Torn Apart

by James Harden

And I actually let out a cheer.

  I looked around for another point of cover. Maybe I could even make a run for it to one of the skyscrapers in the city, I thought. Rest up for a few days.

  I decided to wait until all of the soldiers had completely fallen back. I did not want to risk being spotted.

  The Blackhawk took off slowly and moved out over the water. But then once again, everything went straight to hell.

  The tail of the Blackhawk swung out violently. The whole chopper began to spiral. It was out of control like the damn thing had been hit by an RPG, or one of those hellfire missiles.

  It continued to spiral.

  There was no stopping it. The pilot had lost control.

  A split second later the Blackhawk crashed in the harbor. Right in the water.

  Only the strong survive

  The rest of the men in black had cleared out. They were either dead or had retreated, under the impression that their target was secure.

  I was scanning the water, looking for survivors.

  All I could see were bodies.

  Infected or not. I couldn’t tell.

  I fired off a couple of rounds but then realized there was really no point. Before I even realized what I was doing, I was up and running for the chopper. I’d left the safety of my hiding spot, exposed for any sniper or any soldier with a half decent aim. Exposed to the infected.

  I braced myself for a bullet in the back. But the shot never came.

  I kept running.

  The voice in my head kept yelling at me. Blaming me.

  “This is all your fault.”

  “You left her.”

  “You made the call.”

  “If she’s dead now, it’s all on you.”

  “Her blood. Your head.”

  “No. It was the right thing. We had to leave her. It was the right thing to do. Maria needs out of here, out of this city, out of this country. She is special. Immune. Resistant. She was bitten but she didn’t die.”

  My head was a mess. Fear and self-doubt and panic on the verge of crippling me.

  I was finding it hard to breathe.

  But I kept running.

  The chopper had crashed right next to the footbridge that cut across this end of the harbor.

  If I could make it over there I’d have a much better chance of helping any survivors. Finding Maria. There had to be survivors, I thought. The chopper wasn’t that high up when the pilot lost control.

  Up near the casino, I saw a man on fire, stumbling towards the harbor and the wreckage of the chopper.

  I raised my rifle, took careful aim.

  Squeezed the trigger.

  I nailed him in the chest, knocked him off his feet.

  But he got back up and started running towards me.

  I dropped to one knee. Took aim.

  I waited.

  And waited.

  Focused on my breathing.

  In and out.

  I waited for the man on fire to get closer.

  I drowned out the voice in my head.

  Fear.

  Self-doubt.

  “If you miss now, he will run you down. Tackle you. Burn you. He will bite you. Infect you.”

  “Do not miss.”

  I lowered my aim at the last second and took out his legs. He fell to the ground and skidded to my feet. One more shot to the head finished him off. I was about to stand up and make my way to the chopper. But then I saw someone climb on to the jetty on the opposite side of the harbor.

  They climbed up, took a few steps and then collapsed.

  I looked through my scope.

  It was a girl.

  Not a soldier.

  It was Maria.

  Hope

  I couldn’t believe it.

  She was alive.

  She was the only one. None of the soldiers had made it.

  I shook my head. I could not believe it. I looked through my scope just to make sure she was all right. She had pulled herself up and out of the water, on to the jetty. She was drenched. She brushed her blonde hair out of her face, wiped the water out of her eyes.

  How she avoided all those floating bodies, I’ll never know. She must’ve dived for the bottom of the harbor, picked out clear spot, swum up to the surface. I was still in denial. Maybe I had already convinced myself she was dead.

  More infected piled out from the casino. Some of them were on fire. Some of them were missing limbs. Regardless of their injuries and disfigurements, they were all running faster than humanly possible.

  Maria saw them and started backing away. A split second later she started running. Luckily she ran in my direction.

  I took aim at the infected. I unloaded the rest of the magazine. Full automatic.

  I reloaded. Kept firing.

  Maria looked up and saw me. She ran over.

  She made it over to me in world record time.

  She doubled over, breathing hard. “Kenij! I can’t… I can’t believe it.”

  “It’s OK. Just breathe.”

  “Where did you guys go? What happened?”

  “They got out,” I answered. “I had to stay behind. I had to cover their escape.”

  “What? What happened back in the casino?”

  I fired off a few more rounds, making sure they were head shots, making sure they counted.

  “We had to leave you,” I said.

  And as I said it, Maria looked like someone had sucker punched her. “What?” she repeated.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “We had to leave. I made the call.”

  Her face went pale. Her knees were starting to buckle. It was then I remembered she was probably still very weak from being bitten.

  “Where is Jack?” she asked.

  “Look, we have to hide. I’ll explain everything but right now we need to get out of the open. We’re not safe here.”

  She shook her head. “No. Where is Jack!?” she asked again, ignoring everything that was happening around us.

  “He’s safe. They’re all safe. We gotta go.”

  I scanned our immediate area. We did not have long.

  Maria’s knees continued to buckle. It was taking her considerable effort to stand. I went to put my arm around her, to support her but she pushed me away.

  “Please, just tell me! Where is Jack?”

