The Sixth Level (Secret Apocalypse Book 2)

by James Harden

  Daniel looked through the scope on his rifle.

  "What the hell was that?" I shouted. "What happened to Ethan!? What did that to him!? Where are the others!?"

  Daniel didn't answer. He was scanning back and forth with his rifle. He was frantic. He fired off multiple shots in all directions, into the nothingness of the dust.

  "Can you see anything?" I asked.

  "I don't know! Something big. It’s... it's huge. We have to go!"

  I looked around. "Go? Go where? What about the others?"

  "They're dead. Ethan's dead. He's...he's in half. Smitty is gone. Griffin..."

  His voice trailed off as he fired off more rounds. When he ran out of ammo, he reloaded and continued firing. He unloaded two more magazines.

  Daniel had gone into shock. He's whole team was gone. The best and baddest soldiers in the world.

  Gone.

  I grabbed him by the shoulders. "Come on! If we don't get out of here, we're next!"

  He looked up at me and nodded his head. But his body was still frozen. That's when we heard the footsteps.

  Loud, heavy footsteps.

  One after the other, heavy enough to shake the truck we were on, heavy enough to almost knock us off.

  I looked around quickly. But again I couldn’t see a damn thing. And at that point it was hard to keep my balance as the cabin rocked back and forth from the vibrations. Down on the street I could just make out the crowd of infected surrounding the semi. Their outstretched arms and hands and fingernails were clawing into the truck, scraping the sides of the trailer. Their eyes were wide and glazed over; their mouths were stained with blood. Most of them were baring their teeth, some were missing teeth, others were missing the whole lower section of their jaws altogether.

  They were starting to shake the cabin and the trailer, trying hopelessly to climb up. It then dawned on me if there were enough of them they would start piling up on one another, like a swarm of ants.

  I did not want to go back down to street level. We'd be ripped apart and eaten in a matter of seconds. Even with the protection of the NBC suits, there's no way we'd survive that many of them.

  I stood up and moved towards the trailer. When the truck had lost control and jack-knifed across the road, the trailer had slammed into the corner of a building, knocking out a section of the wall. It looked like the end of the trailer had wedged itself in the entrance to an alleyway.

  If we could make it to the end of the trailer, we could maybe climb up and into a first storey window. Or we could get to the fire escape stairs that zig zagged up the side of the building.

  "Come on," I said to Daniel. "If we run to the end of the trailer we can make it onto the fire escape and get inside that building."

  Daniel regained his senses. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and jumped from the roof of the truck onto the roof of the trailer.

  He sized up our options. "That's a pretty big jump. Even with the aid of the suits. Do you think you can make it?"

  It was distance of about fifteen feet and at least another storey up from where we were.

  "Yeah, no problem. Ah, I think."

  The loud, heavy footsteps continued to come closer. And the roaring. My god, the roar of this thing was incredible. It was like a howler monkey and a 747 jumbo jet engine combined. And it sounded angry, like we'd woken it up or something. So I guess we didn't really have a choice. We'd needed to get inside the building or die trying.

  "We'll need a running start." Daniel said.

  "Just go!"

  The thing coming towards us roared again. It was an earth shattering, ground shaking roar.

  Daniel didn’t need any more prompts. He took off at full sprint, taking five huge steps and then jumped from the very end of the trailer. He practically flew through the air, his arms were flailing and his legs were kicking like he was still sort of running through mid-air. He made the distance easily and landed on the fire escape violently.

  He waved me forward. "Come on!"

  I took off running, leaning forward, nice and low. I can make this I was telling myself as I ran. I can make this. I took another step but was tripped up by something. I fell and slid along the rest of the trailer, coming to a stop at the very edge, stopping myself from falling over and down to the road below.

  I looked back from where I had run. The infected had done what I feared they would do. They'd started piling up on one another. One of them had reached out to grab my foot, tripping me over.

