Last Refuge: Final Update: Book 2
Date: 2019-01-28 20:03:37+00:00
Keywords: sci fi action; Horror; teen scifi; scifi dystopia; Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic; Science Fiction; scifi series; zombie; Adventure; Apocalyptic; scifi horror; Fiction; alaska
Description: Opportunity doesn’t knock twice, but death can… After making it through the long Alaskan winter, Nick and Jimmy begin building their hard-earned new lives. But the spring thaw has revived more than trees and green grass. For the two brothers, killing crazies has once again become an everyday reality. Then their lives change forever when Nick receives Lusa’s call for help and a new threat is revealed. Launched into a world worse than the one they escaped from a year ago, Nick and Jimmy must face a new enemy, one which promises to wipe out the rest of humanity…one bite at a time.
Publisher: Smashwords

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 circle, 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.

Nick brought the steaks to the table and flopped Jimmy’s down in a pleasingly heavy-handed way. Nick put his down too. Then he walked by the radio, turning it on before retiring the greasy pan to the sink.

There was nothing but static, not even that really. Just the warm sound of electric air with the occasional pop or hiss of random electromagnetic activity bouncing off the ionosphere.

“Do you think they’re up?” asked Jimmy.

“Who?” Nick played dumb.

“Lusa and Pete.”

“Maybe,” was all Nick offered. He had gotten in the habit of turning on their frequency, the one they had agreed to use to reach each other. The problem with shortwave, unlike telephones or email, was that both parties had to be present and on the same frequency to communicate. That took some preplanning or a bit of luck. Nick didn’t believe in luck, and ever since he’d made that fateful journey back to Pete’s village last spring during the thaw, this had become their default frequency. If he wasn’t actively scanning the bands for reports from around the globe, it stayed on this frequency, her frequency.

“But it’s not Sunday, and it’s nowhere close to noon yet,” Jimmy offered.

“Yeah, I know.”

They ate in silence until the toaster sounded. Nick jumped; he’d forgotten all about it, and it must have been set too long because he could tell it was burnt.

“Oh, well,” he said retrieving the two blackened pieces. “Burnt toast is better than no toast.” He tossed Jimmy’s piece down like he had the steak. It was like how you would throw food to a dog who you were afraid might bite your hand by mistake. They both loved doing that to each other. They were wild. They were dangerous men. And that’s how they should be treated.

“How much bread’s left?” Jimmy asked as he crunched his toast.

“Half-dozen loaves in the deep freeze,” Nick answered.

“Even if we limit ourselves to two pieces a day—that won’t last a year, will it?”

Nick shook his head. It was realities like these that dampened his spirits. If only he could live completely in the moment. Everything right now was fine. Sure, he wanted things, he wanted to improve their condition. But he wanted to have untainted moments of happiness too. What was wrong with that? he asked himself.

“What about carrots?” Jimmy continued. “We’ve got a bunch of bags of those, don’t we?”

A year ago, Nick wouldn’t have dreamed either of them would ever care how many vegetables were in their freezer. Now they both were obsessed with the scarce commodity.

“I think we’re good for a while on those,” Nick answered. Then a lightbulb went off. “Hey, we don’t have to worry about bread.” He waited for Jimmy to connect the dots.

“The wheat seeds?” Jimmy asked.

“Yeah. We can do just like Pete’s village was going to do with what I brought them: grind it up into flour.”

“Well, I guess, but…” Jimmy’s face said it all. Suddenly, that strong fearless warrior was reduced to childish weakness when faced with doing what he considered to be painfully dull work. “How would we grind them? I mean, we don’t have tools for that, do we? Maybe we could trade with the villagers, let them grind it for us in exchange for more seed.”

Nick gave his brother a dubious look. “We’re not going to ask them to grind it for us, not unless we’ve given it our best try anyway. Besides, we can’t even reach them for nine or ten months of the year. One-hundred and eighty miles is too far to walk in the snow. Who’s going to grind your flour in the winter?”

Jimmy waved his hands. “Okay, okay. I get it.” He took another bite of toast as if he was savoring the last of it. “I guess we ought to tell them about the vault,” he finally added.

Nick had hoped they wouldn’t go there again, not today. His meal had already been tarnished with grim realities of their food stores. Revisiting this topic could ruin it altogether.

“I mean, didn’t they question you when you brought them the grain?” Jimmy added. “Where would someone get two fifty-five-gallon drums of wheat?”

“Not really,” Nick answered truthfully. “I already told you this. I told them we found it, which is the truth. They don’t have to know more.”

“Yeah, but if we’re going to keep this up—some day it’s going to be awfully embarrassing to admit we have thousands of pounds of seed back there, especially if they half-starve this winter.”

“We’ve been over this,” Nick said. “Now’s not the time to tell. We just established good relations with them. I had to make amends after what you did up there,” Nick said.

That was all it took. A little bit of old-Jimmy, the troubled immature kid, resurfaced. Nick could see it on his face.

