"Wait here," I said as I ran for the security room.
If we could contact one of those pilots, we could get Maria out of here. Maybe they would even spare our lives.
Maybe.
But as I ran back to the security room, I realized something was wrong. The noises, the howling screams of the infected. They were getting louder. Closer.
Those noises were coming from inside the building.
I stopped. Confused.
What the h.e.l.l?
The screams continued getting louder.
I could hear their footsteps.
The infected were in here. They were in the shopping complex with us.
I had frozen.
Jack grabbed me from behind. "Come on! We gotta go. They"re inside!"
I shook my head. "What? How?"
"The train station maybe," he answered. "I don"t know. Maybe they smashed in from somewhere."
The radio. We could still get a message out.
I moved inside the security room. Picked up the two walkie-talkies. Stuffed one in my pocket and turned the other one on. But there was way too much static and interference to broadcast. Probably from the building itself, I thought.
"I can"t get a signal!"
"Forget it!" Jack said. "We need to get out of here!"
"The pilots, the choppers are close," I said "It"s too good a chance to pa.s.s up."
But I needed to get a signal. I moved over to the window again and shot out the gla.s.s. The gla.s.s shattered and fell away into the street below. I took a cautious step out on to the ledge and tried the radio again.
"Mayday! Mayday! If anyone is out there, we are survivors of the Oz Virus. We are not infected. Repeat, we are not infected. We are trapped in the middle of Sydney. We have a survivor here who has shown immunity to the virus. She may hold the key to a cure."
I could no longer see the choppers. But I could still hear them which meant they had to be close. Unfortunately, the screams of the infected were getting louder.
"Kenji!" Jack shouted. "We have to go!"
He was right. The choppers were moving further away. And the infected knew we were here. They were coming for us. They were getting closer.
"If anyone is listening, Please send help. Please."
Escape from Sydney Tower and the Tunnel of Doom We moved into the stairwell and headed for sub bas.e.m.e.nt levels. Jack swore to me there was an underground car park facility.
He was right.
We found a police car. It appeared to be some sort of highway patrol car. Luckily for us it was unlocked. The doors were left wide open. And the keys were in the ignition. If I had to guess, I"d say that whoever had been driving this police car had left it here in a real hurry. No time to lock it up, no time to close the doors, no time to take the keys.
It was a stroke of luck. Fortune favors the bold, right?
I sure hope so. We need fortune. We need luck.
I told Jack to drive because he knew the streets.
"Maria you"re in the back. Keep your head down."
She did not argue.
We drove out of the parking lot. We had to drive up three levels. Around in a circle. Up and up. I got dizzy. Jack was driving fast. I felt like I was pressed against the door, unable to move. Unable to breathe. Unable to do anything.
We finally reached the exit. We smashed through a flimsy wooden boom gate and sped out into the middle of the street. Jack executed a perfect hand brake turn and the car slid sideways coming to a stop.
I was breathing hard, holding on to the door and dashboard. "Maybe slow down?"
"Sorry, I"ve always wanted to do that."
Maria was looking out the rear windscreen. "Guys, we gotta go. They"re coming."
The infected were about half a block away. Chasing hard.
Jack released the handbrake and accelerated away. The cop car was fast. The engine was most likely a V8. Extremely powerful. But we had only driven another two blocks before Jack slowed. He was trying to figure out which way to go.
"Um, which streets were blocked again?" he asked.
I was looking left and right. I had no idea. The streets all looked the same to me.
"Ah guys," Maria said. "They"re still coming."
Jack picked a direction. He turned the steering wheel hard to the left and floored it once more.
Unfortunately we were unable to full take advantage of the cop car"s V8 engine. The streets were just too congested. A lot of the streets had been blocked off by the military. These were cordoned off with concrete barricades and ma.s.sive piles of sandbags. The machine gun nests had been abandoned. Most probably they had been overrun. The heavy machine guns, the 50 cals had been left behind. The military had even left some of their tanks behind. These enormous machines only added to the chaos and congestion of the streets.
There were huge signs that gave directions for the evacuation routes and the quarantine areas.
The streets that hadn"t been blocked by the military were blocked by abandoned cars and collapsed buildings. Other streets were completely destroyed by mortar rounds and bombs and Surface to Air missiles. The destruction made our escape from the inner city near impossible.
Eventually we were funneled to the "Cross City Tunnel".
