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  LAST REFUGE

  Final Update: Book 2

  ALLEN KUZARA

  Copyright © 2018 Allen Kuzara

  All rights reserved.

  CHAPTER 1

  NICK PULLED THE van over to the side of the dirt road and turned off the headlights.

  “What are you doing?” Jimmy asked, more annoyed than concerned.

  Nick didn’t answer but instead stepped out into the cool night air. He left the engine running, one of their agreed upon rules. Gas and diesel were easier to come by than extra lives.

  The orange-gold sun stayed tucked behind the horizon on this summer night, and the aurora borealis hung in the sky, giving him just enough light. He stepped up on the side board and inspected the roof of the van. There was their most recent modification: the PA loudspeaker from the research station. Well, one of them. One they hadn’t used the whole time they’d lived there. It still looked like it was secured despite the bumpy ride here.

  Nick looked back behind them toward the Dalton Highway. He could barely make out the pipeline, which made him feel a little bit more secure. Then he turned and stared into the darkness before them. He knew they were almost to the little mining camp they’d found on the map. He stood there watching and listening. There was nothing, and for a moment it almost felt normal, like before the update and all the insanity that had become their lives over the past year.

  Three thumps came from the van’s roof. It was Jimmy, impatient as always. Nick complied, getting back in the driver’s seat.

  “You ready?” Jimmy asked.

  “Everything looks good up top,” Nick answered. Jimmy nodded. Yes, it was still the same old Jimmy: impatient, impulsive, immature. But some things had changed. As much as Nick had thought he would go mad stuck with his little brother all winter, the two had come to appreciate each other. They knew how to keep their distance, give each other necessary space. And they both knew there was no one else in the world they could trust more.

  Nick moved the van forward, using the running lights instead of the high beams. Finally, they came upon a shot-up sign beside the road that read:

  EXTRACTION SITE #9

  Beyond the sign were two rows of shacks, travel campers, and trailers. Nick stopped and looked at Jimmy. They didn’t have to talk; they knew what came next. They’d been here before, all too many times. They both fingered their weapons: Nick his trusted Springfield XD-9, Jimmy a newfound Marlin lever-action .30-30.

  A slow smile came across Jimmy’s face as he reached forward and grabbed his phone, now jerry-rigged with wires through the ceiling to the loudspeaker. He held his finger over the screen waiting for Nick to assume the position.

  Nick reached his left hand out until he felt the knob for the high beams, the same knob he’d searched for in the dark in Grandpa Joe’s garage. Nick took a deep breath, gave Jimmy the look, and they engaged their buttons simultaneously.

  The high beams burned through the night air out onto the mining camp, and Nick stomped the gas, the tires spinning gravels by the time Jimmy’s song came on over the loudspeaker.

  Adding to the excitement was the fact that Nick didn’t know which song Jimmy would pick; it was different each time they had done this. Tonight’s pick was instantly recognizable from the first stabbing guitar line: AC/DC’s “Back in Black.”

  They burst upon the too-small-to-be-called-a-town, and Jimmy climbed back into the back of the van and slid open the side door. This part was what made Nick most nervous, but they had decided this was the best way; they could slam the door shut faster than they could manually roll up a window, plus this gave them a better opening out which to shoot.

  Nick heard Jimmy’s Marlin fire. Apparently, the first crazy had appeared. Jimmy still had better eyes than Nick, especially at night, with or without celestial bodies glowing.

  Then Nick saw several crazies emerge from each side, illuminated by the high beams. They came out and seemed to wince from the light, partially covering their faces with their hands. Nick could have felt sorry for them if they weren’t so dead set on tearing the boys limb from limb.

  He accelerated the van forward, not wanting the crazies to catch up with them. He looked back and saw Jimmy lose his balance, then right himself. Jimmy kept firing, and Nick decided this camp was especially full of crazies.

  He reached a bend in what had become the road, a spot where the two rows of temporary shelters made an L. He wheeled the van left, and when he’d straightened up, he realized they were in trouble.

