We were getting closer now. We had the option of going over the bridge or going underground, through the tunnel. Maria made it very clear that she did not want to go through the tunnel and I totally agreed with her. I already felt claustrophobic enough around all these people. I didn't need to be crammed into a confined space to make matters worse. Some people didn't have the luxury of choice. The sheer numbers of the crowd forced everyone on the far right side of the road into the tunnel. I count my blessings every day that I was not one of those people.
A minute later, we passed under the giant concrete pylon of the northern end of the bridge. Just like Kenji had predicted the Military had converted the toll booths into checkpoints. The checkpoints were like the metal detectors at airports. A light turned green as people walked through the detectors.
I asked Kenji what the lights meant.
"Green light means normal body temperature," he said.
"What’s normal?"
"I’m not sure. But a red light will flash if a person’s temperature is too low."
"Too low? I thought a virus caused a fever?"
"Low temperature is bad. I’m not sure why. They did the same thing at Woomera," Kenji explained.
We came to the checkpoints and walked through one by one. I held my breath. Luckily the light flashed green. Apparently we all had normal body temperatures. But the next people to walk through did not. The light flashed red. It was a lady and her child. She was taken away at gun point by the soldiers wearing the space suits, the same suits the soldiers were wearing at the hospital.
The lady began to scream, her child was crying. She pleaded with the soldiers to let her through. She was begging to at least let her child through. But the soldiers remained steadfast which only reinforced the image in my mind that they were heartless, soulless killer robots. The crowd around the checkpoint stopped, silenced.
It was then we could hear more screaming further off in the distance. It sounded like it was coming from back down the road, maybe a few kilometers away. It was out of sight but it was enough to put the crowd on edge and when a crowd of that size gets on edge you can feel it, like a ripple of electricity. We could then hear mass gunfire. Not just the sporadic single round bursts we had been hearing all morning. It sounded like a full unleashing of ammunition.
The crowd as a collective whole began to freak out. Hundreds of thousands of people asking the person next to them, what was that? What's going on? It was like a hive mind that had lost its mind. It was pure fear.
Kenji’s radio crackled to life. There was another bunch of code words that didn’t make sense to us.
Then we heard one voice full of panic. He didn't even use code words. "They're coming this way!" the voice yelled. "There's too many!"
There were more code words that only Kenji understood. He looked to the sky again like he had earlier. From somewhere far off in the distance we could just make out the roar of jet engines.
"We have to get off the bridge." Kenji said.
Chapter 20
Now we knew why the military was trying to evacuate North Sydney. I knew why Doctor Hunter had such a worried look on his face, why he kept checking his watch every thirty seconds.
According to the voice on the other end of Kenji’s radio, there was an entire horde coming this way. An endless stream of people who were infected with the Oz Virus. The horde stretched as far as the road stretched, as far as they could see. I couldn't even comprehend what I was hearing. I tried to imagine all those infected people, each as violent and aggressive as the next, biting and eating their way through everyone crammed on to the highway. But I couldn’t. The thought was too gruesome.
"What was that order?" Kim asked
"They’re going to blow up the bridge," Kenji said in disbelief.
"What?" Maria shrieked. "While we’re still on it?"
"Are they going to use nukes?" Kim asked.
"I don’t know," Kenji said as he looked around for a way off the bridge.
The crowd started shouting and the gunfire in the distance intensified. We could see the jets now. They flew in low and fast. They were so low you could see each individual missile on the underside of their wings and see every little scuff mark. The noise of their engines made you feel like the world was coming to an end.
Seemingly from nowhere a whole swarm of helicopters descended and hovered over the bridge dropping rope ladders to extract the soldiers. A few people tried to climb up but they were quickly beaten back. The soldiers left the majority of their equipment behind. They took with them only what they could carry.
Once the helicopters cleared out we could see the jets way off on the horizon begin to slowly turn back around.
"Run!" Kenji shouted over all the noise. "Go! Run as fast as you can."
We started running as did everyone else. No one really knew where they were running to. We could only move in one direction. We could worry about what was on the other side when we got there. The only thing we knew for certain was that we needed to get off the bridge. It was a no man's land. At that moment we were completely stranded above water and completely vulnerable.
