The Lost Journal Part 2 (A Secret Apocalypse Story) (11 page)

Were they
falling back?

If so, what area
were they falling back to?

Every now
and then we could hear the screaming roar of jet engines and the thumping of
helicopters. There were so many questions I wanted answers to. But all of them
would have to wait until tomorrow. Or whenever the damn weather cleared up.

Jack and Maria
both had their faces pressed up against the glass, hands cupped around their
eyes, like that was going to make a difference, make it easier to see anything.

I had to
lead them away from the windows eventually. They were just as anxious as I was
to see what was going on, although maybe for different reasons. I guess they
wanted to see how bad the city was. It was their home after all.

It must be
hard for them to see it like this.

We decided
to check out the kitchen of the restaurant. We found some canned food. Peaches.
Baked beans. Bottled water. Even found some cans of Coke. That seemed to lift
everyone’s spirits for a little while. We found some candles just before
sunset. We were going to light them but then I thought better of it. I didn’t
want to draw any attention to ourselves.

We set up an
area to get some sleep. Or at least try. I slept leaning against the wall. Rifle
in my arms. I was looking at the fire door. Watching. Keeping guard.

Eventually I
fell asleep.

Feb 11th - A room with a view

We woke to clear skies.

I wished we
hadn’t. The clouds had cleared out. We had blue skies from here as far as the
eye could see. We walked over to the windows. We could see everything. And I
mean everything. Maria started crying. Jack was silent, mouth open. From up
here we could see it all. All the destruction, the chaos. Everything that had
happened.

A lot of buildings
were on fire. They were smoldering, smoking wrecks. We could see the twisted
skeleton of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. More buildings throughout the city were
on fire. Others had been reduced to rubble. North Sydney, on the other side of
the harbor was perhaps the worst hit. That’s where the majority of the air
strike had been concentrated. It was devastating. Over near Darling Harbor, I
tried to spot the casino but I couldn’t see it. The building had completely
crumbled. It just wasn’t there anymore. It was like a wrecking crew had
demolished it. Set charges at the specific structural points and blown it up.

"Damn," Jack
said. "The ANZAC bridge is gone as well. They must’ve blown that up when they
blew the Sydney Harbor Bridge. We were probably too busy swimming for our lives
to notice it."

Further west
was the endless urban sprawl of the outer suburbs. Huge firestorms were
spreading from house to house. Black smoke drifted up into the blue sky.

"They’re
trying to burn it," I said.

"What?"

"The virus.
The infected. They’re trying to burn them all."

"Are they
going to bomb the rest of the city?" Maria asked.

"Don't know."

"Maybe there
are still too many soldiers in here," Jack said hopefully. "Like Special Forces
soldiers. And maybe they know your here somewhere," he said to Maria.

"But what
happens when everyone clears out?" Maria asked. "All the Special Forces guys and
all the brass. What happens when they decide that I’m not worth risking
soldier’s lives for?"

I shook my
head. "Don't know."

I wished I
could’ve been more optimistic. But seeing the city in ruins was putting me in a
foul mood.

I took a
deep breath and looked out passed the firestorms of the western suburbs. Way off
on the western horizon you could just see the peaks of a mountain range. They
looked weirdly peaceful, too peaceful to be the backdrop for this warzone.

We could still
hear sporadic gun fire coming from different areas of the city. Every now and
then we could hear an explosion, a split second later a fresh plume of smoke
would rise up into the sky. It looked like the military or whoever was left was
still putting up a fight.

"What happened?"
Jack whispered. "Why? Why here? Why now?"

I shook my
head again. "I don’t know. The doctor said they were trying to weaponize it. Looks
like that idea back fired."

"A weapon,"
Jack said. "I can’t believe it. All this for a weapon? Just not worth it. Not
by a long shot."

"Maybe it
was an attack," Maria offered.

"What do you
mean?"

"Like, what
if terrorists or someone found out about the virus, found out that they were
trying to make it into a weapon. Maybe they planned an attack, like a
pre-emptive strike or something and released the virus."

I shrugged
my shoulders. "Yeah, maybe. I guess we’ll never know. At least not for awhile."

The idea of
an attack and the idea that this whole mess was the result of a new biological
weapon that had gone horribly wrong had made us all depressed. Seeing the city
burning and crumbling, seeing it as a warzone wasn’t helping either.

We couldn’t
do this, I thought. Now was not the time to feel sorry for ourselves or for anyone
else. Now was not the time to grieve.

"Look, we
knew it was going to be bad," I said. "But we need to be strong. Remember why
we came up here. It wasn’t to feel sorry for ourselves, or for those who didn’t
make it. We came up here because we’re safe from the streets. We came up here so
we can see what’s going on."

Jack nodded
his head slowly. Maria wiped away some tears.

"We need to
make sure they can’t get up here," I said.

They both
nodded. I could tell they had gone into a kind of shock. They weren’t really
listening to my words of comfort. Their minds were elsewhere. Despite the
somber mood we got straight to work on fortifying our position. The mundane
work would provide a good distraction for Jack and Maria as they slowly came to
terms to what had happened to their home city.

We barricaded
the doors to the fire escape. And planned escape routes and contingency planes
just in case. After we were satisfied with our new living arrangements we sat
down and talked about what to do next.

