Last Refuge

by Allen Kuzara

  Lusa sat quietly next to Nick. She had her eyes closed, exhausted. He felt a voyeuristic thrill at being able to watch her, to look at her intently without having to explain himself or be self-conscious about it. She was beautiful. He’d always known that, but there had been passing moments when he wondered if his infatuation with her was one of circumstance. In some ways, it had to be the case. But she was indeed lovely. There was no denying that now. He hoped they could make a go of it, but he knew the losses she’d experienced could complicate that. It could go either way, he decided. Either they would come closer together, or, if she somehow decided what happened to her and her family was his fault, they would grow apart.

  Three men accompanied them in the boat: one drove the manual outboard motor in the rear, and the other two sat forward as if at attention. There was something different about them, but Nick couldn’t put his finger on it. They were soldiers, though not dressed in typical camo fatigues. They were silent, always on duty, always ready to act. Maybe that was it, Nick thought. They were too perfect.

  Suddenly, Nick heard the motor change pitch. He glanced back at the man steering their boat; he was unchanged. Then he realized it was Vaughn’s boat, the one that had been traveling in tandem beside them. He turned around, looking over the starboard side just in time to see Vaughn’s craft veer off and change direction.

  “What’s he doing?” Nick shouted over the roar of the engine and waves.

  “He said he’d meet up with us,” Jimmy replied. “He has to do something on the other boat.”

  That made little sense to Nick; Vaughn was already on the other boat. Nick looked forward, and then it all clicked. Before them were two massive ships. The one Vaughn’s boat was headed toward looked to be some kind of US Navy vessel, maybe a destroyer, though Nick couldn’t be sure.

  But what Nick’s boat was headed toward was far easier to identify, though it was laughably absurd. Yet, there it was, a surprisingly large craft with its minimalist exterior and sleek design for all to admire.

  “A sub?” Nick shouted.

  Jimmy’s eyes danced. “Isn’t this awesome?”

  AFTER REACHING THE submarine, the trio was led up the ladder that was attached permanently to the sub’s side. True to his word, Vaughn had sent orders ahead of time to have a table set up on the sub’s top deck. The three gladly took their seats around the table that was covered by a canopy, the kind that Nick had seen people take to campsites.

  More sailors in black assisted them, and after they had been seated, brought out a spread that exceeded what any of the three could have imagined: salad, fresh pasta, chicken parmesan, and strawberry gelato for dessert.

  The three, half-starved, dove into the scrumptious fare, and only after finishing their first plates full of food did they slow down enough to savor the meal or enjoy each other’s company.

  With perfect timing, Vaughn’s craft arrived at the sub just as Nick’s spoon clinked the bottom of the glass that had held his gelato. The time Nick had spent waiting for Vaughn to ascend the ladder and come sit with them had been short, but it was long enough for him to ponder several questions: Who was this man, and how could he ever come to control such powerful resources?

  “I trust you enjoyed your dinner,” Vaughn said magnanimously as he sat down in an empty chair at the table.

  The three erupted in cheers and other non-verbal affirmations of gratitude. Then it became awkwardly silent, and Nick searched for something to say.

  “Very well,” Vaughn said, as if he’d made some invisible assessment of the situation and had only then perceived the next move forward. “I suppose you have questions. But why don’t I just lay some facts down, a brief history of how all this,” he raised his hands to either side, referring to the boats, “came to be?”

  No one objected. “I’m a scientist,” he said. “Or I was a scientist. I’m not sure if I can call what I do now science, more like survival.” Nick detected contempt in Vaughn’s voice. “I was stationed on this submarine, doing geologic surveys of the ocean floor. Then the update happened, and like everyone else unaffected by it, I had my hands full.”

  “You mean the Navy was using the DataMind app?” Jimmy asked.

  “You better believe it,” Vaughn said. “We had contract orders for every seaman. Turning barely competent young men and women who would probably otherwise end up in jail into productive cogs in the wheel of war is what Uncle Sam has been doing for over two centuries. DataMind made it even easier. In fact, counting on the tech, the Navy made an unprecedented change of policy; they lowered the IQ threshold for applicants, knowing the app would raise it quickly.”

