Last Refuge

by Allen Kuzara

  “Let’s see if he’s ready,” Nick said.

  Nick mashed the CALL button assigned to Jimmy. Seconds later he heard Jimmy say, “Is that you big brudder?” with a cartoonish voice.

  Nick saw Lusa smile out the corner of his eye. “We’re in position,” Nick said with a serious tone. “Are you?”

  “Ready and waiting, Capt’n,” came Jimmy’s response.

  “Okay, then,” Nick exhaled. “You know what to do.”

  “Roger that.”

  “And Jimmy,” Nick said. A pause. “Don’t get yourself killed.”

  “And don’t leave us out to dry,” Lusa added over her headset.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” came his response. “See you two in a jiffy.” Then there was a click, and Nick knew Jimmy was gone.

  “Alright, we don’t have much time,” Nick said, turning to Lusa.

  “Why don’t I come with you?” she asked.

  Nick’s mind felt like it would explode. “What are you talking about? We’ve a got a plan. We can’t change it now.”

  “We’re not really changing it. Why don’t we just get things started now? That way I can come with you. You’re going to need all the help you can get.”

  Nick stared Lusa down. He felt like he was showing a part of himself that he had tried to keep hidden, a dark side that knew how to kill and that wouldn’t let childish sentiment get her killed.

  “No, Lusa. I’m sorry, but you’re not going. You’re staying here out of harm’s way until after Jimmy comes.”

  She looked injured. “You don’t think I can do it, do you?”

  “Do what?” his voice elevated.

  “Fight? You don’t think I know how to fight?”

  He let out a big sigh and said, “Can we talk about this afterward?”

  Lusa turned her back and faced the bridge. “Go on then. I’ll wait for your signal.”

  Nick stood there, helpless. He wanted to say a proper goodbye, to tell her how he really felt in case he wouldn’t get another chance. But instead, it was like this and he knew he didn’t have time to mend things. Not before they were finished.

  He clenched his teeth, angry it had to be like this. But he knew what was right, what needed to happen. And if there was one thing that had kept him alive on his way to Deadhorse, it had been his willingness to do what was necessary when no one applauded him, when no one was in his corner. She would thank him later, he told himself. And if he died, she’d know he did it for her.

  “Go ahead,” he said finally. “Do it.”

  Lusa, still with her back to him, raised a small remote control, the same color as the PA speaker on the bridge. She mashed it with her thumb, and immediately a screeching siren sounded over the Chena river.

  CHAPTER 28

  JIMMY WAVED TO the drone duo as they climbed aboard the C-28. “Steve and Raoul, we’ll be right behind you.”

  They didn’t respond, didn’t seem to care what their handler did, but Jimmy liked conducting his business this way. It kept him from feeling so alone, and he reminded himself that soon enough he’d get to save the day and be back with Nick and Lusa. What a celebration. What a party they would throw.

  He directed the remaining four drones to help load the rest of the supplies onto the two planes parked behind Steve and Raoul’s C-28. And for the first time since before he’d met Vaughn, Jimmy was alone. He felt goose bumps tingle on the back of his neck. “Easy, killer,” he told himself. “They’ll be right back. And besides, the base is all quiet.”

  He listened to be sure. There was nothing but the deliberate footsteps of drones in the distance and the rat tat tat of that annoying sign flapping on the fence.

  Then over his headset came the final confirmation from Steve: “Ready for takeoff, sir.”

  Jimmy looked up at the cockpit window and thought he could make out Steve’s shadow behind the controls. He looked around once more. The other drones had already reached the two cargo planes and were dutifully inside, unloading the equipment.

  “Alright, Steve,” Jimmy said. “Start engines and get out of here. Remember to wait for the rest of us before heading to Fairbanks. We’ll meet you in the air.”

  Jimmy thought he saw Steve give a little salute, though that didn’t seem likely given what he knew about them. Seconds later, he heard a clicking sound come from the plane’s massive propeller engines. They roared to life, the propellers turning into a solid blur. Then the engine throttled up, and the plane slowly lurched forward on the runway.

  “There they go,” he said to no one.

