The Lost Journal Part 16

Self-doubt.

"If you miss now, he will run you down. Tackle you. Burn you. He will bite you. Infect you."

"Do not miss."

I lowered my aim at the last second and took out his legs. He fell to the ground and skidded to my feet. One more shot to the head finished him off. I was about to stand up and make my way to the chopper. But then I saw someone climb on to the jetty on the opposite side of the harbor.

They climbed up, took a few steps and then collapsed.

I looked through my scope.

It was a girl.

Not a soldier.

It was Maria.

Hope I couldn't believe it.

She was alive.

She was the only one. None of the soldiers had made it.

I shook my head. I could not believe it. I looked through my scope just to make sure she was all right. She had pulled herself up and out of the water, on to the jetty. She was drenched. She brushed her blonde hair out of her face, wiped the water out of her eyes.

How she avoided all those floating bodies, I'll never know. She must've dived for the bottom of the harbor, picked out clear spot, swum up to the surface. I was still in denial. Maybe I had already convinced myself she was dead.

More infected piled out from the casino. Some of them were on fire. Some of them were missing limbs. Regardless of their injuries and disfigurements, they were all running faster than humanly possible.

Maria saw them and started backing away. A split second later she started running. Luckily she ran in my direction.

I took aim at the infected. I unloaded the rest of the magazine. Full automatic.

I reloaded. Kept firing.

Maria looked up and saw me. She ran over.

She made it over to me in world record time.

She doubled over, breathing hard. "Kenij! I can't... I can't believe it."

"It's OK. Just breathe."

"Where did you guys go? What happened?"

"They got out," I answered. "I had to stay behind. I had to cover their escape."

"What? What happened back in the casino?"

I fired off a few more rounds, making sure they were head shots, making sure they counted.

"We had to leave you," I said.

And as I said it, Maria looked like someone had sucker punched her. "What?" she repeated.

"I'm sorry," I said. "We had to leave. I made the call."

Her face went pale. Her knees were starting to buckle. It was then I remembered she was probably still very weak from being bitten.

"Where is Jack?" she asked.

"Look, we have to hide. I'll explain everything but right now we need to get out of the open. We're not safe here."

She shook her head. "No. Where is Jack!?" she asked again, ignoring everything that was happening around us.

"He's safe. They're all safe. We gotta go."

I scanned our immediate area. We did not have long.

Maria's knees continued to buckle. It was taking her considerable effort to stand. I went to put my arm around her, to support her but she pushed me away.

"Please, just tell me! Where is Jack?"

She began to collapse. I caught her and picked her up.

"I'll explain everything," I whispered. "But we need to get out of here. It's not safe."

We made our way back to the boat I had been hiding in. I laid Maria on the floor. She kept asking for Jack.

And I kept telling myself I did the right thing.

Calm on the outside. Freaking out on the inside.

The boat we were hiding in was a harbor cruise boat. It had multiple levels and lots of windows. If the military were still looking for Maria it would not take them long to find us. Although at that moment it appeared that the men in black, the Special Forces soldiers had left the area. And for some reason the number of infected had thinned quite a bit. I looked around the boat. The floor we were on had a bar. I found some bottled water and forced Maria to drink it.

She grabbed the bottle and downed it in one go. And then she threw it all back up.

"Slow down," I said as I gave her another bottle. "Small sips."

She reluctantly took my advice.

"Where are the others?" she asked between deep breaths. "Where is Jack?"

I lowered my head. This would be hard for her. But there was no point in sugar coating it. No point in lying. "We made, well, I made the decision to leave you back at the casino," I said. "I figured the soldiers wanted you. And only you. I figured they knew you were resistant to the virus. I don't know how they knew but they knew. It was obvious that you were their target. They wanted you alive. The rest of us were expendable. If we stayed, if we tried to fight those soldiers, we would've been killed. Even if we surrendered peacefully they still would've executed us."

She continued to drink the water, taking small sips. Her eyes flicking back and forth as she thought about the implications of what I was saying, replaying the events in her mind's eye.