  Another one had almost climbed on top of the trailer. He stared at me the whole time. His mouth was open, his teeth were bared. He pulled himself up and on to the trailer. He was about to charge me but then all of a sudden his head exploded.

  "Hurry!" Daniel shouted. "Get up! I won't be able to shoot them all!"

  I clambered back to my feet. The rest of the infected were now starting to climb on top of the trailer. I didn't have time for a run up, I didn’t have room. I took two quick steps and jumped as far as I could, reaching out with my right hand. Just as I hit the top of my jump and began falling back to earth, I grabbed on to the lowest rung of the fire escape ladder. And I held on for dear life.

  Below me the crowd of infected swarmed, trying to climb up and over each other to get to my dangling feet. I swung my left arm up and grabbed on to the ladder.

  Come on, I thought to myself. All I needed to do was one pull up. One measly, little chin up and I could climb up the rest of the ladder.

  Daniel was just above me. He had his rifle cocked and ready. He looked like he was pointing the rifle right at me.

  "Wait! What are you doing?" I asked.

  "Hurry! Climb up. But don't move. And don't look down!"

  "What!?"

  "Don't move your head!"

  Just then I felt something grab onto my foot and I nearly lost my grip on the ladder.

  Daniel fired a couple of rounds. I ducked my head into my shoulder, closing my eyes.

  "I told you not to move!" he shouted.

  "I didn’t!"

  "You did!"

  Another hand grabbed my other foot and I really started to lose my grip on the ladder. "Get them off me!"

  I braced myself for another barrage of bullets from Daniel, hoping he was still calm and controlled enough to keep his aim.

  A few seconds passed but there were no shots. I looked up. Daniel had put his rifle down. He was now climbing down the ladder towards me.

  "What the hell are you doing?"

  "I can't get a clean shot."

  He stopped climbing and hooked his legs around one of the ladder rungs just above my head. Then he leant all the way back, so know he was dangling upside down, his back against mine, his head down near my butt.

  He took his sidearm out. It was the Desert Eagle.

  He took aim and fired twice. I could feel the grip on my feet loosen and fall away.

  Daniel pulled himself back up the ladder and then leant down and helped me up. We were on the first landing of the fire escape. We were safe from the swarms of the infected but that big thing was still coming.

  There was no time to catch our breath. We had to keep moving.

  Suddenly the huge McDonalds semi-trailer was pushed out of the way, crushing hundreds of the infected in the process.

  "We need to get to a higher level!" Daniel shouted. "Now!"

  We started running up the metal stairs. I kept tripping over, step after step. I wasn't used to running up stairs in the suit. It was weird and awkward, like my feet were too big or I was wearing oversized clown shoes or something.

  We got maybe two flights up when that giant thing grabbed on to the first level of the fire escape and ripped the whole lower section off the wall.

  I nearly fell over the railing. The force knocked us off our feet and Daniel dropped the Desert Eagle down into the alley below. I still couldn’t see the damn thing because the dust was concealing it. But it sounded like it was climbing up after us.

  We managed to run up two more fli
ghts before another huge force rocked the entire stair case. It began to break away from the side of the building. The metal staircase, the whole structure, the entire fire escape, was rocked again, even more violently. It started shaking back and forth.

  "We need to get off this structure!" I said.

  Daniel was one move ahead of me. He had his rifle pointed at one of the adjacent windows. He unloaded a barrage of bullets, smashing the glass. He dived through it, breaking the rest of the glass with his body. He didn't even check to see if it was safe on the other side. He just jumped. I guess anything would’ve been safer than staying on the fire escape at that point in time.

  Daniel picked himself up off the floor and turned around and motioned me forward. "Hurry!"

  I looked down, a huge hand, like the hand of God or a giant demon reached up out of the dust and grabbed on to the staircase.

  As I jumped through the window, the giant hand ripped the entire fire escape from the side of the building. Everything, including the staircase and half the wall of the building and that giant thing fell back down into the alley.