  She began to collapse. I caught her and picked her up.

  “I’ll explain everything,” I whispered. “But we need to get out of here. It’s not safe.”

  We made our way back to the boat I had been hiding in. I laid Maria on the floor. She kept asking for Jack.

  And I kept telling myself I did the right thing.

  Calm on the outside. Freaking out on the inside.

  The boat we were hiding in was a harbor cruise boat. It had multiple levels and lots of windows. If the military were still looking for Maria it would not take them long to find us. Although at that moment it appeared that the men in black, the Special Forces soldiers had left the area. And for some reason the number of infected had thinned quite a bit. I looked around the boat. The floor we were on had a bar. I found some bottled water and forced Maria to drink it.

  She grabbed the bottle and downed it in one go. And then she threw it all back up.

  “Slow down,” I said as I gave her another bottle. “Small sips.”

  She reluctantly took my advice.

  “Where are the others?” she asked between deep breaths. “Where is Jack?”

  I lowered my head. This would be hard for her. But there was no point in sugar coating it. No point in lying. “We made, well, I made the decision to leave you back at the casino,” I said. “I figured the soldiers wanted you. And only you. I figured they knew you were resistant to the virus. I don’t know how they knew but they knew. It was obvious that you were their target. They wanted you alive. The rest of us were expendable. If we stayed, if we tried to fight those soldiers, we would’ve been killed. Even if we surrendered peacefully they still would’ve executed us.
”

  She continued to drink the water, taking small sips. Her eyes flicking back and forth as she thought about the implications of what I was saying, replaying the events in her mind’s eye.

  “We fled the casino,” I continued. “We made it to one of the boats in the harbor. The problem with our escape plan was that we were completely surrounded by those soldiers. They were enforcing the containment protocol. They wanted us dead. I put Rebecca and Kim and Jack on the boat. I provided cover fire for them as they made their escape out of the harbor. If I hadn’t done that, we would’ve been blown apart. We wouldn’t have gotten two feet without being torn to shreds. I mean, we were completely surrounded; they were above us on the bridge. They would’ve killed us.”

  “Did they make it?” Maria asked, worry all over her face.

  I nodded. “I think so. They made it out of Darling Harbor.”

  “You think so? But you can’t be sure?”

  I lowered my head.

  “Did they make it!?”

  “I…I can’t be sure.”

  Maria started crying. Her jaw was clenched. She was trying to keep it together. She looked out the windows of our cruise boat. She looked out towards the main harbor.

  “I had no choice,” I said, defending myself.

  She didn’t answer me. She started shivering. She was going into shock. “Where will they go? What will they do?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. Hopefully they can get away from the city. Find a quiet beach somewhere up the coast and come to shore.”

  “We need to find them.”

  “No. We can’t. We need to keep you safe. We need to hide.”

  Pass the ammunition

  Maria was sitting down against the wall, knees to her chest, head tucked into her arms. The whole harbor seemed to be deserted now.

  The casino building was leaning at an angle. It looked like it was about to fall over. The wreckage of the tank was still smoldering. Bodies were everywhere.

  Infected.

  Soldiers.

  Innocent people.

  I wondered how long it would take for more infected to make their way through here. I wondered if the soldiers would be back to clean up this mess.

  One thing was obvious, I needed more ammo. Maybe a spare rifle for Maria. She probably didn’t know how to fire a gun but she would have to learn. Necessity was a great teacher.

  I walked over to Maria and knelt down beside her. “Maria,” I whispered.

  No response.

  “Maria. I need to leave you for a few minutes. I need to go down there and look for some ammunition. I’ve only got half a mag left. It’s not enough if any more infected come through here. It’s not enough to defend ourselves. I’ll only be gone a few minutes.”

  She raised her head slowly. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t leave me.”

  “I need to do this. We need the ammo. If more infected come through here we’ll need to defend ourselves. We need to be prepared.”

  The infected would indeed come through here, I thought. They would probably make their way into the city from the western suburbs.

  She tucked her head back into her arms and kept saying, “Don’t leave me.”

  But I had to. She knew it. I knew it. I patted her on the shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”

  Exposed

  I made a quick pass of the surrounding area and made my way back up to the footbridge. I managed to scavenge five more magazines of ammunition.

  From the vantage point of the footbridge I could see back out to the main harbor. I could see the smoke rising from the ruins of north Sydney and the main bridge. There was more smoke from other areas of the inner city as well. The smoke billowed up into the blue summer sky, giving the whole city a weird hazy orange look. It was then I realized I could hear more gunfire coming from the city.

  The military were in the process of falling back. And if my experience in Woomera was anything to go by, they would be leaving those last soldiers behind. Leaving them as a distraction, a diversion so the rest of the forces could get away unscathed.

  Poor bastards.

  The gunfire continued to intensify as I made my way back to our boat.

  Heavy machine guns.

  Chain guns.

  Mortar rounds.

  Rockets.

  Hellfire missiles.

  It sounded like a pretty big force. This could only mean they were being pursued by a very large number of infected.

