I had no idea how high up I was. I remember Daniel said he was going to climb out of the dust storm, which must’ve meant we gained altitude. I’m pretty sure that’s what saved my life in the end. I was free-falling and spinning out of control. I was somersaulting head over ass. Luckily I had my hand firmly gripped on the handle of my parachute. I’d grabbed it as soon as we started bouncing around.

I pulled the handle and the chute opened immediately, slowing my descent. But I was still coming in fast.

I managed to catch a glimpse of the Osprey, smoking and spiraling out of control. And then all of a sudden it was swallowed up by the swirling red dust and I lost sight of it. I heard it crash to the ground, though. Maybe two or three miles away. But I couldn’t be sure. I was completely disorientated. Did the others survive? Did they jump in time? How could they jump out and use their parachutes when they were still strapped into their seats? Everything happened so quickly. There was no warning. No time.

I came in fast, skimming the tops of trees. At that point I thought my brain had stopped working. It wasn’t making sense of the situation. Too much shock and awe, too much adrenalin. I remember thinking, we crashed in the middle of the city! Why am I landing in a forest?

And just then my parachute finally caught enough wind and created enough drag so I straightened up. For a second it felt like I was just hanging in mid-air. Suspended and frozen in time. That was one of the worst moments of this whole ordeal. Just knowing I was falling back into the apocalypse. I was terrified. I was supposed to be going in with the best Special Forces team in the world, or black ops team, or whatever the hell they called themselves. I was supposed to be going in with the elite. I was supposed to be protected, staying out of harm’s way. An advisor, their insurance policy. We were supposed to stick to the rooftops of the skyscrapers, to the high ground. We were supposed to use the Osprey to get around, far above the reach of the infected. But now I was falling right back into the middle of hell. Alone. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to change that.

I hit the ground hard and skidded for maybe twenty feet. Fortunately the ground was soft. It was grass. I was still strapped into my seat. When I finally came to a stop, I unbuckled the harness, tore my chute off and I just ran. I ran as fast as I could. I remembered what Ethan said about getting as far away from the parachute as possible. The chute was a big target. If there were any soldiers in the area, that’s what they would converge on.

Luckily, I didn’t have any injuries. Well, none that I could feel at the time. I guess the NBC suit absorbed most of the impact.

After a couple hundred meters I was still running at full sprint. But I wasn’t tiring at all. I remember thinking, I should probably stop and get my bearings, or at least think things through and gather myself. But all my survival instincts told me to keep running. I don’t know why. I mean, I couldn’t even see where I was going. But I was freaking out. I was terrified. I couldn’t see a damn thing. I was alone. I felt like I was going to be surrounded and attacked and eaten at any second.

And just then I had this weird flashback moment. I remembered back to when the Oz virus first broke out, back when we all needed to cross the Sydney Harbor Bridge to get to the military compound, back when we thought if we got to the other side of the bridge, we would be safe. I remember Kenji had a walkie-talkie with him, and through it we could hear this blood chilling, heart stopping message of warning from an unknown soldier. He was talking about the horde of infected eating its way through all the people on the freeway. It felt like I could hear that fearful voice right now.

“They’re coming this way. There’s too many of them!”

So I kept running. And I was running fast. It felt like I was flying. The NBC suit had not only protected me from the impact of the fall, but it had increased my speed as well. I felt like I was faster than any Olympic champion, even the ones on steroids.

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I was running through trees and bushes. I was running into branches left and right. But again, the impact of the branches was being absorbed by the suit. The branches were snapping off as I ran into them. I could barely even feel them.

Another branch appeared right in front of my face. I reflexively put my hands up to protect my head. A split second later I crashed through. And I mean I literally crashed through. The branch practically exploded upon impact.

After I’d crashed through the branch, a tree appeared right in front of me. It was a smaller sapling but it was probably too big to simply run through. So I jumped. Everything at this point was just a reflex. It must have been at least ten feet high. I planted one foot on the trunk and launched myself up and over. I cleared it easily and landed with a thud on the other side.

I remember going to the Bronx zoo once with my parents. We were lucky enough to watch a tiger exhibition. After the show had finished, the handlers were walking the tigers back to their enclosure. And this massive white Siberian tiger saw a bird fly over its head, maybe thirteen or fifteen feet in the air. The tiger jumped, its instincts taking over. It caught the bird in its jaw in mid air and landed with a huge thud. I mean, the ground shook when it landed. It was incredible. The tiger had knocked over its handler with its bulk. It was a seven hundred pound monster. Amazingly heavy, yet agile at the same time. That’s kind of how I felt like right now. I’m not saying that I felt like I weighed seven hundred pounds, but I did feel amazingly agile.

This suit and these new abilities were starting to freak me out.

After running for a few more seconds I realized it was impossible to get my bearings with zero visibility. So I slowed down to a jog. My breathing was rough and loud, like I was sobbing and choking at the same time. My footsteps were crunching and crashing through the undergrowth and fallen leaves and twigs.

I was making too much noise.

I stopped jogging completely. I crouched down and slowed my breathing. I closed my eyes and forced myself to regain my composure. I listened.

The only noise I could hear was the wind tearing through the trees.

No footsteps. No howling moan of the infected. No gunfire.

I could only see a few feet in front of my face, but I was pretty sure I was alone.

I remembered there was a park and a botanical gardens right near the middle of the city. This has to be it, I thought. We were over the city when we were hit. Where else would I have landed?

Just then the radio inside my helmet squawked and crackled to life and it was the loudest thing in the world. I grabbed the helmet with both hands, trying to cover the speakers.

It was Daniel. “Rebecca! Did you punch out in time? Rebecca, can you hear me? We have crash landed near Hyde Park. Repeat, we are near Hyde Park. Check your GPS. Is it working? Rebecca? Where are you?”

I tried to respond to him but his voice was swallowed up by the static, there was too much interference. Probably from the dust storm, I thought.

And even though his voice sounded like the loudest thing in the world, at the same time it was so distant. He might has well have been on the other side of the planet.

The noise of the static was deafening and it wasn’t stopping. It was getting louder and louder. In my mind’s eye, I could picture a horde of infected turning slowly towards me, like they did when Kenji and I found them on the gaming floor of the casino. They turned slowly, waited a second, almost as if they were making sure the noise was coming from something they could eat. They zeroed in on the noise and ran towards us. Hungry and relentless.

I took my helmet off and threw it away, wondering if I was going to regret that decision later. But the thing was obviously busted; it was making too much noise. I had no choice.

I checked the GPS screen located on the inside of my left forearm. The screen was slightly cracked but I could just make out the map. My location was indicated by a little blue ball. It told me that I was in the Sydney botanical gardens, just as I had suspected, and that Hyde Park was approximately two kilometers south of my location, deeper into the city.

Two kilometers.

Two thousand meters.

In reality it wasn’t that far, but at that point in time it felt like a huge distance. Even with the aid of the NBC suit. I mean, who knew what was between me and Hyde Park? On the one hand, maybe this whole area was deserted, maybe there was nothing? But on the other hand, maybe it wasn’t deserted. Maybe it was the most hostile section of the entire city, of the entire country.

Unfortunately it was too easy to imagine the worst. It was too easy to imagine millions upon millions of infected, just waiting for some poor lost soul like me to come along.

It was a world of possibility, a scary, frightening world.

But this was the reality. I was on the streets, on the ground floor with the infected. I was all alone. And at that moment I had no choice but to make my way deeper into the city.