The Sixth Level (23 page)

"Yeah or it could get us all killed." Jack said.

"It’s the only way we’ll have a chance of contacting Maria," Daniel replied. "She needs to be in the middle of the ground. She needs to be ready. Otherwise this whole thing won’t work."

Daniel was right. But he couldn’t go by himself. Maria doesn’t even know who he is. What if she doesn’t believe him? What if she thinks it’s a trap?

"I’m going with you," I said.

"No way. This is a one person job. There’s no point in risking your life as well. It’s unnecessary. Remember what I said about taking calculated risks, and being smart?"

"As a matter of fact I do remember. But did you stop and think that maybe Maria won’t believe you when you tell her you’re here to rescue her? That maybe she’ll think you’re crazy for asking her to stand in the middle of the cricket pitch, out in the open, exposed for the whole world to see?"

"She’s got a point," Kenji agreed.

"She’ll believe me," I added.

"No," Jack said. "One of us will go."

"I’ve got the NBC suit," I reminded them. "I’ll be safer than either of you. Faster too."

I could tell they were hesitant, especially since they were probably used to being a lot more careful than this. But we had to contact Maria. If she wasn’t ready the plan wouldn't work. We needed the timing to be perfect. And we needed Maria to be in the middle of the field.

"OK," Kenji finally said. "I’ll be on the roof of the Humvee providing cover. We’ll keep the engine running. But if there’s any sign of trouble, anything at all, you get the hell out, all right?"

We both nodded our heads as I felt my adrenalin levels spike even higher. I'm doing this for my friends, I reminded myself. For Maria.

Chapter 28

"Shouldn’t we be running to the tree line?" I asked in a whisper.

"Not yet," Daniel answered.

Behind us, Kenji climbed on to the roof of the Humvee, lying flat on his belly in a sniper’s position. "Good luck," he said.

We’d picked out the tree we were going try for; it was directly in front of us about five hundred yards away, maybe more, maybe a little to the left. It looked big enough so that we could climb up and hide among its leaves and branches. And there were enough footholds to climb up to a decent height so we could get a better signal for the radio. Hopefully once we were that close, the height wouldn’t matter so much.

Daniel stopped and scanned the surrounding area. He turned around to Kenji. "We’re going stealth. Keep your weapon on the tree line. If we get in trouble, we’ll disengage our cloaking devices."

"Understood."

Daniel told me to unzip a small compartment at the base of my collar. He told me to put the hood over my head. The hood was made of an extremely fine mesh-like material. It was like a stocking or panty hose. It fit over my head and completely covered my face and neck, like a balaclava.

"On your left wrist, on the control screen, there should be a small icon, a little picture of an eye."

"Yeah."

"Press that. That’s the cloaking device."

Sure enough there was a little icon that looked like an eye. I looked up to see Daniel already shimmering, and fading into invisibility. I did the same. A second later, we were ghosts.

I heard Kenji swear in disbelief. "OK, I can’t see you anymore. At all. So if you want covering fire you’ll totally need to disengage your cloaking devices."

"Will do," Daniel replied. "But don’t worry. We won’t need it."

As we set off for the tree line I thought about how lucky we were to now have two fully trained soldiers helping us. I must admit, I thought I was going to feel kind of awkward about the whole Daniel kissing incident, that moment of insanity. I guess
the possibility of death was enough to subdue those kinds of feelings. And really when you compared my stupid mistake to everything else that was happening, it really didn’t compare.
It
didn’t even come close.

Plus I knew deep down that kissing Daniel was a mistake. It was a temporary lapse in my judgment, a moment of weakness. I can’t be blamed for that right? If Kenji knew, he would understand right? And I guess that was a whole other can of worms. Do I tell him? Do I even bother? Do I need to?

The more I thought about it the more I convinced myself that all that crap could wait until we were safe and as far away from the city as possible. But then I started to think about whether or not we would ever be safe or whether or not we’d ever even make it out of the city.

Thinking too much in this situation was a bad, bad thing.

I looked up ahead to the tree line. "Do we run now?"

"No," Daniel answered in a whisper. "If we run, we’ll make noise, and we might leave a dust trail. The infected might hear us or see the dust. I don’t want to take that risk. Just keep walking. We’ll be there in no time. Keep your eyes peeled for any signs of danger."

He didn’t need to remind me. I felt like my head was on a swivel. I was constantly looking left and right. I suddenly wondered if Jack or Kenji were watching our rear. I mean it’s not like we were fighting one particular front. After all, we were completely surrounded when you thought about it. So I guess it didn’t really matter if anyone was watching our rear. And I guess it was way too late to bring up that concern. We were already committed to this last minute change of plans.

A couple of minutes later we arrived at the tree line. The trees were huge. They were maybe thirty feet high, with huge trunks. They had good, strong branches for climbing with plenty of foliage to hide amongst.

The best thing was that they lined both sides of the road, providing excellent cover. This was a good thing because just on the other side of the road were more infected than I’d ever seen in one place. The energy they were giving off was amazing. The fact that they could sustain that level of intensity, for what seemed like forever was mind boggling.

At that moment they reminded me of a cross between a crowd at a rock concert, like a giant, angry mosh pit and mob riot.

