The Sixth Level (Secret Apocalypse Book 2)

by James Harden

  A few more seconds after that, we heard glass smashing.

  "Oh no," Daniel said.

  We backed away from the window. Daniel grabbed me and we dove for the floor as a giant steel wire smashed right through the window we had just been looking out. The steel wire seemed to have a mind of its own. After it smashed through the window it smashed through the far wall and simply kept going. Who knows how far it went? It could've gone right through to the other side of the building. Nothing was stopping it. Not reinforced glass or steel or concrete. Nothing.

  Outside we could hear the crack of the steel whips and it sounded like another building was coming down. Our building started to shake again.

  The wire that had smashed through the window seemed to be slithering through the building when all of a sudden it started coming back. Slowly at first but then it started moving faster and faster. And then it was gone, back through the glass wall it had smashed through.

  "Jesus, we need to get out of here," Daniel said. "The building could come down any second now!"

  We scrambled to our feet and headed back towards the stairwell. We needed to hurry. If the building came down, there would be no surviving it. We'd be crushed. Vaporized.

  As we ran for the stairs, I couldn’t’ help but wonder what the hell was going on. It was strange and terrifying. There was no way we could’ve prepared for this. I mean, the wires, they just snapped free. Was it the tension? Had they been damaged? Or was it something else? I know it sounds crazy but it looked like they were alive.

  There was no time to analyze it. We just had to run. We actually ran right through the hole the wire had created when it smashed through the building. Luckily it led straight to the emergency stairwell.

  We started running down the stairs and then jumping down each flight, the suit absorbing the impact of each leap.

  But after maybe five flights the light from above disappeared and the darkness swallowed us whole. We stopped. We were breathing hard, we were scared, confused, terrified. Daniel fumbled with his rifle for a second, trying to turn on the torch. He finally found the switch. The small light illuminated the stairwell.

  Fortunately the shaking and the rumbling had stopped. We could only assume that the wire supports from the tower had stopped flailing around, stopped slicing through and destroying the surrounding buildings.

  We held our breath for a few minutes as we listened and waited for the rumbling and the shaking to start back up. But it never did. The stairwell was silent.

  "We need to find a car," Daniel whispered. "Preferably a big one. Something with a bull bar. I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be a bumpy ride."

  Chapter 19

  We continued to move down the stairwell as Daniel’s torch created an island of light in other wise dark tunnel.

  For a while there I thought the stairwell would never end, that we would keep descending, deeper and deeper until we eventually stumbled into hell.

  I could just imagine it.

  We'd be standing right in the middle of hell. Completely lost and confused, scratching our heads like Bugs Bunny when he tunnels underground and takes a wrong turn. ‘Should’ve taken that left turn at Albuquerque’. And then Satan would be there, sizing us up, tilting his head to the side as if to say, ‘What are you doing here? Are you nuts?’

  At one point it was so dark it felt like we were inside a cave, or a mountain, or hundreds of miles below the Earth’s surface. I mean, our torch only lit up a small section of the stairwell. And all we could hear were our own footsteps and our ragged, almost whispered breathing. I don’t know about Daniel but I was trying my hardest to breathe as quietly as possible.

  It felt like we were the only people left on the planet. And I was the only girl in the world. I wondered if I would procreate with Daniel for the survival of the human race.

  "Shh."

  "What? I didn't say anything."

  "You're breathing too loudly," Daniel said.

  "Oh. Sorry."

  I needed to stop thinking about that kind of stuff. I needed focus on not falling down the stairs. I think it must’ve been a side effect of the adrenalin and the near death experiences.

  I noticed that my mind had started to wander a bit lately, like I was having these intense day dreaming episodes about absolute nonsense. Especially when I really should've been concentrating on what was going on. Apparently it was a side effect of post traumatic stress disorder, or so I had been told by various Doctors.

  I had to keep reminding myself that I couldn't afford to day dream. Not here. Not when I could be shot or killed or eaten at any second. It would only take one of the infected to sneak up on us and that would be the end.

  We arrived at the basement levels. According to the map on the back of the door, there were six sub basement levels of parking. Surely we'd be able to find a car to use. I just hoped the basement levels were deserted. This was the last place we wanted to meet any of the infected. Trapped underground with only one way out. I was feeling claustrophobic enough already.

  "Remember," Daniel said. "We want a bigger vehicle like an SUV, something that can take a pounding if necessary."

  "Got it."

  "But it can't be a new car. It's gotta be old enough so I can hot wire it. Can't hot wire new cars."

  "Right."

  After only a few minutes of searching, we settled on a black Range Rover. Apparently it was a late nineties model. It was built like a tank. Daniel seemed confident enough that he could hotwire it and get the engine to tick over.

  He lifted the bonnet and started tinkering around near the engine.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Disarming the airbags and the emergency fuel cut off."

  "Don't we need those?"

  "No. The airbags will just get in the way. If we ram something or if something hits us, especially if it’s something big like..."

  He was about to say ‘like whatever the hell is down there on the street.’ But he stopped himself.

