by James Harden
Complications. Yeah, it gets worse.
We were standing around, trying to catch our breath, trying to make sense of the situation.
I was struggling to come to grips with shooting and killing these old people, an old woman for crying out loud.
I guess I was in denial. Even though deep down there was a part of me that knew these people were infected. How else could they have escaped from the old folk’s home? How else could these geriatrics get through the perimeter? How else could they run barefoot through the desert?
We were just about to call it in but off in the distance a van approached. It appeared to have a satellite dish on top of its roof.
It was a goddamn news van.
"What the hell?” Drake said. “Is that what I think it is?”
Reporters? Out here?
It was the last thing we needed.
I’m ashamed to admit it, but my first thought was that we’d have to shoot them.
I mean, these guys were obviously not infected. At least, I don’t think they were. But what would happen if we refused to follow orders? Would we be court marshaled? Locked up? Would they send in the gunships now and take us all out?
I know it sounds crazy but all these thoughts were running through my head as that news van pulled up to us. Once again we held innocent people’s lives in our hands. We had the final say. I feel sick just thinking about it. For all we knew, these guys were just lost. Maybe they were going to ask for directions. Maybe they were going to tell us how much they appreciated us soldiers and what we do for our countries.
But the situation was about to get real tense, especially if they saw the corpse of the old man that Franco had just shot. The body of the old man was lying on the ground a few feet behind us. He was lying face down in the dirt, tangled up in a low lying scrub.
Drake, Franco and I stood between them and the corpse, hoping we had sufficiently blocked it from their view. We were just praying that they reporters didn’t look past us and see it, praying they didn’t get out of the van.
The news van drove up alongside us and came to a stop as the driver wound down his window.
I could only see a driver and the cameraman sitting in the front passenger seat. But there could’ve been more in the back.
"Good afternoon, soldiers,” the driver said. “Do you mind if we ask you few questions?"
Franco was waving them back. "This is a restricted area. You can’t be here."
"Where are you boys from? The states?"
“Are you deaf?” Franco said. “This is a restricted area. You need to leave immediately.”
The reporters didn’t understand the severity of the situation. They just kept asking questions.
“What’s going on in Woomera? Rumor has it that people are being kept inside their own homes against their will. And why is the U.S. military involved?”
“Look, we’ve been authorized to use deadly force in this area. You need to leave right now.”
“Deadly force? What the hell for?”
They weren’t taking the hint.
Drake moved up to the van. “You guys ever heard of Guantanamo Bay? Camp X-ray? You know why they call it Camp X-ray? Coz no one knows what goes on there. You wanna get locked up? The military police are on their way here right now. And believe me, once they get here, they will lock you up. And all your expensive equipment, including that pretty looking satellite dish will become property of the United States Military. Please, gentlemen, get the hell out of there.”
The reporters gave each other worried looks. I guess they were trying to figure out if Drake’s threat was serious or not. But in the end, they decided it wasn’t worth the risk. They apologized for the disturbance and drove off.
I guess at that point we were distracted, scared of the possibility of shooting more innocent people, scared and sick that we were all thinking like that. And because we were distracted, we didn’t see it.
The thing.
It was infected.
Another reason we didn’t see it; it was crawling on its belly.
Maybe it got out with the others. I don’t know.
But it managed to sneak up on us. It grabbed Franco by his leg and bit into his flesh. He jumped back, yelling in shock. At first I thought he’d been bitten by a snake.
But then I looked down and saw it.
Another old man. Well, half of an old man. He was missing his legs. His legs looked like they had been amputated some time ago. Maybe a war injury. Maybe diabetes. It was hard to tell because they were torn up and bleeding.
He must’ve crawled all the way from town.
His dressing gown was torn up. As was his belly and chest from crawling all this way over rock and gravel.
Before we could react, before we could put a gun to his head and put him out of his misery, he had already grabbed Franco by the leg and bit into his calf muscle.
And the old man did not let go.
Franco fell back screaming. He was trying to shake it off. But the man had locked his jaw around Franco’s leg and he wasn’t letting go.
Franco continued to scream and shout. “Get it off me!”
Drake grabbed the thing by its hair and put his sidearm up to its temple. He blew its brains out all over the desert.
Franco had gone into shock. He threw up. He was shaking and shivering. There was a huge bloody wound in his lower leg where the thing had bitten into him.
I called it in.
The containment crew chopper showed up five minutes later. A team of guys in yellow HAZMAT suits piled out. Two of them strapped Franco to a stretcher and got him into the chopper.
The rest got to work securing the area.
They located the three other bodies and threw them into a shallow ditch. They doused them in fuel and set them on fire.
They watched them burn for a few minutes before they got back in the chopper.
And just like that, they were gone.
As Franco was airlifted away I watched the helicopter until it disappeared over the horizon. It was headed somewhere towards the military testing site. Complete opposite direction to the hospital. Maybe there was another hospital. Maybe they wanted to keep him separate from the public and the soldiers because he had been bitten. I don’t know.
Everything happened so damn fast. We didn’t get a chance to ask where they were taking him.
Way off in the distance, I could also see black smoke rising up into to sky. It looked like it was coming from the Unofficial Immigration Center.
I looked to the east. There was nothing but miles and miles of flat, desolate land. For a fleeting moment I thought about running away, off into the desert.
Walking away from all this madness.
But then Drake said, "Come on. We still got a job to do. Stay frosty.”
He patted me on the shoulder and went off to find a spot to watch for anyone else trying to escape the quarantine.
He was putting on a brave face but I knew he was just as worried.
