Torn Apart (14 page)

“
So?”

“
So we can use
these parachutes. We can jump.”

“
Jump? No. No
way.”

“
Come on. It’s
the only way. We have to jump. If we jump with a parachute, we
might have a chance.”

“
Might?”

“
We will have a
chance. We will survive. You were right before, if we jump at this
speed we won’t survive. We will die on impact. But if we jump with
a parachute, deploy it immediately, we will survive. It’ll be like
BASE jumping. The parachute will catch enough wind and create
enough drag to slow us down. Trust me. We will survive. I’ve done
this before. It’s the only way.”

“
You’ve done
this before?”

“
Well, not
exactly like this.”

We didn’t get a
chance to discuss this dangerous plan any further.
Just as I had finally loaded a
full magazine, the infected broke through.

Maria and I both unloaded
with machine gun fire. The narrow doorway of the train kept them
all bunched together. As a result, we were able to keep them pinned
back. It was like shooting zombies in a barrel. It was as close to
target practice as we were ever going to get.

I’m not sure how many
infected there were. A carriage full. Once again, there were
probably more infected than we had bullets.

The bottle-neck of the
doorway bought us precious seconds.

“
Stick to the
right hand side!” I shouted to Maria over the roar of the gunfire.
“Cover me!”

“
What? Why!?
What are you doing?”

“
Parachutes!”

I moved further
into the carriage, closer to the infected. As fate would have it,
the para-troopers had been sitting at the rear of the carriage when
they had been murdered. So unfortunately, I had to get closer to
the doorway, closer to the infected than I would have liked.
There was blood everywhere.
Blood and bone and brain. The man in the gas mask had made double
sure that none of these soldiers were alive. Or infected. And in
the process he had made quite an unbelievable mess.

“
Over there!”
Maria shouted from behind, as she covered me. “The soldiers up the
back!”

I was on my
stomach in a sniper’s position. I managed to take out a few more
infected before I slung my rifle and crawled over to the
para-troopers. I wrestled with one of the bodies, trying to unclip
the harness. I finally got it.
It was weird taking the parachutes off the dead
soldiers. I remembered back to when Kenji saved us, back in the
interrogation room at the North Sydney police station. All those
months ago. There was a dead soldier there. Kenji basically picked
him clean. He checked all his pockets and took his ammo and his
rifle. I had to tell myself then, and remind myself now, that it
wasn’t disrespectful. It was about survival. It was
necessary.

I turned and threw the
parachute back to Maria.

“
Take
it!”

Maria was a picture of
concentration. Her rifle was raised to her shoulder. Eyes down the
sight and the barrel. She was doing an excellent job of keeping the
infected back. Maybe those shooting sessions with Kenji and Daniel
had finally paid off. Or maybe it was just easy to hit something in
a confined area like a train carriage.

I reminded myself to stay
low. Keep my head down. I didn’t want to get done by friendly
fire.

Not now. I’d come too far
for that.

I loaded my last remaining
magazine into my rifle. Took down a few more infected. Luckily, the
force of a rifle shot was enough to knock them backwards off their
feet.

But to get the next
parachute, I had to move even closer to the doorway and the
infected.

I continued to crawl and
climb over the dead soldiers.

Just a little further, I
told myself. Almost there.

“
Hurry!” Maria
shouted. “I’m nearly out of ammo.”

I slung my rifle and got a
move on. If I had to guess, I'd say I had about ten bullets left.
But running out of ammunition wasn’t really our biggest worry. Our
biggest worry was running out of track. Because when that happened,
if we were still on board, we would be killed instantly.

I needed this parachute and
we needed to fall back to the next carriage.

Lock the door.

And then Jump.

I finally made it to the
next para-trooper. I fiddled with the straps of the parachute
harness. My hands were shaking with adrenalin and energy. And
fear.

I got the parachute free. I
threw it back towards Maria.

The infected kept coming.
They charged.

There was a man wearing
overalls. Somehow he was still wearing a hat. He was a farmer in a
past life. I shot him in the head and he flew back towards the
door.

Another infected climbed
over the top of his body. It had no legs. It was just a body and
hands and fingernails and teeth.

It clawed its way
forward.

I squeezed the
trigger.

Click.

I was out.

I scrambled back on my
hands and ass. “Maria! I’m out!”

“
I'm out too!”
she answered.

I was just about to get to
my feet and turn and run. It was my only option. We were out of
ammo and now was not the time to get into a fist fight with these
things. But all of a sudden, Maria jumped over the seats, knife in
hand. She stomped on the side of its head and drove the knife
through the temple, killing it instantly.

Maria grabbed my hand and
pulled me to my feet. She looked like a goddamn action hero. “Come
on,” she said. “Let’s go.”

“
Where’d you get
that knife?”

“
I borrowed it
from one of the soldiers.”

Maria had just saved my
life but there was no time to thank her. No time to
celebrate.

“
All right,” I
said. “We need to shut this next door. And then we need to
jump.”

Maria nodded.

We moved into the front
carriage. The last carriage. We had nowhere else to go.

We slammed the connecting
door shut, hoping the infected wouldn’t figure out how to use the
handle and slide it open.