  "But yeah," he continued. "If we get hit or whatever, we need to keep driving. If the airbags go off they’ll just blind us. That’s no good."

  "Damn. I hadn't even thought of that."

  "And I'll need to disarm the emergency engine shut off as well. Again if we get hit, the engine will cut off the fuel supply. Which means the engine will stop. If the engine stops we’re screwed. This thing basically needs to be ready for a crash derby. I'm no psychic but I’m predicting this is going to be a rough ride."

  Lucky for us, Daniel seemed to be regaining his composure. His rational thinking was coming back to him. And thank God for that. I would never have even thought to have disarmed the airbags. It seemed counter intuitive. But I guess he had a good point. Especially about the fuel cut off. I did not want to get hit and have the engine die on us.

  When Daniel had finished tinkering with the engine and had it hotwired, we hopped in the car and buckled up. We were ready to go.

  "Here, hold my rifle," Daniel said as he handed his weapon to me. "Do you know why they call the front seat riding shotgun?"

  "Ah, no."

  "Because back in the Wild West days, a person armed with a shotgun would sit up front of the wagon or stagecoach next to the driver just in case they were ambushed by bandits or Indians or whatever. Hence the term ‘riding shotgun’.

  That useless bit of trivia actually distracted me momentarily from the demolition derby we were about to embark on.

  "We only have the one rifle," Daniel added. "And only two magazines. That’s only sixty bullets. So if you do need to provide covering fire, short controlled, bursts, OK? And if you don't have a clear shot on something or if it’s out of range, save the ammo."

  "Right," I said.

  I held the rifle getting used to the weight of it, trying to convince myself that I had spent extra hours at the shooting range preparing myself for a moment like this.

  "Are you ready?" Daniel asked.

  "Ready as I'll ever be," I answered.
r />   He revved the engine and put the Range Rover into gear. The tires screeched for a split second before the four-wheel drive kicked in and gripped the smooth concrete. We took off, accelerating towards the exit gate.

  Chapter 20

  Daniel put his foot to the floor as the Range Rover sped towards the gate. We crashed through, completely destroying it upon impact.

  As soon as we broke through the gate of the parking lot, we smashed into a group of infected, splattering half decomposed bodies and limbs all over the road. For the first few blocks, it was indeed a bumpy ride, just as we predicted.

  There wasn't as many infected as there was before, though. It was like they had attacked en masse and then retreated to whatever hiding place they'd come out from. Like a swarm of bees, returning to a hive or something.

  "We can't really afford to look for your friends, for Maria right now," Daniel said as he swerved away from a group of infected, keeping his foot on the accelerator. "We need to regroup, make a new plan."

  "Yeah," I said, as I held on to the dash board and the seat, even though I didn’t really want to agree with him.

  I felt like we were giving up on the mission and giving up on my friends. I felt like I was abandoning them again, like I did before.

  I knew it was crazy to feel like that. We weren't giving up; we were just trying to stay alive. We had only been in the city for a few hours and yet we had already come so close to death, so many times. I mean, since this morning absolutely nothing had gone right. Nothing had gone to plan. And I’d somehow managed to survive a plane crash, an emergency parachute drop and being shot with a machine gun. Not to mention the horde of infected psychopaths and that giant monster thing that nearly got to us.

  When I thought about that cold hard fact, when I thought about how dangerous this city was and how many times we’d almost died, I found it hard to believe that my friends were still alive, that they had survived this long on their own. How old was the recording of their call for help? Nearly two weeks? In this hostile and unforgiving environment two weeks was an eternity. How long could someone survive here before the infected found them?

  I had to push these thoughts out of my head. I had to believe. I had to have faith in my friends and their ability to stay alive, to protect and help each other survive.

  Daniel swerved hard again. He maneuvered the Range Rover up onto the sidewalk because the road was blocked with abandoned cars. We were running over infected left right and center; chunks of flesh were exploding on to the hood of the car and on to the windshield.

  Daniel told me to keep an eye out for that big thing. If we came across that, we wouldn't be able to smash into it. We'd have to hit the brakes, turn around and try and outrun it.

  We turned down another main road and headed west. We were determined to drive in the opposite direction to the Sydney Tower and get as far away from the city as possible.

  Same plan different day, I thought to myself.

  It was tough going, even when the number of infected began to thin out, the roads were clogged with debris, and abandoned cars and rubble.

  We eventually came to the ANZAC bridge. It led out of the city and across one of the bays of Sydney Harbor. It was a gateway to the western suburbs.

  But sadly, just like the Sydney Harbor Bridge, it too had been destroyed.

  "This bridge was named after the Australian and New Zealand Army Corp," Daniel said flatly. "ANZAC for short."

  The bridge had two bronze statues posted at the western end. One of an Australian soldier and one of a New Zealand soldier. Eerily the statues had survived the demolition. They looked like silent guardians, solemn and solitary, grieving for lost casualties of war, paying respect to those who had paid the ultimate price.

  I wondered how many people had died here, crushed beneath the bridge, blown to bits by the military’s containment protocol. I guess the only way to get out of the city now was to find another way. We’d have to back track and head further south where we didn't need to cross a bridge to get out of the city. Maybe we could drive towards the airport and then head west?

