, something that had come loose slightly and hadn't fully gone back.
"Come in on the Alexandra Road side," he said. "Take the right after the hotel. You'll see the walls."
The road was almost clear. Almost. A few infected in the distance moving away from us, the vehicle's minimal signal output not enough to draw them from range. The evening light was going orange and low, the sky above the residential blocks the specific colour of Singapore at dusk that I had grown up with and apparently still recognised below all the fog.
Reuben drove steady. Unhurried. The kind of driver who had made peace with the world taking the time it took.
We passed the hotel. Took the right.
And then Theo-3 said, "Ah."
[ THEO-3 ]
I want to state for the record that I had been running location probability calculations since we left the nursing home and the IKEA store on Alexandra Road had appeared in my top three possible base locations from the beginning.
I had not mentioned this because saying "I think the base might be IKEA" felt like a statement that required verification before delivery.
It required verification.
The walls were the first thing visible. Four and a half meters of soundproofing barrier, the kind erected around major construction sites to contain noise pollution for surrounding residential and hospitality areas. Grey and solid and in significantly better condition than everything else in this part of Singapore because construction-grade soundproofing barriers were built to last through a project timeline, not five months of zombie apocalypse, and a zombie apocalypse was well within the operational parameters of construction-grade soundproofing barriers.
Reuben slowed the vehicle as we approached the gate.
I looked at the walls.
Then I looked at the IKEA signage still visible above them, the familiar blue and yellow only slightly weathered, and I said: "You built your base at the IKEA store."
Reuben smiled for the first time since I had met him. "Yes."
"The IKEA store," I said again.
"The construction barriers were already up," Reuben said. "The soundproofing is four and a half meters. Infected can't hear anything inside. The store itself has food, furniture, tools, bedding, kitchenware, storage solutions." He paused. "It has everything. We didn't choose it so much as it chose us."
I considered this.
"It is," I said carefully, "a very practical choice."
"Matthew said the same thing when he first saw it."
The gate was large, reinforced with additional materials bolted to the original construction barrier framework. It opened inward as we approached, someone on the other side having been watching for us. Reuben drove through and I looked at what was inside.
[ DAMIAN ]
The inside of the base was not what I expected.
I don't know what I expected exactly. Something improvised, barely functional, the specific grimness of survival stretched thin. What I saw instead was a community. Not comfortable, not by any standard that existed before January, but organised. Deliberate. The result of five months of people deciding that if they were going to be here they were going to make here work.
Eight men near the gate. Four with rifles, Singapore Armed Forces issue, the kind that didn't end up in civilian hands through normal means. The other four standing and watching with the assessing quality of people who had been careful for a long time and had learned that careful was the reason they were still here.
They looked at me. They looked at Theo-3. They looked at Echo, who looked back at them with her ears forward and her tail in a neutral position that meant she was gathering information.
"We're with Reuben," I said. "You can trust us."
Nobody moved.
Then from somewhere behind the armed men, footsteps. Unhurried. The footsteps of someone who didn't need to hurry because the situation was already under their management.
"Calm down everyone. These people saved Reuben. They are good people. Atleast for now."
The voice was the one I had heard through the police band receiver in the CPIB carpark. The measured one. The careful one. The one that had been frightened underneath and hadn't let the frightened part run things.
The man who walked through the group of eight was not what the voice had led me to picture.
Six foot four. Built in the way that suggested it wasn't accidental, the kind of physical presence that comes from someone who had decided some years ago to be ready for situations exactly like this one and had spent the intervening time making good on that decision. Chinese, mid-forties, his hair more grey than black at the temples, the partial grey sitting on him the way it sits on people who earned it rather than accumulated it.
He looked at me the way you look at someone you have been talking to through a wall and are now seeing for the first time. Taking in the information, adjusting the model, deciding what the new information meant.
Then he extended his hand.
I took it.
"You are the radio man," I said.
"I am," he said. "Matthew Ng. Just Matthew. I'm in charge of this base for the time being." He looked at Theo-3. "And this is THEO-3."
Theo-3 extended his hand. Matthew shook it with the equanimity of someone who had been living next to the unusual for five months and had updated his definition of normal accordingly.
"Damian Kael Caine," I said. "Just Damian."
Matthew nodded once. Then he turned to the men behind him and said something quiet and the rifles came down and the group dispersed back toward the interior of the base and Matthew turned back to us.
"Come," he said. "I'll show you the place."
[ NARRATOR ]
The IKEA base was home to forty five people.
Matthew told them this as he walked them through, the inventory delivered with the matter-of-fact quality of someone who had been keeping it in his head for five months and had long since made peace with every number in it.
Five complete families, the Tans, the Ridwans, the Krishnas, the Wongs, the Aimans. Mothers, fathers, children, all present, which Matthew noted was not something he took for granted. Several individuals and pairs. A group of teenage siblings, four of them, who had been found together and had stayed together. Reuben and Matthew himself. Others.
Forty five people.