  Suddenly, a new sound competed with the roar of the plane. Jimmy struggled to figure it out. But by the time he recognized the scuffs of racing footsteps behind him, it was too late.

  The wheezing crazy tackled him, Jimmy’s face smashing against the concrete runway.

  Jimmy strained to get free, to twist away from his attacker. But the crazy pounded him, punching him from behind. And just as Jimmy would lift his head, another punch would smack his face down hard against the ground.

  He tried yelling for help but choked on a mouthful of blood. Jimmy realized he was on his own. In a moment of clarity, he pulled his arms forward and raised his hands over his head, protecting himself.

  The crazy continued bashing him, and he felt new sharp pain as his fingers were smashed. But then, Jimmy caught the crazy’s fist and held on for dear life.

  The break in the crazy’s rhythm gave him time to twist around onto his side. Then Jimmy clutched the fist with two hands, and the crazy punched angrily with its left hand.

  The weaker blows told Jimmy that the once human animal must have been right-handed. Still, Jimmy was receiving a beating. He pulled hard on the crazy’s arm, causing it to lose its balance and fall sideways.

  Jimmy jumped to his feet, hurrying to gain an advantage over the crazy. He now could see she had once been an attractive woman. What was left of her blood-stained summer dress revealed long bruised legs.

  She rolled onto her feet like a judo master, wheezed angrily, then charged Jimmy.

  He reached down, pulling out his Colt .45 pistol, and fired from the hip. Its heavy bullets tore through the crazy’s body, pushing her back with its kinetic force. Three shots later, she was on the ground, dead.

  Before he could celebrate, Jimmy caught sight of a new threat. Up ahead, a mob of crazies had emerged from a hangar on the far side of the base, the opposite end of the runway.

  He wanted to warn Steve and Raoul, but there wasn’t time. He watched what seemed like a slow-motion train wreck as the dozen-plus crazies ran headfirst toward the C-28 as it attempted to take off.

  The bodies unflinchingly plunged themselves into certain destruction, their update-inspired hatred greater than their instinct for self-preservation. Blood splattered in all directions as the propeller blades instantly pureed the on-comers into torso-less piles of legs.

  The C-28 whose front wheels had been only inches off the runway slammed down to the ground violently. Then its back wheels ran over the pile of remains.

  Jimmy watched helplessly as the plane bounced hard, momentarily going airborne. Then its nose crashed down onto the runway, and by the time the fuselage came to rest upside-down, the plane was engulfed in flames.

  Jimmy felt his sore jaw drop in stunned amazement. Movement to his left pulled him out of his trance, and he turned to see the rest of Charlie Five emerge from the remaining two planes.

  “Too little, too late,” he mouthed toward them. His instinct was to blame them for what had just happened, but the truth was crashing in on him faster than his ability to deny it. This was his fault. He hadn’t cleared the base properly, and the sound of those engines had roused the dormant crazies inside the hanger.

  He looked back at the wreckage. There was no way Steve or Raoul was alive, and there was no way that plane could ever fly again. Not only that, the runway was blocked, and he couldn’t think of a way to clear it in time to take off with the other two planes.

 
Nick and Lusa! They needed to know. They needed to be warned before they got in harm’s way.

  Jimmy reached for his headset, but it wasn’t there. He looked all around him on the ground for it. Then he found it.

  He walked to it slowly, hoping his eyes were deceiving him. But they weren’t. Jimmy knelt over pieces of broken plastic and protruding slivers of exposed wire.

  As the reality set in, he felt his chest move erratically, in short waves of breath, in and out. Panic washed over him, and he knew there was no stopping it. There was nothing he could do now. He was stranded with no plane and no radio, without the ability to come to his brother’s aid or even warn him. He was useless, and the dark voices inside that he fought off daily sang louder and louder, an echoing chant: Screwup! Screwup! Screwup!

  CHAPTER 29

  FROM ATOP FAIRBANKS’S tallest structure, the Polaris Building, Nick gazed out onto what was once his hometown. He’d never seen it from this high up before, not with his own eyes anyway. It was almost beautiful here with the afternoon sun’s warm glow reflecting off the Chena river and the motionless streets down below that appeared like miniatures, like the models he and Jimmy used to assemble when they were kids.

