We’d been flying for about two hours. The whole time I’d been buzzing on a seemingly endless rush of adrenalin. I was on the brink of what felt like a cross between a heart attack and an anxiety attack. Probably the beginnings of a nervous breakdown, I thought.
The guys didn’t talk much. Ethan had actually fallen asleep. Maybe they knew this was their last chance for some peace and quiet so they were making the most of it. I wondered how Ramirez was doing by herself back at the camp. I don’t know how she did it. I’d be scared senseless all by myself, in the middle of the outback. Especially with killer dogs on the loose and God knows what else out there. I suppose she was protected by automatic machine guns and a super charged electric fence. But still, there was no way I would let anyone leave me alone in a place like that.
Daniel’s voice came over the PA system. “ETA, thirty minutes. Coming up on the eastern seaboard.”
We banked sharply to the left and began flying north to follow the shoreline towards Sydney. It was still too dark outside to see anything, but I knew that approximately a hundred miles to our right, over the eastern horizon, was the military blockade. They would be waiting and watching, evaluating their position and planning their next move. To our left was the east coast of Australia. A stretch of coast that was overrun with millions of infected. What’s that saying about a rock and a hard place? I think that’s where we were at that point in time.
Griffin unstrapped himself from his seat. “All right! It is go time, ladies and gents!” he shouted as he started walking up and down the cabin area. He seemed to be stretching his legs, waking himself up, psyching himself up.
“Woo! Yeah!” he shouted as he slapped himself in the face. “Hey Smitty, wake up the Major.”
“You wake him up,” Smitty replied, obviously not wanting to disturb Ethan from his slumber.
Griffin made his way towards me. “You look nervous, little lady,” he said in his rough as guts voice. “Don’t be. We’re the best of the best. Ain’t no one or no thing gonna hurt you while we’re around. The Osprey here is armed with two M134’s. AKA, the mini gun. AKA, the Gatling gun. AKA Ol’ Painless. Made famous in such movies as Terminator 2 and Predator and every other action move worth a damn. It fires over six thousand rounds per minute, one hundred rounds per second. You can take out an entire army with just one of these bad boys and we’ve got two of them. We got M4 carbines with pump action grenade launchers and infra-red scopes. My main man Smitty over here is packing a mini-me M249 machine gun. That baby’s got a two hundred round ammo pouch, just in case you got a whole lot of bad guys to kill. We got javelin missile launchers. We got automatic shot guns because why the hell not. And let’s not forget the cult classic, the iconic, the Desert Eagle,” he said as he slid a handgun out of the holster on his leg. “This is one of the largest hand guns in the world. It is a hand held cannon and it is not practical at all. Quite frankly, it is a pain in the ass to aim, and it’s only got a relatively small magazine. But goddamn it looks cool.”
“Don’t forget the suits,” Smitty reminded Griffin from his seat. He was obviously enjoying Griffin’s little show.
“How could I forget the next generation NBC suits? I mean, we’re practically invincible in these bad boys. Ironman can eat his heart out. We’re the real deal.”
He started banging his chest like a gorilla. “And when you put us all together you get what’s called a ‘fire team’. Because we’re hot. And we’re here to save the day. Gonna take the villains down to zero.”
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At that point he started to perform an adlibbed version of the ‘Captain Planet’ theme song. If I didn’t know any better, if I didn’t know we were all on a razor’s edge and fueled with adrenalin, I would’ve sworn he was on crack.
“OK, that’s enough, Griffin,” Smitty said. “You’re scaring the girl.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “I’m cool.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll be staying out of harm’s way for the most part,” Smitty reassured me.
And in a weird way I knew Griffin was just doing his whole performance routine thing to lighten the mood, to calm everyone down, including himself. Actually, mainly himself. To remind himself that he was a total badass, that he was the best. That he was trained and strong enough to deal with whatever we faced. Despite what we’d already seen, despite what we’d already been through.
About twenty-five minutes later we flew in closer to the shore line and dropped in altitude. The familiar sinking feeling in my stomach returned. My ears popped as the pressure changed. We were following the beaches and the cliffs. It felt like we were so low we were skimming the waves. The sun was peeking over the horizon, turning the ocean and the sky a bright pinkish orange.
We banked to the left and headed inland.
“We should be flying over the coastline now,” Daniel said over the PA system. “Bondi beach should be directly below us.”
I turned awkwardly in my seat and craned my neck to take a look out the small window. We should’ve been able to see Bondi beach below us, but we couldn’t see anything because of the red dust. It seemed to spew out into the ocean.
“Hang on guys, we’re in for some rough turbulence,” Daniel warned. He told Griffin to buckle up. I guess there was a camera back here or something.
Griffin took his seat and buckled his belt just as the Osprey started to bounce around. Ethan was still asleep.
“I’m coming up on the middle of the city,” Daniel announced. “The Central Business District. I can just make out the buildings. I’m going to circle around for a closer look.”
The tops of the buildings were barely visible. I could only see a few of the taller ones. The Sydney Tower stood above the rest, swaying in the strong winds. The lower section of the tower was completely obscured by the dust, giving it the appearance that the upper section, the distinctive golden turret, was floating in the red sky.
“I can’t see a landing point in this dust,” Daniel said. “And it’s too windy for a drop. I’m going to circle back around and find a suitable place to touch down. Maybe somewhere near the outskirts. Or even on the beach.”
As Daniel turned around I tried to catch a glimpse of the Sydney Harbor Bridge, or what was left of it. But the dust was too thick, I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t even see Darling Harbor or the casino. And they couldn’t have been any more than a couple of miles away. Maybe less.
As Daniel continued to circle, we flew into some more rough turbulence. Extremely rough.
“This is no good,” Daniel said. “We’re flying blind. I’m gonna have to climb out of this dust storm. Hang on everybody.”
I was starting to freak out. I could see the strain on the men’s faces. Ethan was awake now. He looked confused, worried, like he already knew something was wrong.
Just then the chopper was rocked by a huge force. The noise inside the cabin sounded like an explosion.
“Holy Mother of Christ!” Griffin shouted. “That’s not turbulence!”
Were we being shot at? Did something just hit us? I thought this area was supposed to be quiet. I thought Ethan said the military had retreated out of the city?
The sinking feeling in my stomach returned once again and we started to free fall. I heard a loud screeching noise, metal tearing, another explosion. It had to be an explosion. A huge blast of air sucked and pulled at us. The entire back section of the Osprey, the ramp, everything was gone. It was just ripped apart by something, a missile or anti-aircraft gunfire. And now it was gone.
The wind was roaring through the cabin. It’s hard to describe, but the wind sounded alive, like it was roaring and grunting. It sounded animalistic. The noise and the force of the wind rapidly intensified. The seat I was strapped into started to strain and buckle. The bolts started to loosen, the whole section of the cabin started to shriek.
My seat lurched forward. The soldiers across from me, Ethan, Griffin and Smitty were holding on for dear life. My seat and the whole row of seats on my side lurched forward again. Smitty reached out for me but he was too far away. My seat broke free from its supports and I was sucked out into the swirling red dust storm.