The Lost Journal Part 2 (A Secret Apocalypse Story) (16 page)

We
decided to climb to the roof of a warehouse to get our bearings and to make
sure there weren’t any infected people in the immediate vicinity. The warehouse
was a giant storage shed. There was a whole row of them lined up, one after the
other. The warehouses and the industrial area stretched all the way to Sydney
Harbor.

Jack
had his hands over his eyes to shield from glare. The sun looked weird. It was
only just visible through the dust storm. It appeared to be blue.

"What
do you think?" Jack asked.

"I
don’t know. This area seems to be deserted. We might be able to find a truck
that has a working two way radio."

"Yeah,
that’s a good idea. They’re usually long range, right?"

"Hope
so."

"We
can start here," Jack said. "And then work our way to the harbor."

We
were about to make a move when all of a sudden we heard a grunting noise and a
man’s voice. He was rambling something incomprehensible.

"It’s
time!" the man shouted. "Come on! We are doing this."

The
noises, the voice was coming from the alleyway below.

I
held my index finger up to my lips, telling Jack to be quiet. We moved over to
the edge of the roof and looked down into the narrow alleyway between the
warehouses. Standing alone in the alley was a man. His head was lowered as he
spoke to no one.

"Come
on. Let’s go!"

He
was wearing jeans. No shirt.

He
was barefoot.

He
placed a baseball bat and a samurai sword against the wall of the warehouse.
The sword was sheathed. Slung around his leg was a holster that carried an old
school revolver. I couldn’t see what kind. My guess is that it was an old colt
45 revolver. Maybe a Smith and Wesson.

Maybe.

He
was holding an AK 47.

"Mister
Anton Kalashnikov," he said to the rifle. "Let's dance."

He
was talking to himself and the ghost of a gun maker.

He
was a man who had lost everything.

He
opened the door to the warehouse. It was a small side entrance. He picked up an
empty glass whiskey bottle that was sitting next to the door. He smashed the
bottle against the brick wall and fired the AK 47 into the air.

One
single shot.

It
was loud.

He
waited.

He
was slowly breathing in and out.

There
was silence.

"Come
on!" he shouted.

He
adjusted something on the rifle. The rate of fire. Single shot. Semi-automatic.
Full Automatic. He fired the rest of the magazine into the air. Bullet casings
bounced on the concrete ground and scattered in the alleyway.

He
reloaded.

In
the waist of his jeans and his pockets were about nine spare magazines.

He
waited some more.

Suddenly
I could hear the screaming, howling moan of the infected. The noises were coming
from inside the warehouse.

He
backed away from the door.

He
stood off to the side.

An
infected man ran out of the door.

The
AK 47 came to life.

The
shirtless, shoeless man, the man who had lost everything, unleashed another
magazine.

One
magazine, for one infected man.

He
wasn't aiming.

He
was shooting from the hip.

He
reloaded.

More
infected ran out of the door. They ran for the man. He fired the AK 47 on full
automatic. The barrel turned red at one point. Steam and smoke drifted up into
the air like some sort of weird exorcism - the ghost of a gun maker. Each
bullet had a demon’s soul that was released when it was fired or something. I
don't know.

He
walked backwards as he reloaded. He continued firing on full automatic from the
hip. It took approximately seven seconds for the gun to chew through an entire magazine.
He ran out of bullets. He threw the AK 47 to the ground. He picked up the
baseball bat.

The
infected swarmed.

He
swung the bat.

He
crushed heads and faces.

And
noses.

He
was bitten.

The
infected tackled him to the ground. He got back up and pushed the crowd, forced
them off. He drew the revolver and cocked the hammer. He fired five shots into
the swarm.

Five
shots.

This
is important.

He
put the revolver back in the holster.

He
swung the bat again.

He
was grunting.

Like
an animal.

"Come
on!"

The
baseball bat was covered in blood. And so was he. At one point he had to wipe
the blood clear of his eyes so he could see.

He
was bitten on the neck. His carotid artery has been ripped open.

He
screamed.

He
wavered and stumbled. But he kept his footing. He kept fighting and raging. He kept
swinging the bat. He did not stop. He knew to attack the head.

The
swarm, the infected kept coming.

"Good!"
he said. "Good! Come on!

He
cleared space with the bat. At this point he had killed more infected with the
baseball bat then he had with the AK 47.

But
the infected kept coming.

They
were relentless.

Death
is relentless.

The
blood from the wound in his neck was pulsing to the beat of his heart. It was spraying
the walls of the alley and the faces of the infected in a perfect rhythm of his
death.

But
somehow he kept swinging the baseball bat. And I became immune to the sickening
noise the bat made when it sunk into the face of an infected person,
simultaneously cracking the skull and the neck.

It
was incredibly violent.

And
I became used to it. Numb.

The
handle of the bat became wet and slippery with blood. He lost his grip and he dropped
the bat. But he did not stop. He began punching the infected in the face, the
jaw. The stomach. He grabbed the hair of an infected person who used to be a
business man. A manager of the warehouse maybe. He pulled back on his hair and
threw it to the ground and stomped on his throat. He picked up the baseball bat
again.

