by James Harden
Chapter 12
I had no idea how high up I was. I remember Daniel said he was going to climb out of the dust storm which must've meant we gained altitude. I’m pretty sure that saved my life in the end. I was free- falling and spinning out of control. I was somersaulting head over ass. Luckily I had my hand firmly gripped on the handle of my parachute. I’d grabbed it as soon as we started bouncing around.
I pulled the handle and the chute opened immediately, slowing my descent but I was still coming in fast. I guess we weren’t that high up after all.
I managed to catch a glimpse of the Osprey, smoking and spiraling out of control. And then all of a sudden it was swallowed up by the swirling red dust and I lost sight of it. I heard it crash to the ground, though. Maybe two or three miles away. But I couldn't be sure. How could I when I couldn’t see a damn thing? I was completely disorientated. Did the others survive? Did they jump in time? How could they jump out and use their parachutes when they were still strapped into their seats? Everything happened so quickly. There was no warning. No time.
I came in fast, skimming the tops of trees and at that point I thought my brain had stopped working. It wasn’t making sense of the situation. Too much shock and awe, too much adrenalin. I remember thinking we crashed in the middle of the city! Why am I landing in a forest?
And just then my parachute finally caught enough wind and created enough drag so I straightened up. For a second it felt like I was just hanging in mid-air. Suspended and frozen in time. That was one of the worst moments of this whole ordeal. Just knowing I was falling back into the apocalypse. I was terrified. I was supposed to be going in with the best Special Forces team in the world or black ops team or whatever the hell they call themselves. I was supposed to be going in with the elite. I was supposed to be protected, staying out of harm’s way. An advisor, their insurance policy. We were supposed to stick to the rooftops of the skyscrapers, to the high ground. We were supposed to use the Osprey to get around, far above the reach of the infected. But now I was falling right back into the middle of hell. Alone. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could to do to change that.
I hit the ground hard and skidded for maybe twenty feet. Fortunately the ground was soft. It was grass. I was still strapped into my seat. When I finally came to a stop, I unbuckled the harness, tore my chute off and I just ran. I ran as fast as I could. I remembered what Ethan said about getting as far away from the parachute as possible. The chute was a big target. If there were any soldiers in the area, that's what they would converge on.
Luckily I didn't have any injuries, well none that I could feel at the time. I guess the NBC suit absorbed most of the impact.
After a couple hundred meters I was still running at full sprint. But I wasn’t tiring at all. I remember thinking I should probably stop and get my bearings or at least think things through and gather myself. But all my survival instincts told me to keep running. I don’t know why. I mean, I couldn’t even see where I was going. But I was freakin out. I was terrified. I couldn’t see a damn thing. I was alone. I felt like I was going to be surrounded and attacked and eaten at any second.
I don’t know why, but just then I had this weird flashback moment. I remembered back to when the Oz virus first broke out, back when we all needed to cross the Sydney Harbor Bridge to get to the military compound, back when we thought if we got to the other side of the bridge we would be safe. I remember Kenji had a walkie-talkie with him and through it we could hear this blood chilling, heart stopping warning from an unknown soldier. He was talking about the horde of infected eating its way through all the people on the freeway. It felt like I could hear that fearful voice right now.
"They’re coming this way. There’s too many of them!"
So I kept running and I was running fast. It felt like I was flying. The NBC suit had not only protected me from the impact of the fall but it had increased my speed as well. I felt like I was faster than any Olympic champion, even the ones on steroids.
I was running through trees and bushes. I was running into branches left and right. But again, the impact of the branches was being absorbed by the suit. The branches were snapping off as I ran into them. I could barely even feel them.
Another branch appeared right in front of my face. I reflexively, put my hands up to protect my head a split second before I crashed through. And I mean I literally crashed through. The branch practically exploded upon impact.
After I'd crashed through the branch, a tree appeared right in front of me. It was a smaller sapling but it was probably too big to simply run through it. So I jumped. Everything at this point was just a reflex. It must have been at least ten feet high. I planted one foot on the trunk and launched myself up and over. I cleared it easily and landed with a thud on the other side.
I remember going to the Bronx zoo once with my parents. We were lucky enough to watch a tiger exhibition. After the show had finished, the handlers were walking the tigers back to their enclosure. And this massive white Siberian tiger saw a bird fly over its head, maybe thirteen or fifteen feet in the air. The tiger jumped, its instincts taking over. It caught the bird in its jaw in mid air and landed with a huge thud. I mean the ground shook when it landed. It was incredible. The tiger had knocked over its handler with its bulk. It was a seven hundred pound monster. Amazingly heavy, yet agile at the same time. That’s kind of how I felt like right now. I’m not saying that I felt like I weighed seven hundred pounds but I did feel amazingly agile.
This suit and these new abilities were starting to freak me out.
After running for a few more seconds I realized it was impossible to get my bearings with zero visibility. So I slowed down to a jog. My breathing was rough and loud, like I was sobbing and choking at the same time. My footsteps were crunching and crashing through undergrowth and fallen leaves, and twigs.
I was making too much noise.
