by Bobby Adair
"And somebody shot you?" asked Oliver.
"Yes," said Jingo. He leaned over and pulled up his pant leg, showing Oliver and Melora a circular scar in his calf. He turned his leg and showed them a similar scar on the other side. "The bullet went right through."
Oliver was fascinated. "What did you do to the man who shot you?"
"I never saw him," said Jingo. "Like I told you about guns, you don't have to be close to use one."
"Is that why you stopped traveling?" Melora asked.
"Yes," said Jingo. "After I was shot, I didn't leave the city again for thirty or forty years. By then, very few people were around. Nobody had guns or bullets to shoot anyone anymore, for the most part. I was pretty safe. After that, I used to travel, like I said. I used to go out and look for men and women like me. I used to try to find out if civilization survived anywhere."
"Did it?" Oliver asked.
"Not that I could find," said Jingo. "Eventually, I stopped going out to look."
Beck came jogging up, out of breath, excited about something. "Come up to the crest of the hill. You have to see this."
Oliver reached the crest and stopped behind a blackened tree trunk lying on it side.
Ivory, hiding behind the same tree trunk, asked, "What do you make of that?"
Oliver looked down at a bowl shaped valley surrounding a bay. Every tree in the valley had been cut down, leaving thousands of stumps, each with a top as flat as a dining room table. Oliver had never seen a tree cut that way before. Trees felled with axes left ragged stumps.
Most of the valley had burned, and among the blackened stumps on the ashen ground lay thousands of skeletons.
At the center of the valley, down by the water, Oliver saw the remnants of a stockade made from logs. They were standing side by side, sharpened at the top end. The logs formed walls thirty feet high, but many of them had fallen, and most were burned to ash.
Inside the boundary of the stockade stood nearly a dozen towering houses, seemingly constructed from the logs cut in the valley. Each of the houses was large enough to fit five or six families. They stood four or five stories tall, narrowed to a roofed observation platform, and were open on all sides, large enough to easily hold a dozen men.
Oliver looked in the water and saw something even more fantastic.
"Ships," Jingo whispered.
"They look like your boat," said Melora, "only much bigger."
"They're probably a hundred feet long. Mine was only twenty-seven feet."
"Did they lose their masts and sails?" Melora asked.
"Those kinds of ships don't have sails," Jingo answered.
"How do they get them out into the water?" Oliver asked.
"They don't," said Jingo. "Those four ships will be on that beach until they rust away."
"Rust away?" Ivory asked. "They're made of metal?"
"Steel, most likely," Jingo answered. "It looks like they're stuck."
Ivory mused, "They must be worth a fortune."
Beck shook his head in disbelief. "That's what ships from your time looked like?"
"No," said Jingo. "We had plenty of ships that size, but we also had ships ten times that big. Those aren't ancient ships. They look like they've been there a long time, maybe ten or twenty years, but those aren't from ancient times. They weren't here the last time I came this way, maybe a hundred years ago."
"Where did they come from?" Oliver asked.
"I don't know," said Jingo.
Ivory tensed and crouched down.
Everyone did the same.
"Look." Ivory pointed down to a spot where the stockade had burned to ash.
Oliver followed Ivory's gaze and saw a person, draped in what looked like a blanket with a hood, colored in shades of green and brown. The hood was down, letting the woman's long hair flow down her back. In one hand was a pair of rabbits she'd killed. In her other was a long, intricately shaped thing. Oliver turned to Jingo and asked, "What's that she's carrying?"
Jingo's voice seemed stuck in his throat, but he managed an answer. "That, Oliver, is a gun."
LOOK OUT FOR THE LAST CONQUEST, THE FINAL BOOK IN THE LAST SURVIVORS SERIES!
COMING SUMMER 2016!
That Review Thing
Since you've gotten this far, you know that at the end of each book I write a little something to thank you for reading and to ask you to leave us a review. It truly is important to us.
The thing is, I know when I come up with something witty that makes you laugh, you're much more likely to leave a review. At least, that's how it appears to work from our perspective. Though I'll admit, we could be dead wrong.
As I'm sitting down to write this, having just completed my final proofread of the entire book yesterday, I have to be honest, I'm having a hard time with the humor. The Last Refuge was a pretty dark book in the series. We lost two of our favorite characters and one of our villains, two of those in a disturbingly brutal fashion. Jingo and Beck talked a lot about the downfall of humanity and the parallels between the old and the new world. It was a discussion that made the tidbit of hope we ended the book on seem pretty tenuous.
I feel like I need a few days to recover. And I think that's the reason I enjoy reading and writing. I want to be immersed in imaginary worlds. I want to see the worlds in my mind, and I want to feel what the characters are experiencing, both good and bad. I'm guessing that's the same reason you read.
So, if you need some recovery time too, I'll understand. That means Piperbrook and I have done our job.
Please do leave a review. We appreciate it.
And The Last Conquest, book 6, the final book in the series will be out this summer. See you then.
-Bobby
LEAVE A REVIEW HERE!
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Typos
We do our best to make sure all our books are edited and proofread, but occasionally something slips through.
If you find a typo in THE LAST REFUGE, let us know at: http://www.bobbyadair.com/typos
Other Things To Read
Since THE LAST CONQUEST (THE FINAL LAST SURVIVORS BOOK) isn't out yet…
If you'd like to read something else by T.W. Piperbrook, the CONTAMINATION series might be your thing. It's a fast-paced, action-oriented zombie series with a twist. Check out the Boxed Set HERE.
If you'd like to read something else by Bobby Adair, Ebola K might be a good choice. It follows the collapse of the society through the story of several people struggling through an ebola epidemic. GET IT HERE.
Text copyright © 2016, Bobby Adair & T.W. Piperbrook
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental.
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