by James Harden
"You better check him out first," the pilot said. "He’s been out for awhile now. And I’d love some pain killers. My leg is killing me. Wait, where is your equipment? Where’s the medivac? Which one of you..."
"We’re not doctors," Drake said, cutting him off.
"What?"
"We’re not doctors."
"But they said the medivac was on its way."
"Well yeah, technically the medivac is on its way. But they’re tied up at the moment. We’re here to provide support until they show up."
"Fantastic," the pilot said through clenched teeth. He put his hands over his head and took several deep breaths, closing his eyes.
The bone sticking out of his leg was covered in blood. He must’ve been in an extreme amount of pain. I felt bad that we didn’t think to bring any morphine with us.
"Look, they’ll be here within a few minutes," Drake said. "We’ll be out in no time."
"I hope for his sake you’re right," the pilot said. "I’m not sure how badly he is busted up. He’s been out cold for awhile now. I haven’t been able to check up on him. I can’t put any pressure on my leg."
Drake moved over to the co-pilot and checked his pulse. "Strong heart beat. Nice and steady."
"So why did they send you guys anyways?" the pilot asked.
"Just as a precaution. Make sure none of the people here tried to hurt you or take you hostage or anything. We’re pretty lucky that this area seems to be empty at the moment."
"Yeah. When we did our fly over it looked like there was town meeting on the other side of the slum."
"Town meeting?"
"Yeah, that’s what it looked like from the air. Of course, that’s not what it was. It was the riots."
"The refugees are angry," I said. "They’re fed up. Everything that’s going on. The virus. The testing. It’s pushed them over the edge."
"Yeah, that’s an understatement," the pilot agreed. "Hey, can you check up there?" he said pointing to an overhead storage compartment. "There might be a first aid kit in there. Might have some pain killers."
Drake retrieved the first aid kit from the storage container. He opened it up and found some morphine.
Drake prepared a shot and injected it into the arm of the pilot. A few minutes later he was asleep.
"What now?" I asked.
"We need to get to a vantage point," Drake answered. "So we can see what’s going on. We need to be able to see people coming from a distance. It’s no good being down here on the ground floor. We can’t see a damn thing."
The chopper had crashed into a heavy duty shipping container. The massive container had been converted into a home. By the looks of it, I’m guessing more than one family lived in it.
"Up there." Drake said. "We’ll have a good view of the surrounding area."
We positioned ourselves on top of the container. From our vantage point we could see the entire slum. At the very far end we could see a few wisps of black smoke floating up into the air.
The riots.
Thankfully they were still a fair way off. At least a few miles.
Drake and I settled in. He was up one end and I was down the other. We got into position and prepared ourselves to play the waiting game.
Before we left base, they stressed to us that it was important we monitor this section and the surrounding lane ways with the utmost vigilance.
We had to hold this position. If at any point we became overrun, we were to radio for back up, immediately.
So once again we played the waiting game. Drake called up command a couple of times to see what the ETA was on the evac. But the medical chopper was still out at an isolated area of the military testing site.
We had to wait it out.
And wait.
And wait some more.
The sun set and the stars came out. The night sky was stunning. Out here, where there are barely any lights, and no electricity, the stars look amazing. Endless. You can actually see the spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy.
I’ve seen so many shooting stars streaking across the night sky, I’ve lost count.
Drake has climbed down and checked on the pilots a couple of times.
Apparently they're in bad shape. The Pilot is shivering. He had gone into shock. Can’t blame him. He had freakin bone sticking out of his leg. I feel sick just thinking about it. The co-pilot was still unconscious.
Luckily it’s been ridiculously quiet for the whole afternoon. And so far into the night.
I mean, it’s quiet enough so I can write all this down. So yeah it’s quiet.
Drake tells me I look like shit. Tells me to get some rest. I begin to argue but he tells me he knows that I haven’t been sleeping. He tells me to get a few hours. He’s got a bad feeling we’re going to be here all night. He said he’ll wake me if he needs me.
Again, I begin to protest. But he’s right. If I don’t get some sleep soon, I’m going to crash and burn.
So I’m going to sleep on top of a shipping container, in a shanty town in the middle of the Australian outback. Never thought I’d write those words.
Never thought I’d get to sleep in the desert, watching the stars go by. Watching the galaxy go by.
Left behind.
I woke to gun fire. That’s the first thing I remember. I was still half-asleep when I heard the shots. My brain didn’t understand what was going on. I was totally confused. I had no idea where I was. The fact that it was still dark didn’t help matters either. There was no moon. Not even any stars. Hidden by cloud cover I assumed.
It’s weird. Now that I look back on it, everything seems like a dream.
I tried to sit up. My back twinged in pain due to sleeping on the hard metal surface of the shipping container. I must’ve been out for a couple hours at least.
Unfortunately I didn’t feel very rested.
More gunshots. Closer this time.
Drake was on the far side of the shipping container. He had his night vision goggles on. Checking the chopper, checking the surrounding area.