  He pushed the van harder, knowing that time wasn’t on their side.

  “What is it?” Jimmy yelled from the back, apparently sensing something wasn’t right.

  “Dead end,” Nick pointed forward. But from the sounds of gunshots, Jimmy probably didn’t see the massive dump truck blocking the road ahead. The heavy machinery seemed to mark the end of the little shanty town. Nick hoped that meant they would only be attacked from one direction.

  “Hang on to something,” Nick warned before he whipped the van hard to the right, spinning the back tires sideways, until they were parked perpendicular to the road as well as the slew of crazies still heading their direction.

  Nick left the van running but put it in Park. Then he slid back to the rear where Jimmy was. The gunshots had momentarily ceased as Jimmy reloaded. The lever action held five in the tube that ran underneath its barrel and one in the chamber.

  Nick pulled a flashlight with his left hand and tried to align his pistol sights with its beam. Before he could get a bead on the crazies, he heard the sound of an opening door to his right. He turned and was met with the wheezy scream of a crazy fast approaching their position.

  Unflinchingly, Nick shot the crazy in the head, dropping it to the ground. Headshots weren’t needed because crazies were undead or that body shots didn’t cause damage; they were efficient. Save your ammo for another crazy had become their motto.

  After quickly scanning both sides for more threats, Nick realigned his aim toward the coming onslaught. By this time, Jimmy was back at it, somehow able to see well enough without a flashlight.

  One by one, the boys took out members of the fast approaching mob. They didn’t have to talk about it, but they knew to take out the closest ones first, and Jimmy could tell which ones Nick was aiming at because of his flashlight.

  Jimmy stopped firing, ostensibly needing to reload again. Nick noticed how much faster the crazies seemed to be coming now that his brother wasn’t able to help.

  Click.

  Nick was out. He reached for his spare magazine in his pants pocket. It wasn’t there. He panicked, then shined his light inside the van and saw his magazine up on the dash.

  “Idiot!” Nick yelled.

  Jimmy raised an eyebrow but stood up and fired instead of asking questions.

  Nick had a choice to make. He looked one more time at the approaching numbers; there were too many of them, even if he had the spare mag. Unlike Jimmy’s more accurate long gun, Nick’s four-and-a-half-inch barrel didn’t connect bullets with distant crazies. Tonight’s average had been about three shots per take-down except for those that were very close.

  “Come on,” Nick said. “Let’s go.”

  Jimmy started to argue, stopped himself, fired once more and followed his brother into the van.

  “Close that,” Nick instructed. Jimmy slammed the door shut just as Nick took the van out of Park and punched the accelerator.

  The soundtrack for this killing spree had just gotten to the guitar solo. It was Jimmy’s favorite part, and Jimmy would have headbanged if they had been anywhere else.

  Nick told Jimmy to reload, that they might get one more chance. Then he turned the wheel deep to the right, and seconds later the van straightened up. Nick startled when he saw
how close the crazies were in his headlights. He stared at the Dodge Ram hood decal and spoke a word of invocation: “Don’t let me down now.”

  Then he pushed the van harder, as if the oncoming horde stood a chance of stopping it. Nick felt and heard the bodies impact the van. He flinched each time the monster-on-wheels swallowed them whole. Most disappeared underneath her, though some bounced off to either side. Those were the ones, he knew, he might have to see again.

  But those weren’t all the crazies; try as he might, Nick couldn’t hit all that stood in their way. Crazies have that pesky habit of not standing in a single-file line, and tonight was no exception.

  After a gut-wrenching minute, the boys reached the mining camp entrance. Nick stopped the van.

  “Okay, let’s get as many of these buggers as possible and get out of here,” Nick said.

  “Oh, right, Captain,” Jimmy said in his most cockneyed accent. He was making fun of Nick who had picked up a few limey words like bugger from shortwave. A year ago, teasing from Jimmy would have irritated Nick, but no longer. This was their life now, and as unpleasant as parts of it were, at least they had each other.