  Daniel checked his GPS device. He said there was a main road, a motorway not far from here. It would lead west. Not sure if it would lead us anywhere near Maria but at least it would get us further away from the city. At the moment that was our top priority. It was really our only priority. If we didn’t get away soon we would be completely surrounded. And whatever that thing was that got Ethan and the others, that thing would find us and it would rip us in half and throw us to the horde of infected.

  We turned around. Daniel's voice was calm but I could tell by the way he was driving he was scared. He wanted to get out of the city as quickly as possible. He turned the car sharply and the tires screeched as the back end of the Range Rover swung out behind us.

  There was no clear path. There was no easy option. All the motorways and highways leading out of the city were clogged with abandoned vehicles. There was no getting passed them. We'd need a tank or a bulldozer. And even then it'd take forever.

  We were winding our way through the city streets looking for an alternate route. The inner city suburbs were disorientating and dangerous. The narrow streets, the high density housing estates, the buildings, the alleyways. There were literally millions of places for the infected to be hiding and waiting to ambush us like they did before.

  So Daniel kept his foot on the accelerator. We were still running over a few infected, although there seemed to be even less now. The low visibility wasn’t helping matters either. Sometimes the dust was so thick we could only see a few feet ahead and Daniel was forced to slow down.

  After about twenty minutes of driving around it became obvious we were lost. Daniel didn't want to stop the car in the middle of the city so I was trying to read my GPS device and read the street signs at the same time. I was failing miserably. I couldn't make out where we were on the map and Daniel was driving too fast.

  After awhile I’m pretty sure we'd just driven around in a massive circle.

  I started to panic.

  And Daniel was getting frustrated with my inability to read the map and navigate us out of the city. But it was hard to read the map when he was driving so fast. Plus the visibility was so poor we could barely see where we going. And every second street sign had been knocked over.

  We turned down another street. It was in bad shape. There were giant potholes and craters in the road. Cars were piled up everywhere like some giant had come through and shoveled all the cars into great, mountainous piles. Daniel finally slammed on the brakes and checked his own GPS device.

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  He took a deep breath. "Don't be. It's fine. This place is Armageddon right now. It's fine. We just need to plan a route and get the hell out of here."

  There was a large street sign directly in front of us. It read: Cross City Tunnel.

  According to the sign, the tunnel led out of the city and eventually to the airport. I'm not sure if we wanted to go there but at least it would get us away from the city. Maybe we could find a chopper and fly out of here, I thought hopefully.

  The road above the tunnel was completely blocked by cars and great big chunks of concrete. There were even some military tanks that had been left behind. But luckily there was a small gap at the entrance to the tunnel, between the abandoned cars and the debris.

  Daniel put the car into gear and approached the tunnel slowly. On our left was an abandoned military Humvee. Mounted on its roof was a massive machine gun.

  "Should we take that? I asked. "Might come in handy."

  "Probably out of fuel," Daniel answered. "That’s why it’s abandoned. And the windscreen wipers are pointing up, probably to warn people, let people know that it’s out of fuel. It’s not worth the risk."

  "What about that gun on the roof? Could we take that?"

  "It’s a fifty cal. machine gun. It’s big, heavy. Maneuverability is our biggest advantage right now. Hauling that thing around would only
slow us down."

  Daniel applied pressure to the brakes, slowing down even more. "But now that you mention it, there might be spare ammo or guns inside."

  He drove over so we were parallel to the Humvee. He put the car in park and pulled the hand brake on but kept the engine running.

  "I'm going in," he said. "Hand me the rifle."

  I handed him the rifle as he scanned the surrounding area. He looked out the rear windscreen to make sure there was no approaching infected. "If you see any signs of danger, anything at all, beep the horn. OK?"

  "OK."

  He then opened his door and jumped out. His movements were quick.

  He opened the rear door of the Humvee and climbed up into the armored vehicle and disappeared from view. And even though I knew he was right there, I started to freak out a little.

  I did not want to be alone again.

  The infected could come from anywhere; we could be surrounded without even knowing it. I had to keep reminding myself, that the low visibility was also helping us, that it was giving us cover, that it was concealing us.

  A few seconds later Daniel emerged with a spare rifle. It looked very similar to the one he already had.

  He jumped back in the Range Rover and handed the spare rifle to me. "And hey presto, now we have a matching set," he said. "Seems to be fully loaded. This takes our ammo total up to three clips. Ninety rounds. But we still have to be careful. If we come across any resistance, we still need to use caution, all right? Be cool, calm and collected. And if we have to use these guns, remember..."

  "I know, I know," I said cutting him off. "Short, controlled bursts."

  "All right then."

  "I’m cool as a cucumber," I said extremely unconvincingly.

  Daniel smiled and put the car back into gear and we continued slowly towards the tunnel.

  As we moved closer, Daniel furrowed his brow in concentration, squinting his eyes. He was staring at the dark mouth of the tunnel. I guess he was trying to see into it, or figure out if it was safe to drive through.