Last Refuge

by Allen Kuzara

  “Look, you can think it over,” Ayers said. “But I’d suggest—”

  “I’ll come with you,” Nick blurted out.

  Ayers smiled again, that same grin Nick had first seen on him. Except this time, his eyes didn’t seem so cold or dark. They gleamed in the sunlight. Ayers said, “That’s good, Nick. Real good.”

  CHAPTER 18

  NICK, USUALLY BURDENED by the mundane and sedentary, hardly noticed the work required in setting up the relay station. His mind was on what was to come. In fact, he thought about abandoning the relay station all together. He really hoped that his fears would be confirmed, that he’d realize he had been on a fool’s errand after all, and that Colonel Ayers and the army would be the cavalry coming over the hilltop that he so desperately wanted them to be.

  Once he tested the relay transmission—the lights blinking green—he had a choice to make: to call it in or skip it. He chose the middle-ground and sent a typed message that read: PUMP STATION #3 SECURE. TRANSMISSION RELAY UP. MOVING TOWARD STATION #4. NICK OUT.

  It wasn’t a lie, just a half-truth; the base, Ayers told him, was south of their position. Indeed, he was moving closer to the fourth pump station. But his hope was that he’d never have to lay eyes on it.

  Nick left the truck that had transported their gear back on the Dalton, and the drones carried the remaining supplies to one of Ayers’s trucks. It was one of those transport trucks with racks in the back to support the canvas covering. Nick figured it could all be taken down and turned into a flatbed truck if needed.

  He ordered Delta Three to get in the truck and, after glancing back like Lot’s wife but not turning into salt, Nick climbed aboard. He found a seat near the back of the bed where he could see out the open rear.

  “Lucky we found you,” Higgs said, sitting next to Nick.

  Nick hadn’t realized he was there, and he couldn’t decide how to take his words. Was he saying that Nick was lucky or that Ayers’s troops were lucky? And why would he say either?

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Nick finally said ambiguously as the truck’s loud diesel motor started up. They sat there, and finally he asked, “What are we waiting for?”

  Higgs pointed over at the miniature refinery, the critical machine that kept the transmission relay up and running. Nick noticed what looked like a long fireman’s water hose connecting it to the large tank-for-trailer truck on the hilltop.

  Nick’s heart skipped a beat, and Higgs seemed to notice. “Don’t worry, kid. They’ll hook it back up when they finish filling the tank.”

  Nick settled a bit, and then it hit him: he wasn’t dealing with Jimmy or drones. He was talking with professionals, adults, trained soldiers. These people weren’t screwups. They had missions. They carried them out. No excuses.

  The last bit of doubt vanished from Nick’s mind as he saw them roll up the fuel hose and reconnect the generator to the refinery. He could even see the green blinking lights from the tower, and he knew he’d made the right choice going with Ayers. He could always decide to continue on to Fairbanks, but if Ayers and his crew had it all together, he could leave the fighting to someone else. He could introduce Ayers to Vaughn. Then, after Jimmy and Lusa were out of harm’s way, the three of them could go on with their lives.

  The last soldier responsible for hooking up the generator came running toward the tanker. He whistled and howled, shaking his hand in the air in a circular pattern, his finger toward the sky, in a universal gesture that Nick realized meant to move out.

  And that’s just what happened: the oversized trucks with oversized tires ripped up the ground as their chug chugging motors growled, plowing and pulling the load on their way. Seconds later, Nick heard and felt the truck shift into second gear and then into third, and the wind whipped around the sides of the truck. It didn’t seem they would change gears any higher; either they didn’t have a fourth gear or the terrain wouldn’t allow them to go faster.

  As the transmission tower disappeared from view, Nick closed his eyes and rested. Though the bumps were considerable and often he had to grip the bench seat he was on to keep from falling out, he found himself drifting away into afternoon slumber.

  After what seemed like ten minutes—his command display read that over an hour had passed—Nick heard the whine of the engine change. He sat up and looked about. The rest of the passengers seemed to know they were getting close, because they were stirring, bantering with each other, their teeth showing as they undoubtedly joked immaturely as men without women often do.