“I’m not proud of what I did,” Jimmy admitted. “But I’m not that person anymore.”

“I know,” Nick said. “All I’m saying is, it’s too soon to blab around about these seed stores. We thought the crazies would all be gone by now, and they aren’t. We aren’t out of the woods just yet.” He paused, waiting until Jimmy looked up. “Jimmy, you’re the only one I trust.”

Nick could see the change happen in Jimmy’s face. First it was in his eyes, a glimmer of light emerging. Then Jimmy’s puckered frown turned up into a half-grin before saying, “Now who’s the big Nancy?”

CHAPTER 3

OUTSIDE. MIDAFTERNOON. EARLY August. Nick was alone. This wasn’t perfection, but it felt pretty close. Alaska had its drawbacks, for sure: eternal night of winter and bone-shattering cold to name a couple. But just like Pete and the village elders had said, nature seemed to seek a balance. And it was during this late summer season that nature seemed to do just that; the days were jam packed with warm, glorious light, and Nick knew—he’d had it ingrained into him at school—that it was during this window of time that people synthesized their year’s supply of vitamin D with the help of UV-B rays.

The long days and intense light were also the reason Alaska held some of the world records for largest garden vegetables. It was usually the melons and pumpkins that grew into the mammoth category. Nick was hoping for success on a fraction of that scale.

After having slept-off the previous night’s living nightmare, Nick was in the mood for something less dangerous. Something more grounding, literally. He was in his first-year garden out in front of the research lab, one that he and Jimmy had dug by hand. It was close enough to the vault to make it convenient to tend but far enough down the gentle slope that, when it needed watering, they didn’t mind carrying buckets from the little creek at the bottom of the valley.

Now, he sat between rows of potatoes, examining their wonderfully exuberant growth. He hoped there was as much under the ground as there was above. The thigh-high, lush green plants were covered by little white flowers that were only now wilting, leaving marble-sized potato seeds in their place.

Back in Fairbanks, Nick would have been intrigued by the plant’s behavior. He’d never noticed the potato seed before and didn’t know why people didn’t use the seeds for planting. As little gardening as he’d done, he knew that everyone cut actual potato roots into pieces—each piece having an eye—and planted those.

Today, the flowers made him question whether the potatoes had developed enough. Did they make flowers, then start forming roots? He couldn’t remember, but he thought that might be right. The only time he’d helped garden was when he was very young, back when Grandpa Joe was alive. Nick had helped him with a little garden, and Grandpa Joe had tried to teach him every step of the way. But like most children, Nick hadn’t listened carefully, and he certainly hadn’t retained much of what he had heard.

He glanced over at the neighboring row of spinach. Most of it was stems and solitary large leaves here and there. He had just harvested several Ziploc bags of the stuff and had put it away in the freezer. That had been a success, at least. And even with the first cool snap that could come any day now, the spinach would continue producing. Or so he hoped.

Nick looked back at the vault, at the bullhorn shaped PA speaker mounted above the door. Unlike the van’s roof-mounted speaker, the vault’s PA was all original, unmodified by the boys. And only after a few days of twisting knobs, Nick and Jimmy had figured out how to blast their shortwave feed outside. He had it tuned to the default, Pete’s frequency.

Nick looked up at the crystal clear, blue sky, which wasn’t really ideal for shortwave transmissions. Better were cloudy days when the signals could bounce back and forth from ground to clouds, traveling across the globe. But one-hundred and eighty miles wasn’t far to transmit, he decided. And Pete’s village was on a small mountain, which improved line-of-sight and reduced the need for ionospheric bounce.

Nick turned back to his handheld radio, the one sitting on the ground beside him. That was his connection to Jimmy who had never developed a green thumb. Nick hadn’t either really, but he had tried. Jimmy, on the other hand, had zero interest in gardening, not unless there was absolutely nothing left to do. Nick wondered if it was because of all the teasing Jimmy had received, all the times Nick had called him a sissy. Maybe Jimmy thought gardening was for girls or something.

Jimmy was off now on what he called a scouting expedition—Nick called it a walk. But they both agreed it was a reasonable use of Jimmy’s time. If they were to live here long term, or at least for several more years, they needed to know their surroundings, the lay of the land, and not just those places they could easily reach by car. The summer days promised to last forever, but they both knew they had only a short window of time before they would be back under the ice and snow. Nothing in this world lasts forever.

Nick was stalling, and he knew it. It felt good being still, letting his shirtless back absorb the sun’s rays, letting his mind skip from one association to another. But he was avoiding the task at hand—not because it was work, but because he was afraid. It was time to pull up potato plants and see what lay underground. He could wait longer, but the calendar told him frost could come any day. If the potatoes were going to produce, they would have done so by now.

As if tricking himself into action, Nick turned quickly and grabbed a nearby plant at its base. He imagined he had the plant by the throat, that if he was merciless enough, the poor defenseless plants would have no choice but to give him what he wanted. Grow roots or this one gets it!