  Like members of a highly trained fighting team, the boys spilled out of the van as if on cue and stood shoulder-to-shoulder to meet the remaining crazies.

  Jimmy took the first shot, his .30-30 firing as straight as he could aim it, and what a devastating blow the heavy bullet took.

  Nick jumped into the fray when he could make out their faces. He used to hear Grandpa Joe talk about not firing until you saw the whites of their eyes back in the war. He couldn’t afford that kind of bravery he had told himself. This was a live-to-fight-another-day kind of battle.

  Before Nick had spent his final magazine, Jimmy dropped out, retreating to the van. Nick figured he was reloading.

  Nick had kept a mental count of his bullets this time. He was sure he had five rounds left, at least. And there were three crazies near enough he thought he could take them out.

  He aimed high, fired, and missed the first. The second shot connected. Head shot.

  He shifted to the second crazy and fired. This time he hit the first try, and the crazy flipped backwards like how Nick remembered seeing bad guys die in old B movies.

  The third crazy seemed to sense the danger he was in—if only he was reasonable enough to back off, Nick wished—and shifted its pace into high gear. Nick fired twice in quick succession, once to the body and then the head. When he had the luxury of extra rounds and time, this was the most successful pattern he’d found.

  The next wave of crazies wasn’t far behind, but Nick knew he wouldn’t have time to reload magazines before they were upon them. He turned and ran to the van. He expected to see Jimmy either returning to the front lines with his rifle or be inside the van, but instead he saw Jimmy carrying a red gas can to the nearby travel trailer.

  “What are you doing?” Nick pleaded. But he already knew the answer. All Jimmy offered was a grin.

  Nick watched and waited. He was helpless to assist his brother. Jimmy had his gun slung over his shoulder and Nick was out of rounds with no time to reload.

  Nick shined his light toward the oncoming crazies. Surely Jimmy could see them too, but he didn’t seem bothered. Instead, he maintained his steady hand, pouring a trickle of gasoline from the street to the trailer. After setting down the gas can underneath the trailer, he stepped back and removed matches from his pants pocket. He struck the first match, and it went out instantly. Jimmy’s second try stayed lit, and he cast it onto the head of the gas trail.

  The volatile liquid erupted into a head-high flame and ran toward the can faster than any man or crazy could. The boys winced from the intense light and heat as the gas can exploded.

  Regaining his wits, Nick checked for crazies. Surprisingly, even they had been taken aback, but now they were in full-attack mode.

  “Come on!” he shouted to Jimmy who still wore that same dumb grin.

  Jimmy followed his brother’s command, but, as usual, put his own spin on things: he turned and fired cowboy style at the coming crazies, the butt of his lever-action tucked under his arm as he slowly backed toward the van.

  His second-class aiming resulted in all gut shots at close range. The crazies—there were two very close—came on, screaming, wheezy, bleeding. After Jimmy emptied his rifle, one had dropped, and the second had slowed to a true zombie-like pace.

  Nick knew they should be in the van by now, long gone even. But he couldn’t leave Jimmy who was only ten yards away.

  He kept waiting for Jimmy to turn and run, but much to his chagrin, Jimmy raced with butt of his rifle raised toward the final nearby crazy. He leapt and landed on the crazy, the hard maple stock smashing what was left of the crazy’s face.

  The crazy fell to the ground, and Jimmy stood over it like Mohammed Ali taunting a knocked-out opponent. Finally, Jimmy turned, dumb grin and all, and raced toward the van.

  Nick exhaled a sigh of relief as he heard Jimmy slide shut the van door. They were done, at least for tonight.

  As Nick drove away from the camp, he looked for the glow of the rising sun on the horizon. He knew it was out there somewhere, waiting to come up any minute now. But he was too blinded by Jimmy’s firestorm in the rearview mirror—the one that was sure to spread from trailer to shack to building until the entire camp was in ruins—to notice the faint hue.

  Nick considered asking his brother about it, about why he had decided to torch the place. But he thought he knew. Jimmy had burned the camp so they wouldn’t have to do it all again next spring.

