It hit us like a freight train and we were pushed and thrown around like rag dolls. It wasn’t like a washing machine this time, it was much more violent. Jack held on to me in a bear hug as tight as he could. If he didn’t, we would have been separated for sure and who knows where I would’ve ended up. I probably would’ve drowned. We were pushed a long way underwater. It must have been like surfing a big wave and being wiped out and then being wiped out by the rest of the big waves in the set, constantly being tossed around like a cork, one after the other.
When I finally surfaced and took massive, gulping, gasping breaths I braced myself to be torn to pieces by the machine guns. But surprisingly we were a good distance away from the helicopters, taken further than I thought by the underwater current created by the explosion. Suddenly, we didn’t need to out swim the search and destroy helicopters.
Jack asked me if I was all right as he looked around for the others. He spotted Kim about fifty meters away. "Kim! Over here!" he yelled as she immediately started swimming towards us.
Over our shoulders, further away from the bridge were Kenji and Maria
"Jack!" Maria shouted, waving her arms.
"This way," Kenji said, "We need to hide from those choppers."
We waited for Kim to catch up with us, which didn't take long. She was swimming like an Olympic champion. I guess the fear of being shot or blown to bits will tend to do that.
We swam over to Kenji and Maria. I was in total disbelief we had all survived. The Sydney Harbor Bridge had just been demolished as well as the tunnel. I mean, everything had just been completely destroyed. So many people had just been murdered. It was too much to think about, especially since we weren’t even out of danger yet.
We were treading water, looking around, trying to catch our breaths. Waiting. Watching. Making sure those damn helicopters of death weren’t coming after us.
I think in some ways it hit Kenji the hardest. I think he felt responsible. He just witnessed the military massacre hundreds of thousands of people and if he hadn’t run away when he did, then maybe he would’ve been part of it. I tried to reassure him. "You said it yourself. Someone else is in charge."
"I know. I just can't believe the order was given."
"We’ll make them pay," I said. "I don't know how, but we'll find whoever's responsible and we'll make them pay."
I think I was delirious from lack of oxygen or too much sea water. We could’ve been shot to pieces at any moment and there I was, making vendettas.
"Come on," Jack said. "If we swim around to Darling Harbor it should be a bit more sheltered."
"Yeah, good idea," Kim agreed. "It might give us a chance to get out of the water undetected."
"We should stay close to the harbor wall so those Apaches can’t see us so easily," Kenji said.
"What the hell is an Apache?" Maria asked.
"Those helicopters. The ones killing all the people. Hopefully they'll be too busy with everyone else to come looking for us."
It was a gruesome thought but we were all thinking it. Well at least I was. I wanted those choppers and their machine guns as far away from us as possible.
"So this is all part of the containment protocol?" Kim asked as she looked at the ruins of the Sydney Harbor Bridge.
"I don't know," Kenji answered. "I never thought it would come to this."
We slowly started swimming for Darling Harbor and in my exhausted state of mind I thought to myself that postcards of Sydney will never be the same.
Chapter 22
We needed to get out of the water or else we wouldn't survive long, we were sitting ducks. Well maybe not the others but I felt useless, like a bit of driftwood floating around. I was struggling just to keep my head above water. I now know why humans as a race are scared of sharks. Not only are sharks perfect killing machines, but when you're in the water, you're helpless, completely out of your element. You can’t just run away and you certainly can't hide.
Jack said that our best chance of survival would be Darling Harbor. We could swim to one of the jetty’s there and hide on one of the boats. The only problem; it was about a two kilometer swim.
I told jack I was fine to swim on my own now it was less chaotic. The choppers were still buzzing around but they were concentrating their firepower over near the ruins of the bridge where the majority of the survivors were. Every now and then the roar of jet engines would tear through the sky but fortunately they weren’t concerned with us either.
Jack reluctantly let me go and I almost sunk right under. It was amazing just how much he was actually lifting and pulling me through the water. He had without a doubt saved my life.
So we swam for Darling Harbor and pretty soon I was lagging behind everyone else. Not by much at first but after a few minutes I was at least a hundred meters behind. Jack would stop every now and then to make sure I was all right.
"Come on, it's just a little bit further," he called back.
I lost track of how many times he said that. It felt way longer than two kilometers, more like we were swimming across the English Channel. Every couple of strokes I had to take a break and catch my breath but the sound of distant gunfire was always enough to get me going again.
I'd only ever been to Darling Harbor a couple of times. It's a long, thin bay that cuts right into the middle of Sydney. Apparently it used to be a really industrial part of the city but over the past few decades it had been transformed into an entertainment hub. Nowadays the bay was full of million dollar, luxury boats and super yachts. I remember when I first moved out here, Jack and Maria were showing me all the sights.
We spent a whole day walking around Darling Harbor. There was a long footbridge that connected one side of the harbor to the other so people could walk across easily. It was a popular spot to stop and take photos. The whole place had a real festival atmosphere. There were pubs, restaurants, nightclubs and a casino. Jack pretended to be a tour guide when they took me that first time. He had a whistle that he blew whenever it was time to move on to the next place and a little flag that he would hold up so we could see him in the crowd. We even had a couple of German tourists following us around at one point.
As we swam into the bay I couldn't get over how dead it was. It was strange seeing the place so empty. The boats were still there but the people and the festival atmosphere were gone.
"Let’s go for that catamaran," Jack said. "It’s looks big enough to hide all of us and there’s probably even some food and water on board."
