The Lost Journal Part 6

The second part of our a.s.signment was to supervise more Testing. Our destination - The Unofficial Immigration Center.

Yeah that's right. Unofficial Immigration Center. Or Temporary Immigration Center. Blew my freakin mind when they told us that.

It was a completely separate section. It was hidden in plain sight, in the middle of nowhere. It was listed as 'unofficial' and 'temporary'. I'm guessing no one knows about it. Certainly not the public. No freakin way.

Now I knew why they had brought a whole regiment of troops down here. It all made sense.

The Unofficial Immigration Center was located about twenty miles further north-west of the 'Official' Immigration Center. It was located within the military testing ground.

It was basically a slum.

They told us it was where they housed the criminals of the refugee population. Put simply, it was where they took anyone who had committed a criminal offence whilst in custody of the immigration center. The most common offences were a.s.sault and s.e.xual a.s.sault.

It was also the place where they took anyone who allegedly worked for people smuggling networks.

But that had to be a lie.

There were thousands of people living in that slum. The population was ma.s.sive. There's no way they were all criminal offenders, or people smugglers. There was just too many. And there were women and children. Elderly. There were entire extended families.

These were scared, innocent people who had left their homes, saved up all their money, sold all their earthly possessions. They had risked their lives and the lives of their children to come here. And against all the odds they had made it. They had come here in search of asylum, in search of safety and a new life.

Instead, they had found a nightmare.

Now they were living in a slum, a makeshift shanty town in the middle of the Australian outback.

No one knew how many people called this place home. But estimates were as high as ten thousand.

And since it was located in the middle of the Woomera Military Testing site, the largest land-based testing site in the world, it was basically hidden from the world. It was a dirty little secret of the Australian government.

The site was initially the same size as the 'official' immigration center. It was basically the same set up, the same buildings and design. But overtime the population, the number of immigrants had grown and grown. The shanty town kept expanding. Most of the little huts were made of corrugated tin and aluminum sheets, metal shipping containers, plastic tarpaulins and ply wood, anything the refugees could get their hands on.

And since it was in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but miles and miles of desert in all directions, it appeared that this site was free to just keep growing and growing.

It was out of control.

I was now starting to wonder if a regiment of troops was enough to enforce the quarantine.

As we approached it we couldn't really see how big it was. It sort of blended into the horizon as a shimmering heat mirage. But as we got closer... then we could see.

It was late afternoon when we finally made it to the immigration center. The sight of it, the enormity of it took my breath away.

This place was huge. It was ma.s.sive.

And the smell. My G.o.d, the smell of the place was unlike anything I have ever experienced in my life. The stench hit us all in the face, causing some of the soldiers to gag and throw up.

The size of the slum was big enough that Command had even set up some temporary barracks just outside the shanty town. And we figured after we'd just trekked twenty miles in the desert we'd be resting up for the remainder of the day.

Again, no such luck.

We were ordered into the slum.

They were about to conduct more testing. Just like the other day. Same set up with the testing gates and everything. If the light flashed red, the person had a lowered core body temperature and they were to be taken away for more testing.

The difference being there would be thousands more people to process. And I'm guessing not many of them spoke English.

This was going to be a nightmare. I had no idea how right I was.

Where there is smoke...

We had been testing all day. The sniffer dogs had been busy. The testing gates would flash red every five minutes or so.

Hundreds of people were being taken away at gun point. Children torn away from mothers. Families ripped apart with no explanation.

The suspected cases were taken into the main buildings, the original buildings of the immigration center for further testing. This meant that whoever had been lucky enough to call those buildings their home, were now displaced once again, forced to find homes out in the slum. It was sickening to think that they were refugees inside an asylum for refugees.

Fate can be cruel sometimes.

After awhile I began to feel like I was going to throw up. The cry of young children. The desperate pleas of mothers and fathers.

It was a gut-wrenching, soul-crushing exercise. But it had to be done. People were getting sick all over. The virus was spreading fast. The situation was getting out of control.

We worked through the day and into the night.

It was late, almost midnight when we were finally relieved of duty for the day. We were walking back through the small laneways of the slum.

As we made our way back to our temporary barracks, winding through the narrow laneways the people, the refugees stared at us with a kind of scared, fascination, like we were aliens or something.

The men made sure they stood between us and the women. The women made sure they held on to their children, making sure the kids didn't run up to us.

At first I was nodding and smiling at them. But after awhile I gave up trying to be friendly. I was just too tired. I was exhausted. I hadn't slept much the past couple of nights. Pretty soon my eyes glazed over and became unfocused. My surroundings kind of blurred into one messy scene of dilapidated huts and the sick, scared faces of refugees, of people that I didn't know the names of and never will. I was basically walking in a daze through the narrow laneways of the shanty town. And I'll admit, at that point, I was getting a little disorientated. OK, I was completely lost. But I was following Drake and Franco. I trusted they knew the way.

We must've been close to the edge of the slum when everything went to h.e.l.l.

