Last Refuge

by Allen Kuzara

  Nick’s mind raced for an answer. He instructed one of the patrolling drones to take his place at the door, and he jumped up on a nearby table and glanced outside an upper window. He had hoped that there weren’t as many crazies outside as he feared, and he was partially right. The ones already scratching and clawing their way inside must have been nearby crazies who hadn’t already reached the bridge. And when the new siren sounded, they had simply changed course to the Polaris building.

  But Nick saw in the distance a wall of people, murderous marathoners, rushing toward him, and he knew his trouble was just beginning. These were the crazies from the bridge, and they numbered in the thousands.

  The siren. Nick realized he could hit the pause button on this whole thing just by stopping the siren. Yeah, it wasn’t the plan, but neither was getting stuck inside the Polaris building.

  Nick mashed the button on the remote control, hoping he’d just get lucky. Nothing changed, and he knew what he had to do.

  “Delta Three, hold this position for as long as you can. When they overrun you,”—he choked on the words and the certainty with which he said them— “retreat back to the stairwell and hold that position.”

  Nick didn’t wait for confirmation but ran to the stairs. As before, the darkness was unwelcoming, but behind Nick was a threat more frightening than the unknown, and he climbed the stairs with relative ease.

  His adrenaline ran pure and clean and he no longer felt fatigue, sore muscles, nothing but fear and the singular hope that he could quell it.

  He believed that the battery in his remote was running low on juice, and he was worried that every time he mashed the button, he was only weakening the battery further. After a couple of fruitless mashings, he told himself he’d wait until the eighth floor before trying again. That’s how high he had been last time when it had worked.

  After passing the door to the sixth-floor hallway, Nick heard the creak of an opening door, then an echoing loud slam.

  He froze. Someone else was in the stairwell. He couldn’t tell from which direction the sound had come. It could have been above him or below him. The siren was too loud to allow him to hear details that well.

  He waited for new sound, for Delta Three to identify themselves. Nothing.

  His hand reached the tip of his gun and turned off the light attachment. His mind watched his body make this executive decision in mild horror and fascination.

  Only after the light was off did he understand why some secret part of him had made the choice. If it was a crazy, they could no better see in the dark than he could. At least now he was invisible to it.

  He listened for sound. He thought for a second that he heard breathing, maybe from up above him. But he couldn’t tell. Again, the siren was blocking him. It could just be the natural hum and reverberation that these manmade caves emitted, he thought, or it could have been just his own breathing he heard bouncing back at him.

  A voice inside him spoke up: he didn’t have time for this, and if it was a crazy—so what? He’d killed plenty of them before. What he couldn’t deal with was the horde of nutjobs outside. Maybe, he told himself, the crazy had opened the door, hadn’t seen anything worth chasing, and had turned back into one of the hallways.

  He clicked on his flashlight and stepped carefully upward. He aimed the light as far forward as possible, knowing that if he was to run into something, there wouldn’t be much time before it was on him. Plus, there was a delay in the darts, a second or two before the nerve toxin immobilized them. If the thing was behind him, he had the upper ground and he would hear it coming.

  Another door slammed, and Nick realized hoping and wishing away his problems wasn’t going to work. Someone, something was in there.

  But hope springs eternal, and just as the deafening siren’s screech was beginning to nauseate Nick, the thought occurred that maybe the second door slam was the sound of the crazy leaving.

  Either way, he needed to get this over with. He moved past the seventh floor and felt a positive surge; he was going to make it.

  He rounded the next landing and spotted the eighth-floor door. He stepped up to it and pulled out his remote. He held his breathed as he mashed it.

  Nothing. No change.

  Nick cursed as he stepped up to the next landing and mashed it again.

  No effect.

  He was beginning to panic, wondering if the remote was going to work at any distance at all when he heard the sound of scuffling feet.

  In his haste, Nick dropped the remote which clanged down the stairs like a pinball, coming to rest two floors below.

  He tried to get his bearings, to locate the sound, but the stairwell reverberated so loudly he couldn’t be sure of anything. He kept turning, up and down, shining his light both ways, trying to spot the oncoming threat.

  Finally, he saw movement below him, and he turned and took aim at the crazy. It had once been an overweight middle-aged man. Somehow in his panic ridden mind, Nick thought how lucky he was the crazy wasn’t in better physical condition, how a trim man could have mounted the stairs more quickly.

  Using the light’s beam to target, he shot two darts into the man. Nick saw them impact its gelatinous abdomen. The crazy made it up three more steps, froze, then fell backwards.

  The crash landing produced a sharp smack that resonated loudly. Nick breathed a momentary sigh of relief, then recognized he was still in trouble. He had dropped his remote and didn’t even know if it still worked.

  As Nick stepped down toward the flat-on-his-back crazy, he felt his legs wobble. They were jelly now, the maxed-out adrenaline having its final effect.

  Just as Nick stepped down to the landing where the man’s body was, he heard new sounds. He twisted around to identify the threat and caught sight of a crazy at the top of the landing above.

  Before he could fire his weapon, the crazy leapt down the whole length of stairs and crashed hard into Nick.