We swam towards the catamaran. It was definitely big enough to hide all five of us. Probably could’ve held a lot more. But I was glad someone had suggested we hide on this boat. I really didn’t feel like I could swim any further. We could’ve spent another half an hour swimming around picking out the right boat to hide on. But this one would do nicely especially since it was the closest and had two very convenient ladders at the back of the boat to climb up. I was glad for Jack’s decisiveness.
One by one we snuck on like stowaways. At the rear of the boat was a huge area with at least a dozen sun chairs and a couple of tables and lounges. There was even an outside bar and a Jacuzzi. We headed for the door to the main cabin area which was at least twice the size of my living room at home. We needed to get inside because even though we were out of the water, we knew we wouldn’t be safe until we were hidden from view. We inched forward. No one had actually said be quiet but we were all being ultra careful, like mice being hunted by circling hawks.
Kenji tried the handle but the door was locked. He took a step back and planted a powerful kick into the door with his heavy army boots. The resulting noise sounded like the loudest thing in the world and we all ducked instinctively. Surely someone had heard that.
"Not so freakin loud!" Kim whispered.
"Sorry. But I think I’ve almost got it."
Kenji took a step back, preparing for another kick. I crouched down and covered my ears. Kenji launched his foot and his whole body at the door and broke through falling over and head first into the room.
"Far out," Maria said. "I think they heard that on the other side of the country."
We all rushed inside. Jack grabbed the broken door that had fallen off its hinges and propped it up. It was crooked but hopefully if someone was passing by and had a quick look they wouldn’t notice it.
Once we were in the cabin we all collapsed on floor. I finally felt like I could breathe a little, I felt like we weren’t about to get blown up or torn to shreds by machine gun fire. We were lying there for what seemed like hours. I could've slept there all night I was that exhausted. But we knew we had to keep moving.
After we caught our breaths we raided the kitchen and found a whole bunch of energy bars and protein bars. Whoever’s boat we were on must have been a health nut. In the dining area were some photos on the wall. Most of them were of an older man. He looked like he was in good shape for a man of his age. He had dark tanned skin, silver hair and gold chains around his neck. Standing next to the old guy was a younger woman. She had long black hair and in all the photos she was wearing the world’s smallest bikini.
Jack stared at the woman in the bikini and whistled his approval. Maria, who was standing right next to Jack, smacked him in the back of the head. It was such a silly, normal thing to do I couldn’t help but laugh. And at that moment it made me feel just a little better about our current situation.
After we ate some food and regained some of our energy we all came together around the dinner table. We started to discuss our options for survival.
"So, what do we do now?" Maria asked.
It was a daunting question. We had barely survived the initial attack and we were still stuck in the middle of the city. We were surrounded by the military and if what we heard on the walkie talkie was accurate, there was an entire horde of hostiles or zombies or whatever coming this way.
"We need to head west to the less populated areas." Kenji said.
"But to get out west we’ll need to get through the outer suburbs," Kim said. "I would not recommend going out there. Not after everything I saw last week. It would be complete anarchy by now."
"What if we head to the mountains, get above the snow line?" I asked. "You heard the Doctor. The infected people freeze. It’s the only way to contain them."
"There’s not a lot of snow this time of year," Maria informed me.
"Yeah and besides the mountains are way south of here. And we’ll still have to go through a lot of suburban territory to get there," Kim reminded.
"But we’re in the middle of the city." I said "No matter what direction we go, we’re going to pass through a lot of suburbs. There’s no avoiding it."
"Unless we head east," Jack offered
"East is the ocean," Kim replied.
"Exactly. We could head east in this boat. It looks sturdy. Definitely big enough for ocean travel."
Kenji shook his head. "The navy would see us on their radar a mile away."
"OK, well what if we took something smaller," Jack said. "Not to take out on the open sea but just to get out past Sydney heads and then we could stick close to the shore and travel up the coast or something."
Kenji thought this one over like it could be an option. "It could work but there are still a couple of aircraft carriers situated out there. One is anchored in the actual harbor and the other one is probably off the coast somewhere. There are probably a couple of destroyers as well."
"And even If we get by them and then make it out to the open sea, if the weather turns bad we’d be done for in a small boat." Kim said.
Jack’s idea was getting shot down. But I think it still had some merit. "What if, instead of heading east out to sea we head inland," I suggested. "We take one of the smaller boats and head west as far as we can go. That way we can bypass the suburbs and get out to the less populated areas."
"The only problem is if someone spots us we’d be trapped. It’s a perfect situation for an ambush. We’d be sitting ducks, target practice," Kenji pointed out.
"So maybe we don’t take a boat," Maria said. "We could swim with the tide. It’s the middle of summer so hypothermia won’t be an issue. We wait till it gets dark and we swim out west. We pack enough food with us and we just go for it. Surely, they won’t be expecting that."
It sounded crazy but maybe Maria was right. Maybe it was crazy enough that no one would expect it. And even though I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the prospect of more swimming it was probably our best chance to get out of the city alive.
Chapter 23
I was chewing on a stale protein bar and feeling cautiously optimistic about our plan. I was staring out at the water and slowly coming to terms with the fact that I would have to dive right back in and basically swim a marathon.
Maria was staring at the water as well. "Do you think they’ll be looking for us?"
"Who?"
"The bad guys. The guys with the guns."
"I don’t know. But remember what the Colonel said back in the morgue? It sounded like the military were evacuating, like they were on the back foot. He mentioned something about a containment failure. I think whatever their dealing with, the virus or whatever, is taking up all their resources at the moment. What do you think, Kenji?"