  Again, Nick detected bitterness in Vaughn’s voice, but he noticed that Vaughn seemed to be self-aware and was quickly covering and changing the inflection of his voice after hitting a dark tone.

  “But you didn’t use it?” Nick asked.

  Vaughn stared at him for a second, like he was reading past Nick’s words. “No,” Vaughn said, “I didn’t need it.” More silence.

  Lusa spoke up. “How did you get off the submarine if everyone went broke?”

  Vaughn turned to her, his eyes lighting up. “Excellent question.” He breathed in as if he was bracing himself for the retelling of the memory. “The thing everyone knows about subs is that they are meant to go underwater and to do so for extended periods of time.”

  “Up to a year, right?” Jimmy asked.

  Vaughn smiled. “Yes, that’s correct. Back during the Cold War, the military relied heavily on nuclear subs to underpin its doctrine of mutual assured destruction. The idea was that you could send a sub down to the bottom of the ocean and leave it there indefinitely. Then, if the USSR carpet-bombed North America, a single sub could surface and send a slew of missiles armed with nuclear warheads to hit back. It was part of a strategy that worked. Both sides knew they could never take down the other power without receiving a crippling blow in return.”

  “Back to your question, Lusa—the thing people often don’t know about submarines is that they all leak. Small amounts of water are expected to get in; you just pump the bilges periodically to get rid of it. When there are serious amounts of water coming in, that’s not called a leak anymore. That’s a flood, and all crew are trained to hit the flood alarm, which means that every water-tight door gets shut and dogged, and every ventilation damper closes to keep the flooding isolated. The ship’s designed to seal off compartments and carry on—in most cases—quite easily.”

  “I don’t understand,” Jimmy said simply. “What’s this got to do with you surviving the crazies onboard?”

  “He sealed them off,” Nick blurted out. He felt the negativity flow out of him, and he knew his harshness and impatience was due to his fatigue.

  “That’s right,” Vaughn said as he gave Nick an approving look. “After positioning myself…”—he said it like it was a gross oversimplification, and Nick perceived it meant he must have scratched and clawed his way through many lives to get where he needed to be—“I sealed all the compartments from the control room. From there, I holed-up. I had time and plenty of food and water. I studied the effects of the update, looked at the code itself. It was a wild-goose chase at first, trying to undo DataMind’s damage. Ultimately, I discovered there was no way to revert the crew back to their previous states. The only way to control them, to save their very lives, was to overwrite the program.”

  Vaughn stopped and took coffee from one of the sailors who waited on the table. It was then that Nick noticed something on the left temple of the soldier. It was partially hidden by the cap he wore over his head. But once Nick spotted it, the object shined like a beacon, reflecting sunlight.

  “They were crazies?” Nick asked, pointing to the soldiers.

  “Yes,” Vaughn said softly as he sipped his coffee.

  “All of them?” Lusa added.

  Vaughn nodded as he swallowed. “Every last one.”

  “But how?” Jimmy blurted. “I mean, how did you get them
to do another update or whatever?”

  “He didn’t,” Nick said. “Not with a phone, anyway.”

  “Very good,” Vaughn said to Nick. “How insightful.” He turned to the waiter. “D-Seventeen, remove your cap.”

  The soldier obeyed, and then everyone noticed the metallic coin-shaped object on his temple.

  “Is that it?” Jimmy asked, pointing. “That’s how you control them?”

  “Partially,” Vaughn answered. “They each have a chip on their brow which acts as both a CPU and as a transceiver. It overwrites the program, modulates their neural frequencies so the update no longer affects them. They have a basic program of how to act. Simple rules of engagement and from whom to take orders. After that, modifications are made either directly by me or via radio.”

  “Walkie-talkies?” Jimmy said. “You control them with walkie-talkies?”

