The Sixth Level (30 page)
Authors: James Harden
Jack and Maria dived under a large family sedan. Jack had his arm around Maria, pulling her close into his chest. Kenji and I hid under the car next to them.
But Daniel had remained standing. He quickly activated his cloaking device and moved out into the open. He moved away from the Toyota we were hiding under to see if he could get a better look at the jet or airplane or whatever it was.
"Can you see it?" Kenji asked.
"Yeah. It’s a drone. Looks like a Predator."
"What’s a drone," I asked.
"It’s an unmanned aircraft." Kenji answered. "Mainly used for reconnaissance missions."
"So there’s no pilot in that plane?"
"No. It’s all automatic. It has sensors that..." Kenji trailed off like he’d just thought of something important. "Daniel. I think you should get under the car. The Predator’s have infrared sensors. You’re not invisible to infrared!"
"It’s fine," Daniel replied. "The suit reduces the heat signature of the wearer. It can’t see me."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I’m positive. Besides, it’s not even looking over here. It seems to be doing a wide, low circle of the airport terminals. Definitely a recon mission. Looks like it’s checking out the airplane hangars."
"The hangars?" Maria asked. "What's it looking for?"
"Not sure," Daniel said. "Maybe the military want to see if it’s safe to return?"
"So they don’t know we’re here?" Jack asked.
"I don't know," Daniel replied. "I don’t think so."
"So what the hell is it doing here then?"
"Maybe it's not looking for us," Maria offered. "Maybe it's looking for something else."
Eventually, after a few minutes the noise of the propeller faded off into the distance.
"It’s heading back out to sea," Daniel said.
"What do we do now?" I asked.
In front of us was nothing but wide open space for at least several miles. Off to the right was one terminal and off to the left was the other. I guess, the smaller one was the domestic terminal and the bigger one was the international terminal.
The domestic terminal was a bit closer, not by much but we decided to go their first. The only problem was once we started to cross the runways we’d be totally exposed. If another drone or spy plane or whatever decided to come back we’d be screwed.
We talked about how maybe Daniel or myself should go first with our cloaking devices activated. But we figured there was no point in waiting any longer. Now was probably the best time to go for it. The drone had obviously flown back to an aircraft carrier somewhere off the coast, probably to refuel. This meant that while it was flying back and refueling we had a small window of time.
So we ran for it. We stuck close together in our little diamond formation.
We ran fast.
Chapter 38
"What is it?" Kenji asked.
"I don’t know. It’s just...I don’t think the military would’ve set up their base of operations near the terminals. Too many civilians."
"So maybe they didn’t set up there," Kenji said.
Daniel swiveled around and looked back down the main runway, out towards the ocean. "There!" he pointed. "It’s over there."
We all turned and looked back down the runway to where he was pointing.
"Are you sure?" Kenji asked as he looked through the scope on his rifle as well.
"Yeah. That’s definitely the HQ."
I had to strain my eyes to see it. It was off to the side about half way down the runway, about two miles away. From here it looked like a couple of large green tents or marquees, which I guess that’s pretty much all it was.
"Is it deserted?" Jack asked with his arm around Maria.
"It appears so," he said as he slowly scanned back and forth.
"Why did they set up their base all the way out there?" I asked. "Why didn’t they use one of the hangars? Or even the air traffic control tower?"
"I don’t know," Daniel answered. "But we’re going to find out."
We continued running towards the base of operations. It became obvious the closer we got that it was completely abandoned. But just to be on the safe side, Daniel and Kenji moved ahead and made sure it was empty.
They moved together, perfectly in sync with one another. Both of them had their rifles up to their shoulders even though I’m pretty sure Daniel didn’t even have any ammo left at that point.
After a few minutes they waved us over. They were both smiling.
The temporary base consisted of two extremely large, dark green tents, about the size of a small town hall. They were both joined together. Situated around the rear of the tents were two Humvees. One had a huge satellite dish on top of its roof and the other one had a machine gun mounted on top.
But the best thing of all, right next to the Humvees was a freakin helicopter.
Now I knew why Kenji and Daniel were smiling.
Inside the tent were rows and rows of tables. Whiteboards and large monitors were situated towards the front of the tent. Maps of the surrounding areas lined the walls. To my surprise there were a lot of laptop computers left behind. I guess it was sort of like the camp Daniel’s team had set up. Only this was about twenty times bigger.
Outside the tent, parked right next to the main runway was a whole row of fuel tankers. They looked like they were lined up and ready to go, waiting for jets to land so they could be refueled. There were six of them.
I started to get the feeling that the military had left in a real hurry. The computers were still on. There was paperwork and maps of Sydney left strewn all over the tables and the ground. Coffee cups were left half empty. Or half full, depending on your outlook.
Kenji had moved over to the Humvee with the machine gun on its roof. He checked the back seat and found some rifles and spare ammunition. He gave me one of the rifles as he and Daniel reloaded.
It was like Christmas. We had guns, ammunition, our choice of armored Humvees and even a helicopter.
I picked up a pair of large binoculars that had been dropped on the ground and looked back towards the international and domestic terminals.