He was on the radio to Command asking if any soldiers or friendlies were in our section.
I assumed the answer was no, because the next words out of Drakes mouth were, "Then who the hell is shooting at us?"
The gunshots were sporadic. Out of control.
Whoever was shooting wasn’t shooting at us. How would they even know we were here? But just then a barrage of bullets smashed into the side of the shipping container. The noise scared the hell out of me.
The night had been so quiet and peaceful when I’d fallen asleep. Now it was alive with gunfire and something else. Other noises filled the darkness. I could hear people shouting. Screaming. Howling.
My mind flashed back to the horse carcass we found at the entry to the opal mine. The wild dogs. It had to have been wild dogs, right?
Then from the far side of the shanty town, we could see flames. Another fire had broken out.
Was this one controlled? Was this one deliberately lit like the other night? Or had the refugees done this?
It seemed doubtful that they would set their own homes on fire.
I finally spoke, fumbling for my night vision goggles as I did. "Drake, what the hell is going on?"
"Not sure. We’ve got gunshots coming from all around. Command says nobody is in this area. Command says they’ve pulled out completely."
"Pulled out? What about the riots? Who’s going to control these people? What about the quarantine?"
I could see the flashes of gun fire around the narrow streets of the shanty town. I put my night vision goggles on and everything turned a luminous green colour. Not much help though. The slum was a labyrinth. I could see the flashes of gunfire but the shooters were still hidden behind the actual shanties.
One thing was clear. Whoever was shooting, they weren’t shooting at us. It was too random.
"Are the pilots all right?" I asked.
"Yeah." Drake answered. "But they won’t be for long."
&
nbsp; "Why isn’t the medivac here yet?"
"I don’t know."
Just then another barrage of bullets smashed into the container and we dived, flattening ourselves on the opposite side.
"We’re going to take a stray bullet if we don’t get out of here," I said.
Drake was back on the radio, trying to find out what was going on. But there was no response.
We were on our own.
"Why the hell aren’t they responding?"
Another barrage of bullets smashed in the container and the chopper below. We had to get out of here. We had to make a move.
When the gunfire stopped I peered over the edge of the container to see if I could locate the shooter.
I don’t know what I expected to see. Maybe a soldier left behind. Scared and unsure of himself.
But it wasn’t a soldier shooting at us. It was a refugee.
Amazingly I recognised the man. He was the guy who had kicked me in the shin the other day.
He looked scared. In his hands was an M4 rifle. I have no idea how he came to be in possession of a marine’s weapon.
He was firing in all directions. He kept looking left and right. This man was terrified.
He then lowered the rifle and slung it over his shoulder. He reached inside one of the huts and grabbed his daughter. He carried her in both arms. Her head was tilted back, blood stained her open mouth and her eyes were closed. The man ducked down one of the narrow laneways and vanished.
Drake continued to use the radio. Calling for help, calling for an extraction over and over again. But there was no reply.
We slowly came to the realization that we’d been left behind.
Suddenly I remembered Gordon’s warning from earlier.
If they couldn’t contain the virus they would blow this place sky high, wipe it from the face of the planet.
"Come on, we gotta check on the pilots," Drake said.
We jumped down from the roof of the storage container and checked on the pilots.
They were both out cold.
"What do we do?" I asked.
"We gotta move them. We’ll have to carry them out."
"But if this guy’s got a busted spine we could do some serious damage if we try and move him."
"We have no choice. No one is answering our call."
Drake was about to try calling for an evac again but the pilot regained consciousness. He grabbed Drake by the hand.
"There’s a reason they’re not responding on the radio," the pilot said. "They’re going to call in an air strike any minute now."
"No. No way," Drake said. "They wouldn’t do that."
"Yeah they would," the pilot answered. "This place is crawling with infected refugees. It’s out of control. The only way to make sure it doesn’t spread any further is to blow this place up and burn it to the ground. They need to destroy it."
"No! These are innocent people!" I shouted.
"It doesn’t matter," the pilot said calmly. ‘Think about it. This place is listed as unofficial. No one knows it even exists, no one knows these people exist. If they get rid of this place no one will know. No one will ask questions."
"So they’re just abandoning these people?" I asked.
"Open your eyes, Kenji," Drake said. "These people are screwed. It’s over. We’ve lost control."
"What about the riots? What about the soldiers operating in the slum?"
"Forget about them," the pilot said.
"What?"
"They're not riots," he explained. "The refugees are sick. They're infected. They’re all going crazy. I've never seen anything like it. Not in Baghdad, not in Mogadishu. This is a nightmare."
"So if they're not rioting then what the hell are they doing? What's going on?"
"Did you even read the report? Weren’t you paying attention during the briefing session? The infected refugees are attacking us. They are attacking anyone who is not infected. If any of them make it here, we're in big trouble. You think you can hold off a couple thousand infected psychopaths?"