  “Not exactly,” Vaughn grinned. “You see that destroyer?” He pointed with his eyes as he took another sip. Everyone glanced at the larger ship anchored nearby. “That’s where the transceiver station is. I run fifty thousand watts through that antenna you see there.” Nick saw the tall tower with its dipole beams. “That gets me up to a ten-mile radius before I can no longer make contact with the drones.”

  “Drones?” Nick repeated. “That’s what you call them?”

  “What would you call them?” Vaughn asked defensively.

  “Maybe, men?” Nick replied more forcefully than he should have.

  “They aren’t men anymore, Nick,” Vaughn replied. “They haven’t been men or women since the update itself. They lost their humanity that very day, and since then have been a menace to us all and to each other. They’re worse than animals.”

  Nick lifted his hands up a few inches from the table and nodded his concession.

  “At least this way,” Vaughn continued, “they can be a force for good in the world.” He took another sip, then said, “the word drone is appropriate. They possess some of the faculties of humanity but not all of them, and they’re controlled by us.” He pronounced the last word with zeal.

  “But what about the cannibals?” Lusa asked. “Do the chips work on them?”

  “Ah, dear girl. Now that’s the right question,” Vaughn said. “There appears to be a clear distinction between the groups. For whatever reason, those people don’t respond to the chip. But that brings up another point, the real reason I brought you all here.” Vaughn snapped his fingers at one of the sailors who then went to the main hatch and disappeared.

  The group sat in silence for a few moments that would have felt awkward to Nick if he weren’t so tired. Instead, he felt his eyes grow heavy and his head nod uncontrollably. When the drone returned, the metallic screech the hatch made woke Nick up again. The drone carried a large rectangular object, which he placed down on the table before them. Vaughn touched the half-inch thick tablet, and the screen came alive with a map of Alaska.

  “You’ve got maps?” Nick asked, the sight of it reinvigorating him. He and Jimmy had scouted their area and loathed the fact they couldn’t find one.

  “Not just maps,” Vaughn answered as he manipulated the screen with his fingers, “we have live satellite imagery.”

  “No way,” Jimmy said. “Are they”—he pointed up to the sky— “still going?”

  “You better believe it,” Vaughn said. “They don’t need anything from us once they’re put in geo-synch orbit. Luckily, the sub captain had all the codes to access these.”

  Nick wondered how Vaughn had gotten the codes from the captain. Did he get them before or after the update? He decided to let it go for now.

  “Here’s what you need to see,” Vaughn said as he dragged the map east, then south of the Canadian border and into the United States. There were red flags scattered all around the map, more so the farther south you looked. Vaughn selected one of the red flags and zoomed in. On screen was a mass of red-white blotches.

  “Is that infra-red?” Jimmy asked.

  Vaughn nodded. The red-white blotches moved. Most were concentrated in the center, but some came and went like little ants from their hill.

  “Those are cannibals?” Nick asked.

  “Yes, each of the flags represents an identified group,” Vaughn said. He then pulled back and selected another pinpoint. This time the screen was not covered with red-white blotches.

  “Where’d they go?” Jimmy asked.

  Vaughn didn’t answer but instead zoomed out part way and moved the screen north. After a couple of finger slides, he stopped. “There,” he said. “There they are.” He paused, letting the trio process the information.

  “I don’t get it,” Lusa said, finally. “How’d you know where to look for them?”

  “They’re all migrating north,” Nick said.

  Vaughn smiled and nodded. “Oh, how refreshing it is to be around people who can think,” he said. “Nick’s right. They all—at least the ones in the northwest portion of the United States—appear to be moving north.”

  “They’re coming toward us?” Jimmy asked, perplexed.

  “Not all of them,” Vaughn said. “They don’t know we’re here. But they’d be glad to eat us if they did know.”

  “So why are they moving?” Lusa asked.

  “The same reason they’re not like the crazies around here,” Vaughn explained. He tapped the screen and sifted through a few different tabs until he pulled up a new map. This one had blue cones, most of which had points facing west and bases facing east. “These are nuclear reactor sites,” Vaughn said.