It was an oasis in a ruined city.
An express lane out of that h.e.l.l hole. Or so we thought.
I don"t know why we thought it was a good idea. Maybe we were too exhausted and too scared to think straight. I mean, at that point, after driving around for what felt like a whole day, we were all convinced that there was no getting out of the city. Not above ground. So when we found the cross city tunnel, it was like our prayers had been answered or something. We were blinded to the possibility that it might not be safe. Even when we voiced those fears out loud, we quickly pushed them aside and silenced them.
Basically we were stupid. And like I said, we should be dead.
"Cross City Tunnel," Jack said, reading the street sign. "That"ll lead us out of the city, to the other side."
"I don"t know about this," Maria said. "Going underground? Is that really a good idea?"
"We don"t have a choice," I said.
Jack pointed to the entrance. There were a few abandoned cars that looked like they had been pushed off to the side of the road. "Few cars here, but it shouldn"t be too bad."
"How do you even know that?" Maria asked. "We can"t see all the way inside. What if there are more cars blocking our way further in? What if we can"t get pa.s.sed? What if we get trapped in there?"
"Well think about it," Jack said. "If they were trying to evacuate people out of the city then they most probably would"ve used this tunnel and..."
"Yeah, and?" Maria asked. "What"s your point?"
"OK, I don"t know."
"It"s all right," I said. "We can afford to check it out. If the tunnel is blocked we can come back and keep looking. But I think this is worth a shot. Jack, if what you say about the tunnel is right, it"ll get us across the worst part of the city and out on the other side."
We had to take the tunnel, I thought to myself. Every other street we had turned down was just flat out impa.s.sable. Unfortunately Maria"s fears about the tunnel being blocked were realized. About half way in, there were two cars that looked like they had crashed into each other head on. Jack slowed down and tried to drive around the wreckage of the two cars but we couldn"t fit. We would need to get out and move them to the side.
Jack put the car in "park".
"Come on," I said. "We need to do this quickly."
I turned on the torch attached to my rifle. The cars had definitely crashed head on. They were practically twisted and tangled up together. We would need to try and separate them from each other and then push them out of the way.
"Jack, can you see if there"s a torch in the trunk or anything?"
Jack opened the trunk of the cop car and found a shotgun, a bullet proof vest and a traffic wand.
He turned it on and then started waving it around like a light saber, making the sound effects. "Kenji," he said in his deepest voice. "I am your father."
"Stop messing around," Maria said.
"It"s cool. I just..." he trailed off.
He held the traffic wand up, moved it over to the side of the tunnel.
There were piles of dead bodies on the side of the road. They were pushed up against the walls of the tunnel. They had been shot in the head. Next to the bodies was a large sign. We hadn"t seen it because it was dark. Jack held the traffic wand up to read it.
The sign read: Evac Route.
"What?" Maria asked. "What does it mean? Did they really evacuate people out of the city through here?"
We looked up ahead, into the dark.
Nothing.
A black hole.
We strained our ears. We couldn"t hear anything except the wind blowing through the tunnel.
"Guys," Maria said. "Let"s turn back."
In the trunk there was another traffic wand. I picked it up and walked forward.
Still nothing.
The wind died down to a whisper. It was then I could hear something that sounded like a pitch fork sc.r.a.ping along the road. Metal on concrete. I looked at the others. It could"ve been one of them making the noise.
But they were both still. They were statues. They weren"t even breathing.
I continued to listen.
Silence.
"What is it?" Maria asked.
I ignored her. Kept staring into the dark. Kept listening. This was bad.
"Kenji, you"re scaring us," she said.
"Are there any flares in the trunk?" I asked Jack.
"Yeah, I think so," he answered.
I moved over to the trunk and picked up handful of flares. I lit one up. It sparked and ignited and gave off a blindingly, bright red light. I threw it into the dark.
Nothing.
"We better hurry," I said. "Jack, make sure that car is in neutral and the handbrake is off. You should be able to push it out of the way. It"s only a small car. Maria stay close to Jack."
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
"Reconnaissance."
I lit another flare, threw it ahead.
Nothing. Nothing except that d.a.m.n sc.r.a.ping noise.
Jack moved over to the small hatchback and opened the driver side door. He released the handbrake and started pushing.
I moved deeper into the tunnel.
"Be careful," Maria whispered.