Torn Apart

by James Harden

  And I have no weapons.

  There is broken glass. Mirrored glass.

  I see a large triangle of sharp jagged glass, and as I am running for the next room, I bend down and pick it up, cutting the palm of my right hand in the process. The glass is so sharp, it slices my skin easily and effortlessly and instantly. I don’t feel any pain. If I didn’t see the blood, I would never have known I’d been cut.

  As I raise the piece of glass up, blood drips down the length of my forearm.

  The infected man is almost on top of me.

  Everything is happening in super slow motion, like my mind has realized I’m about to die a horrible death and it’s soaking up these last few seconds of existence, not taking this moment or anything for granted.

  The infected man’s hands are now on me. That’s how close he is.

  His jaw is wide, wide open. It’s so wide open, I think to myself, that his jaw has to be dislocated. It has to be broken.

  But it’s not. His jaw clamps shut. Snaps shut. Inches from my face.

  The clack of teeth makes me flinch and the hair on the back of my neck stands up and I have goose bumps. I think to myself that maybe the only worse sound in the world is fingernails on a chalkboard. But then again, maybe not.

  The infected man is still coming forward. Still charging. All of his weight and all of his strength and energy is directed at my body.

  The virus is so pure. Pure death. And this is perhaps its greatest advantage. It is not complicated. And it is never distracted. It wants and needs one thing.

  Food.

  Hosts.

  It needs to spread.

  It causes aggression. Single-minded aggression.

  The Oz virus is simple and pure and deadly.

  And this infected man is almost on top of me.

  He wants to feed on me.

  He wants to eat me.

  He is running and moving faster than humanly possible.

  Doctor Hunter, or was it Doctor West? One of those guys said that the Oz virus stimulates the adrenal glands. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it sure as hell looks like it.

  Anyway, the speed, the weight, the force.

  This actually works in my favor.

  The shard of glass in my hand is a knife. And his force, his weight, his speed, allows the glass shard to slide into his eyeball, right into his brain.

  It also slices the hell out of my palm in the process, and I finally feel pain.

  And the pain lets me know that I am alive and that I am not infected.

  Not yet.

  I let go of the piece of glass because I can no longer physically hold it. It is stuck into the infected man’s eye socket, into his skull and brain. The infected man goes limp but his weight and the force of the collision carries us into the next room. We flip up and over the window sill where the mirror used to be.

  I land on broken glass.

  The infected man is on top of me and I am cut up and bleeding and I can feel pain.

  It is excruciating.

  But I keep moving.

  If I stop for a second, to catch my breath, to check my injuries, to stop the bleeding, I am dead. I roll the infected man off me, and I jump to my feet. I cut my hand up even more on the glass on the floor.

  I ignore the pain and the blood.

  I keep moving.

  More infected pour into the interrogation room, they jump through the window where the one way mirror used to be. One of them jumps through and falls over. They thrash around on the floor, around on the glass, like a shark out of water. One of them gets jagged on a large piece of glass as they jump through the window. The piece of glass was protruding from the window sill. The shard of glass pierces his abdomen, slicing his stomach open. He is stuck in the window sill, guts falling out onto the floor.

  And I keep moving.

  I get to the door and I try and open it with my right hand because I always open doors with my right hand. I have never had to think about this before. But I can’t open the door because my hand is covered in blood. I can’t grip the handle.

  I use my left hand and I finally open it.

  The door opens up into a corridor.

  To my left the corridor is empty. It is a long, long corridor. I can’t see the end of it. A long line of fluorescent lights flicker on and off. The corridor is so massively long that I can’t see the end of it and it eventually disappears into darkness.

  I look to my right. To my right is a crowd of infected people. A horde. A swarm. I can feel their energy. It is simply incredible.

  The horde is a mix of soldiers and research scientists and civilians. I tell myself in that instant I need to stop thinking about what these people used to be. I can’t think of them as soldiers or civilians or people. Because they are not people. Not anymore. They are infected. They are zombies. They are the living dead.

  I can’t afford to give them my sympathy, but I am only human and I can’t help it.

  The former soldiers and scientists and civilians are all trying to squeeze through the door into the interrogation room at once. The door that I was just barricading with a table and my body weight. The sheer number of infected people and the narrow area of the corridor and the doorway have created a bottleneck.

  But then they see me.

  And I turn and run into the next room. And we’re going to rinse and repeat. We are going to do this all over again.

  For a second, a split second, a nano-second, I think, what’s the point?

  There’s too many of them.

  There is nowhere to run.

  Nowhere to hide.

  No escape.

  I am underground. I am trapped.

  I am trapped in a prison within a prison.

  I am surrounded by the infected.

  For a split second, I think about giving up, leaving the door open, letting them in, giving myself to them, to the Oz virus. But then I walk through the door. I enter the room. The doorway leads to an office. The room looks like it belonged to someone important. There is a desk. It has paper strewn all over it. A computer. A bookshelf full of files and folders. Two chairs in front of the desk.

