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and Drake were situated but I couldn’t see them at all.
    I looked back to where I had last seen the guys trying to escape. They were standing up, looking right at me. They paused for a split second, frozen, like a couple of deer caught in headlights.
    I waved at them, trying to get them to come over to me. But instead they started running away. They had panicked. They were not going to make this easy.
    I was about to start running after them. I took maybe two steps before I heard the rotor blades of an Apache gunship. It flew in low over my head. I dived for the ground as the engine and the rotor blades roared on by.
    It hovered over the area for a few seconds before locating the two guys. They continued to run, oblivious to the fact that it was useless to try an outrun an Apache gunship.
    I got back to my feet and started running after them.
    I actually shouted, "NO!" Not that anyone could hear me.
    What’s that saying? ‘In space no one can hear you scream’. Yeah well, same thing goes here. In the outback no one can hear you scream.
    The Apache unloaded with its minigun. The burst only lasted a second.  The tracer bullets whizzed through the sky giving the impression they were shooting a bright orange laser beam.
    The guys fell to the ground. They did not get up.
    The Apache turned around and began flying right for me. It flew low, over my head once again, incredibly close.
    I guess they were listening in on us before as we argued over these guys lives. I guess they were trying to send a message to us.
    Enforce the quarantine.
    We were probably going to get chewed out for hesitating when we got back to base.
    Later in the day, when we finally did make it back for debriefing, I prepared myself to get reprimanded for compromising the quarantine. But to my surprise we weren’t in trouble. We didn’t even get a chance to debrief. Everyone was too busy. The regiment was stretched thin over the vast area of the twin immigration centers and Woomera Testing Site.
    They told us to get a good night sleep.
    We were going back out again tomorrow.
    January 26th - Shoot to kill.
    The sun wasn’t even up when we made our way to the check point. They wanted us back out there, watching the perimeter as soon as possible. Our orders were simple. We were to keep a look out and make sure no one gets through.
    Infected or otherwise.
    If anyone stepped outside the quarantine area we were to take them out.
    Shoot to kill.
    Maybe that’s why we weren’t reprimanded yesterday, I thought. Maybe they figured our orders were too vague or confusing. Deciding whether or not a person was infected and then deciding on whether or not to use deadly force was too much for one little grunt to handle right?
    Well, now they were removing all doubt.
    Shoot to kill.
    No exceptions.
    We set up in the exact same positions as the day before. About a mile outside the perimeter, rifles pointed back towards the town.
    We spread out. We watched and waited.
    And waited.
    We waited out in the hot desert sun for about six hours before anything happened.
    At one point I thought I was going to die of boredom. And heat stroke.
    But then all hell broke loose.
    At first I thought maybe I was seeing things. Maybe the sun and the heat had sent me crazy. Maybe I was dehydrated.
    I could see three people off in the distance, back towards the town. Three figures on the horizon. Their bodies appeared to be distorted, shimmering in the heat. I couldn’t see clearly but they seemed to be staggering slowly towards us. They actually looked drunk.
    "Franco. Drake," I whispered. "I got three people in my sights."
    I had another look through my scope at them. As they walked closer I could see that there were two men and one woman. They looked old. One of the men was wearing a dressing gown that was untied at the waist, exposed for the whole world to see. The woman was wearing a night dress and nothing else. None of them were wearing shoes.
    "They look elderly," I said. "Two men.