I ignored the crazy soldier. "Where have you been getting your supplies from?" I asked. "Where have you been getting your ammunition from?"

"We were dropped in here with enough supplies to last us a long time," the Sergeant said.

"Is that your Humvee out the front of the school?"

"Nah, we found that bad boy," the crazy soldier answered. "Haven"t had a chance to test out the 50 cal yet. Thinking about taking it into the city center and letting it rip. You guys want in?"

"What?"

"Do you want to come with me and shoot sick people?"

"No. We can"t," Jack said. "We need to get out of here. Do you guys have a radio?"

"Nah man. We lost it."

"You lost it?"

"Yeah. Doesn"t matter anyways. The d.a.m.n thing was busted. We tried calling for an evac but there was no response. So yeah, it was definitely busted."

I"m not sure if this guy was just stupid or if he was in shock or if he was just bat c.r.a.p insane. Maybe a combination of all three. But he didn"t seem to realize the severity of his situation. Somehow he had survived. He had been left behind by his superiors in an extremely hostile environment. He had been written off as collateral damage.

And yet here he was. Alive and breathing.

"Look, I don"t know how to say this," I said as calmly as possible. "You guys have been left behind. The military is using you as a diversion, a distraction."

"What the h.e.l.l are you saying?"

"I"m saying you guys are bait. You have been left here to distract the infected while the rest of the military falls back."

The Sergeant sat back down against the gym mats. We should"ve shot him right then and there.

"Nah man. You got it all wrong. We"re here on a recon mission. We"re the G.o.dd.a.m.n eyes on the ground. We"re coordinating air strikes. We"re taking care of business."

"Oh yeah? How long since you spoke to command? When was the last time you coordinated anything?"

The soldier thought about it for a second. His face went blank.

He shook his head. "Nah. You"re wrong."

He didn"t want to believe me.

"Trust me," I said. "I was in Woomera. I was left behind. I"ve been through this all before."

"Woomera? Nah, man. They nuked Woomera."

I kept trying to tell him he"d been left behind but he didn"t want to hear it. He didn"t want to believe me.

"Nah, they"ll be back," he said. "We were inserted here to do a G.o.dd.a.m.n job. We were ordered to hold this section. This is important. We need..."

"Wake up! They"re not coming back!"

He thought it over again. He was biting his bottom lip.

I looked back at the door to the bas.e.m.e.nt. It was locked and chained shut. Even if we made a run for it, we wouldn"t be able to open the door in time.

The soldier"s eyes were flicking back and forth. He was thinking this through. He was coming to grips with reality. "Command has been quiet," he whispered. "We lost contact. No word. No re-supply. Nothing."

He kicked the Sergeant in the leg again. "So we"re alone?" he asked. "We"ve been abandoned?"

"I"m sorry," I said.

He raised his sidearm and aimed it right at my head. "Drop your rifle, man."

"Whoa. There"s no need for this. We can work together."

"I said, drop your rifle!"

I reluctantly did as he instructed.

He then reached inside his shirt and ripped off his dog tags from around his neck and threw them away. "You too," he said to Jack. "Drop it!"

Jack placed his rifle on the ground slowly.

"You know, I think I knew," he said. "Yeah, I knew. I just didn"t want to admit it, you know? Yeah, that"s it. I knew all along. I"m not an idiot. I did it for Sarge. I was strong for Sarge. You gotta do it for the man standing next to you. You know what I"m saying?"

"Yeah. I get that," I said. "We understand. But you don"t need to freak out on us. You can lower your gun as well."

"Freak out? Who said anything about freaking out?"

He was yelling again. He was practically screaming at the top of his lungs.

We needed to get out of here. It"s like we had stumbled into a spider"s web or something.

We were trapped.

In a bas.e.m.e.nt.

With a mad man. A heavily armed mad man.

"Last week I was calling in air strikes," he continued. "The military had herded people into certain areas of the city. Everyone was following the evac routes; everyone was walking to the safe zones. It made everything so easy. You might think these people were innocent. And yeah when you really think about it, I guess you"d be right. I mean, sure they were innocent. But that doesn"t change the fact that they were carrying a deadly virus and spreading a deadly virus. They needed to die. There was no other way to control the spread of infection. Could you call the strike in? You think you"re strong enough to order the deaths of all those people? You ain"t strong. You"re a n.o.body!"

"It"s OK," I said, desperately trying to calm him down. "We"re not here to blame anyone for anything. We just want to survive this."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. We all want to survive. That"s what I"ve been doing. I"ve kept myself alive. I"ve kept the Sarge alive. Everyone else is either dead or infected. Not me. I"m strong. I"m smart. I told the Sarge I"d find other survivors. I made bet. I won. I found you!"

He turned to the sergeant and leant over him. "You hear that? You were wrong! I won! I found survivors!"

It was at that moment the Sergeant turned. The Oz virus took over. He lunged forward and grabbed his fellow soldier by the leg. He sunk his teeth in.

"Is that all you got!?" the soldier yelled.