  I knelt down on the footbridge and listened to the noises. I tried to zero in on the location of the fire fight. It was difficult. The gun shots were echoing off the city buildings. The only thing I could tell is that they were close. Maybe a few blocks away. Maybe less.

  As I listened to the sounds of a new kind of war I wondered about what to do with Maria. I needed to get her to the military, I thought. I don’t care if they execute me. Maria needed to get out of this city and the military were the only ones capable of doing that. It was the right thing to do, the only logical thing to do.

  There had to be a radio around here somewhere. I could get the radio. Call for help. Simple.

  Right on cue, there was a blast of static from the radio of a fallen soldier.

  The noise was coming from behind me. I turned around. Lying underneath a huge slab of concrete was a body of one of the men in black. The body was partially crushed by the slab.

  His legs were too far away from his upper body.

  Somehow his radio was still working. I could hear static. Every now and then I could make out voices on the other end.

  Scared voices.

  Terrified and panicked voices.

  “There’s too many!”

  “Fall back! Fall back!”

  “Get to the extraction point. NOW!”

  “They’re coming!”

  In between the shouting I could hear gunshots and explosions. The screams of dying men. The howling moans of infected.

  We weren’t safe here, I thought.

  I could hear static from another radio. There must’ve been another fallen soldier close by, but I couldn’t see him. I moved a plank of wood that used to be part of the footbridge. I expected the body to be underneath.

  Nothing.

  He had to be close.

  I lifted another piece of rubble. And then I finally found him.

  And then it was clear to me.

  The reason I was having a hard time finding the body.

  It was slowly crawling away.

  But when I’d moved the piece of wood it saw me or heard me or whatever.

  It knew I was there.

  The body. The infected.

  Moments ago this thing was a soldier. A Special Forces soldier. He was smart and skilled. Highly trained. His mission was to rescue Maria. Kill the rest of us. But a human being none the less. His legs were bent at sickening angles. His intestines had been dragged behind him.

  His weapon, an M4 carbine with an infra red scope and a 40mm grenade launcher was still gripped in his hand. The hand was still attached to most of his arm. It was several feet away on the other side of the footbridge.

  Now the thing was slowly turning back towards me. It was crawling. But then it got back up.

  I took a step back. My heart stopped.

  When they get back up. A human. A person that in all probability should be dead. Someone that has been blown apart, their legs shattered and their guts and major organs hanging out in the world. When they get back up…

  It shook me to my core.

  If I wasn’t a trained soldier, if it wasn’t just a reflex, I probably would’ve frozen up completely. I probably would’ve died.

  The infected soldier took a few stumbling steps towards me.

  I heard a loud crack as one of its leg bones, its tibia maybe, snapped clean in half. A sliver of extremely sharp bone stuck right out through the skin, right through his pants.

  The thing stumbled to its knees. But he kept shuffling forward, arms outstretched. M
outh wide, wide open.

  My training kicked in.

  I raised the rifle. Fired two shots into its chest and one into its head.

  I destroyed the radio in the process but at that point I didn’t really care about the radio. Would the military even come back if I called them? I doubt it.

  They were in the process of retreating. They had their hands full.

  I grabbed the fallen soldier’s hand, pried his cold fingers apart and relieved him of his rifle and spare ammo.

  “Look at us,” the dead soldier said. “Two of a kind. Two peas in a pod.”

  I dropped the arm. Took a big step back.

  “Yes,” the dead soldier said.

  I shook my head. Took another step back. “What?”

  “Yes, to whatever. Yes, you did the right thing. Yes, you screwed up. Yes, you had no choice. Yes, we were a Special Forces team. Yes, we are two peas in a pod.”

  “I’m not a Special Forces soldier,” I said to the corpse.

  “Sure ya not. And I’m a goddamn china man.”

  “I’m Japanese.”

  “Whatever. Turn away.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Turn away and describe what I’m wearing, describe me, my facial features.”

  “I’m not turning away.”

  “Of course not. That would be dangerous. I could hit you. I could attack you. Hell, I could even bite you. But that wasn’t the point of my little exercise. The point was; if you were to turn away or close your eyes, you could still remember everything I was wearing. You would know my eye color. Hair color. Skin tone. I bet if someone asked you to describe this harbor you could do it with autistic savant like detail. You know the exits. You know the points of cover. You know everything.”

  “Who are you?”

  “You mean, who was I?”

  “Whatever.”

  “I’m nobody. I’m a ghost.”

  “What?”

  “Exactly. No one knows about us. We don’t exist. I’m only telling you because, well, you’ll be dead soon anyways. Dead men tell no tales, right?”

  “What were you doing here? What was your objective?”

  “You already know. Our primary target was Doctor West. Secondary target was the girl. Maria Marsh. Approximately sixteen years of age. Caucasian. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Apparently she’s immune. No one believed Doctor West when he called it in. We figured he just wanted to be rescued. But he was adamant. Command sent us in because Doctor West was in charge of the research. He knows everything. If anyone can save us, it's Doctor West. That's why he was our priority.”