  We were breathing hard, crouching just below the window we had jumped through. The loud, heavy footsteps passed us by. We snuck a look, peering over the edge of the window sill. We couldn't see it clearly. All we could see was a shadow of something massive walking through the swirling red dust.

  I shook my head. It just didn't make sense.

  Chapter 18

  We were inside some sort of office room. We were crouching down, whispering, trying desperately to make sense of everything that had just happened.

  Daniel took off his helmet and threw it on the floor. He ran his hands through his hair. "We need to get out of the city. It's worse than we thought. The military haven't reclaimed anything. It's completely out of control. It’s completely overrun."

  He was talking fast. A tear streaked down his cheek, his voice became angry. "They said they were fixing it!"

  Daniel was on the verge of breaking down. He had just lost his team, his friends. The closest thing he had to a family.

  But we did he expect? What did I expect? We knew it was going to be dangerous, especially on the streets. We talked about it in the mission briefing. We all saw the footage of the failed rescue mission. We all knew we wouldn’t last long on the streets.

  But what were the odds we’d be ambushed? What were the odds of both Ospreys going down?

  The scary thing was, the more I thought about it the more I realized that something had attacked those Ospreys. I was sure of it. Something weird was going on, something that none of us could’ve prepared for.

  I looked at Daniel. He seemed to be regaining some of his composure. He took a deep breath. "We need to get out of the city," he said.

  "Yeah, we totally need to get out of the city," I agreed.

  Daniel took another deep breath, wiping a tear away from his face.

  "But how?" I asked. "There’s no way I’m going back down to the streets. They're everywhere. And that other thing, that giant thing is down there."

  "We need a vehicle," he said calmly.

  "And do what?"

  "Drive the hell out of here."

  "But the streets, they're choked with abandoned cars and the infected. And that thing is roaming around somewhere. What if there are more of them? The big ones, I mean."

  "We have to try. We can't stay here."

  "So, we get a car and then we just smash and crash our way through the horde of infected, all the way to safety? Where the hell are we going to get a car from anyways?"

  "This is an office building," Daniel pointed out. "Probably apartments on some of the floors as well. There's got to be a parking level. I’m guessing in one of the sub basements. We find a sturdy, reliable car and then we make a break for it. But first, we need to get to a higher floor, maybe even the roof to see if we can spot a clear path out of the city."

  I nodded my head in agreement but just then I had the worst case of déjà vu. It was happening all over again. I was trapped in the city, surrounded by the infected. I felt like such an idiot. How did I get myself into this mess?

  I was terrified at being in this situation again. So I had to keep reminding myself over and over why I was doing this. It was simple. We needed to find Maria. She was the most important thing, the only thing that mattered. To hell with my feelings, to hell with me.

  Daniel stood up. "Ready?" he asked

  "Wait a second, we can't just go walking around in here," I said. "Those things, the infected came out of nowhere. Which means they could be hiding in here. In any one of these rooms."

  "Yeah, you're right."

  I looked around the room we had dived into. It appeared to be a small office room. There was a desk and small book case. Not much else. It was actually a pretty depressing room. Even more depressing to think someone spent eight hours of everyday in here crunching numbers or paperwork or whatever.

  Everything in the room was covered in a thin layer of red dust. It appeared the dust storm had found its way inside.

  I wonder how many of these rooms were in this building or just on this floor alone. The infected could be hiding anywhere. This could be like the casino all over again, I thought. I suddenly felt claustrophobic. The overwhelming sense of fear, of wanting to get as far away from the city as possible was back. The city was the worst possible place to be. I knew this. I knew this better than anyone. And yet there I was, right back in the thick of it.

  "Do you still have the gun I gave you?" Daniel asked.

  "Ah, would you be mad if I said no? I dropped it earlier."

  "That's OK. Just means you have to stick to me like glue. Wherever I move, you move. I want you right behind me, OK?"