  Nick slammed back against the wall. The body on the floor tripped him, making his fall that much worse.

  When the back of Nick’s head smacked into the block wall behind him, the lights flickered. He regained consciousness only to see his weapon and light bounce down the stairs and the light going off.

  In sheer darkness, Nick’s senses awoke to the plentiful stimulus on a dead-set crazy on his chest, scratching, clawing his face and body.

  Nick was on his back, his legs twisted like a pretzel. He tried to raise his hands to block the attacker’s blows. It worked for a second. Then he felt excruciating white-hot pain and understood too late that the crazy was biting his forearm.

  The pain gave him courage to fight back. And with strength he didn’t know he possessed, Nick pushed up against the crazy, pressing its body back with his other hand until the monster released its grip of him.

  Nick swung at the creature wildly. His punch missed, and he felt the thing’s hands grabbing for him. He locked his elbow, holding the crazy back at arm’s length before swinging again.

  This time, his punch connected, and the crazy reeled to one side. It was enough for Nick to extract himself from underneath it.

  Scrambling to his feet, Nick felt the killer charge him again. This time it was like a lineman’s tackle.

  It pressed him back against the wall, but Nick knew he had the upper ground, the crazy’s head lowered for the charge and its arms wrapped around Nick’s waist.

  Nick groped his hands down onto the back of the attacker until he could hold onto it, grasping around the crazy’s torso. Then Nick pushed off the wall into the darkness.

  The crazy stumbled over the body on the floor, and when Nick had rammed it up against the staircase railing, the attacker let go of him completely.

  Nick released him, stepped back, and visualized where he thought the crazy was. He jabbed with his weak hand, connected with what felt like its face, then delivered his most powerful uppercut punch to the crazy’s jaw.

  He heard the crazy fall back against the railing, and Nick
knew he had what might be his only chance. Quickly, he ducked down and grabbed for the crazy’s legs.

  The thing seemed to catch on to his plan, and fought back vigorously, pounding and scratching Nick’s exposed back.

  But it was too late; Nick had the hold he was after. And with an effort that felt like all he had left inside him, Nick lifted the crazy up and over the railing.

  Once the body slipped out of Nick’s grasp, gravity did the rest. He heard it whoosh through the darkness making a couple pings and pats on its way down before slapping the concrete floor at the bottom.

  Nick groped for the railing, and for a split second he worried that he had broken it, pushed it over in the preceding events, and that he would fall forward to his death. But he found the twisting wrought iron tines and grabbed on for support.

  Alone, in complete darkness, without his remote, without a light, and without a weapon, Nick searched for his next move. Maybe he could find his light and get it working again. Or maybe he should simply search for the remote. He still had bigger problems than a couple of crazies in the stairwell after all.

  Then he heard a sound down below and saw light penetrate the darkness. He glanced over the railing and spotted the light attachments of two drones on the bottom floor. He reached for his headset and realized it too had been knocked off, so he simply yelled down.

  “Delta Three, what’s your status?” He had thought they were coming to help him, possibly.

  But the reply wasn’t the one he wanted to hear. “Overrun, sir. Holding present position.”

  That wasn’t good. While Nick had been fighting for his life, Delta Three had been too, and now they were reduced to only two drones.

  Nick looked back down once more and saw them both with their backs to the door like they had been at the lobby entrance. And just like then, the door was bulging, buckling under the constant pressure of pounding and pushing of thousands of crazies.

  The door opened and closed in spasms, and each time, new light flooded into the stairwell. Nick watched in horror as the door finally burst open.

  One of the drones retreated up the steps while the other turned and faced the onslaught. The drone at the bottom was devoured on the spot, sucked into the mass of arms, legs, and teeth, forever gone.

  The last drone fired impotently at the on-comers as it tried to climb the stairs faster than its attackers. Nick turned away just as he saw one of them grab the last member of Delta Three by the ankle and pull it down into the flood waters of destruction.

  In the subtle light that the open door below cast into the stairwell, Nick tried to make out his surroundings. He looked straight up and saw a slim sliver of daylight shining. It was from a crack in the door leading to the rooftop.

  CHAPTER 31

  NICK RACED UP the stairs toward his only hope of survival: stopping the siren. He kept telling himself that he could run as fast as any crazy, that going broke didn’t give you superhuman speed, and then, finally, to stop thinking so much and just move.

  Somewhere around the tenth floor—he wasn’t sure because he couldn’t see well and had lost count—Nick had an idea. He stopped at the next door he found and checked it. It was locked, and he kept moving. If it had opened, he would have had to decide between hiding in one of the hotel rooms—if they were open—or proceeding to the top and stopping the siren. Lack of options makes decisions easy.

  Nick finally made it to the roof. When he burst through the door, the sunlight momentarily blinded him. His whole body heaved in exhaustion as he fell back against the door to shut it.

  Nick searched for a deadbolt but only found the small in-handle lock. He locked it, knowing it was better than nothing.

  He squinted over at the blaring siren. And when he could muster the effort, Nick stepped toward it. He had to disable it, but how?

  The white plastic casing looked flimsy enough that he thought he could bust through it if he had some kind of blunt object; how he wished he had his old Springfield nine millimeter now.

