The Sixth Level (12 page)
Authors: James Harden
"Hang on guys, we're in for some rough turbulence," Daniel warned. He told Griffin to buckle up. I guess there was a camera back here or something.
Griffin took his seat and buckled his belt just as the Osprey started to bounce around. Ethan was still asleep.
"I'm coming up on the middle of the city," Daniel announced. "The Central Business District. I can just make out the buildings. I'm going to circle around for a closer look."
The tops of buildings were barely visible. I could only see a few of the taller ones. The Sydney Tower stood above the rest, swaying in the strong winds. The lower section of the tower was completely obscured by the dust, giving it the appearance that the upper section, the distinctive golden turret, was floating in the red sky.
"I can't see a landing point in this dust," Daniel said. "And it’s too windy for a drop. I’m going to circle back around and find a suitable place to touch down. Maybe somewhere near the outskirts. Or even on the beach."
As Daniel turned around I tried to catch a glimpse of the Sydney Harbor Bridge, or what was left of it. But the dust was too thick, I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t even see Darling Harbor or the casino. And they couldn’t have been anymore than a couple of miles away. Maybe less.
As Daniel continued to circle, we flew into some more rough turbulence. Extremely rough.
"This is no good," Daniel said. "We're flying blind. I'm gonna have to climb out of this dust storm. Hang on everybody."
I was starting to freak out. I could see the strain on the men's faces. Ethan was awake now. He looked confused, worried, like he already knew something was wrong.
Just then the chopper was rocked by a huge force. The noise inside the cabin sounded like an explosion
"Holly Mother of Christ!" Griffin shouted. "That’s not turbulence!"
Were we being shot at? Did something just hit us? I thought this area was supposed to be quiet. I thought Ethan said the military had retreated out of the city?
The sinking feeling in stomach returned once again and we started to free fall. I heard a loud screeching noise, metal tearing, another explosion. It had to be an explosion. A huge blast of air sucked and pulled at us. The entire back section of the Osprey, the ramp, everything was gone. It was just ripped apart by something, a missile or anti-aircraft gunfire. And now it was gone.
The wind was roaring through the cabin. It's hard to describe, but the wind sounded alive, like it was roaring and grunting. It sounded animalistic. The noise and the force of the wind rapidly intensified. The seat I was strapped into started to strain and buckle. The bolts started to loosen, the whole section of the cabin started to shriek.
My seat lurched forward. The soldiers across from me, Ethan, Griffin and Smitty were holding on for dear life. My seat and the whole row of seats on my side lurched forward again. Smitty reached out for me but he was too far away. My seat broke free from its supports and I was sucked out into the swirling red dust storm.
Chapter 12
I pulled the handle and the chute opened immediately, slowing my descent but I was still coming in fast. I guess we weren’t that high up after all.
I managed to catch a glimpse of the Osprey, smoking and spiraling out of control. And then all of a sudden it was swallowed up by the swirling red dust and I lost sight of it. I heard it crash to the ground, though. Maybe two or three miles away. But I couldn't be sure. How could I when I couldn’t see a damn thing? I was completely disorientated. Did the others survive? Did they jump in time? How could they jump out and use their parachutes when they were still strapped into their seats? Everything happened so quickly. There was no warning. No time.
I came in fast, skimming the tops of trees and at that point I thought my brain had stopped working. It wasn’t making sense of the situation. Too much shock and awe, too much adrenalin. I remember thinking we crashed in the middle of the city! Why am I landing in a forest?
And just then my parachute finally caught enough wind and created enough drag so I straightened up. For a second it felt like I was just hanging in mid-air. Suspended and frozen in time. That was one of the worst moments of this whole ordeal. Just knowing I was falling back into the apocalypse. I was terrified. I was supposed to be going in with the best Special Forces team in the world or black ops team or whatever the hell they call themselves. I was supposed to be going in with the elite. I was supposed to be protected, staying out of harm’s way. An advisor, their insurance policy. We were supposed to stick to the rooftops of the skyscrapers, to the high ground. We were supposed to use the Osprey to get around, far above the reach of the infected. But now I was falling right back into the middle of hell. Alone. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could to do to change that.
I hit the ground hard and skidded for maybe twenty feet. Fortunately the ground was soft. It was grass. I was still strapped into my seat. When I finally came to a stop, I unbuckled the harness, tore my chute off and I just ran. I ran as fast as I could. I remembered what Ethan said about getting as far away from the parachute as possible. The chute was a big target. If there were any soldiers in the area, that's what they would converge on.
Luckily I didn't have any injuries, well none that I could feel at the time. I guess the NBC suit absorbed most of the impact.
After a couple hundred meters I was still running at full sprint. But I wasn’t tiring at all. I remember thinking I should probably stop and get my bearings or at least think things through and gather myself. But all my survival instincts told me to keep running. I don’t know why. I mean, I couldn’t even see where I was going. But I was freakin out. I was terrified. I couldn’t see a damn thing. I was alone. I felt like I was going to be surrounded and attacked and eaten at any second.
I don’t know why, but just then I had this weird flashback moment. I remembered back to when the Oz virus first broke out, back when we all needed to cross the Sydney Harbor Bridge to get to the military compound, back when we thought if we got to the other side of the bridge we would be safe. I remember Kenji had a walkie-talkie with him and through it we could hear this blood chilling, heart stopping warning from an unknown soldier. He was talking about the horde of infected eating its way through all the people on the freeway. It felt like I could hear that fearful voice right now.
"They’re coming this way. There’s too many of them!"