  Immediately, Nick felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. He remembered all the things Bob had said about nuclear fallout, melting icecaps, and how Deadhorse could become the Havana of the North. He had turned a blind eye to the problem lately. The shortwave transmissions he’d listened to hadn’t discussed it like they had early on, and he’d hoped it meant there wasn’t a problem. More likely, he now realized, those persons affected by reactors were no longer on shortwave to complain about it.

  “Each of the reactors is melting down to varying degrees,” Vaughn said. “They aren’t all equally bad. Some aren’t even emitting radiation yet; they’re just super hot. But many, as you can see from this map, have gone critical and are spewing radioactive isotopes. Now watch this.”

  He clicked another tab, and then the previous map with the cannibals overlaid with the nuclear map.

  “They’re trying to get away,” Lusa said.

  “How do they know to come north?” Jimmy asked.

  “They don’t,” Vaughn said flatly. “They’re animals. All you see here are northern migrations for one simple reason. What do you think happens to those that go south or stay put?”

  “They die out,” Nick said.

  “Precisely. This is a form of evolution,” Vaughn stated. “They have no idea what they’re doing or why, but those that try to escape their toxic environment by traveling north are the ones that will survive. At least until winter,” he added.

  “That’s why the cannibals we saw didn’t wear as many clothes,” Nick said. “They were from the south, somewhere warmer.”

  “Right,” Jimmy joined in, “and they won’t make it through the winter the way the crazies do. They don’t hibernate, do they?”

  “No, fortunately they do not,” Vaughn said.

  There was another silent moment as the three all thought things through. As before, the quietest member was the first to break rank. “So why did you bring us here?” Lusa asked.

  “Right,” Vaughn exhaled. “You all know first-hand the danger those cannibals represent. But they are a temporary threat. Hold out through this winter, and they’ll be gone.”

  “That sounds familiar,” Nick quipped. “Everyone was saying the same thing about the crazies last fall and look where that got us.”

  “You don’t understand,” Vaughn said too harshly. He stopped himself, visibly regaining his composure and patience. “What I mean,” he said softly, “is that there is an ex
istential threat greater than cannibals or crazies combined. These nukes,”—he smashed his finger down onto the map— “aren’t going to fix themselves. They won’t go offline unless someone takes them offline.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jimmy said. “But we’re nowhere near those reactors. Why do we have—”

  “Because it goes up into the atmosphere,” Nick interrupted. “It falls out somewhere else. Plus, it builds up until the clouds are permanent. The whole northern hemisphere can get clouded out, for decades at a time. It’s called a nuclear winter. Didn’t you go to school?”

  Jimmy looked injured, but Nick didn’t care. He was too tired to care.

  “Nick’s right,” Vaughn said. “This problem’s bigger than all of us. And we have a limited small window of opportunity, one that’s closing rapidly. If we don’t get those reactors shut down in the next couple of months, I don’t think we ever will.”

  Everyone waited for him to go on and explain why, but apparently, he wasn’t used to having to explain himself. That made sense, Nick thought. He hasn’t answered to anyone in over a year. He’s probably not even held conversations with anyone since the update.

  “What’s your plan?” Nick asked.

  “Well,” Vaughn said, “it’s just funny how everything goes against you for so long; then you run into a lucky streak. That’s what you three represent, you see. I came to Deadhorse, expecting to do all this alone, and let me say, it’s a long shot, even with your help. So, very likely, I was going to fail, but it was the only chance I had, so I was going to take it.”

  Now, Nick thought, we’re hearing the real Vaughn. This was his inner dialogue out for all to hear.

  “We docked here in Prudhoe Bay, knowing it wouldn’t be ice-free for many more weeks. We came to Deadhorse, because the first pumping station along the pipeline is here. The seed vault, well that was just a side trip, something generically labeled as a research station on my map. But finding you three…” He whistled. “Well, all I can say is that we actually have a shot at this…if you help me.”