Daniel was right, there didn’t appear to be anyone home at all. But as I looked closer I slowly started to realize there was indeed some evidence of the military being there. Situated right near the terminals and the individual boarding gates were the burnt out wreckages of commercial passenger jets. There were Jumbo jets and smaller ones as well. All that remained of them was their blackened skeletal framework.
This could only mean one thing. People had boarded these planes hoping to get out of the country, hoping to escape. And the military had enforced its containment protocol to the fullest.
It’s amazing just how lucky we’d been to escape the full brunt of the military’s might.
"It’s a Blackhawk chopper," Daniel said referring to the helicopter parked next to the tent. "If it’s fuelled up, we can get out of here."
"Will it make it all the way back to the camp?" I asked.
"No. It won’t make it that far," Daniel answered. "On a full tank we can get maybe five hundred miles."
And there's the catch, I thought.
"But that’ll get us out and away from here," Kenji added. "Away from the population centers."
"
I don’t know, maybe we’re better off taking one of these Humvees," Jack suggested. "At least then we won't get stranded. We’d have a better chance of refueling."
"
Yeah, because it was so easy to fill up last time," Maria said. "Did you suddenly develop a case of amnesia? We were almost killed by a giant mechanical spider!"
"But next time we’ll be prepared."
"Prepared? How the hell can we ever prepare for something like that?"
"Well, I don't know. But you saw what it did. It watched and waited. Next time we will be more careful."
"I’m not convinced," Maria said. "I vote for the chopper."
"OK,
so let's say we fly out," I said. "How far will we get?"
"Like, I said before," Daniel answered. "We can get about five hundred miles on a full tank of fuel."
"And where will that get us?" I asked. "Should we aim for a town or somewhere? I mean, where the hell would we even fly to?"
"I wouldn't aim for a town," Kenji warned. "They would be just as overrun as the cities."
"I guess our best option is to get all the way back to camp," Daniel said. "Back to the Nullarbor plains."
"How far is that?" Kenji asked.
"Too far. We'll never make it. We'd need to refuel."
"
There's gotta be some airfields, or regional airports between here and the camp where we can re-fuel," Maria said.
"I can check my GPS," I suggested.
"Well yeah, there'll definitely be airports between here and the camp," Daniel answered. "But we don’t know if they’ll have any fuel and we don’t know how secure those places will be. I know from experience that in disaster areas and war torn areas, fuel becomes scarce. People start to panic and as a result they hoard food, water and fuel. And on top of that the supply is cut off."
"So what you're saying is," Jack said. "Any place we set down to refuel will be a huge gamble? And it may not even have any fuel at all?"
Daniel nodded.
"OK, so maybe we should take the Humvee after all," I said. "I mean, if we don't know if we can refuel, there's no real point in taking the chopper."
"But taking the Humvee won’t be any safer," Kenji pointed out. "
The back streets might be clear but the main roads leading out of the city are a parking lot. They’re completely blocked up with abandoned cars. So are the highways. You know this. The Humvee will only do us any good if we’re already out of the city. Way out of the city."
"
Maybe we could tie the Humvee to the Blackhawk and take it with us somehow?" Jack offered.
Daniel shook his head. "No, it’s too heavy. The Blackhawk isn’t designed to carry that kind of load. And besides, we don’t have anything to secure it with."
We were arguing back and forth. It was getting pretty heated. The problem was we were all imagining the worst case scenario, which is totally understandable given the circumstances. It was weird though, finally we had come by a bit of good luck and yet it still presented a problem.
"Guys, remember what you said about taking risks in a warzone," I said.
Everyone suddenly stopped arguing and looked at me.
"We need to think this through carefully but we also need to understand that no matter what option we go with, it’s going to be risky. We’re right in the middle of an apocalyptic warzone. We need to take calculated risks remember?"
Kenji and Daniel both nodded.
"Let’s make a list of pros and cons," I suggested.
It was crazy after everything that had happened today we now had time to sit down and write a list and plan what we were going to do instead of just running for our lives. It was an amazing yet weird luxury.
I moved over to one of the collapsible tables, looking for a pen or a pad or something to write with. But there were no pens, no magic markers. There were a few boxes and a few briefcases that upon closer inspection, I realized were computers. Most of them were black.
But one of them was metallic silver.
And there was a smeared, bloody hand print on the case.
I opened it. Turned it on. Amazingly it still had about fifty percent of its battery power left.
Daniel moved over to have a look.
There was a message on the screen.
It read: ‘
Welcome Doctor Hunter’. A cursor blinked at us, waiting for a password to be entered.
"You gotta be kidding me," I said.
Welcome Doctor Hunter.
"What is it?" Daniel asked.
"Doctor Hunter…he… he tried to kill us… he was crazy."
A shiver ran down my spine as I realized this computer belonged to the madman who tried to harvest our organs in the morgue of North Sydney hospital.
Chapter 39
When I said his name, Jack and Maria snapped their heads in my direction like I'd said a bad, bad word. The look they gave me was one of anger and disbelief. Anger because if I was trying to make a joke it was just plain sick. And disbelief because we had handcuffed Doctor Hunter to the fridge in the morgue. We had left him for dead.
Kenji moved over to Daniel to see if what I was saying was true.
"It’s got a password lock," I said.
Daniel tried to type in a few basic options.