  And crouching behind the desk, is a man.

  He sort of looks like a businessman. He is wearing a white, long sleeved shirt. A black tie.

  He looks middle aged.

  Why the hell is he wearing a tie?

  The top button of his shirt is undone, his tie is loose, like he’s had a rough day at the office.

  “Shut the door!” he says. “Lock it!”

  I do as he says. I do it quickly. I shut the door. I lock the door.

  “Did they see you?” he asks.

  I nod my head.

  “How many?”

  “Too many,” I answer.

  “The door has a dead lock. It should hold them for a minute or two.”

  “Maybe less,” I say.

  I push my weight into the door.

  And I know it won’t hold for long.

  Enjoyed the sample for Salvation?

  For more info visit http://jamesharden.blogspot.com/

  The following is an excerpt from the Lost Journal Part 2. The story takes place between The Secret Apocalypse and Extinction Level (Book 2 in the Secret Apocalypse series.)

  3 WEEKS AGO - An outbreak of a deadly new virus is reported within an immigration center in the Australian outback town of Woomera.

  The virus is 100% lethal.

  2 WEEKS AGO - The town of Woomera is placed under an unofficial quarantine. The residents are tested for infection.

  A military force led by the U.S. Marines enforces the quarantine.

  1 WEEK AGO - The virus continues to spread. The military lose control of operations in Woomera.

  Airstrikes are ordered to contain the infection.

  SIX DAYS AGO - The Australian press first report the outbreak at Woomera.

  American scientists confirm virus is multi-resistant. They have named it the ‘Oz virus’.


  The World Health Organization has declared a phase 4 Pandemic alert. Phase 4 = multiple cases reported and human to human transmission of virus has been confirmed.

  FIVE DAYS AGO - Nationwide quarantine is ordered.

  All flights in and out of Australia are grounded.

  Australian communication networks are shut down.

  ONE DAY AGO – Military containment protocol is initiated.

  Firebombing of Sydney and Melbourne commences.

  A nuclear warhead is dropped on Melbourne.

  SYDNEY IS NEXT...

  Private Kenji Yoshida is running for his life.

  He is trapped in the middle of Sydney.

  He is surrounded by the infected and the military who want him dead.

  He must use all his training and survival skills to stay alive.

  This is his story.

  Feb 10th - Fate and the choices we make.

  I read this book a few years ago that I found in my dad’s study. It was about a man chained to a wall in a prison. He was being tortured. Pretty gruesome stuff. The skin on his back and his arms and his torso and his legs, every part of his body had been flayed off with a splintered bamboo cane. His eyes were sealed shut with his own blood. And yet through all the pain and the screaming in his mind he realized he was a free man.

  He had choices.

  Hate.

  Forgive.

  Love.

  Accept.

  He talked about fate. And he talked about the choices people make in their lives. In an instant he understood that even though he was chained to a wall, he was still free. He was free to hate the people torturing him or free to forgive them. This book had a profound effect on me. Mostly because I did not believe someone could be that strong. And that understanding.

  To forgive the people torturing you?

  To accept it?

  To love them?

  I don’t know, man. I don’t think anyone could be that strong.

  I can’t remember who wrote the book. I think it was an autobiography. I think it was based on a true story but I can’t remember.

  I’m trying hard to remember who wrote it, like somehow if I remembered who wrote that book it would give me strength or courage.

  I’m trying to think but I can’t.

  I’m too exhausted.

  Too damn scared.

  We’ve been running for our lives for the past week now. I’ve been running for longer. Much longer. I’m starting to feel like a drifter. A homeless person. No fixed address. No name. No belongings.

  I think it’s important to write down what I’ve been doing and who I am. I do not want to just disappear and fade away into nothingness.

  So who am I?

  My name is Kenji Yoshida.

  I’m a soldier.

  I’m a trained sniper.

  And I’m slowly but surely starting to lose my mind.

  When I was on tour in Afghanistan, I had a little freak out. Wow. Afghanistan. That seems like a dream. A lifetime ago. It happened when we returned to base after a patrol in the Hindu Kush mountain range. We had received a distress call from a small village. We went to investigate. We saw a boy. He was sick. They said he’d been poisoned with a neurotoxin. But seeing this boy. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like he represented everything that was going wrong in my life. I don’t know. It sounds kind of selfish when I think about it like that. But I can’t help it. It messed me up.

  I saw the psychologist on base and she told me to keep a journal. She said I needed to get my thoughts out of my head and my heart. She said if I kept them bottled up, they would eventually kill me. From the inside. Infect me. Like a virus.

  Now that I look back it’s weird that she’d used the word virus. Flash forward one month and here I am, trying to survive an actual killer virus. Something more destructive than any gun, rifle, missile or bomb. In a matter of days it has brought the major city of Sydney to its knees. This virus has caused untold damage and chaos. I don’t know how many people have died. I don’t want to think about it.