I think back to yesterday. We could barely handle three infected elderly people.
"We inserted a squad on the other side of the slum," the pilot continued. "They joined up with a few other squads. It's basically a distraction."
"A distraction?" Drake asked. "What do you mean?"
"I mean those poor bastards are gonna be left behind. They are keeping the infected refugees distracted and occupied while the rest of our forces pull out and get ready for the air strike."
"What? We have to warn them!" I said. "We have to get them out of here!"
"Have you lost your mind? They're dug in. There is no getting them out. You even try and you'll be surrounded by the infected. You won't survive it."
"Do they know?"
"Know what?"
"Do they know there being left behind!?"
"No. They have no idea. Their orders are to hold the fort. Shoot to kill. They are geared up with enough ammo to last them a month. They have no idea that their lives, this whole place will be reduced to dust tonight."
I was sick to my stomach. I wanted to throw up.
Just then the pilot started to lose consciousness. He started shaking and shivering. He was going back into shock. He started whispering something over and over.
"What’s he saying?" I asked Drake.
"Shh."
We held our breath and listened.
"Midnight," the pilot said. "At midnight."
He kept whispering, repeating the same thing over and over.
Midnight.
Drake gently shook him by the shoulders. "What are you trying to say?"
The pilot swallowed some excess saliva. He seemed to regain his focus and composure momentarily.
"We were sent into to provide an assessment," he whispered. "To determine whether or not an air strike was necessary."
"You had the final say?" I asked.
"I doubt our say was final. But we gave our assessment. We acknowledged and confirmed the pockets of resistance, the areas of infection. We informed Command that the infection was spreading. We recommended the air strike."
It was slowly dawning on me. We were in deep. So very deep. Drake and I had been sent in here to protect these pilots but now we had been left behind.
It was supposed to be a simple assignment.
It was a suicide mission.
"So what happens next?" Drake asked.
The pilot closed his eyes, wincing in considerable pain.
But Drake wouldn’t let up. "How long, Goddamn it!?" he shouted. "How long before the air strike?"
"The air strike," the pilot whispered. "It’s scheduled for midnight tonight."
I checked my watch. My heart sank. Twenty minutes.
"Jesus Christ." Drake said. "They’re gonna bomb this place. They gonna flatten it. We have to go."
Drake was right. Gordon was right. The pilot had confirmed it. They were calling in an air strike. They were going to destroy this place.
I checked my watch again. We had twenty minutes.
They were going to bomb this place. Level it. Wipe it from the face of the planet.
And we had been left behind. Written off as collateral damage.
A sacrifice.
We had twenty minutes to get ourselves and the pilots the hell out of that God forsaken slum.
Exit strategy.
For about a nano-second I freaked out. I did not want to die in an air strike.
But once I reasoned with myself and came to the conclusion that I could either curl up into a little ball and wait for the inevitable or at least try and make a run for it, I was unnaturally calm.
We decided to carry the pilots out. To hell with their injuries. If we didn’t get them out they were going to die anyway.
Drake kicked out the front wall of the nearest hut. It was made of ply wood. Using the wood we made a makeshift stretcher. We basically piled up the pilot and the co-pilot on top of each other. It wasn’t safe or
supportive but it was the best we could do.
I checked my watch. Fifteen minutes.
Drake and I slowly picked up the stretcher, taking care to keep the piece of wood flat and even so the pilots didn’t fall off. Once we had a good grip on each end of the make-shift stretcher we began running as fast as we could.
Unfortunately, our top speed wasn’t very fast.
It was slow going. And the twisting, narrow lanes of the slum weren’t making it any easier. To make matters worse, every couple of minutes we would hear some gunshots close by. We were forced to put the stretcher down and take up defensive positions in case we needed to return fire. And the further we moved through the slum, the thicker the smoke from the fires became. I started to cough and choke. It was hard to breathe, hard to see through watering eyes.
We finally made it back to the wider laneways, the area where we had been dropped off earlier that afternoon.
We scanned the street up and down. Amazingly at the very far end of the laneway was a vehicle. I couldn’t tell what it was because it had its head lights on. But it had to be one of ours, I thought. Who the hell else would it be?
We gingerly set the pilots down on the ground. Drake flashed the torch on his rifle on and then off. He repeated this multiple times. The vehicle then flashed its high beams at us and began driving slowly down the laneway in our direction. It was a Humvee.
I checked my watch. We had ten minutes until midnight, ten minutes until the bombs started dropping.
I had no idea what these guys were still doing here at this late stage. Maybe they were hanging back for us? Maybe they were waiting until the last possible second to clear out?
Whatever the reason, we owe them our lives.
We picked up the stretcher once more and picked up the pace.
The sporadic gunfire continued to erupt and echo throughout the dark slum. Somehow we had managed to avoid whoever was doing the shooting so far. I guess it was just sheer luck. If we had turned down a different laneway who knows what might’ve happened? We were really in no position to get into a fire fight.