The Lost Journal Part 29

We were able to use the cop car to drive back into the city. Lucky for us it hadn't been touched. The keys were still in the ignition and it still had about half a tank of gas. The winds.h.i.+eld was completely covered in dust and it took a good five minutes to clean it off so we could see.

Once we could see Jack drove off at a hundred miles an hour. I told him to slow down. A car accident was the last thing we needed.

It took us a long time to make it back into the city. It was bad. The streets, the mess. And of course, the infected. Again, Jack's knowledge of Sydney was invaluable. He knew every inner-city suburb, every side street and alleyway.

Jack had driven us into an industrial area of the city. This turned out to be a good thing because the industrial area of the city was completely deserted. It had been left untouched by the military's containment protocol. There were no abandoned cars clogging the streets. The roads were in good condition. The buildings were still intact. And there didn't seem to be any infected roaming around.

We decided to climb to the roof of a warehouse to get our bearings and to make sure there weren't any infected people in the immediate vicinity. The warehouse was a giant storage shed. There was a whole row of them lined up, one after the other. The warehouses and the industrial area stretched all the way to Sydney Harbor.

Jack had his hands over his eyes to s.h.i.+eld from glare. The sun looked weird. It was only just visible through the dust storm. It appeared to be blue.

"What do you think?" Jack asked.

"I don't know. This area seems to be deserted. We might be able to find a truck that has a working two way radio."

"Yeah, that's a good idea. They're usually long range, right?"

"Hope so."

"We can start here," Jack said. "And then work our way to the harbor."

We were about to make a move when all of a sudden we heard a grunting noise and a man's voice. He was rambling something incomprehensible.

"It's time!" the man shouted. "Come on! We are doing this."

The noises, the voice was coming from the alleyway below.

I held my index finger up to my lips, telling Jack to be quiet. We moved over to the edge of the roof and looked down into the narrow alleyway between the warehouses. Standing alone in the alley was a man. His head was lowered as he spoke to no one.

"Come on. Let's go!"

He was wearing jeans. No s.h.i.+rt.

He was barefoot.

He placed a baseball bat and a samurai sword against the wall of the warehouse. The sword was sheathed. Slung around his leg was a holster that carried an old school revolver. I couldn't see what kind. My guess is that it was an old colt 45 revolver. Maybe a Smith and Wesson.

Maybe.

He was holding an AK 47.

"Mister Anton Kalashnikov," he said to the rifle. "Let's dance."

He was talking to himself and the ghost of a gun maker.

He was a man who had lost everything.

He opened the door to the warehouse. It was a small side entrance. He picked up an empty gla.s.s whiskey bottle that was sitting next to the door. He smashed the bottle against the brick wall and fired the AK 47 into the air.

One single shot.

It was loud.

He waited.

He was slowly breathing in and out.

There was silence.

"Come on!" he shouted.

He adjusted something on the rifle. The rate of fire. Single shot. Semi-automatic. Full Automatic. He fired the rest of the magazine into the air. Bullet casings bounced on the concrete ground and scattered in the alleyway.

He reloaded.

In the waist of his jeans and his pockets were about nine spare magazines.

He waited some more.

Suddenly I could hear the screaming, howling moan of the infected. The noises were coming from inside the warehouse.

He backed away from the door.

He stood off to the side.

An infected man ran out of the door.

The AK 47 came to life.

The s.h.i.+rtless, shoeless man, the man who had lost everything, unleashed another magazine.

One magazine, for one infected man.

He wasn't aiming.

He was shooting from the hip.

He reloaded.

More infected ran out of the door. They ran for the man. He fired the AK 47 on full automatic. The barrel turned red at one point. Steam and smoke drifted up into the air like some sort of weird exorcism - the ghost of a gun maker. Each bullet had a demon's soul that was released when it was fired or something. I don't know.

He walked backwards as he reloaded. He continued firing on full automatic from the hip. It took approximately seven seconds for the gun to chew through an entire magazine. He ran out of bullets. He threw the AK 47 to the ground. He picked up the baseball bat.

The infected swarmed.

He swung the bat.

He crushed heads and faces.

And noses.

He was bitten.

The infected tackled him to the ground. He got back up and pushed the crowd, forced them off. He drew the revolver and c.o.c.ked the hammer. He fired five shots into the swarm.

Five shots.

This is important.

He put the revolver back in the holster.

He swung the bat again.

He was grunting.

Like an animal.

"Come on!"

The baseball bat was covered in blood. And so was he. At one point he had to wipe the blood clear of his eyes so he could see.

He was bitten on the neck. His carotid artery has been ripped open.

He screamed.

He wavered and stumbled. But he kept his footing. He kept fighting and raging. He kept swinging the bat. He did not stop. He knew to attack the head.

The swarm, the infected kept coming.

"Good!" he said. "Good! Come on!

He cleared s.p.a.ce with the bat. At this point he had killed more infected with the baseball bat then he had with the AK 47.

But the infected kept coming.

They were relentless.

Death is relentless.

The blood from the wound in his neck was pulsing to the beat of his heart. It was spraying the walls of the alley and the faces of the infected in a perfect rhythm of his death.

But somehow he kept swinging the baseball bat. And I became immune to the sickening noise the bat made when it sunk into the face of an infected person, simultaneously cracking the skull and the neck.

It was incredibly violent.

And I became used to it. Numb.

The handle of the bat became wet and slippery with blood. He lost his grip and he dropped the bat. But he did not stop. He began punching the infected in the face, the jaw. The stomach. He grabbed the hair of an infected person who used to be a business man. A manager of the warehouse maybe. He pulled back on his hair and threw it to the ground and stomped on his throat. He picked up the baseball bat again.

And he just kept going.

I did not know where this guy was getting his strength from. He should be dead. He was covered in blood. He was covered in bite wounds. He was bleeding out. He was infected. Two minutes slowly ticked by. He had destroyed the horde of infected.

He threw the baseball bat away.

He fell to his knees.

He was breathing hard.

He picked up the samurai sword.

It was still sheathed.

He held it tight and took his last dying breaths.

He lowered his head.

The blood spurting from his neck had stopped. He gripped the sword with his left hand and drew the revolver with his right. The revolver was a six shooter. He c.o.c.ked the hammer and placed the barrel against his temple.

He stopped breathing.

He pulled the trigger.

Nothing in life is free We moved on. I told Jack that we needed to put distance between us and the alley. The noise of the gunshots would no doubt attract more of the infected. So we got out of there as quickly and as quietly as possible. We made our way further towards the harbor.

The cop car's engine began to smoke. It eventually stalled. We had to ditch it. This is when we found the armored Humvee. It was just sitting in the middle of the road. It was too good to be true, like an oasis in a desert.

"We could use this to get out of here," I said. "This is our ticket to freedom."

We knelt down in the street behind a parked car for awhile just watching the Humvee. I think we were both scared it was too good to be true. Or maybe we were still in shock over what we just witnessed.

I now know that nothing in life is free. And this Humvee was no exception.

We had to pay a price. It nearly cost us our lives.

Jack and I have agreed to keep this a secret. He didn't want Maria knowing what he did, and how close he came to dying.

I told him I would keep it a secret, even though I'm pretty sure Maria would understand.

She would understand it was a hard decision and that it was something terrible.

Kill or be killed.

She would understand.

Still, Jack wanted to keep it a secret.

It turned out that the Humvee belonged to a couple of Force Recon Marines. They had been left behind by their superiors. They had been written off, left to die alone in the city.