  I don’t even want to think about why I’m still alive.

  Why me?

  I should be dead.

  And yet here I am. Still breathing. Still writing in this journal. Still running.

  I served in Afghanistan. I survived fire fights in the isolated Hindu Kush mountain range. I was part of an emergency quarantine force sent to the Australian outback. I survived the outbreak there in the town of Woomera. And the surrounding Immigration camps. I survived when in all honesty, I probably should’ve died. I survived when other soldiers, men that I consider to be my brothers, died around me.

  Drake.

  Franco.

  Gordon.

  Together we formed a small four man fireteam. We served together in the Middle East, in Iraq and Afghanistan and Australia.

  They were better soldiers than I was. Better men.

  I don’t know why I’m still alive when these men are dead.

  I haven’t had a chance to grieve for them yet and as a result I think they are starting to haunt me.

  The dead are talking to me. Man, I really am crazy. It’s kind of like that kid in that movie. But not really. You can see why I think I’m starting to lose my mind.

  I haven’t written a journal entry since I fled Woomera. I haven’t had time.

  I’ve been on the run. Running and fighting and struggling for my life. And the life of my friends.

  Rebecca.

  Jack.

  Kim.

  And Maria.

  Apart from Rebecca, I’ve only know the others for a couple of days. But I already consider them my friends. I can already tell what kind of people they are. They are the best kind of people.

  They are loyal. Strong. They are always prepared to offer a helping hand.

  They would make good soldiers. This is a good thing because the situation we find ourselves in right now is a war like situation. A battle for survival. Our enemies are the innocent people who have been infected by the Oz virus. And the military who have been authorized to use deadly force.

  The Containment Protocol.

  This is the military’s contingency plan. A final solution to stop the spread of the deadly Oz virus. Their last roll of the dice. It won’t work. They are too late.

  As I write this, the whole of Sydney is a warzone. A crumbling, ruined city. Artillery fire, and mortar rounds and bombs and air to surface missiles have all left their destructive fingerprints on the city, on the buildings and the roadways. Even now, in the absolute dead of night, I can still hear the constant chatter of machine gun fire. There are soldiers somewhere in this city. They are fighting for their lives. They have been left behind to hold off the infected while the rest of the force retreats. They are going to die.

  We have been lucky enough to get off the streets. We’ve found a hiding spot in the upper floors of the Sydney Tower. Up here we are safe. We are high above the reach of the infected. The tower is connected to a shopping center. Earlier, we decided to go down there to look for food and water. And I also wanted to find another notebook so I could write this stuff down. My original journal went for a swim with me when we were thrown off the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Most of the pages are all stuck together. Some of the ink has been ruined. I’ve kept it anyway. Maybe I could eventually dry it out or unstuck the pages or something. Maybe they could be saved. I think they need to be saved. In those pages are details of some of the finest soldiers I have ever known. Drake, Franco and Gordon. Their story needs to be preserved. People need to know how they served their country and their fellow man.

  It was a risk to move down to the lower levels of this tower to look for supplies and a notebook. But I figured it was worth it. Like the doc told me, I couldn’t afford to keep everything bottled up. Now was not the time to lose my head. Especially since I have a responsibility to look after Maria. Keep her safe. Keep her alive.

  This is important. Maria is important. She is immune. Maybe the only pers
on in the world who is immune to this virus.

  Maria had failed to be extracted from the city. She was moments away from being rescued by an elite Special Forces team before everything went to hell. I can’t believe the team that had captured her had met their end so swiftly. But then again, it seems to be the way things are going around here. Yep everything is going to hell. And it’s going really, really quickly.

  I’ve never witnessed anything as destructive as this virus.

  When I was redeployed from Afghanistan to Woomera they briefed us on the virus. I should’ve paid more attention. They gave us a briefing document so we could study up on the symptoms. I didn’t give it much attention when I first received it. But since the outbreak I’ve read the document closely. Studied every word. Every sentence.

  Virus symptoms - (Observable)

  facial hemorrhaging

  skin discoloration

  cloudy and bloodshot eyes

  dilated pupils

  aggressive behavior

  loss of motor skills

  speech impairments

  loss of sensitivity in limbs

  symptoms similar to concussion

  memory loss

  I put the folded up pages back in my pocket.

  The odds are stacked high against us. The Oz virus is designed to find life and destroy it. It is designed to turn human beings into mindless, psychotic hosts.

  And here we are, trapped in a city, surrounded by the infected.

  We are safe for the moment, in our tower, our castle in the clouds. But if this place becomes compromised then we will have to make a run for it.

  And I’m sick of running. I’ve been running for the past two years. I haven’t stopped. No time to look over my shoulder. No time to catch my breath. I ran away from home. And Rebecca. I left her without even saying goodbye. I ran away to the U.S. Marines. Ran all the way to the freakin Middle East. Now I’m running from a plague, a virus and the military that have been ordered to enforce a containment protocol.