We got about half way when we heard the first explosion. It wasn’t as loud as I thought it would be. The bridge shook and groaned. Everyone ducked instinctively. But nothing seemed to happen. The collective panic that had seemed to grip everyone disappeared momentarily and was replaced by confusion. The screaming and shouting was reduced to a murmur.
On Kenji’s radio we could hear loud and clear the result of what had just happened. "Positive ignition for southern end of tunnel. Repeat, positive ignition."
This voice was different to the other one. It was calm, almost emotionless.
Kenji yelled at us to keep running. So we did. People all around us started to catch on. The panic returned and so did the screams.
"They've blown the southern entrance to the tunnel!" Kenji Shouted.
I couldn’t believe they actually did it. How many people had just been killed? How long before they blew the bridge?
We didn’t have to wait long. About ten seconds later a huge explosion erupted at the northern end, right where we were standing not even five minutes ago. Everyone on the bridge was knocked off their feet. The whole bridge started to sway and the massive steel support structures began to buck and warp out of shape.
The road eventually broke away from the north pylon and crashed into the water. As the road fell away we started to slide downwards, to a certain death. I'm not sure how far it was but it felt like we were falling forever. I'm not even sure how we survived the initial impact but the next thing I knew we were in the water with thousands of other people.
I came up for air. Jack and Maria were right next to me. They were good swimmers both of them. Jack was probably one of the best swimmers at school. He grabbed me because he knew I was terrible. Sure I was getting better with all those surfing lessons but I was still an amateur compared to those two. And right now was no time for doggy paddle.
Some people were being crushed by falling debris and falling people. Others were unconscious by the time they hit the water. But the thing that scared me the most was not the falling bits of concrete and steel, it was the people who were dragging others down underneath the water, drowning them without realizing what they were doing. They weren’t doing it on purpose. They were just trying to survive. They were just afraid. So I was thankful that Jack had grabbed me. If he hadn’t I probably would’ve been one of those people, dragging someone else down with me.
We managed to swim a few meters away from where we hit the water. Any second now they would blow the remaining charges on the bridge and the whole thing would come crashing down on top of us. I wiped some water out of my eyes and looked up. The parts of the bridge that had survived the initial explosion were straining and twisting under the enormous stress. The noise of breaking steel was terrifying. It reminded me of Godzilla’s scream; metallic and blood curdling. Somehow the road was still attached to the southern pylon. And amazingly, there were a lot of people still actually on the bridge, holding on for dear life.
Everyone else had fallen into the water with us. There must have been thousands of people. We looked around for Kim and Kenji. They weren't too far away. Kenji was telling us to go, to swim as fast as we could. So we did. We swam hard. It was simple really; we needed to get as far out of the way as possible because when the bridge came down, it would kill everyone underneath.
I saw Maria swimming out in front of Jack and me. She had already caught up to Kim and Kenji. Jack was pulling me along. There were people all around us. Splashing their arms wildly, pumping their legs as fast as they could. Jack got kicked in the face a couple of times.
Above us, the bridge continued to slowly break apart but it seemed to be holding for the moment with the southern end still intact. We were able to put some distance between us and the rest of the crowd. Suddenly there was another explosion. Metal screamed and shrieked in pain as the iconic bridge buckled and finally collapsed into the harbor crushing anyone trapped beneath it.
I looked back and saw a huge wave of white wash bearing down on us.
Jack grabbed my hand. "Duck dive!" he shouted. "Just like I taught you, remember?"
I nodded my head as I remembered the very first time he tried to teach me how to surf. Lesson number one; diving under a wave to avoid getting killed. I think I swallowed my weight in sea water that day.
He gripped my hand tighter as I took a huge gulp of air. "Wait for it! OK, now!"
We dove together, the white water crashing all around us, pushing us around like we were in a giant washing machine.
We resurfaced and I took another deep breath. The water was still churning as the road and the massive steel supports sunk to the bottom of the harbor. There was now a huge expanse where the famous bridge used to be.
Chapter 21
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 flames 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 if I ever got caught in a riptide or undertow, do not panic. Just relax and let the rip take you. And even though this situation was a little different to being caught in a rip, panicking was 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.
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.
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.