  Sure enough, the truck dropped a gear, and Nick saw one of the other transport vehicles that had been travelling beside them pull back and trail from behind. He stared at the driver, a nondescript soldier, and he suddenly realized the awkwardness of the situation. That was a real person he was eyeing, not an automaton drone.

  The caravan slowed even more, and Nick thought he heard the sound of metal on metal, and he guessed it was a gate opening. The trucks moved now at walking speed before zooming ahead again, though not shifting out of first gear.

  Nick wished he could peer around the corner of the canvas, but soon enough he saw the gate appear behind them, its chain link fencing standing twelve feet tall. He felt surprised, though he didn’t know what he had expected—maybe a security booth like parking garages sometimes had. But instead, he saw the gate towers, two of them, rising some twenty feet high.

  After the last truck passed through, Nick saw soldiers closing and locking the gate. I guess they have to take precautions, Nick thought. Crazies are crazy no matter where you are. Then he wondered if these soldiers had come in contact with emergents, Vaughn’s name for the cannibals.

  The truck pulled into formation beside the rest of the caravan, and all the soldiers spilled out of the backs just in time to hear a bugle call sound from a loudspeaker attached to one of the entrance towers.

  “Chow time!” Higgs announced to Nick. The rest of the men didn’t need to be told, and Nick soon intuited by the mass migration that the mess hall was the building in the center of camp. He allowed himself to go with the flow, comfortably swimming with the tide of hungry men. It was several moments before he realized he’d forgotten something.

  “Delta Three, at ease,” Nick said. “If you’re hungry, come eat with the rest of the men.” He watched as the six drones descended the truck, their movements smooth, efficient, and distinctly less human than the lively crew around them.

  Nick didn’t waste another thought on them. They knew how to eat, pee, and whatever else they needed to do. They weren’t his problem right now, and maybe, if things worked out the way he hoped, they wouldn’t ever be his problem again.

  Dinner consisted of plain food but was plentiful, and Nick was glad to be surrounded by so many live, unaffected bodies, even if he didn’t know but one or two of them. He saw potential here. Friendships. A surrogate family, maybe. Or at least, he saw people who had signed up for saving the world; he certainly had not. That’s what soldiering was all about, wasn’t it? Saving your country from threats foreign or domestic? Well, as far as Nick could tell, the update and the resulting mayhem—as unexpected as it had been—was exactly the kind of thing these men had signed up for.

  That was another thing Nick noticed; this mess hall of several hundred men was a gender monolith. No women were in sight, and Nick thought it queer that there hadn’t been at least a woman here or there. The military had had female soldiers in it since before he was born, and even Vaughn’s drones consisted of a minority of women sailors.

  Another bugle call sounded, and the hall erupted in clatter and clamor as everyone stood and rushed to return their trays before reporting to who-knew-where. Higgs marched over to Nick. “Ayers wants to see you. I’ll take you there.”

  Nick started to take his tray back to the small hatch in the wall that he thought was the breach to the kitchen—it was a piled high precarious mountain of mashed potato stained, red plastic trays—but Higgs gave a look, and a private took Nick’s plate and
refuse.

  Higgs led Nick out of the mess hall and toward what Nick figured was the northwest corner of the base. Nick tried to spot the drones as they walked but was unsuccessful. For whatever reason they hadn’t followed him to the mess hall, and he didn’t know where they were now.

  “Over there’s the barracks,” Higgs said pointing. It looked the part, Nick decided. A spartan series of structures, each looking like a half circle tube of aluminum. All his post-apocalyptic mind could think of was how difficult that kind of paper-thin walled building would be to heat in the dead of winter.

  “And over there,” Higgs said pointing to the southwest corner of the base, “is the armory. You saw where we park our vehicles.” Higgs nodded toward the northeast corner, and when Nick looked past him, he noticed more than just parked trucks. How he’d missed the tanks and portable missile launchers when they’d first arrived, he didn’t know.

  “Wow, that’s pretty impressive,” Nick said.

