Where The Dead Men Lie (The Secret Apocalypse) (22 page)

The thing that woke me was the squeaking noise of the brakes and Ben hitting the steering wheel. The force of the blow shook the whole car.

We lifted the hood to see what was going on. This time there was a whole lot of steam coming from the engine.

"It’s dead," Ben said. "Engines over heated. Looks, like we’re walking from here."

"How far is the Fortress?" Daniel asked.

"Too far. We’d never make it. Not without water."

We had driven all through the night. It was early morning now. And we still weren’t close. That was a disheartening fact. And the water, I thought to myself. From the general store. I guess with everything that had happened, I’d completely forgot about it.

"Then what the hell are we supposed to do?" Jack asked with a strain in his voice.

"There's gotta be a town close by, right?" Maria offered.

Ben nodded. "Yeah there is. But it's completely overrun with infected."

"Well, we don't have a choice."

"No," Jack said. "The last time we tried to raid a town that was overrun, we nearly died. We are not doing that again. No way."

"What else are we going to do?" I asked.

"There's an outpost," Ben said. "About a day's walk from here."

"Outpost?" Kenji asked.

"Yeah. The Fortress is the main facility in this section. There are smaller outposts all over. They’re isolated from one another."

"How many?"

"Not sure. Five others that I know of. But they’ve all been compromised."

"Compromised?" Daniel asked. "How?"

"The Oz virus. And the nano-swarms."

"But this outpost is still operational, right?"

"The last I heard it was."

"So how has this one survived? How has the Fortress survived?"

"Force field," Ben answered. "Keeps the nano-swarms out. They were the only ones."

"The only ones? Why? Why not the others?"

"The other facilities didn’t get their force fields set up in time. I’m guessing they didn’t really know what was going on until it was too late."

"Which way to the outpost?" Kenji asked.

"South-East. It's in the complete opposite direction to the Fortress."

"So we’re gonna backtrack?" Jack said.

"We don't really have a choice," Kenji pointed out. "We're in no man's land. We have no water, no food. We have to try."

"The last time we deviated off course we nearly died," Jack argued. "We were kidnapped and drugged. You two," he said pointing to me and Maria, "were nearly fed to a freakin monster."

"That was unforeseen," Daniel answered. "No one could’ve predicted that the priest and those people were all crazy."

"Well, we should’ve. We should’ve been more careful."

"What the hell were we supposed to do?" Daniel said. "We were out of food. Nearly out of water. We had to check the towns for supplies."

"And in the process we risked Maria. Have you all forgotten what our mission is? It’s not supplies. It’s Maria. She is all that matters."

"I know that," Daniel said. "Believe me, I know."

"Jack, come on," Maria said. "It was no one’s fault."

"Yeah it was," Jack continued. "You guys are supposed to be highly trained soldiers. Kenji, you’re a killer. A stone cold killer. You could’ve taken out those guys when they came up to the house. You could’ve shot them all between the eyes before they even knew what was going on. And you," he said, pointing at Daniel. "Special Forces? I don’t think so. No wonder the rest of your team didn’t make it."

"Jack that’s enough!" Maria shouted.

Daniel stepped forward and grabbed Jack by the shirt. He raised his arm, seconds away from punching Jack right in the jaw. Which he totally deserved.

But Daniel didn’t throw the punch.

Both guys were exhausted. Too weary to fight. Daniel knew it. He let go of Jack and pushed him away.

"Look, we’re on the edge here," Daniel said calmly. "The very edge. We’re starving and dehydrated. I understand you’re upset. I understand you’re angry. Believe me, I do."

"Do you?" Jack said. "Then you understand why back tracking is the worst idea ever. It’s a whole day in the complete opposite direction to the Fortress, the complete opposite direction to your camp. We’re hundreds of miles away from the Nullabor plains. We need to keep moving. We need to keep walking. One foot after the after. That’s the only way we’re gonna make it. Hopefully we’ll get lucky and find food and water along the way. Maybe we’ll find a car or bikes. Hell, I’ll take a skateboard at this point."

"Jack, we’re no good without water. We’re dead without it." Kenji being all Zen, the voice of reason. "We need to get to the outpost. Rest. Recover."

Jack took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. "Look, I knew it was gonna be hard. No one ever said it was going to be easy. I get that. But if we go to this outpost or whatever, we waste a day. And then it’s one more day just to get back to this point. Two days wasted. And for what? We don’t even know what’s at this outpost. It could be overrun. It could be abandoned."

Maria stepped forward and put her arm around Jack but he brushed her off. I’ve always seen Jack as an easy going kind of guy. I guess he was back before the world went to hell. I guess dealing with school and teachers and exams and parents wasn’t that big of a deal compared to this.

But the one thing that was really making Jack lose his mind, the one thing that was killing him, was his love for Maria. And now that she needed to be protected at all costs, it was putting Jack on edge. And having her come so close to death had caused him to snap.

"Jack, we have to go," Maria said. "We need to rest. We need food and water. I need food and water. You need food and water. Can’t you see how you’re acting? What do you want us to do? Do you want us to split up? We can’t split up. We’re stronger together. We all need each other. We can’t fight like this."

Jack turned away from the group and looked to the west. His hands were on his head. He took another couple of deep breaths. It looked like he wanted to pull his hair out. He had a look of anguish on his face that I’d never seen before. He wanted to get to Daniel’s camp so badly. He wanted to get Maria out of here. I can understand that. I think we could all understand that.

"Fine," Jack finally said. "We go to the outpost. We backtrack."

