Did Rebecca and Kim make it out alive?

Simple questions with not so simple answers.

Eventually, we made it to the upper floors of the tower. We pushed open the fire doors and found ourselves in one of the restaurants. According to the sign on the door it was the Sydney Tower Buffet. It was a big, expansive room. It had floor to ceiling windows for walls, with complete panoramic views of the entire city and the surrounding area. However, at that point in time we could only see the closest buildings. Everything else was obscured by the clouds and the rain. I was disappointed. The view was one of the reasons I wanted to come up here, one of the reasons we climbed all those stairs. I guess it was still good to be up high above the reach of the infected. But I still wanted to know what else was going on in the other parts of the city.

Were the military still operating in here?

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 d.a.m.n weather cleared up.

Jack and Maria both had their faces pressed up against the gla.s.s, 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 c.o.ke. 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.

"d.a.m.n," 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 bra.s.s. 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sumed 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 d.a.m.n near impossible when at night we started hearing renewed gunfire and sh.e.l.ling. I guess there were still survivors and soldiers, somewhere in the city. They must be putting up one h.e.l.l 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. .h.i.t.

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.

What were they chasing? Who were they chasing?

Over the past couple of days, the horde, the swarm of infected has been growing exponentially, down in the streets, right outside this building.

Why were they coming back into the city?

Are there other survivors down there?