Also four dogs, which became five when Echo walked in and was immediately assessed by the existing four with the specific social protocol of dogs who had established a hierarchy and needed to know where the newcomer fit. Three cats, who observed this process from elevated positions with the profound disinterest of cats. And a parrot, grey with a red tail, perched on a cable management unit near the ceiling of the main hall.
"Where did the parrot come from," Theo-3 asked.
"It was here when we arrived," Matthew said. "We have no explanation for this. We have stopped looking for one."
The parrot looked at Theo-3.
Theo-3 looked at the parrot.
"Hello," Theo-3 said.
The parrot said nothing.
"Forty six people now," Matthew said, looking at Damian. "Five dogs."
[ DAMIAN ]
Matthew's personal space was at the back of the store, sectioned off from the main floor with a combination of the store's own shelving units and additional materials that had been added over five months. Not large. A desk made from a repurposed IKEA kitchen counter. Maps on the wall, hand-annotated, the kind of coverage that came from months of systematic observation rather than a single survey. A radio setup considerably more sophisticated than the police band walkie talkie we had been using.
He sat behind the desk. We sat across from it. Reuben came in a few minutes later and took the third chair without being told and I understood that this was a usual arrangement for them.
Matthew looked at us for a moment.
"SGH to here," he said. "In one day."
"Yes," I said.
"Walk me through it."
I walked him through it. The MRT tunnel from Outram Park, the flooding, the infected in the tunnel, the elevated track from Redhill, the open cut section, the train collision, the nursing home. Theo-3 added details where I was imprecise, which was more often than I would have preferred.
Matthew listened without interrupting. When I finished he was quiet for a moment, looking at the maps on his wall with the calculating expression of someone running the route in their head against what they knew.
"In one day," he said again. Quieter this time.
"We had motivation," I said.
Matthew looked at Theo-3. "His condition. How is he actually."
"He has two fresh lacerations," Theo-3 said immediately. "One sutured in the field by himself under suboptimal conditions. A possible internal contusion from a direct blow to the abdominal area. A head strike that I have not been able to properly assess. He also coughed blood earlier this afternoon which he has not mentioned since and appears to believe I have forgotten."
"I haven't forgotten," Theo-3 added.
I looked at the ceiling briefly.
"He needs rest," Theo-3 continued. "Proper rest. And the sutures need to be checked by someone with better access to materials than we have had available."
Matthew nodded. He looked at me with the expression of someone who had managed a group of forty five people for five months and had developed a reliable sense of when someone was performing fine and when they actually were.
"Resources," I said, redirecting. "What do you have. What do you need."
Matthew accepted the redirect. He went through it methodically, food stores at approximately four months remaining at current consumption, medical supplies partially depleted but recently restocked from a run two weeks ago, fuel for the vehicles they had at roughly sixty percent. Water filtration running at full capacity. Generator running on stored diesel, conserved carefully.
What they needed: medical expertise, which they had in partial form from a retired nurse among the families. Information about the tunnel network, which they had none of. And people who could operate in the field effectively because Matthew had forty five people to protect and not enough of them were capable of the kind of work that keeping forty five people alive required.
"What do you want," Matthew said. Looking at me directly. "Not what you can offer us. What do you want."
I looked at the maps on the wall. Jurong was there. Marked. Matthew had annotated it with the same care as the rest of the map, observations about infected density, movement patterns, areas of interest.
"My family," I said. "I think they went to Jurong. There's a house near Lakeside, Jurong West. I can almost remember it. I need to get there."
Matthew looked at the Jurong section of the map.
The room went quiet in a specific way.
He looked at the map for a moment longer than looking required. Then he looked at Reuben. Then he looked back at me with the measured expression of someone choosing what to say next from a set of options that all had different consequences.
"You've both had a long day," he said. "Longer than most people have in a week." He stood. "Rest first. Proper treatment for those wounds. We can talk about Jurong in the morning when everyone is thinking more clearly."
He called through the partition for Reuben, who appeared immediately, and asked him to take us to the room that had been prepared.
Reuben led us out.
I looked at the Jurong section of the map one more time as I stood.
Theo-3 followed me out. In the corridor between the shelving units he came up beside me and walked with me and said nothing. But I had spent enough time with him now to know the difference between Theo-3 not noticing something and Theo-3 noticing something and choosing not to say it yet.
He had noticed.
Whatever Matthew knew about Jurong, Theo-3 had noticed that Matthew knew it and had chosen not to share it.
Neither of us said anything.
The room Reuben led us to was small and clean and had two actual beds with actual bedding and a third sleeping area on the floor that Theo-3 said he didn't need but positioned himself near anyway, amber eyes going to their low idle glow as the base settled into its night routines around us.
Echo found the space between my bed and the wall and turned three times and lay down.
I looked at the ceiling.
Thought about the Jurong section of Matthew's map. About the way his expression had changed when I said the word family. About what a man who had been carefully surviving for five months might know that he had decided not to say on the first night.
Tomorrow, I thought.
Tomorrow we find out what he knows.
End of Chapter 18