The infected were constantly pressing forward, cramming up against the stadium walls. Some looked like they were pushed up on top of each other. The sheer weight of the crowd and the force of their numbers was actually pushing the closest of the infected up the walls of the stadium. I wondered how many they needed before they piled up and over.

We could also see the cars of the convoy or motorcade or whatever it was. There were a couple of big black cars and two armored Humvees which had been flipped over. One was lying on its roof and the other was on its side. These were in amongst the crowd of infected.

We stayed crouched at the base of the trunk for awhile. Watching and observing the horde, making sure that none of them had seen us or heard us. If they saw us now, before we started climbing we could get away easily. But if they charged while we were climbing or once we got to the top, it would take us longer to get down and away, putting the group in more danger.

Once we were satisfied none of them had seen us. We made our move. Thanks to the suits we were able to climb up pretty easily. Once we were up as high as we could get, maybe twenty feet or so, we tried to call Maria again.

Daniel handed me the radio. He removed it from his side pocket. Being that close to Daniel, I could just make out his shape, but it still looked weird when he handed me the black radio. It was all distorted and it looked like it was floating in mid-air as he passed it to me.

"Time to shine," he said I think in attempt to calm my nerves. And in a weird way, I was actually calm. Maybe taking the initiative like this had a calming effect. I mean, on the one hand I was completely wired on adrenalin but on the other hand, I knew we had the element of surprise. For once we had the upper hand, well, sort of. But we were on the attack, on the move. We were doing something instead of just hiding or running away.

And it was kind of weirdly exciting being this close to so many of the infected but remaining unseen, hidden, safe. I should've been a ninja, I thought to myself.

I clicked the button on the side of the radio and whispered into the speaker. "Maria. Are you there? Come in, Maria."

Static.

We waited a few seconds before I tried again. "Maria. Are you there? Come in."

Finally a reply. "Hello? Who is this?"

"Maria! It’s Rebecca. Where are you?"

"Rebecca? What… how.. What are you doing here? Where have you been?"

"It’s a long story."

"Are you with Jack?" she asked. "Is Kenji there? Do you know where they are?"

I thought I could hear a strain in her voice, a slight tremor. She was frantic, afraid.

"Yes, we’re all here."

"Oh, thank God. They’ve been gone all day. I’m starting to freak out here. Something terrible has happened."

"I know. We can see that. We’re here to rescue you."

"What? What do you mean? Where are you?"

"We’re right outside?"

"Outside? But they’re out there!"

"We know that already. But it’s OK, we’ve got a plan. We can pick you up; we can get you out of there. But you need to get to the middle of the cricket pitch."

"Down on the field? Are you out of your mind?"

"Trust us. We’ve got a plan. We've got an armored Humvee. We’re gonna smash through the horde and then smash through the emergency access tunnel. We’ll meet you in the middle of the field, pick you up and make our getaway before the infected can pick themselves off the concrete."

There was a slight pause. "I don’t know. It's getting pretty dangerous in here. They’ve been going crazy for hours now. They won’t stop," she paused again weighing up her decision.

Then the connection went hazy. There was more static.

"Maria? Are you still there?"

"Can – hear me? I’m scared. Some – inside. On field. Open... out there… don’t want to be exposed. Won’t last long. Rebecca? Are you there? Hurry! Please!"

"Maria, if you can hear me. We’ll be there in two minutes. Be on the field. Be ready. We’re coming for you!"

Chapter 29

We started running back for the Humvee.

"Do we switch off the cloaking device?" I asked as we ran.

"No. Not until we get closer."

I snuck a glance over my shoulder. Luckily we weren’t being chased. We still had the element of surprise.

About fifty yards away from the Humvee, Daniel switched off his cloak. He shimmered back into sight.

"Time to go guys," he said to Kenji and Jack "We don’t have much time."

Kenji was off the roof in an instant. We weren’t even all the way in before Jack took off straight for the stadium.

"So what happened?" Jack asked. "Is she all right?"

"Yeah," I answered. "But she’s scared. She’s worried about being out in the open. She doesn’t like that idea at all. But I said we'll be there in the middle to meet her in two minutes."

"But she is going to meet us there on the field, right?" Kenji asked.

"Ah, I think so. Yes."

"What do you mean, you think so?"

"Well, the radio connection was a bit distorted. I couldn’t quite make out what she said. But I’m pretty sure she agreed to the plan."

"So we don’t’ even know if she’ll be there?

"I... I’m sorry, it was.."

"Don’t worry," Jack said as he floored the accelerator. "She’ll be there."

I glanced at the speedometer; we were up to sixty miles per hour already. The massive engine was working overtime. It was redlining. I almost felt sorry for anything that got in our way.

Almost.

We crashed through the tree line with the engine roaring, the tires screeching and the horn blaring.

Our plan was to do a lap of the stadium first, to get them away from where we wanted to enter on the northern side. So we headed off in a counter clock wise direction.

But then Jack actually slowed down.

"What are you doing?" I asked in disbelief.

"Need to make sure they're following us."

It was weird making this much noise and actually trying to get spotted after sneaking around for so long. Now we were going in with our guns blazing our horn blaring. Full throttle. Everything, decidedly not stealth.

I looked out my window, behind us. It was a sea of infected. And every single one of them was coming for us. Every single one of them was hungry.

Jack picked up the pace as we drove right around the stadium.

When we approached the northern access tunnel he took the Humvee out nice and wide so we could get a good run at the gate.