I stopped jogging completely. I crouched down and slowed my breathing. I closed my eyes and forced myself to regain my composure. I listened.
The only noise I could hear was the wind tearing through the trees.
No footsteps, no howling moan of the infected. No gunfire.
I could only see a few feet in front of my face but I was pretty sure I was alone.
I remembered there were a park and a botanical gardens right near the middle of the city. This has to be it, I thought. We were over the city when we were hit. Where else would I have landed?
Just then the radio inside my helmet squawked and crackled to life and it was the loudest thing in the world. I grabbed the helmet with both hands, trying to cover the speakers.
It was Daniel. "Rebecca! Did you punch out in time? Rebecca, can you hear me? We have crash landed near Hyde Park. Repeat, we are near Hyde Park. Check your GPS. Is it working? Rebecca? Where are you?"
I tried to respond to him but his voice was swallowed up by the static, there was too much interference. Probably from the dust storm, I thought.
And even though his voice sounded like the loudest thing in the world, at the same time it was so distant. He might has well have been on the other side of the planet.
The noise of the static was deafening and it wasn’t stopping. It was getting louder and louder. In my mind’s eye, I could picture a horde of infected turning slowly towards me, like they did when Kenji and I found them on the gaming floor of the casino. They turned slowly, waited a second, almost as if they were making sure the noise was coming from something they could eat. They zeroed in on the noise and ran towards us. Hungry and relentless.
I took my helmet off and threw it away, wondering if I was going to regret that decision later. But the thing was obviously busted; it was making too much noise. I had no choice.
I checked the GPS screen located on the inside of my left forearm. The screen was slightly cracked but I could just make out the map. My location was indicated by a little blue ball. It told me that I was in the Sydney botanical gardens just as I had suspected and that Hyde Pa
rk was approximately two kilometers south of my location, deeper into the city.
Two kilometers.
Two thousand meters.
In reality it wasn’t that far but at that point in time it felt like a huge distance. Even with the aid of the NBC suit. I mean, who knew what was between me and Hyde Park? On the one hand, maybe this whole area was deserted, maybe there was nothing? But on the other hand, maybe it wasn't deserted. Maybe it was the most hostile section of the entire city, of the entire country.
Unfortunately it was too easy to imagine the worst. It was too easy to imagine millions upon millions of infected, just waiting for some poor lost soul like me to come along.
It was a world of possibility, a scary, frightening world.
But this was the reality. I was on the streets, on the ground floor with them. I was all alone. And at that moment I had no choice but to make my way deeper into the city.
Chapter 13
Two kilometers wasn't far at all. I could make it.
I started whispering to myself then. "I can make it. I can make it."
Kind of like ‘The Little Engine That Could’.
I was crouching down, trying to collect my thoughts, studying the GPS, trying to memorize it so I could turn the screen off. I wanted to conserve the battery power but mostly I didn’t want the little bit of light it was emitting to attract any of the infected. The light wasn’t much, especially in the dust but I couldn't afford to take any chances.
Be invisible, I thought. Daniel said the most important thing; the only thing that mattered was being invisible. I thought about using the cloaking device, but I figured there was no need because the dust storm was providing plenty of cover. And I didn’t want to waste the suit's power supply. If the suit’s battery ran out, I'd be screwed.
I checked the control screen one more time; the battery indicator said it was at ninety-six percent. Daniel said it could last for about a week. But using the features like the cloaking device would chew through the battery. Hopefully we wouldn’t be here for that long. I really wanted this protective suit at full power. I was still skeptical that I’d be able to wrestle a grizzly bear but being protected from the infected and their snapping jaws was crucial. Especially now considering that I was alone, unarmed and in the middle of the goddamn city. Sydney was home to six million people. Those six million people were now hosts for the Oz virus. Violent, psychopathic hosts.
I shook my head. I needed to stay positive. I needed to drown out and ignore the fear that was seconds away from paralyzing me.
"I can make it," I whispered again.
Yeah right. What if you get surrounded? What if they start chasing you? Where are you gonna go? What are you gonna do? You can't even see.
"Shut up, shut up."
I suddenly wondered if the guys would leave me here. If they couldn't find me or if I couldn't make it to them, would they just pack up and leave? No they wouldn't do that, would they? I'm their insurance policy, their ace in the hole. I'm here to make sure that Maria and the others don’t run away at the first sight of them. I was valuable, wasn't I? They needed me, right?
Stay positive, I reminded myself. Daniel wouldn't leave you. There's no way.
I looked at the little blue ball again on the map. Two kilometers. Not far at all.
I was about to make a move but just then I heard something. A twig snapping, followed by footsteps. Fast footsteps. Running footsteps.
The infected. They were here. They were right freakin here.
I held my breath. I froze. I didn’t dare move in case they saw me, even though they seemed to be focused on something else. They hadn't seen me, or smelt me. Or whatever sense they use to interact with the world around them. At that moment, they were just ghosts, corpses running through the oppressive red dust.
I wondered where they were running too. It looked like they were running towards the harbor, in the opposite direction to where the Osprey crash landed. Maybe there was something else or someone else in the area? Someone less fortunate than me.