I was so tired my brain didn't even fully register what was happening at first.

Off in the distance I heard gunshots.

At first I thought they were firecrackers. I don't know why I thought that. Maybe because there were so many kids running around.

Drake and Franco stopped. We heard more gunshots.

We crouched behind a small shanty and listened. My brain still wasn't functioning.

Gunshots? Why was there shooting? Who was shooting? What were they shooting at?

Then my mind flashed to the day before. The shooting in the street. That man running, refusing to stop, getting shot in the back. Dying in the gutter.

If these people started to resist here, in this slum. If people started to run...

"The shots are coming from the testing area," Drake said.

We all listened for a few more seconds. At first we could hear single shots being fired.

Controlled bursts.

But then we could hear automatic gun fire. And then we could hear the heavy machine guns. The fifty cal's mounted on the Humvees.

"Jesus Christ," Franco said. "Let's go!"

We started running back the way we had come, back to the testing facilities. But the small walkways and laneways were disorientating and confusing. The slum was a maze, a labyrinth. Now I really was lost.

Men, women and children were now running in the opposite direction. Not just running but sprinting.

Shouting in broken English, "They are coming. Run. Get away."

They all looked scared, every single one of those people. Young and old. Even the smaller kids, they probably didn't understand what was happening but they were scared.

We tried to ask them who was coming? What were they running from?

But no one was stopping to answer us. I guess most of them couldn't really speak English that well.

We tried to stop one of the men. He was carrying a small girl, his daughter. I grabbed him by the arm to stop him from running away. He looked Arab. I thought maybe Franco could speak to him. But we never got the chance to ask him what his nationality was or if he spoke English, or what he was running from. He wrestled away from me, kicking me hard in the shin.

We gave up trying to stop anyone after that. We kept moving against the flow of the crowd.

I could smell smoke. And ahead I could see flames reaching up into the black sky. If a fire broke out in this shanty town there would be no stopping it.

Franco was on the radio, trying to find out what the h.e.l.l was going on.

We continued to force our way through the fleeing ma.s.ses. It was slow going.

Finally, we made it back to the main buildings where they had been conducting the testing all day.

The buildings where they were taking anyone who might be infected.

The buildings were on fire.

Huge, angry flames engulfed the entire structure. The heat blasted us, keeping us at a bay. I could feel the heat on my face. The smoke was making my eyes water.

But I couldn't look away.

Something was wrong with this scene.

These buildings were the only buildings on fire.

And the soldiers were watching them burn.

None of the refugees remained.

No one was trying to put out the fire.

The Humvees were all facing the burning buildings. The barrels of the fifty cal machine guns were smoking.

I heard a crash. Windows and gla.s.s shattering. There was a man inside the building. He was trying to get out. My natural instinct was to go and help him. I was about to run over there but Drake held me back.

The soldier manning the fifty cal machine gun pulled the trigger.

The orange flames reached up and out of the broken windows. The fire continued to burn steadily throughout the night.

It was late when we got back to the barracks. We were all covered in ash and soot. Our cammies and hair smelt like smoke. We were all exhausted.

But again, I found it hard to sleep that night. Even after the exhausting trek, and spending the afternoon and most of the night testing people for the infection, even after getting everything out of my head and on to the page. I still found it hard to sleep.

Whenever I closed my eyes I saw a blur, a collage of frightened and helpless people.

They looked at me with scared fascination. Some of them were holding children. Some of them were on fire.

January 25th - Deadly Force The next day they had expanded the outer perimeter of the quarantine to a ten mile radius. The quarantine now covered the town, the official immigration center and the unofficial immigration center.

It was a huge area.

But I'm starting to think the quarantine is a band-aid solution. I'm starting to think we've lost control.

Yesterday, the unofficial immigration center was partially destroyed by fire. A fire that was deliberately lit. Command isn't telling us why. No one tells us grunts anything. But it doesn't take a genius to figure out why they did it.

They locked up those poor people. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. Then they cleared out and set them on fire.

They were burned alive.

I woke up that morning and my whole body was sore. My feet, my legs. Even my throat was sore from the smoke.

I was hoping today we would be given a chopper ride back to the main barracks. Grab a shower. Some real food.

Get some rest.

But no. We had been a.s.signed to guard duty.

We were to set up at a checkpoint about a mile outside of the outer-perimeter and watch for anyone who had broken through.

The fire and the shooting in the town had put everyone on edge. And understandably, people were trying to get the h.e.l.l out of here. Not just the immigrants, but people from the township as well.

I can't blame them.

But no one was allowed to leave. Didn't matter if you were healthy.

Our orders were to keep a look out for anyone trying to make a run for it. We were authorized to eliminate any probable threat or any persons we believed were infected beyond help. If they were infected we were authorized to use deadly force if necessary. They reminded us that a head shot was the only way the only way to stop a person infected with the virus.

If we couldn't contain the threat, or if the outer-perimeter was breached by too many people, we were to call in the gunships for aerial support.