  “Yeah, there’s not much that can touch us here,” Higgs said confidently.

  Suddenly, there was a commotion. Nick turned to a nearby building and saw a scantily clad woman half-run, half crawl toward him.

  “Help me!” she screamed.

  Behind her another woman in similarly poor condition bolted through the door but was stopped by a soldier from inside the same building before she could get out. She wailed inconsolably.

  “Get her!” Higgs commanded to a couple of nearby troops. They obeyed and effectively scooped up the first woman who had never seemed able to get on her feet.

  As they dragged her back kicking and screaming, Nick noticed she had several bruises and scrapes on her body.

  “What’s that all about?” Nick asked.

  “Prisoners,” Higgs said as if the words were distasteful to him. “I signed up to fight,” he went on, “not play policeman.”

  “I don’t understand,” Nick said, and he noticed Higgs look up at him as if he’d challenged him. “I mean, I guess it’s none of my business,” Nick backpedaled, “but what’re their stories?”

  Higgs exhaled loudly. “Alright. Tell me, who do you know unaffected by the update?”

  Nick wasn’t following Higgs but answered anyway. “My brother. A girl from the Indian village.”

  “Right,” Higgs. “So, no adults. No normal white people. Right?”

  Nick was jarred by his racially insensitive verbiage. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “So, we’re not so lucky. There’s a lot of us, and we monitor quite a big patch of territory as Colonel Ayers will—I’m sure—explain. So, think of the kind of people we run into that are unaffected. Who did you know—I’m talking people your parents’ ages—who didn’t use DataMind?”

  Nick thought for a long time. “Nobody but senior citizens,” he said quietly.

  “Okay, those don’t count,” Higgs said impatiently. “I’ll answer this for you, kid. Nobody, that’s who. Because I’m guessing you came from a nice, middle-class family who worked hard and did all the right things. Everybody who was worth a darn used the app.” He paused, then smiled. “Everyone but us, that is. But we had no choice. Uncle Sam calls the shots around here. Or, at least, he used to.”

  Nick didn’t know what to make of that last comment, but it seemed so much less significant from everything else Higgs was saying that he let it go. “So those two are—”

  “They are scum,” Higgs interrupted. “They and the other prisoners detained here are the kind of low-life’s that wouldn’t be interested in being smarter or more productive or having inner peace, you name it. They are junkies, thieves—the underclass of society that you were privileged enough not to have to deal with before. It used to be the police’s problem. Now it’s ours.”

  “You aren’t exactly selling him on this place,” said a voice ahead of them. Nick turned and saw Colonel Ayers standing in the doorway of the nearby building. “I’ll take it from here, Sergeant,” Ayers said.

  “He’s all yours, Colonel,” Higgs said, who then turned and headed toward the building from which the women had tried to escape. Nick watched him go, and he thought his trot was just a bit too enthusiastic.

  “Well, you gonna make me wait all day?” Ayers asked.

  Nick turned and saw the same tough face he’d seen earlier. From this distance he couldn’t make out the eyes. Were they dark or gleaming? he wondered.

  Finally, Ayers grinned and retreated back into the room, leaving the open door for Nick to enter.

  CHAPTER 19

  “CLOSE THAT, WOULD ya?” Ayers asked as Nick passed through the doorway. Nick couldn’t help but notice that Ayers was talking to him differently than he did his men, that his tough drill sergeant persona was no more. For one, a colonel wouldn’t ask a subordinate to do anything, he’d order him to.

  “Yes, sir,” Nick said, closing it behind him. His own words surprised him. Was he trying to play soldier?

  “Here you are,” Ayers said, pulling out a chair. He placed it in front of his desk, which was one of those massive oaken pieces of furniture that would take six men to move. Nick approached the chair and took off his hat in respect. Ayers stepped around to the other side of the desk, and they both took their seats. Nick noticed the walls were mostly barren, and there were nails where ostensibly pictures had once hung. He wondered if these had once held photos of people Ayers had lost in the update.