A few seconds later they
crashed into it from the other side. Again, I was extremely
thankful that the glass was reinforced.

But it wouldn't hold them
for long. The glass was already beginning to break and shatter. The
frame was already starting to strain and buckle.

The train emerged from the tunnel, speeding along at two hundred
miles per hour. We had entered another huge cave. An endless space.
Suddenly the ground fell away from us. We were now on the bridge.
We were now over the water. The underground lake.

We were fast running out of
track. Fast running out of time.

The bridge was high above
the water. At least two hundred feet. Possibly higher.

“
How long?” I
asked. “How long before the track runs out?”

“
Two minutes,”
Maria answered. “Maybe less.”

“
OK, it’s time.
We have to jump. In one minute the infected will break through. In
two minutes we're out of track. We need to jump.”

Maria did not look
confident. She did not want to do it.

I handed her one of the
parachutes. “Here. Put this on. Like a backpack.”

“
Was it bad?”
She asked. “When you were sucked out of the plane over Sydney. Was
it scary?”

I wanted to lie and say,
‘nah, it was a piece of cake’. But I knew she would see right
through me.

“
It was
terrifying,” I answered. “And then for a split second, it was kind
of fun. But your NBC suit will absorb a lot of the
impact.”

“
What about
you?”

“
I have
experience on my side.”

“
One jump and
now all of a sudden you’re an expert?”

“
Look, we don’t
have time for this.”

Maria nodded. She didn’t
like the idea at all. But she knew it was the only way. I showed
her how to put the parachute on, and gave her the crash course in
how to pull the handle as soon as she was clear of the
train.

“
Keep your hand
on the handle as you jump. As soon as you’re clear, pull the
handle.”

Maria nodded, speechless,
too scared to say anything.

And as soon as I gave her
these last second instructions, my heart began to race. My chest
tightened up. We opened the side door and the wind roared through
the carriage. It was violent and angry. I guess travelling at over
two hundred miles per hour, the wind really is angry and violent
and dangerous. We had to open the door together, using all our
strength to pry them apart. To get the door to stay open we had to
jam the shotgun in there.

Maria had strapped on the
parachute. The harness was covered in blood.

“
Grab the
handle!” I yelled over the roaring wind. “Turn your back so it’s
facing out the door.”

“
You want me to
jump backwards? Are you crazy!?”

“
You won’t
really be jumping. You won’t have time. Just pull the chute. The
wind will catch it and drag you out and away from the carriage.
Hopefully, you will float down to the water.”

“
And then
what?”

“
Unclip the
chute and swim.”

Maria shook her head. She
still did not want to do it.

“
I can’t,” she
said. “I can’t.”

“
You
can!”

“
It's too high.”

“
That’s a good thing,” I said. “The
higher up we are, the more time the chute has to deploy, the more
chance the parachute has to slow down your descent.”

“
What are you
going to do?”

“
I’ll be right
behind you.”

“
Wait! What
about Ben?” she asked. “How are you going to get him
out?”

“
Don’t worry.
I’ll get him. I’ll drag him out.”

“
He’s too heavy.
You’ll never make it!”

“
We don’t have a
choice!”

We were almost out of time.
The infected were about to break through the door. The tracks were
about to run out on us. And it felt like the train was still
picking up speed. It felt like we were now flying along, high above
the water.

I pushed Maria towards the
door. The time for arguing was over. She was shaking her head.
Crying.

We made eye
contact.

And I pulled her chute
handle and pushed her out.

The parachute deployed out
of the door, and she was immediately dragged up and out of the
train as she screamed.

I watched her for a few
seconds to make double sure that she was clear of the bridge and
over the water.

She had made it.

Now it was my
turn.

I ran to the driver’s cabin
and grabbed Ben by his arms and dragged him towards the
door.

I prepared myself. I took a
deep breath.

I shook my hands out one
last time and then grabbed Ben in a sort of bear hug. I clasped my
hands and fingers together. Ben was big and heavy, but adrenalin
and fear had given me a burst of strength. I could hold him, I told
myself. I have to hold him. If I dropped him, he would
die.

I turned so my back was
facing out the door. But then I realised I would only be able to
hold onto Ben with one hand, since I needed my other hand to
release the chute.

This wasn’t going to
work.

I needed to secure Ben to
my body somehow.

His belt.

I whipped it out through
the loops on his pants. I quickly buckled it and slipped it over my
shoulders. I then made sure Ben’s shoulders were looped over the
belt as well. It wasn’t much of an improvement but it would
help.

It was time to
go.

But just as I was about to
jump, the whole train began to shake. I looked up. Looked through
the door into the driver’s cabin.

Through the windshield I
could see the carriage dip forward.

The whole train shook
violently again.

I was nearly knocked off my
feet.

We had run out of
track.

The train began to
fall.

I remember everything
happening in super slow motion.

I held on to Ben as tight
as I could. All seven foot, three hundred pounds of the
man.

I pulled the handle on the
chute.

In the end, I didn’t even
need to jump. The train shook from side to side, throwing me out
and away from the train, out into the enormous, dark cavern. My
chute was deployed and my descent was slowed. I held onto Ben as
tight as I could. My arms and my hands and my fingers screamed in
pain.