  The last year had changed Nick and Jimmy forever. Nick had expected to be hardened, toughened by the experience. But Jimmy, he had noticed, had changed in other ways. Yeah, he was still impulsive, still the same man-child he would probably always be. But somehow, a necessary darkness had arisen in his brother. A part that was comfortable with the malevolence and violence required to defeat their foes. Nick wasn’t sure he liked it. He wished it could be some other way.

  Jimmy’s phone had been set on repeat, blasting away “Back in Black” for the last ten minutes. He touched the screen, and seconds later a new selection came on: “TNT.” Now it was Nick’s turn to smile like a goober. After the destruction they had just caused, he couldn’t think of a more fitting song.

  CHAPTER 2

  BACK AT THE VAULT—that’s what the boys had started calling the research station that was now their home—Nick and Jimmy stood over the stove as dinner cooked. Or was it breakfast? Neither of them knew. This was summertime in Alaska, and the undying sun was even more pronounced in Deadhorse than it had been in Fairbanks. It wasn’t like the winter, oh the dreaded darkness, when you set your clocks for the blessed sip of life called sunshine. This was time to cherish, to stare into the light and absorb its magic, because it had to last you during the season of emptiness. Winter always came too soon.

  “I swear they’re different now,” Jimmy said.

  “I think you’re just imagining things,” Nick replied.

  “Come on,” Jimmy said, flicking Nick on the shoulder. Nick hated this regular annoyance. “You saw them back there. They were working together.”

  “They’ve always done that,” Nick said, shoving his brother’s hand back. “They become enraged at any sound, any intruder into their hellish world.”

  “Yeah, that was true in Fairbanks,” Jimmy said, flicking Nick on the other arm, “but answer me this—what always happened after we saw a pack of crazies kill an unaffected person?”

  Nick tried to pinch Jimmy’s nipple through his t-shirt but missed his aim. Jimmy reeled back defensively. Then Nick answered him. “They always turned on each other, until there was only one crazy left.”

  “Right,” Jimmy said—both boys guarded themselves like heavyweight champs, except they weren’t avoiding a left-hook. “So, tell me why we found so many crazies back there. After a year?”

  “The winter,” Nick said, still moving around in a slow cir
cle, sizing up his little brother. “They all hibernated back there. Maybe each found their little hole-up place one at a time. Any of the others already there didn’t hear them because they were already zoned out or something.”

  “That could be,” Jimmy agreed, dropping his guard momentarily. “But,”—he regained his vigilance— “that doesn’t explain everything. The thaw happened weeks, months ago. They all would have come out then. Why didn’t they destroy each other?”

  Nick saw the opening, “For the same reason I don’t destroy you,” he said as he successfully pinched Jimmy. He knew he’d succeeded in delivering the ultimate teenage disgrace, the purple-nurple, because Jimmy howled in pain as he retreated, turning his back to Nick.

  The game was over, at least for the time being, though Nick knew he’d have to watch his back. The game never really ended; it was just suspended long enough for that day’s loser to heal up and regain his will to fight.

  The pause gave Nick time to think more seriously about Jimmy’s questions. He had a point. These crazies had survived the winter, as had all the others in the area, by taking shelter and essentially hibernating. How, exactly, they didn’t know. Maybe it was due to a remnant of the crazy’s DataMind training, some superhuman mind-over-matter control of their core temperature. Buddhist monks could do that kind of thing, Nick remembered.

  Still, it didn’t make sense for there to be that many crazies in one place, not if they still behaved like they had right after the update. And if they were changing, why? And what were they changing into?

  The sun was up now and had moved far enough south that it peeked through the main bay windows, casting a warm hue into the vault kitchen.

  Nick flipped the venison ribeye in the pan. “Almost done,” he reported.

  Jimmy sat at the table and pounded it cave-man style with back of his knife. This was one of their great pleasures, an unending buffet of steak. Who said steak wasn’t for breakfast? Especially when you had a near-constant supply of dodo-brained caribou walking past your front door.