  He searched the ground and spotted a short—barely more than a foot long—metal pipe lying in the opposite corner. Nick changed his trajectory to intercept it. But before he reached it, he heard over the wailing siren the pounding and clamoring of hands and feet in the stairwell.

  His eyes shifted to the door and saw it vibrating like a drumhead, and he noticed pieces of mortar and concrete dust breaking free from where the metal hinges attached to the wall.

  Nick rushed to the door and put his whole weight against it. A childhood memory flashed to mind: the time he’d been in summer camp when he was eight years old and had lain on a deflated parachute while the rest of the campers grabbed the parachute’s edges and effortlessly lifted his body. He wondered if the triggered memory meant he was about to die, that his brain was reliving, replaying his life, trying to make sense of senselessness.

  Nick struggled to bring his mind out of the fog, to try and work the problem at hand. If he could just get to the pipe and bust the siren, they might go away.

  But then he heard something snap, and he realized the door was breaking at the hinges. It wouldn’t last long enough for him to disable the speaker.

  Suddenly, a shot rang out.

  Bewildered, Nick relaxed his arms-stretched-out posture and touched his body, examining it for wounds. Finding none, he searched for the source of the gunshot.

  Just then he saw a dim flash from a nearby building’s rooftop, and the bullet, traveling faster than sound, crashed beside him before he heard its report.

  Unbelievably, the screaming siren that had been rattling apart his insides stopped. He glanced over and saw that it was busted, mangled with pieces broken off, lieing on the floor.

  His heart leaped, finding new hope. But then he felt the door behind him move. He pushed back hard, halting the breach. But the door didn’t close all the way; it was too blocked by hands, feet, and fingers.

  The zombie horde didn’t care that the siren had stopped. They knew Nick was up there. He was the reason they were angry. He was the one they wanted. He was who was to blame for their souls being snuffed out one year ago. They were coming, siren or no siren.

  Nick resumed his desperate pose, arms stretched wide across the door, his knees locked and his legs forward. He felt like he was holding one of the tackle hurdles as his former linemen practiced rushing.

  The door now felt paper thin, and the walls themselves promised to crumble on top of him. Maybe, his desperate mind thought, the wall would fall on him, extinguish his life before the crazies took it in the most merciless way.

  Then another thought emerged: he didn’t have to suffer. Not for long, anyway. He was only a few yards from the ledge of the rooftop. He could make a run for it. He could jump, and the world—what was left of the broken thing—would all go black.

  Nick shut his eyes. Thoughts betrayed him, what few he had. He was overrun by emotion: fear, crippling fear, hating death but loathing the life that brought him here even more.

  Tears ran down his cheeks and he heard his breathing become shallow, spasmodic. It was the same way Jimmy used to sound, and he wondered if this was how bad his brother had felt all those times when he had come apart.

  Amidst his inner turmoil and the incessant pounding of the door, Nick heard a new sound.

  In the distance, there was a rumble. Nick strained to hear it, to recognize the conspicuous sonority. He realized it was a distant engine. But not just any engine—it was the distinct sound of large, low-geared diesel motors, like those from Fort Greely.

  Then, much louder, he heard a new sound, and instantly he knew the crazies heard it too. They changed, weakened their pounding, and he could imagine them wrenching their own necks, straining to hear the new offense.

  It only took a couple seconds for Nick to recognize the melody. Somewhere nearby, a loudspeaker was playing his brother’s favorite anthem.

  CHAPTER 32

  DESPITE THE BULLHORN speaker’s poor fidelity, Thunderstruck never sounded
so good. Right as stabbing chords and drum accents accompanied Angus’s guitar line, Nick felt the door behind him become calm, quiet, and he imagined the murderous train of crazies reversing course and descending the stairwell.

  When he felt he was in the clear and when he absolutely couldn’t take the waiting any longer, Nick rushed to the rooftop ledge, the same ledge he’d only moments ago contemplating jumping off.

  Down below, Nick saw crazies spill out of the building like ants from a kicked ant hill. Nick looked east down Main Street and saw a single military style truck turn the corner and come his way.

  Just then, the song came to the chorus, and Nick fist-pumped the air in celebration. It was Jimmy alright. That much he was sure of. Why he wasn’t airborne, Nick didn’t know. But right now, he didn’t care.

  As the U.S. Air Force truck approached the first wave of crazies, Nick saw someone toss a canister out the back that, upon contact with the road, emitted a thick cloud of gas. The truck kept moving, despite the impact with crazies and the unavoidable casualties the action caused.

  Either from coming in contact with the gas or simply from being turned into bugs on the windshield, crazies bounced off the truck’s shell and lay motionless on the ground behind it.

  Nick watched triumphantly as the truck took a hard left, circling around the Polaris building and tossing out an additional canister as it went. Nick knew Jimmy was taunting the crazies, leading them in a giant circle, one that would close after all were unconscious.

  Nick turned around and looked to the top of the nearby building. He waited for his weak eyes to focus, and when they did, he saw Lusa surrounded by Bravo Squad. She smiled and waved in his direction. She had saved him, or at least had been there to try. And luckily, she had had the rifle.