The soldier grabbed the Sergeant by his neck. He ignored the bite wound. He ignored the fact that he was now infected. He put his gun to the Sergeant"s temple and pulled the trigger.

He then threw the gun to the ground and turned to me and Jack. "You see? We"re not bad. We were following orders. We were sacrificing people for the greater good. You gotta kill the few to save the many. That"s the way to beat this thing. You just kill the hosts. Cut off its food source. There"s what, twenty million people in Australia? That"s nothing. That"s a drop in the ocean. We"re gonna nuke the entire country. That"s how you win. You make the call. You press the b.u.t.ton!"

He started backing away from us, back towards to door. "Do not follow me."

He turned and sprinted out of the bas.e.m.e.nt up the stairs.

"Come on," I said to Jack "We gotta go get him."

Jack picked up his rifle. "What? Why? Let him go. We need to get the h.e.l.l out of here."

"No. I need to finish this."

We ran up the stairs and out through the broken gla.s.s doors of the school"s main entrance.

The soldier had climbed up on top of the Humvee. He armed the 50cal and started shooting the big machine gun into the surrounding buildings. Gla.s.s shattered and fell into the streets.

This soldier had been pushed to the edge. He had done things no man should ever have done. He had ordered in air strikes to kill innocent people. He had watched his fellow soldiers, his brothers die. One by one. Physically he had survived up until now. But mentally, emotionally and spiritually he had been crushed.

When a person goes through h.e.l.l, their body and soul and mind need to survive. If any one of these things dies, the person dies.

I raised my rifle and took aim. I put the bullet in the base of his neck.

He fell back awkwardly, letting go of the heavy machine gun. He fell on to the road. Somehow the bullet had only clipped his neck. He was bleeding profusely. Despite this he was still alive. He got to his knees.

"They"re not coming are they?" he whispered. "They don"t have a vaccine do they? They left us here to die."

"What? A vaccine?"

"Yeah, they said they were manufacturing a vaccine. They were lying weren"t they? They lied about everything. I don"t know what happened in here. I don"t know how it came to this. You guys can understand, right? You guys can forgive me?"

Jack had heard enough. He stepped forward and shot him in the head, finishing him off. The soldier fell back so that his legs were still folded up underneath his upper-body. We stood there in silence for a few minutes.

Our goal was to find a radio. Make contact. Get help. Get rescued. We could not have prepared ourselves for this.

"Please, Kenji," Jack said. "Don"t tell anyone about this. You can"t. Especially Maria. Please. She won"t understand. She can"t know how close I came to dying. I mean, this guy pulled a gun on me. Shot at me at point blank range. Don"t tell her I killed him. I don"t want her to think of me like that."

"It"s OK. You did what you had to do. Maria will understand."

"I can"t take that risk. I can"t lose her. Not here. Not again. Look, we"ve got the Humvee. That"s a good thing. It"s the silver lining to this whole messy situation. Maria doesn"t need to know. Let"s just go and get her and get the h.e.l.l out of this city."

So we agreed to keep the incident between us.

I checked the soldier"s pockets and found the keys for the armored Humvee. It was our ticket out of this h.e.l.l hole.

Fate We did the right thing Or did we? I don"t even know anymore.

Fate and the choices we make.

I really wish I could remember the name of that book.

It"s killing me.

I told Jack that before we go back into the city again, I need to write this down.

I need to. And for some messed up reason it feels like a final entry.

I"ve also told jack that leaving Maria inside the stadium was the right thing to do. I have told him a million times.

"We did the right thing," I said. "Leaving Maria inside the stadium was the right thing to do. She is safe."

I"m trying to convince him that Maria is safe. As long as she stays inside she is safe.

We drove back to the stadium in silence. We were a mess of emotions. Overall we were happy and relieved that we had found a working, armored Humvee. We had the means to get out of the city. So yeah, we were happy. But we were also in shock. We were saddened by what we had seen and by what had become of those soldiers. And that man in the alley. Those guys had lost everything. They had been broken by this plague. Mind, body and soul.

Everything.

"Let"s just get out of here," Jack said. "Drive as far out of the city as we can go."

"We"ll have to stock up on supplies first," I said. "Pack as much food and water as we can find in the stadium. Pack as much as we can fit into the Humvee."

"Yeah, right. Of course. But as soon as we do that we get the h.e.l.l out of here."

Jack maneuvered the car through the narrow back streets of Sydney"s inner suburbs. I was glad for Jack"s local knowledge. If I was driving, we"d still be going around in circles. I was instantly disorientated.

We approached the stadium, the SCG. We could only barely see it through the dust storm.

"Where do we park this thing?" Jack asked.

"Good question. Maybe we should drive it around to the main entry point. Or maybe one of the emergency tunnels?"

I was scanning the perimeter of the stadium, trying to locate a suitable and safe place to park the Humvee.

Movement caught my eye.

We must"ve been a mile out, maybe less.

"Jack, slow down," I said.

"What is that?" he asked.

"I don"t know."

I couldn"t be sure. I couldn"t see clearly through the dust storm. It looked like a convoy of cars. They were being chased by the infected.

A very large group of infected.