"We fled the casino," I continued. "We made it to one of the boats in the harbor. The problem with our escape plan was that we were completely surrounded by those soldiers. They were enforcing the containment protocol. They wanted us dead. I put Rebecca and Kim and Jack on the boat. I provided cover fire for them as they made their escape out of the harbor. If I hadn't done that, we would've been blown apart. We wouldn't have gotten two feet without being torn to shreds. I mean, we were completely surrounded; they were above us on the bridge. They would've killed us."

"Did they make it?" Maria asked, worry all over her face.

I nodded. "I think so. They made it out of Darling Harbor."

"You think so? But you can't be sure?"

I lowered my head.

"Did they make it!?"

"I...I can't be sure."

Maria started crying. Her jaw was clenched. She was trying to keep it together. She looked out the windows of our cruise boat. She looked out towards the main harbor.

"I had no choice," I said, defending myself.

She didn't answer me. She started shivering. She was going into shock. "Where will they go? What will they do?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. Hopefully they can get away from the city. Find a quiet beach somewhere up the coast and come to sh.o.r.e."

"We need to find them."

"No. We can't. We need to keep you safe. We need to hide."

Pa.s.s the ammunition Maria was sitting down against the wall, knees to her chest, head tucked into her arms. The whole harbor seemed to be deserted now.

The casino building was leaning at an angle. It looked like it was about to fall over. The wreckage of the tank was still smoldering. Bodies were everywhere.

Infected.

Soldiers.

Innocent people.

I wondered how long it would take for more infected to make their way through here. I wondered if the soldiers would be back to clean up this mess.

One thing was obvious, I needed more ammo. Maybe a spare rifle for Maria. She probably didn't know how to fire a gun but she would have to learn. Necessity was a great teacher.

I walked over to Maria and knelt down beside her. "Maria," I whispered.

No response.

"Maria. I need to leave you for a few minutes. I need to go down there and look for some ammunition. I've only got half a mag left. It's not enough if any more infected come through here. It's not enough to defend ourselves. I'll only be gone a few minutes."

She raised her head slowly. "Don't," she whispered. "Don't leave me."

"I need to do this. We need the ammo. If more infected come through here we'll need to defend ourselves. We need to be prepared."

The infected would indeed come through here, I thought. They would probably make their way into the city from the western suburbs.

She tucked her head back into her arms and kept saying, "Don't leave me."

But I had to. She knew it. I knew it. I patted her on the shoulder. "I'll be right back."

Exposed I made a quick pa.s.s of the surrounding area and made my way back up to the footbridge. I managed to scavenge five more magazines of ammunition.

From the vantage point of the footbridge I could see back out to the main harbor. I could see the smoke rising from the ruins of north Sydney and the main bridge. There was more smoke from other areas of the inner city as well. The smoke billowed up into the blue summer sky, giving the whole city a weird hazy orange look. It was then I realized I could hear more gunfire coming from the city.

The military were in the process of falling back. And if my experience in Woomera was anything to go by, they would be leaving those last soldiers behind. Leaving them as a distraction, a diversion so the rest of the forces could get away unscathed.

Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.

The gunfire continued to intensify as I made my way back to our boat.

Heavy machine guns.

Chain guns.

Mortar rounds.

Rockets.

h.e.l.lfire missiles.

It sounded like a pretty big force. This could only mean they were being pursued by a very large number of infected.

I knelt down on the footbridge and listened to the noises. I tried to zero in on the location of the fire fight. It was difficult. The gun shots were echoing off the city buildings. The only thing I could tell is that they were close. Maybe a few blocks away. Maybe less.

As I listened to the sounds of a new kind of war I wondered about what to do with Maria. I needed to get her to the military, I thought. I don't care if they execute me. Maria needed to get out of this city and the military were the only ones capable of doing that. It was the right thing to do, the only logical thing to do.

There had to be a radio around here somewhere. I could get the radio. Call for help. Simple.

Right on cue, there was a blast of static from the radio of a fallen soldier.

The noise was coming from behind me. I turned around. Lying underneath a huge slab of concrete was a body of one of the men in black. The body was partially crushed by the slab.

His legs were too far away from his upper body.

Somehow his radio was still working. I could hear static. Every now and then I could make out voices on the other end.

Scared voices.