CHAPTER 34

We trekked about thirty miles. Maybe more. We followed a small road for awhile. But then seemingly in the middle of nowhere we turned off the road and followed a dirt track for another few miles.

I wondered how Ben knew where we were going. He didn’t have a map. No GPS. No compass. And now we weren’t even following a road. We were literally walking off into the desert. A huge, never-ending desert. We were far away from any roads or dirt tracks. Our lives were in Ben’s hands.

The reality? Ben could’ve been leading us out into the desert to our deaths. He could’ve been leading us all the way out here just to butcher us. Or make us dig our own graves and bury us alive.

I shook my head. I had to stop thinking like that.

Up ahead, there appeared to be an ancient river bed. Ben said it would lead us to the outpost.

We walked in silence. We were all exhausted. Everyone lost in their own thoughts.

Were we doing the right thing?

Could we trust Ben?

Each step took us further away from our destination, from safety.

Ben was out in front. I had been so lost in my own thoughts, scaring myself with my own crazy imagination that I hadn’t even noticed that Ben was hunched over as he walked, breathing hard, blood dripping down his shirt.

I walked up next to him. "Hey, are you all right?"

He stopped, ignoring my question and held his hand up for everyone to stop. "We’re here."

The river bed sloped downwards between a pile of massive boulders. I’m guessing these rocks would’ve caused rapids in the river once. Or maybe even a waterfall in some places. A very long time ago.

Below us was a vast plain.

Kenji and Daniel moved ahead slightly and climbed over the rocks so they could get a look.

"Well, the good news is that we’re finally here," Kenji said.

"What’s the bad news?" I asked.

I looked at Daniel. He was shaking his head, a look of disappointment on his face.

"Well? What’s the bad news," I asked as I scrambled forward over the rocks so I could have a look.

"It’s completely surrounded by the infected," Kenji answered.

"Oh no," Maria said. "How? All the way out here? There’s no towns? There’s nothing. Where did they come from?"

The outpost had two main buildings. They were rectangular in shape. They were connected by an enclosed walkway about fifty feet in length. This walkway appeared to be damaged. It seemed to be bent slightly, almost as if it had been damaged by an earthquake.

Each building was protected by two, twenty foot chain link fences, topped with razor wire and a twenty foot inner wall. The buildings were also protected by gun towers, one at each corner. Placed around the outer-perimeter fences were three Humvees and one tank. They were spaced evenly apart, facing outwards, towards the desert. Each vehicle had a satellite dish attached to its roof.

One thing was obvious; this was a maximum security facility. Designed to keep everybody on the outside.

And at that moment, the infected had it completely surrounded. They had even knocked over the perimeter fences in certain areas.

"What is this place?" I asked.

"Military research," Ben said. "Standard design. You’ve got a research facility and a military facility. They keep them in separate buildings just in case there’s an outbreak or any contamination issues."

"Outbreak?"

"Yeah. In the research facility, they’re working with everything from the Oz virus, to the Ebola virus. Swine flu. Bird flu. SARS. Small pox. Everything. They need to keep that part separated."

I could see his point.

Maria looked worried. "Where did they all come from?"

"We're in the Woomera military testing zone." Kenji whispered.

"What? We're nowhere near Woomera," Jack said. "If we were, we wouldn't be breathing on account of all the nuclear fallout."

"The testing zone," Kenji continued "It was a huge area. It stretched out across half the outback. It was top secret."

"So?"

"They had multiple testing sites within the area. They tested on refugees, illegal immigrants, people smugglers. They had secret, hidden refugee camps out here. I'm not sure how many. I only saw one of them."

"Secret refugee camps?" Ben asked. "Out here?"

"Yeah. It was awful. It was basically a huge shanty town. Home to thousands of refugees. I guess they used them like farms. The refugees were like cattle."

Maria moved away from us. "I think I’m going to be sick."

"And so now the refugees, they’re all infected?" I said.

Kenji nodded. "I'm guessing these outposts and the Fortress are all part of it somehow."

"There are at least six of these outposts that I know of," Ben said. "The Fortress is the main, central facility."

"So what the hell do we do now?" Jack said, the strain of fear returning to his voice. "We're stuck. No water. In the middle of nowhere. Three days walk from the Fortress. From anywhere!"

"I was hoping somebody was still home," Ben said. "Looks like that was just wishful thinking."

"What good would that have done us anyway?" Jack asked.

"They have a pretty devastating security system. Very effective. All they have to do is push a button and watch the show. The fact that all those infected people are still standing means that nobody has activated the security system."

"So nobody’s home?" I said.

"Or the security system is busted." Kenji offered.

"Or they're dead."

"Yeah."

"So what now?" I asked.

"Well, it looks like most of the perimeter fence is still intact," Ben continued. "Which means the infected are still all on the outside."

"How does that help us?"

"It means if we can get in, we can get supplies, food and water. We can rest up knowing we're safe. We should be able to activate the security system. Clear out the infected."

"But there’s too many of them," Maria said. "There’s no way we can get past. We certainly can’t fight our way through. We only have one little handgun and one shotgun. How are we going to get in?"

"Emergency entry point," Ben answered. "But we need to hurry. There’s no telling how long that fence will hold."

CHAPTER 35

We backtracked down the river a fair way. We came to a point where the river bed branched off from the main stream. It twisted around and eventually it led into the mouth of a cave.

Ben had a shotgun. I think it was a shotgun. I can’t really remember. But I know it had a torch fixed to the barrel. The torch would be our only source of light once we moved deeper into the cave.