The Sixth Level (Secret Apocalypse Book 2)

by James Harden

  Daniel activated his cloaking device again and grabbed the binoculars.

  We ducked behind the tables and chairs of the forward base of operations, hoping the drone wouldn’t see us, praying the cammo net that covered this temporary headquarters would be enough to conceal us and our body heat from the Predator’s infrared sensors.

  I positioned myself under a table near the front of tent so I could see what was going on.

  The Predator appeared to be searching the airport again. This time more closely. It was circling the terminals, slowing down to the point where it looked like it might stall and fall out of the sky.

  "What's it looking for?" I asked.

  "Don't know," Daniel answered.

  The drone finished circling the terminals and then moved over to the hangars.

  "Why is it circling those hangars?" Maria asked. "What’s over there?"

  "Maybe they’ve got some jets stored inside," Kenji offered. "Or maybe they want to see if they can use them?"

  "Why did they even abandon the airport in the first place?" Jack asked. "It looks perfectly safe to me."

  "Yeah why did they?" Maria said. "Isn’t the airport like, really important? Don’t they need it?"

  Daniel ignored the questions. He was focused on the red sky, keeping the binoculars pointed directly at the drone.

  Kenji moved up next to me, kneeling in a shooter’s position. "Judging by the bullet shells and the dried blood at the perimeter fence, I’d say there was a huge struggle here. A last stand. If I had to guess, I’d say they military were looking to reclaim it."

  The Predator drone banked high and wide, disappearing from view. And just like that it was gone.

  "That thing is starting to get annoying," Jack said.

  Daniel deactivated his cloaking device. He was about to put the binoculars down but he picked them back up and looked over at the hangars. "Oh no."

  "What is it?" I asked.

  "Over there!" he pointed.

  "What? What the hell is it?"

  He didn’t say anything. He just gave me the binoculars. I looked in the direction he was pointing.

  Over in the shadows of the hangars, next to the international terminal was a figure.

  It was a man.

  And he was displaying the familiar movements of someone infected with the Oz virus. He was stumbling forward, his arms were flailing. He then lifted his head. It was as if he looked right at me, right down the lens of the binoculars. And then he started sprinting, coming right for us.

  There was no way he could see us, right? He was too far away, wasn’t he?

  We all stared at this lone infected man for awhile. We should’ve reacted right away. But it was weirdly hypnotic. It was frightening, yet fascinating. I couldn’t turn away. He was running for us, as fast as he could. His leg looked bent, like it was broken, like his bone was sticking out through his kneecap.

  "How do they do it?" Maria asked. "How can they keep going like that?"

  "Pain receptors are completely shut down." Kenji said as he stood up, shouldered his rifle and flicked the safety off.

  He looked through the scope, measured the distance and sized up his target. It was too far away to shoot from a standing position. He moved over to the corner of a table and rested the barrel of his rifle on it. He looked through the scope again and took aim. He fired a single shot, hitting the infected man, blowing his left arm clean off.

  But it kept running towards us.

  Kenji took a deep breath, adjusted the sight, fired again. This time he missed completely. He took another deep breath, keeping his composure. He exhaled slowly. He fired, aiming for its legs, blowing apart it's already damaged knee. The infected man fell to the ground.

  But the damn thing kept clawing its way forward.

  Thankfully it was no longer running at full sprint. Kenji had bought us some time. I was starting to realize that was as good as it was ever going to get. We were never going to be safe here. Not until we were long gone out of the city, out of the country.

  We started arguing again. There had to be more of them. There just had to be. Why else would the military abandon this place? We all saw the heavy duty machine guns at the perimeter fence. We all saw the empty bullet shells and the dried blood. How many infected had come through here? How many would it take to overthrow the military’s base?

  There was no time to rest and eat and rehydrate. Not anymore. We had to make a choice. We had to make it right now. And we had to live or die by the consequences.

  Chapter 41

  "We have to go," Kenji said. "It’s not safe here."

  "Let’s fly out," Maria suggested.

  "But if we take the chopper we’ll run out of fuel in no man’s land!" Jack argued. "At least if we take the Humvee we’ll have a better chance of filling up when we run out of fuel."

  I shook my head. "We nearly died trying to fill up the goddamn Humvee. Filling up is no longer a simple everyday process. It’s life threatening. Dangerous."

  "But we don’t even know if that chopper works," Jack said. "Maybe they left it behind because it’s broken."

  I guess because we were arguing and trying to figure out what to do, we didn’t hear the jets until they were practically on top of us.

  There were two of them. Weird looking. Big and bulky. And heavily armed.

  "What the hell?" Maria asked. "What’s going on?"

  "Jesus," Daniel said. "They’re bringing in the big guns. They’re A-10 Warthogs. Bombers."

  I looked up at them through the binoculars. "What are they bombing?"

  "I don’t know."

  The Warthogs flew for the storage hangars, passing directly over them. Were the hangars their targets? I looked more closely over at the massive storage sheds; zooming in as far as I could with the binoculars. It was only then did I notice the huge sliding doors of the hangars were closed. I couldn’t quite tell from where we were but it looked like they were chained shut. They were barricaded with sandbags and concrete barriers.