Another group of about ten or twenty sprinted past. And then thirty and then more and more until it was a stampede. I couldn't take it any longer. I turned and ran. I ran as fast as I could back through the trees, snapping and breaking branches again. I was trying to avoid the trees, trying to be as quiet as possible but it was no use. I was going too fast. I wondered if they heard me. I wonder if the stampeded had suddenly changed direction and was now coming for me. Even if they weren’t I was convinced that they were. In my mind’s eye, they were right behind me.
After about a full minute of sprinting I finally felt like I'd put enough distance between myself and the infected. Surprisingly though, I hadn't run out of breath and my muscles were barely fatigued. I remembered the last time I was here in the middle of Sydney, running for my life. I clearly remembered the burning sensation of lactic acid, my legs, my arms feeling like lead. My lungs feeling like they were about to explode out of my chest. Now, thanks to the NBC suit, I didn't feel any of that. I guess I probably wouldn't have survived if I wasn’t wearing it.
I looked over my shoulder to make sure they hadn’t followed me. I was alone again. At least, I thought I was alone. There was really no way to tell with zero visibility.
But it was strange, apart from the few hundred that just ran past, it was eerily quiet. I wondered where the hell the rest of them were hiding? Maybe the military had actually done a decent job of clearing out the city before they abandoned it?
A few seconds later I stepped out of the botanical gardens and on to a street. It was a shock to go from being surrounded by trees to the cityscape so quickly and suddenly.
It was a main street, a motorway or something. There were four lanes going both directions, with other roadways snaking in and around and all over the place.
It was the road that led out of the Sydney Harbor Tunnel.
The mouth of the tunnel had collapsed in, destroyed by the explosive charges set off by the military as part of the containment protocol. This was the end of the tunnel they blew up first. They didn’t want anyone to get through here. And they did a damn good job of making sure no one did. But in the end what did it even matter?
I walked up to the collapsed mouth of the tunnel, to the concrete rubble. Amazingly, there was still some heat coming off the smoldering ruins. There was a small gap between two crushed cars that led into the tunnel. They were squashed up against a bus.
I looked inside. It was dark. I couldn’t see anything. But my mind showed me things, horrific things that I hoped I would never see again. I thought I heard something coming from the darkness of the tunnel. A scream maybe. It was hard to tell if it was real or if I was imagining it.
I decided not to hang around to find out. I turned and walked away, trying desperately to force the images and the memories of that day from my mind.
But I couldn’t.
Chapter 14
I walked slowly in the general direction of Hyde Park. I walked in a daze.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the massacre of all those people on the bridge and in the tunnel. I couldn’t help but think ‘what if’. What if we had been forced to walk through the tunnel?
I remember the vendetta I made to Kenji as we were fleeing the harbor. We were treading water, we were exhausted. And for some weird reason I told Kenji we would find whoever was responsible and we’d make them pay. It was crazy; I knew that at the time. But I couldn’t help how I felt. I wanted revenge.
And right now, I felt like renewing that vendetta.
I shook my head. I had to stop thinking about that day. I had to focus.
I looked at the GPS device. It told me I was less than a kilometer away from Hyde Park. I checked my immediate surroundings. I was following a road. On my left was grassland that seemed to slope downwards.
I checked the GPS again. It was the Domain, a special park that was used for outdoor concerts. It had an amphitheater down one end.
I remembered bein
g here on Christmas Eve for the ‘Carols in the Park’ concert. I went with Jack and Maria. It’s hard to believe that was only two months ago. And it’s hard to believe how much fun we had. I remember we all dressed up. Maria and I wore Santa hats and Jack dressed up as Rudolf the reindeer. He had antlers on his head and a red nose.
It was my first ever summer Christmas. I was amazed at how warm it was at night.
Kids were running around, over excited, waiting for Santa to show up. Everyone sang along with the Christmas carols.
It’s hard to imagine now, but the crowd, the people, everyone was so happy. Everyone was in good spirits. They were completely and blissfully unaware how their lives would change forever in only a few short weeks time.
It’s hard to imagine that all those people are now dead or infected.
I wondered if Christmas would ever return to this place.
Off in the distance, I heard a low rumbling noise. I could feel the ground shake. I couldn’t see clearly through the dust but it looked like a building was beginning to crumble and collapse.
A second later the rumbling stopped and a plume of lighter colored dust, that seemed to come from somewhere in the middle of the city, billowed up into the sky.
I turned away from the Domain, from one of the last happy memories of this place, one of my last happy memories before the virus took over and continued towards Hyde Park.
I’d only taken a few steps when suddenly I heard the unmistakable pop, pop, pop of machine gun fire. They sounded like small controlled bursts.
Professional.
It had to be them.
I picked up the pace and started jogging towards the sound. The gunfire ceased. I hesitated for a split second; what were they firing at? I listened for a few minutes but the shooting had definitely stopped. Whatever they were shooting at was either dead or gone.
I started jogging again, when suddenly something hit me in the chest, a huge invisible force. I fell backwards landing on my ass and screamed in shock.