The first thing I did was check to see if I had all my limbs still attached. The dust was still settling and my ears were still ringing but I was intact.

I could just make out Kim shouting at Kenji, waving her arms around.

Kenji ignored her. He was on his feet as soon as the grenades had blown. He peered over into the next room and raised his rifle back up to his shoulder. He pulled the trigger three times. Each gunshot sounded muffled but was still loud enough to make me jump.

“Clear!” Kenji shouted.

“Clear? You just killed Pearce!” Kim shouted in disbelief.

“He was already dead,” Kenji replied.

“Is everyone OK?” Jack asked. “Maria, are you all right?”

I slowly uncurled myself. I was slightly deaf but I was fine. Jack and Maria were huddled in the corner. Maria’s amazing tan seemed to have disappeared. She was pale and covered in dust.

Kim brushed herself off. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked Kenji.

Kenji again ignored the question. He slid the ammo magazine out of his rifle and threw it on the ground. “We need to leave,” he said as he leant down and felt the neck of the wounded soldier for a pulse. He then felt his wrist and leant over his mouth and listened for breathing. But there was nothing. No sign of life.

He then searched the pockets of the fallen soldier for ammo and other supplies. It was unsettling, like he was picking him clean, like a vulture. But I guess it wasn’t meant to be disrespectful. It was just about survival. Kenji found a hand gun and a spare magazine for the rifle. “We need to leave right now,” he said again as he reloaded.

Officer Dennis was still lying on the ground. It wasn’t until he regained his senses that he realized he had a piece of glass the size of a large knife stuck in his thigh. He began to freak out. His mouth dropped. His eyes went all bug like. “Guys, I might be in trouble here.”

He went to pull it out but Kenji stopped him. “Don’t!”

“What? Why not?”

“It’s in too deep. If you sever your femoral artery, you’re a dead man.”

“But look at the size of the thing!”

“If you sever the artery, you’ll bleed to death in about three minutes. Do not move it.”

“Oh Jesus,” Dennis said as he swallowed hard.

“Is anyone else hurt?” Kenji asked.

I patted myself down. I seemed to be fine. Maria was in a state of shock but physically she was all right.

Jack held Maria. “Are you sure you’re OK?” he asked again.

“Hurt?” yelled Kim. “You mean besides Pearce?” She still couldn’t believe what was happening.

“It had to be done,” Kenji explained as he unclipped a walkie talkie from the dead soldier’s belt. “Private Ken Yoshida requesting containment crew at North Sydney Police Station,” he said into the radio. “Repeat. Private Ken Yoshida requesting containment crew at North Sydney Police Station. Over.”

“Containment Crew?” Kim asked.

A crackled reply said, “Request denied, Private.”

“Be advised of possible contact. Over.”

More static. “Understood, private. Request still denied. Make your way to Royal North Shore Hospital for decontamination process.”

Stolen novel; please report.

Kenji swore under his breath.

“Buddy, I don’t care who you are, or what you’re doing here,” Kim said. “You need to give me some answers. Right now!”

Kim was enraged. I’d never seen her lose her cool before. Maria had always told me that she was a bit of a control freak. And now that everything was completely out of her control, she was starting to lose it.

But again, Kenji ignored her. “We need to get Officer Dennis to the hospital.”

Dennis was hopeful. “Yeah,” he agreed, his voice croaking. “Yeah, that’s a good idea.”

Kim looked down at Dennis, looked at the oozing, bleeding wound in his leg. She knew it was the only option, the right option. “OK,” she said reluctantly. “But when we get there, you’re going to give me some answers.”

The two of them bent down and picked up Officer Dennis, taking extra care not to dislodge the massive shard of glass sticking out of his leg.

“Have you got him?” Kenji asked Kim.

“Yeah.”

“What about him?” I asked about the other soldier.

Kenji just shook his head and everyone was silent for a moment.

“Follow me,” Kenji said after a while. “Stay close. Girls stay behind Officer Kim, understood? You too,” he said to Jack. “We don’t need any heroes.”

“Hey, I’m not gonna do anything stupid,” Jack said, slightly offended.

We all followed this lone soldier, who used to be my next door neighbor. We followed him out of the interrogation room. We stepped over the person who had been trying to bust in through the door. He’d actually fallen a fair way back. His face was missing and there was a huge hole in his chest. I guess taking a couple of point blank rounds from a rifle will do that to you. We moved out into the foyer of the police station. Kenji had his rifle back up to his shoulder, ready to fire. For some reason, this didn’t make me feel very comfortable.

Outside, it was storming and completely dark except for when a flash of lightning lit up the night.

Kenji held his hand up, signaling for us to stop.

Lying next to the entrance was the Lieutenant. He was lying in a pool of blood. Kenji lowered his rifle and slung it over his back. He drew his sidearm and walked slowly towards the body.

Then the damndest thing happened.

The Lieutenant was lying flat on his back when he suddenly sat straight up.

Kenji motioned for us to stay back as he slowly moved closer. The Lieutenant was making the same moaning sound that Tommy had been making right before he attacked Jack.

The Lieutenant turned towards Kenji, dark red blood dripped from his nose and mouth. When he turned towards us you could see a huge wound in his neck that exposed his spinal cord. It was no wonder he was moaning in pain.

Just as the Lieutenant was about to get to his feet, Kenji fired three shots from his handgun. Two bullets hit the lieutenant square in the chest and one right in the middle of his forehead. Kenji then stood over the Lieutenant and fired another shot directly into his head.

It was the sixth death I had experienced that day, that afternoon. Little did I know it was only a preview of things to come.

“Why did you shoot him?” I asked. “That man needed help.”

“Just don’t step in the blood,” Kenji said without any hint of emotion in his voice. “I’ll explain at the hospital. But right now we have to get out of here. We are all in serious danger. Please, you must believe me. We don’t have much time.”

It wasn’t like we had a choice. So we all did what he said. Maybe we followed him because we were still in shock from the grenades, from the deaths, from being attacked by a couple of psychos. Maybe because somewhere in the back of our collective consciousness we already knew what was going on. These things don’t just happen, not here, not in a country like Australia, not unless something really bad is about to go down. But I guess none of us wanted to voice these fears. Who would? You’d sound downright insane and no one wanted to scare themselves any more than they already were.

Kenji never actually said, “Come with me if you want to live.” Like Kyle Reese’s famous words from ‘Terminator’. But we all knew that if we wanted to live, we better go with him.

So we followed. Blindly. Like Lemmings. One by one.

Kenji slid his sidearm back into its holster and dragged the Lieutenant out of the way so he could open the front doors. He looked out the door and across the street. “Good,” he said. “It’s right there. Everyone into the Humvee.”

The giant military car was parked across the road. Kenji opened the entrance doors and motioned for us to hurry up, and reminded us to not step in the blood.

Over the clap of thunder and the roar of the wind I heard some strange noises. Sort of like the moaning noise the crazy lady had made before she crashed through the observation window. But it sounded like it was coming from multiple directions. The rain was pelting down, making it difficult to see anything.

“Keep your heads down,” Kenji said. “Run straight for the Humvee. Keep as quiet as possible.”

“Keep quiet?” Kim asked. “Why?”

“Just go,” Kenji said as he moved outside the entrance. He knelt down on one knee and looked through the scope on his rifle. He looked up and down the street. “Hurry.”

In the distance, I could just make out dark shapes moving and running. But the rain was making it difficult to see. We hesitated, not wanting to get wet more than anything at that point.

Kenji slung his rifle over his shoulder and jumped to his feet. He started pushing us forward. “Get to the car. Now!”