  The warthogs began to circle back around.

  Kenji was looking through the scope on his rifle. "The hangars are locked and barricaded from the outside," he said, confirming what I was seeing.

  "Why would they do that?" Maria asked.

  "They’re hiding something inside," Kenji whispered.

  I don’t know why he whispered that. Maybe because he realized what it actually meant. Because as far as I could tell, it meant that the military had herded a whole crowd of people into those hangars. They had locked the doors. Thrown away the key.

  People inside had been trapped. Quarantined. Nowhere to go.

  Had they been infected?

  The warthogs flew over the hangars firing their missiles and dropping their bombs. Huge orange fireballs engulfed the buildings and the surrounding areas. We felt the shockwave from the blast as the ground shook. A second later the noise of the explosions reached us, like we were watching a movie with the sound out of sync.

  We were shell shocked. No one said a word or moved or did anything. A few minutes later the smoke from the explosions had drifted up and away into the dusty, red sky.

  Kenji shouldered his rifle once more and looked over at the wreckage. I scanned with the binoculars to see if anything remained.

  A gust of wind blew through the smoke, giving us a clear line of sight. What I saw turned my blood cold.

  Ice freakin cold.

  In amongst the concrete rubble and the twisted steel support structures were the infected. They were everywhere. They were running in all directions. Again, there was too many to count, and again they reminded me of ants defending their nest.

  "We gotta go." Kenji said his voice eerily calm.

  I lowered the binoculars, rubbed my eyes and had another look just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.

  Unfortunately everything I was seeing was real.

  Daniel shouldered his rifle as well and looked through the scope. "
Oh my God. How? Why?"

  "What the hell is it?" Jack asked.

  Jack and Maria were both squinting but without the aid of a telescopic lens they couldn’t quite see what was happening.

  "It’s the infected…they’re… they’re everywhere," I stammered unable to form whole sentences.

  Daniel couldn’t believe it. "Why the hell did they lock up so many people?"

  "They panicked," Kenji said. "They lost control, so they panicked."

  It would not have taken long for the infection to spread from person to person in such a confined area like that. I wondered how many people the military had forced in their at gun point.

  "There’s so many of them," Daniel said in disbelief.

  Too many, I thought to myself. Too many to count. And too many to shoot. They must’ve been crammed in there like sardines.

  "How did so many survive those bombs?" I asked. "Those jets just unleashed a whole arsenal!"

  No one answered me. They were still in shock, mesmerized by the sheer number of infected that were now running and staggering, and crawling all over the airport runways. They were running blindly in all directions. A lot of them were on fire, even more had been scorched black.

  We had to leave. And we would have to fly out. We couldn’t risk getting trapped on the ground in one of the Humvees. Not with that many infected running loose. We had to take our chances in the sky.

  The Warthogs flew in low for another pass, firing whole clusters of rockets, taking careful aim not to destroy any section of runway. They were expert shooters, I’ll give them that. And they were taking out hundreds of infected at a time. But unfortunately there was still a huge number left.

  Kenji warned us if the Warthogs couldn’t take them all out, they’ll probably bring in the Apache attack helicopters, just like they did when the destroyed the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

  We did not want to be here when the Apache’s arrived.

  Once again we found ourselves fighting a war on two fronts.

  "So what the hell do we do?" Jack asked.

  "We have to fly out," Kenji said. "And we gotta go right now. How long to prep the chopper for takeoff?" he asked Daniel.

  "Maybe five minutes," Daniel answered. "Minimum three."

  "We don't have five minutes!" Maria shouted. "The infected will be here before then."

  She was right. The infected were running at full sprint. It wouldn’t take them long to get here.

  "Those fuel tankers," Kenji said. "We can blow them up. It won't stop them completely but it'll buy us some time."

  "Yeah," Jack said smiling. "Just like the hardware store. Only bigger."

  Daniel warned us that jet fuel was much more volatile than regular fuel, much more dangerous.

  But we didn’t have a choice. The infected were running blindly in our direction. They didn’t know we were here yet, but as soon as they did, we were dead.

  Chapter 42

  The rush of adrenalin was back, forcing my body to move and forcing my brain into overdrive.

  Daniel was already at the chopper. He gave it a quick inspection and confirmed it was OK to fly. He jumped into the pilot’s seat and began performing the pre-flight checks, getting it ready for takeoff.

  Our plan was simple as it usually was when we made stuff up on the go. It was based on the explosion we had created in the hardware store earlier. The main difference being it would be much, much bigger.

  And for it to work everyone had to be involved. Even Maria. Sure we wanted to protect her but she had to help, it was the only way. We needed to blow up at least three of the fuel tankers to create a big enough explosion and create a big enough wall of fire to shield us from the chasing horde of infected.

  This meant that Kenji, Jack and I would each drive a fuel tanker and park it about half way back down the main runway. Maria would follow us in the Humvee with the machine gun mounted on its roof and pick us up and drive us back to the chopper. As we made our getaway, Kenji would open fire with the machine gun and blow the fuel tankers sky high. Hopefully the bullets hitting the metal tanks would create a big enough spark to ignite the fuel. Hopefully they weren’t bulletproof.