So I kept running and I was running fast. It felt like I was flying. The NBC suit had not only protected me from the impact of the fall but it had increased my speed as well. I felt like I was faster than any Olympic champion, even the ones on steroids.
I was running through trees and bushes. I was running into branches left and right. But again, the impact of the branches was being absorbed by the suit. The branches were snapping off as I ran into them. I could barely even feel them.
Another branch appeared right in front of my face. I reflexively, put my hands up to protect my head a split second before I crashed through. And I mean I literally crashed through. The branch practically exploded upon impact.
After I'd crashed through the branch, a tree appeared right in front of me. It was a smaller sapling but it was probably too big to simply run through it. So I jumped. Everything at this point was just a reflex. It must have been at least ten feet high. I planted one foot on the trunk and launched myself up and over. I cleared it easily and landed with a thud on the other side.
I remember going to the Bronx zoo once with my parents. We were lucky enough to watch a tiger exhibition. After the show had finished, the handlers were walking the tigers back to their enclosure. And this massive white Siberian tiger saw a bird fly over its head, maybe thirteen or fifteen feet in the air. The tiger jumped, its instincts taking over. It caught the bird in its jaw in mid air and landed with a huge thud. I mean the ground shook when it landed. It was incredible. The tiger had knocked over its handler with its bulk. It was a seven hundred pound monster. Amazingly heavy, yet agile at the same time. That’s kind of how I felt like right now. I’m not saying that I felt like I weighed seven hundred pounds but I did feel amazingly agile.
This suit and these new abilities were starting to freak me out.
After running for a few more seconds I realized it was impossible to get my bearings with zero visibility. So I slowed down to a jog. My breathing was rough and loud, like I was sobbing and choking at the same time. My footsteps were crunching and crashing through undergrowth and fallen leaves, and twigs.
I was making too much noise.
I stopped jogging completely. I crouched down and slowed my breathing. I closed my eyes and forced myself to regain my composure. I listened.
The only noise I could hear was the wind tearing through the trees.
No footsteps, no howling moan of the infected. No gunfire.
I could only see a few feet in front of my face but I was pretty sure I was alone.
I remembered there were a park and a botanical gardens right near the middle of the city. This has to be it, I thought. We were over the city when we were hit. Where else would I have landed?
Just then the radio inside my helmet squawked and crackled to life and it was the loudest thing in the world. I grabbed the helmet with both hands, trying to cover the speakers.
It was Daniel. "Rebecca! Did you punch out in time? Rebecca, can you hear me? We have crash landed near Hyde Park. Repeat, we are near Hyde Park. Check your GPS. Is it working? Rebecca? Where are you?"
I tried to respond to him but his voice was swallowed up by the static, there was too much interference. Probably from the dust storm, I thought.
And even though his voice sounded like the loudest thing in the world, at the same time it was so distant. He might has well have been on the other side of the planet.
The noise of the static was deafening and it wasn’t stopping. It was getting louder and louder. In my mind’s eye, I could picture a horde of infected turning slowly towards me, like they did when Kenji and I found them on the gaming floor of the casino. They turned slowly, waited a second, almost as if they were making sure the noise was coming from something they could eat. They zeroed in on the noise and ran towards us. Hungry and relentless.
I took my helmet off and threw it away, wondering if I was going to regret that decision later. But the thing was obviously busted; it was making too much noise. I had no choice.
I checked the GPS screen located on the inside of my left forearm. The screen was slightly cracked but I could just make out the map. My location was indicated by a little blue ball. It told me that I was in the Sydney botanical gardens just as I had suspected and that Hyde Park was approximately two kilometers south of my location, deeper into the city.
Two kilometers.
Two thousand meters.
In reality it wasn’t that far but at that point in time it felt like a huge distance. Even with the aid of the NBC suit. I mean, who knew what was between me and Hyde Park? On the one hand, maybe this whole area was deserted, maybe there was nothing? But on the other hand, maybe it wasn't deserted. Maybe it was the most hostile section of the entire city, of the entire country.
Unfortunately it was too easy to imagine the worst. It was too easy to imagine millions upon millions of infected, just waiting for some poor lost soul like me to come along.
It was a world of possibility, a scary, frightening world.
But this was the reality. I was on the streets, on the ground floor with them. I was all alone. And at that moment I had no choice but to make my way deeper into the city.
Chapter 13
I started whispering to myself then. "I can make it. I can make it."
Kind of like ‘The Little Engine That Could’.
I was crouching down, trying to collect my thoughts, studying the GPS, trying to memorize it so I could turn the screen off. I wanted to conserve the battery power but mostly I didn’t want the little bit of light it was emitting to attract any of the infected. The light wasn’t much, especially in the dust but I couldn't afford to take any chances.
Be invisible, I thought. Daniel said the most important thing; the only thing that mattered was being invisible. I thought about using the cloaking device, but I figured there was no need because the dust storm was providing plenty of cover. And I didn’t want to waste the suit's power supply. If the suit’s battery ran out, I'd be screwed.
I checked the control screen one more time; the battery indicator said it was at ninety-six percent. Daniel said it could last for about a week. But using the features like the cloaking device would chew through the battery. Hopefully we wouldn’t be here for that long. I really wanted this protective suit at full power. I was still skeptical that I’d be able to wrestle a grizzly bear but being protected from the infected and their snapping jaws was crucial. Especially now considering that I was alone, unarmed and in the middle of the goddamn city. Sydney was home to six million people. Those six million people were now hosts for the Oz virus. Violent, psychopathic hosts.