  But he couldn’t enjoy the view, not fully. The siren, the incessant alarm, was a constant reminder of their peril and of the invisible ticking clock that counted down to a point of no return, a horror from which they wouldn’t be able to escape. However, all had gone according to plan so far.

  Behind him was a mounted speaker, identical to the one he and Lusa had placed over the bridge. It hung on a large series of pipes that he thought might be exhaust vents.

  He raised his less-than-lethal weapon, a tranquilizer gun, and looked through it’s low-powered scope toward the bridge. What he saw reminded him of the television broadcasts he’d seen of marathons in much larger cities: the bridge was covered with bodies, crazies all clamoring, climbing, clawing their ways toward the object of their ire, the siren.

  Fortunately, they hadn’t gotten it down yet, their hatred clouding their ability to work out the solution he and Lusa had used to reach it. But that wouldn’t hold forever. Already, he could see some nutjobs climbing the bridge scaffolding and working their way precariously toward the siren.

  The plan, as Vaughn had instructed them, was to get as many crazies from north and south of the Chena river to converge on a central location. It wouldn’t do to skip this first step at the bridge, because enraged crazies didn’t think through their transportation plans very well; they would simply dive into the river trying to get to the Polaris building or run pointlessly back and forth up the river like a stupid maze rat, unable to find a way through.

  And it wouldn’t do to keep them all at the bridge either. For one, the bridge was a bottleneck; it choked off access to the central point. There were more crazies backed up on either side of the bridge than there were on the bridge itself. Second, the delivery Jimmy would be making by plane might not land securely on the bridge. If it dropped into the water by accident, the whole mission would be for naught. As convoluted as Vaughn’s plan seemed, Nick had been unable to simplify it without increasing their chances of failure.

  “How’s it looking?” Nick asked over the headset.

  “Well,” Lusa answered, “they’re really mad and…crazy.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, I guess I could have told you that much. Still safe and sound?”

  There was a lull, and Nick imagined that Lusa was turning over in her mind their argument about her coming with him. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said simply. “But Jimmy’s signal is gone.”

  Nick looked at his command display. He saw the relative position of his drones—it looked like he was right on top of them, and technically since they were down on the ground floor, he was. He zoomed out and saw Lusa’s beacon. Then he pulled back further, wide enough to see Eielson Air Force Base on the map. No Jimmy.

  “He’s probably just up in the clouds,” Nick said. “Maybe his transceiver doesn’t reach from that height.”

  As soon as he’d said it, he knew it didn’t make sense. But it had to be something like that; Jimmy had just reported in moments ago.

  “I hope you’re right,” Lusa said.

  “We can count on Jimmy,” Nick said, assuring himself as much as her. “Besides you, he’s the only one I can trust with my life.”

  That was a lie, and Nick knew it. In fact, Jimmy was the only person he trusted. He cared for Lusa, trusted her intentions but not her ability to watch his back. Jimmy, on the other hand, had proven himself over and over. He wasn’t the same druggie type he had been when they’d first made their escape from Fairbanks.

  “Okay. I’m coming down,” Nick said. “I’ll signal you to cut the siren when I reach the ground floor.”

  There was no response, but there didn’t have to be. They’d talked this through repeatedly on their ride in, and they both knew the plan like the back of their hands. Nick glanced one more time toward Lusa’s position. He knew things were going well, but he couldn’t help but feel like he might not ever see her again.

  He turned to the single door, the only way onto the top of the Polaris building and—other than jumping off the side—the only way off. The dark stairwell was the thing of nightmares, and Nick knew the imagery would stay with him for years to come. He breathed in deeply as if there weren’t fresh air inside. Then he opened the door and ran into the darkness. He flipped on the light attached to his tranq-gun just as the door behind him closed.