And
he just kept going.

I
did not know where this guy was getting his strength from. He should be dead.
He was covered in blood. He was covered in bite wounds. He was bleeding out. He
was infected. Two minutes slowly ticked by. He had destroyed the horde of
infected.

He
threw the baseball bat away.

He
fell to his knees.

He
was breathing hard.

He
picked up the samurai sword.

It
was still sheathed.

He
held it tight and took his last dying breaths.

He
lowered his head.

The
blood spurting from his neck had stopped. He gripped the sword with his left
hand and drew the revolver with his right. The revolver was a six shooter. He
cocked the hammer and placed the barrel against his temple.

He
stopped breathing.

He
pulled the trigger.

Nothing in life is free

We moved on. I told Jack that we needed to put distance between us and the
alley. The noise of the gunshots would no doubt attract more of the infected.
So we got out of there as quickly and as quietly as possible. We made our way further
towards the harbor.

The
cop car’s engine began to smoke. It eventually stalled. We had to ditch it. This
is when we found the armored Humvee. It was just sitting in the middle of the
road. It was too good to be true, like an oasis in a desert.

"We
could use this to get out of here," I said. "This is our ticket to freedom."

We
knelt down in the street behind a parked car for awhile just watching the
Humvee. I think we were both scared it was too good to be true. Or maybe we
were still in shock over what we just witnessed.

I
now know that nothing in life is free. And this Humvee was no exception.

We
had to pay a price. It nearly cost us our lives.

Jack
and I have agreed to keep this a secret. He didn’t want Maria knowing what he
did, and how close he came to dying.

I
told him I would keep it a secret, even though I’m pretty sure Maria would
understand.

She
would understand it was a hard decision and that it was something terrible.

Kill
or be killed.

She
would understand.

Still,
Jack wanted to keep it a secret.

It
turned out that the Humvee belonged to a couple of Force Recon Marines. They
had been left behind by their superiors. They had been written off, left to die
alone in the city.

They
were in denial about this fact.

One
of the soldiers wanted to kill Jack and myself. It was obvious he had lost his
mind.

So
like I said, when we found the Humvee, we couldn’t believe our luck. We assumed
it had been abandoned by the military. We had no idea there were soldiers still
alive. They had stayed hidden. Used all their survival training to avoid the
infected. These guys were Force Recon Marines. They were hard bastards. Highly
trained. Highly skilled.

"Let’s
go get it," I said. "No point in waiting around any longer."

The
Humvee was parked near a school. We were about to jump in the Humvee and drive
off when I saw something move past the glass entry doors of the school.

It
was a child.

Five
or six years old.

"Jack,
did you see that?"

"See
what?"

Jack
had his face pressed up against the driver’s side window of the Humvee. He was
looking to see if the keys were in the ignition.

"Over
there," I said, pointing at the entrance. "The school."

Jack
looked up. "What is it?"

And
before I could answer the child appeared again. This time he had a chair in his
hands.

He
swung the chair and smashed the door.

"Whoa,"
Jack said. "Strong kid."

"I
can’t believe he’s alive. How? How has he survived?"

I
raised my rifle and walked towards the school.

"Hey
kid!"

The
kid looked up and saw me. And then sprinted off down the street. Maybe I
shouldn’t have raised my rifle.

I
ran after him.

"Kenji,
no!" Jack shouted. "We need to stick together!"

Jack
was right but I needed to ask this boy how he had survived. I don’t know why I
needed to know this. He had probably hid inside the school and survived off the
school cafeteria’s food.

But
I needed to ask him. I had to make sure. I had to speak to him.

The
boy was fast. He was scared. He scrambled up and over a car. He climbed on top
of another one. A van. He turned and looked at me. He was definitely scared.
You could see it in his eyes.

A
muffled gunshot erupted in the otherwise quiet street.

The
boy fell backwards, off the roof of the van. He had been shot. He was dead.

I
turned and dropped to my knee. I raised my rifle. Did Jack shoot the kid? Was
there a sniper in the area?

If
there was, I was probably next.

I
kept moving. I dived under the nearest car. "Jack! Get down!"

I
looked back towards the school, where the shot had come from. Jack had dived
under the Humvee.

It
was hard to see in the dust. Hard to hear over the wind.

Who
shot the boy?

Where
were they hiding?

Why
did they shoot?

I
looked for Jack again. I needed to tell him to stay down. If he moved he was
dead. I looked under the Humvee. I needed to make sure he wasn’t going to do
anything stupid.

But
Jack was no longer there. He was standing right next to the Humvee. He had his
hands in the air. His rifle was on the ground.

A soldier
stood in front of him. His gun, an M40 sniper rifle was pointed right at Jack’s
head.

Survivors

I stood up from under the car. I pointed my rifle directly at the soldier.
"Hey! Don’t even think about it. Drop your weapon!"

The
soldier turned slowly and looked at me. He lowered his rifle.

I
took a tentative step forward. "What the hell do you think you’re doing? Why
did you shoot that kid?"

He
held his rifle in his left hand and raised his right to let me know he wasn’t a
threat. He slowly walked towards me. "Why the hell do you think I shot him?"