"So," Jack
said. "How long should we stay here?"

"Honestly,"
I answered. "I don’t know."

"Do you
think anyone is coming?" Maria asked. "Like, another rescue team?"

"We can’t
sit around and hope to get rescued," Jack said as he pointed out towards the
mountain range. "I think we should still try and get out west, out of the city.
I have relatives in Griffith. My parents would’ve gone there at the first sign
of trouble."

"Jack,"
Maria said. "Do you really think they would’ve left without you or Kim?"

"Yeah, of
course they would. They know we can look after ourselves. Especially Kim. And
they probably just assumed I was staying with you."

"I think
first and foremost we need to rest up," I added. "We’ve been on the run for the
past few days. We haven’t slept much and we haven’t had much to eat. If we become
too fatigued, we’ll start making stupid decisions. We’ll get careless. We need
to rest before we go back down there. We all know how dangerous it is on the
streets."

Jack and
Maria both nodded in agreement. They didn’t say anything. They didn’t need to.
We all knew how dangerous the streets were. No one was in a rush to get back
down there.

Rest

So we took it easy for few days. We lazed around in the tower, high above the
mean streets of Sydney. We relaxed. We chilled out. We tried our very best to
ignore our surroundings, to forget about the virus and the death.

This became
damn near impossible when at night we started hearing renewed gunfire and
shelling. I guess there were still survivors and soldiers, somewhere in the
city. They must be putting up one hell of a fight.

After a
couple of days of rest we decided to go down into the shopping center. We
agreed that it was too dangerous to go down to the ground floors, but we
figured if we were quiet we could check out some of the higher floors. We
agreed that the third floor was as low as we would dare go.

Most of the
boutique shops and stores were completely dark and empty. They hadn’t been
looted because I’m guessing the owners had a chance to lock up and clear out
anything valuable before society crumbled. And as an added bonus the entire
complex probably would’ve been locked up a few days before the virus hit.

So that was
something, I guess.

Jack and
Maria had found a vending machine that was stocked with chocolate bars. They
were checking it out, trying to figure out to break it open without making any
noise.

Without
realizing what I was doing, I had wandered off, out of sight of Jack and Maria.
I found a news stand. I stood alone in the empty, cavernous shopping complex. The
shop fronts in this section of the mall were all boarded up to prevent looting.

There were
signs everywhere that read:

Closed until
further notice due to Oz virus outbreak and National quarantine.

Newspapers
were scattered everywhere, they practically covered the entire floor. I shone
my torch along the ground, reading the headlines.

All the newspapers
showed the same thing…

Deadly Oz
virus.

Nationwide
Quarantine.

Death Toll
Rising.

Rumors of
virus – mutated rabies.

Evacuation Routes.

Worst plague
since the Black Death.

Media
blackout. Communication networks down.

Australia
isolated and cut off from international aid.

These were
the headlines from the tabloid newspapers. All of them sensational. And yet all
of them failing to capture just how over the top and devastating the virus is.

I found a
pocket-sized notepad to write in. I looked for a clicky pen. Took me awhile in
the dark but I eventually found one.

Jack and
Maria had made their way over to me.

"Kenji, are
you all right?" Maria asked.

"Yeah, I was
just looking for a notepad."

"Dude, you
can’t sneak off on us like that," Jack said.

"Yeah. I
know. I’m sorry. Won’t happen again."

"We managed
to open the vending machine," Maria said.

This was
good news. We were all starving. Chocolate bars would be the perfect thing. Snickers
is guaranteed to satisfy, right?

Maria informed
us there was a supermarket on one of the lower floors. But no one wanted to go
back down to street level. At least not yet.

I put the
notepad and the pen in my pocket. I told Maria and Jack that we should get up
top. The less time spent down on the lower levels the better.

They did not
argue with me.

So we made
our way back up to the top of the Sydney Tower. It felt like we were finally
safe. We were high above the infected and the virus and the military’s
containment protocol. Who knows, maybe the infected would all die or whatever. Maybe
the military would retreat or call off their deadly containment protocol.

I don’t
know.

Feb 14th - V is for Valentine

I can’t believe Jack remembered. But he did. He even managed to find some fake
roses for Maria. He said he found them in the kitchen of the restaurant.

Maria was
over the moon. I don’t think she even remembered it was Valentine’s Day.

Jack even
wrote her a poem.

It went like
this…

Dear Maria,

Roses are
red,

violets are
blue.

I am so happy,

I came back
for you.

He wrote one
for me as well so I didn’t feel left out,

Dear Kenji,

Roses are
red,

violets are
blue,

If I was
gay,

I’d totally
do you.

I thanked
him for the poem and told him I was flattered.

On writing

It feels good to write.

It also
feels good to rest up. It feels good that we’re not running for our lives. It’s
like we’ve been given the keys to a castle in the clouds.

We are
untouchable right now.

From our
vantage point I’ve been watching the city. Watching the streets. And the
infected.

It’s funny, if
you squint your eyes and make everything blurry, the infected just look like
normal people standing around. Well, from all the way up here they do. Every
now and then one of them will suddenly spring to life and run off after
something. And like sheep, the rest of the infected in that area will follow
blindly. A stampede is created right in front of my eyes.