  Down he went, floor by floor, what—if he’d counted correctly—must have been eleven stories. Each floor had its own obligatory door that led to what had once been Fairbanks’s finest hotel quarters. Now, they were just empty rooms, useless and decaying. The building had been condemned years ago, and Nick thought it was a fair metaphor for the thousands of crazies outside who were empty shells of their former selves.

  Fairbanks wasn’t a big enough city to have skyscrapers, but a hundred-plus feet high seemed tall enough to Nick. As he reached the ground floor, Nick was glad he wouldn’t have to do any of that again. Last time down, he thought. Last time he’d have to put his own life in jeopardy. Last time Jimmy or Lusa would too. If today went according to plan, Vaughn would have his army of drones. He might want the three of them to continue helping him, but they wouldn’t have to be on the front lines. Not with the transmission relay system up and broadcasting. Not with the Deadhorse-to-Valdez meta-antenna that Vaughn promised would boost the signal far and wide.

  Nick burst free of the dark stairwell and out onto the lobby. Delta Three was where he’d left them, patrolling the room, checking the windows and doors for threats.

  “Okay, Lusa,” Nick said. “Cut the siren.”

  He waited for several seconds, listening. The distant horn silenced. Then he heard Lusa say, “There. It’s done.”

  Nick wanted to ask her what the crazies were doing now, if they were still clamoring toward the horn, turning on each other, or what. But he knew there wasn’t time for that. Not now.

  He reached into the pocket of his tactical vest and pulled out his remote control, the one for his speaker. He mashed it. Nothing. He tried again. Still, nothing.

  “My remote’s not working,” Nick said, half panicked.

  “Are you too far away?” Lusa asked.

  “I’m going up to see,” he said in a hurry as he ran to the stairwell.

  “Last time saying last time,” he told himself as he ran up the stairs. At the landing of each new floor, Nick pushed the button and listened. It wasn’t until he’d reached the eighth floor, not until he’d nearly given up all hope that it would work at all, that he heard the loud scream of the siren open up and wail from above.

  He bent over at the waist, hands on his knees, and tried to catch his breath. That was a close one, he thought, and the first real kink in their plans. He didn’t dare jinx himself by calling it the last.

  He headed back down the stairs, at first slowly, but then incre
asingly faster as his mind caught up with the fact that crazies were undoubtedly headed his way. When he exited the stairwell onto the ground floor, he again bent down to catch his breath. But the sights and sounds before him robbed Nick of any relief.

  Against the front door stood two of his drones, their backs turned, keeping it from being pushed in. Dull, relentless thuds punched against the boarded-up door and windows. Glass broke, one of the higher windows that wasn’t boarded up, and one of the drones quickly moved to the position and fired tranquilizer darts at the offending crazy.

  Like the door and windows of the Polaris building, reality came crashing in on Nick. They’re already here, Nick realized. And he was too late.

  CHAPTER 30

  “I’M STUCK!” NICK shouted over the headset to Lusa. She tried to reply, but he talked over her. “They’re already here, and it’s just a matter of time before they get inside.” He felt stupid for trading their firearms for dart guns back before they entered the city. But a plan’s a plan and all that, and Vaughn had masterminded the whole thing. Where was Vaughn now? Nick thought with murder in his heart.

  “I’m coming,” Lusa answered.

  “You are not,” Nick insisted. “It’s going to be okay,” he lied. “Jimmy will be here any minute, and none of this will matter. Besides, one more person won’t make a difference.”

  Just then, the front doors began to buckle, and Nick ran to assist the two drones holding it back. He slammed his back against it, and suddenly, he was right back in Grandpa Joe’s garage again. Right back in the same heap of trouble he and Jimmy had tried to escape from.

  “Jimmy, can you hear this?” Nick asked over his headset. He changed the frequency from the one he and Jimmy always used and tried some of the other presets Vaughn had designated. He tried again but got no reply.

  Where are you, little brother?

  Another window crashed, and Nick saw a body get part way through before getting tranquilized by a drone. Two seconds later the crazy lost its zeal and became a human sized cork, effectively blocking the entrance. Nick watched in disgust as its body was pushed and pulled by other crazies, the broken pieces of glass along the window frame carving the poor creature like a thanksgiving turkey.