  “You still plugged in?” Ayers asked pointing to the glasses and headset Nick still wore.

  “Oh, I’m so used to this I forget I’m wearing them,” Nick said as he pulled them off and sat them on the desk.

  “Where are your…what’d you call them?”

  “Drones?” Nick offered.

  “Yes, drones. What are they doing now?” Ayers asked.

  “Honestly, I don’t know. I gave them the ‘at ease’ command, after which they take care of themselves.”

  “You mean, they entertain themselves?” Ayers asked.

  Nick half chuckled. “I wouldn’t call it entertainment. You see, I don’t think there’s that much going on upstairs,” he said tapping his own temple. “The chip controls them, takes a wild crazy and wipes out their misfiring brain. They behave better, but they aren’t human. Not like us. They’re more machine now. So, when I say take care of themselves, I mean they eat and relieve themselves. That kind of thing.”

  “I see,” Ayers said, shaking his head in wonder. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.” He paused a minute. “Tell me about the others. You mentioned a doctor…”

  “Dr. Craig. We call him Vaughn.”

  “Must not be military,” Ayers interjected.

  “Scientist for the Navy.”

  “And he doesn’t have any superior officers? No one above him?”

  Nick shook his head. “As far as I know, he thinks he’s alone in the world. At least he did until he met us.”

  “I see.” Ayers said. “I must meet this Dr. Craig…and his little army. Say, how many drones does he control?”

  Nick searched for a number. “I’m not sure. A hundred? Two hundred? I didn’t see them all. But not enough, I can tell you that.”

  Ayers raised an eyebrow. “Now, tell me again this hair-brained plan of his. You’re going to Fairbanks to do what?”

  Nick struggled to say it out loud. It sounded so foolish. “Capture the crazies there and turn them into drones.”

  “And this Dr. Craig needs twenty thousand troops, why?”

  Sheepishly, Nick answered, “He wants to disarm the nuclear reactors and quell the emergents.”

  Ayers turned in his swivel chair and leaned back, thinking. He put his elbow on a table and propped up his head with his hand. “I don’t know, Nick. Sounds fishy to me. I mean, as a hail Mary, I could see it. But this is too much of an undertaking for one man. Too much power unchallenged, with no counterbalance, no oversight. And this Dr. Craig isn’t a military man with years of experience making these kinds of decisions either. It smel
ls, I tell you. I want to meet this man in person, before you or anyone else moves forward.”

  Nick heard wisdom in the colonel’s words. The plan did seem rash and out of proportion. But so did most of life after the update. However, Ayers didn’t seem that way. He was someone who had maintained order during the fall of civilization. He hadn’t abandoned his post. He hadn’t lost all his power or position. Others around him had, but he had held on and could speak with the confidence that no other person Nick knew could.

  “I suppose you have your questions,” Ayers said. “What do you think of this place?” he asked without moving from his the-thinker position.

  “I’m impressed,” Nick answered truthfully. “I never imagined I’d find a place like this after the update. When my brother and I had scanned shortwave, we hadn’t heard anything from military. And none of the HAM operators talked about them either. Not after the first few weeks, anyway.”

  “Well, I can explain some of that,” Ayers said. “We have channels and means of communication that aren’t available to you all. Ultra-low frequency stuff. Your friend Dr. Craig should know about that. That’s how sub captains communicate from the bottom of the ocean. But honestly, you’re partly right. The continuity of government initiatives wasn’t well thought out, not in light of the systemic risk that DataMind posed. The army could see the threat, but the talking heads in Washington are another story. And I’m sad to say, not all bases are in such good condition as ours. We’ve weathered this storm better than most, especially those in the lower forty-eight.”

  That didn’t exactly answer all of Nick’s questions, but it was a confident answer. And increasingly Nick enjoyed letting older, wiser, stronger people take the wheel. Though he could trust Jimmy with his life, he always had to watch out for the periodic destructive impulse, always had to be ready to talk Jimmy off the ledge. He’d been successful up until now, but he was tired and ready to let someone else worry.

  “What are you doing about the reactors?” Nick asked.