  The Warthogs continued to fly overhead as we made our way to the fuel tankers, although they seemed to have stopped firing.

  "Do you think they’ve seen us yet?" I asked Kenji.

  "Not sure. But as soon as we blow these tankers they’ll know we’re here."

  "And once they know we’re here, what’s stopping them from attacking us?"

  "Nothing. In fact they probably will."

  "Oh, great."

  "Don’t worry, they'll probably be out of missiles by the time we take off. And once we’re in the air we should be able to out maneuver them."

  For some reason I didn’t find Kenji’s words very reassuring.

  We each chose a fuel tanker and started them up. As I turned the key in the ignition I suddenly realized there would be no turning back from here. And while we drove the fuel tankers out into the middle of the runways we would basically be driving a massive portable bomb. Just one spark, just one stray bullet or rocket or missile and we would all be vaporized. I guess it was best not to think about that.

  I had to push hard on the clutch to get the engine into gear. But after a few tense seconds I finally got the truck to move. It was slow going at first but as I up-shifted gears I was able to build a bit of speed.

  Kenji was already well ahead. This was a good thing because I was really hoping he’d be able to pick a suitable location to park the tankers.

  This would prove to be a crucial decision.

  If we parked the fuel tankers too far down the runway, the horde of infected would catch up with us and run us down before we got a chance to get away.

  On the other hand, if we parked the tankers too close to the base and the chopper we would almost certainly blow ourselves up.

  I had no idea where this sweet spot would be so I was glad Kenji was out in front.

  As I pulled further away from the base of operations, I looked in the side mirror, back at the chopper hoping to see its rotor blades spinning.

  But instead, to my absolute horror I saw that Jack had hopped out of his tanker. He was over at the Humvee, helping Maria. She had obviously stalled the engine and was having a hard time trying to drive the thing.

  I’m not surprised. I remember just after Jack got his driver’s license he took us out for a spin in his car. And even though it’s illegal he let Maria and I drive. It was stupid and dangerous. But it was loads of fun. I was surprised at how good I was. And even more surprised at how bad Maria was.

  Whenever she tried to change gears, the car would stop and start and bunny hop. Eventually she would change the gears but not before we had all been violently shaken back and forth.

  That was only a few months ago. Neither Maria nor myself had driven much since. We probably wouldn’t be getting our licenses for awhile. But I guess we’d better get better at driving, and we’d better do it quick.

  Maria finally got the Humvee moving, only slightly stalling and bunny hopping as she moved out on to the runway. But once she got going she must have floored the accelerator because she started moving faster than any of us.

  Jack hurried back over to his fuel tanker and slowly started to catch up.

  I changed gears again and put my foot to the floor, revving the huge engine to its limit. I leant forward over the steering wheel and looked out the windshield up to the sky. I was trying to see where those damn jets were but I couldn’t see them anywhere.

  To my left, Jack had caught up and was now driving parallel to me. Maria was following closely behind.

  I looked around for Kenji but I couldn’t see him. I glanced in the side mirrors. For some reason Kenji had stopped. He had jumped out of the cabin and moved to the rear of his tanker.

  "What the hell are you doing?" I shouted even though no one could hear me.

  A few seconds later, Jack and I had driven as far as we
dared. We both slammed on our breaks at pretty much the exact same time. The infected were only a couple hundred yards away now. And they were closing fast.

  I jumped out of the fuel truck, not bothering to turn its engine off.

  Maria drove up next to where I had parked and I jumped in the back seat. Jack was close behind. He jumped in the front seat and pushed Maria over so he could drive.

  "You know technically girls are better drivers than boys," she said.

  "I totally agree," Jack replied. "And as soon as you pass your license exam, and actually get your driver’s license, I’ll let you drive."

  "Ah guys," I said. "What the hell is Kenji doing?"

  Jack turned the Humvee around so we were pointed back towards the chopper.

  Kenji was still outside his truck. He was fiddling with something on the actual tank. He then began to unravel what looked like a massive hose.

  "It’s the fuel hose," Jack said.

  "What’s he doing?" I asked.

  Kenji then turned the hose on and jet fuel began spewing and pouring and gushing out on to the runway. Then he got back in and continued driving towards us, leaving a trail as he went. He then drove out and around the other tankers, weaving in between them.

  I guess he was leaving a trail of fuel, like an ignition trail, just to make sure each of the fuel tankers caught on fire, making sure the explosion and the wall of fire would be as big as possible.

  It was an insurance policy. It was a good idea but the problem was he hadn’t left us with much time to get to a safe distance.

  Kenji finally parked his tanker. Each one was parked about a hundred feet apart. Jack drove over and picked up Kenji. Once he was in the Humvee we sped off back towards Daniel and the Blackhawk.

  I stuck my head out the window so I could see how far away the infected were.

  They had made it to the fuel trucks. Most of them were running around the tankers, some were climbing up and over the actual fuel tanks. All of them were looking right at us. They definitely knew we were here.

  Kenji stood up through the man hole in the Humvee and grabbed onto the massive machine gun and swiveled back towards the fuel tankers.