  I nodded my head. "Let’s get this over with."

  We moved over to the wooden door. Daniel opened it, turning the door handle slowly, inch by inch. We waited and listened. There was no sound. No movement.

  Daniel switched on the light on his rifle, shining it out into the corridor. The building appeared to be abandoned. Well, at least this floor appeared to be abandoned.

  We moved through a labyrinth of corridors and office cubicles. We eventually found the stairwell. Daniel shined his torch up and down, making sure it was empty and then we made our way for one of the higher floors.

  At first I was tripping over the stairs but after awhile I got used to the suit and we were able to power up maybe forty or fifty flights. I lost count after awhile. Daniel had lost count as well. So we decided to get off on the next floor.

  We must’ve been close to the top. We exited the stairwell and found ourselves on a floor that had been converted into some sort of exclusive bar. The sign on the wall read, ‘SkyBar’. Normally the bar would’ve had panoramic views of the city and the harbor but thanks to the dust storm we couldn’t really see much at all.

  We moved over to one of the glass walls and looked out at the city.

  We could just barely make out the tops of the surrounding buildings. We could also see Sydney Tower. It was only half a block away. The swirling red dust seemed to make parts of the tower disappear and then reappear.

  "Pretty amazing building," I said.

  "Yeah it’s over three hundred meters or a thousand feet tall. The steel rope, the wires that support the tower are over a meter thick. There are fifty-six wires in total, each about two hundred meters long."

  "How do you know all that?" I asked.

  "I studied the city's buildings before we came in. Needed to know where we could land if needed."

  The wire supports travelled the length of the actual tower in a criss-crossing pattern.

  I looked over at Daniel. Another tear streaked down his face.

  "Ethan was like a father to me," he said. "He came for me, recruited me when I was training to become a Navy Seal. It was at the end of ‘Hell Week’. During the week we’d only been allowed to sleep a total of three hours. It was torture. Ethan came for me in the middle of the night. He snuck into
the barracks. I don’t know how he did it. And I don’t know why he chose me. Maybe it was because he knew my father. Maybe because he thought I was a talented soldier. He told me that if I came with him, that I could make a difference, that I would be part of a team that operated outside of the normal realms of government policies. He told me he could challenge me more than I’d ever been challenged. Make me a better soldier. A warrior. He told me that I would be rewarded for my efforts. Valued. I was sleep deprived. I thought I was dreaming. I don’t know why I agreed to go with him. Maybe because I was delusional at the time. Or maybe it was because I really believed his speech about making a difference."

  He wiped the tear from his face. "But I guess none of that really matters now."

  I was looking at Daniel’s reflection in the window. His head was lowered. He was looking down at the intersection where his team had met their end. "It does matter," I said. "Of course it matters. He believed in you. And he did challenge you. I mean, you’re only nineteen years of age and you’re already a highly trained solider, a pilot, a hero. It matters because now it’s up to you and me to finish this mission, to save Maria."

  I don’t know if my speech had any great effect on him but he did seem to lift a little.

  "Come on," he said after awhile. "We can’t see the roads from up here. Let’s go check the sub-basement levels for a getaway car."

  We were just about to head back for the stairwell when one of the support wires on Sydney Tower, broke away and started whipping through the air.

  More and more support wires began to snap free. There was an audible crack as each one broke away from the tower. Then the wires started smashing into the surrounding buildings, shattering windows, tearing and slicing through reinforced concrete.

  About ten or so wires sliced into the building right next to the tower. It was a huge skyscraper that was nearly as tall as the tower itself. A split second after the wires had sliced through, it started to sway. Only a little at first but then more and more violently. And then like a deck of cards, it started to come down, almost in slow motion.

  As it was collapsing, the building we were in started to shake. It's like we were in the middle of an earthquake. The demolition stirred up the dust and a few seconds later everything was completely obscured. It was a complete red out.