Aircraft continued to roar overhead. I could see three of them flying in perfect formation. They were coming around for another pass at the bridge, or whatever remained of it. They flew low and fast, skimming the water. They were coming right for us. Jack took me under the water again, a split second later they flew directly over us. Even under water the noise was deafening. When we surfaced, the jets were looping high into the sky. They came around and straightened up, firing missiles directly at the remains of the giant concrete pylons and the toll booths, making sure no one survived the initial explosions.

They looped again, like they were in the midst of a choreographed routine. It was both terrifying and weirdly graceful in the same instant. This time when they straightened up, they pointed their noses towards the highway we had just walked down, the highway that was currently choked up with scared and confused people. They flew low and fast directly over the road. They flew in tight formation. It was a display of expert and deadly precision. When their bombs hit the ground, a wall of flame erupted the full length of the highway.

I’ll never forget the sight and the noise of all that destruction. The twisted metal. The roaring flames.

Kenji was still yelling at us to swim. He told us to head towards land. But we needed to avoid the crowds. We also needed to avoid the areas closest to the roads, the bridge and the tunnel.

We didn’t have many options. I could barely see through all the splashing of arms and feet. It was a miracle this many people had survived the initial explosion and the collapse of the bridge.

Everyone was panicking and frantic, exactly the opposite of how you’re supposed to act when you’re in the water. I remember Jack telling me once that if I ever got caught in a riptide or undertow, do not panic. Just relax and let the rip take you. Swim across it, not against it. And even though this situation was a little different to being caught in a rip, panicking was still not a good idea.

We swam for a few minutes and the crowd began to thin out as people became more and more tired. It was then the helicopters came. I think some people initially thought they had come to help. They were even waving their arms, hoping to get picked up, hoping to get rescued. The helicopters hovered in closer over the crowd. I remember thinking they didn’t look like rescue choppers. They were too small. They had too many weapons. Unfortunately, I was right.

I heard Kenji yell something. I think he told us to dive.

Jack told me to take a deep breath, so I inhaled as much air as my lungs could take. All the diving was wearing me out. The lack of oxygen was making it hard to think straight, hard to move. Everything was happening so fast, the speed and precision with which the military moved was unbelievable. It also meant that all this was pre-meditated and planned.

We dived again. Just before we went under, the helicopters unleashed their guns. They were mean looking guns with multiple rotating barrels. The bullets chopped up the water and chopped up anyone caught in the line of fire, adding to the frenzy and panic, adding blood to the water. The death toll continued to rise. It was a massacre. There’s just no other way to describe it. And there was no way we could out swim these helicopters and their weapons. It didn’t matter how good a swimmer Jack was, or how many big waves he had surfed. This was too much.

Stolen novel; please report.

We hadn’t even come up for a breath. Jack was still diving, dragging me down with him, bullets were trailing through the water all around us. My lungs were on fire. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could hold my breath. I felt like I was going to black out. Suddenly the bullet trails changed direction, like they were being pushed. That’s when the shockwave from the secondary charge from the tunnel hit us.

It hit us like a freight train and we were pushed and thrown around like rag dolls. It wasn’t like a washing machine this time, it was much more violent. Jack held on to me in a bear hug as tight as he could. If he hadn’t, we would have been separated for sure and who knows where I would’ve ended up. I probably would’ve drowned. We were pushed a long way underwater. It must have been like surfing a big wave and getting wiped out, and then getting wiped out by the rest of the big waves in the set, one after the other, constantly being tossed around like a cork.

When I finally surfaced and took massive, gulping, gasping breaths, I braced myself to be torn to pieces by the machine guns. But surprisingly we were a good distance away from the helicopters. We had been taken further than I thought by the underwater current created by the explosion. Suddenly, we didn’t need to out swim the search and destroy helicopters.

Jack asked me if I was all right as he looked around for the others. He spotted Kim about fifty meters away. “Kim! Over here!” he yelled as she immediately started swimming towards us.

Over our shoulders, further away from the bridge, were Kenji and Maria.

“Jack!” Maria shouted, waving her arms.

“This way,” Kenji said. “We need to hide from those choppers.”

We waited for Kim to catch up with us, which didn’t take long. She was swimming like an Olympic champion. I guess the fear of being shot or blown to bits is good motivation to swim like you’re trying to break a world record.

We swam over to Kenji and Maria. I was in total disbelief we had all survived. The Sydney Harbor Bridge had just been demolished as well as the tunnel. I mean, everything had just been completely destroyed. So many people had just been murdered. It was too much to think about, especially since we weren’t even out of danger yet.

We were treading water, looking around, trying to catch our breaths. Waiting. Watching. Making sure those damn helicopters of death weren’t coming after us.

I think in some ways it hit Kenji the hardest. I think he felt responsible. He just witnessed the military massacre hundreds of thousands of people, and if he hadn’t run away when he did, then maybe he would’ve been part of it. I tried to reassure him. “You said it yourself. Someone else is in charge.”

“I know. I just can’t believe the order was given.”

“We’ll make them pay,” I said. “I don’t know how, but we’ll find whoever’s responsible and we’ll make them pay.”

I think I was delirious from lack of oxygen or from too much sea water. We could’ve been shot to pieces at any moment, and yet there I was, making vendettas.

“Come on,” Jack said. “If we swim around to Darling Harbor it should be a bit more sheltered.”

“Yeah, good idea,” Kim agreed. “It might give us a chance to get out of the water undetected.”

“We should stay close to the harbor wall so those Apaches can’t see us so easily,” Kenji said.

“What the hell is an Apache?” Maria asked.

“Those helicopters. The ones killing all the people. Hopefully they’ll be too busy with everyone else to come looking for us.”

It was a gruesome thought but we were all thinking it. Well, at least I was. I wanted those choppers and their machine guns as far away from us as possible.

“So this is all part of the containment protocol?” Kim asked as she looked at the ruins of the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

“I don’t know,” Kenji answered. “I never thought it would come to this.”

We slowly started swimming for Darling Harbor, and in my exhausted state of mind, I thought to myself that postcards of Sydney will never be the same.