Then he pulled up slowly. The smell of dark, rich soil filled his nostrils, scent somehow traveling faster than sight. Large clumps of earth clung to the roots; like at the end of a summertime play date, these subterranean friends were unwilling to part. He grabbed the soil with his left hand and shook free the dirt that now felt more like mud.

He didn’t see potatoes. He kept clearing wet dirt from the root ball. Aha! He’d found one. But seconds later, he realized it was the nasty, rotten piece of cut potato he had planted back in June.

Nothing.

He cast the plant aside and dove into the fresh earth with both hands, now desperate to find some reward for his efforts. After much searching, he found two small potatoes the size of the rubber bouncy balls he used to get out of the machine for a quarter at Wally’s. He also found one tiny, marble-sized potato.

Was that it? That couldn’t be all of it, he thought. If they were all this way, then this was a complete bust. Not only that, the boys could have eaten those June spuds instead of planting them. Nick had believed potatoes were easy to grow and high yielding. Yukon Golds were famous for growing in the North, but apparently, growing four-hundred miles north of Fairbanks was too much to ask from the humble potato.

His injured ego glanced back at the spinach, their one success. That wasn’t food, he thought, that was medicine. Vitamins even. He started to dig deeper in his growing hole in the ground, hoping against hope that the potatoes were there, that they were just deep down, but the second his hands hit the harder, untilled soil he heard the sound of a shortwave transmission.

“Nick, can you hear me? We need help.”

CHAPTER 4

“WHAT DO YOU mean you’re being attacked? By who?” Nick pleaded over the radio. He was inside now.

“I don’t know who they are. They just started attacking us,” Lusa said. “Nick, tell me what to do.”

Nick’s mind raced for an answer, but all he had were questions. “Are they crazies? How many of them are there?”

“I don’t know. Lots. More of them than us.”

Nick knew she had to be in the building next to the radio tower. Maybe she could hide there. If they were crazies, they may not look inside. But then he remembered she must be running the generators to be able to transmit, which meant she was making a lot of noise, one thing they were sure to notice.

Nick wanted to rush to her rescue, but her village was a half-day’s drive from Deadhorse. Still, he had to do something.

“Where’s your dad?” he asked.

“He’s not . . . Nick, they’re coming.” Her voice rose high and shrill, almost a scream. “Nick, what do I do?” He heard a thud. “Nick!”

“Lusa!” he shouted. “Are you there?” But he knew the answer. There had been an audible click, the sound of her signal cutting off. She was gone. Maybe forever.

Nick’s heart pounded, like it was going to jump out of his chest. His mind twisted, scattered between looking for answers, a way to help, and with imagining what was happening at the village. What was happening to Lusa?

She could be dead. Or worse.

He stood up, sickened by the thought. He grabbed the handheld radio and called for Jimmy.

“Yellow,” came his brother’s casual response.

“Jimmy, listen carefully. I’ve got to go to Pete’s village. They’re being attacked. Where are you?”

“Um…several klicks out,” Jimmy answered.

Nick knew that meant it would take Jimmy at least an hour to get home. He didn’t have an hour.

“I’ve got to go, Jimmy. I’ll radio you when I get to Pete’s village and let you know what’s going on. Come home and stay by the radio until you hear from me. Okay?”

There was a pause, and Nick knew Jimmy didn’t like the plan, that he didn’t want his brother off on his own. Finally, Jimmy said, “Yeah. Okay. Nick, stay alive, will ya?”

NICK HAD THOUGHT about taking another vehicle. The boys had salvaged several they had found in and around Deadhorse. Some would go faster, Nick had thought, but in the end the van was already packed with gear and ammo and extra fuel. So, he had taken old faithful and hoped and prayed the sluggish two-tone Dodge would make one more cross-country trek.

He’d had the forethought to punch his odometer when he’d climbed behind the wheel. At least he knew how far to go. Despite maxing out the tired V-8, this was the longest one-hundred eighty miles he’d ever driven. It usually took a solid three hours to get down the Dalton, but the trip today had taken an eternity.

It seemed to Nick that time really was relative, but not to the speed of light; time moved slowly or quickly based on the speed of thought. Just like how ten minutes would zip by when he used to hit the snooze button on his alarm clock, a groggy mind falls forward in time. But Nick’s mind was fever-pitched, traveling a million miles a second. And time seemed to stand still.

He had mapped out every possibility, every explanation he could muster for who or what would have attacked the village, why, and whether or not Lusa was still alive. Elaborate fantasies of her escaping, or successfully fighting back, or being rescued by someone else had filled his mind. And ultimately, they were just that: fantasies. Something to occupy his mind so that more grim, realistic thoughts of what actually had happened or was happening wouldn’t overtake him. Did the truth always set you free? He didn’t think so. Not now.

He watched the odometer click over, and Nick looked up, double-checking that his surroundings matched his memory. When they did, he stomped the van’s brakes and pulled over hard to the left, the wake-up strips rumbling violently beneath him as if he’d landed a fighter jet on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

He stepped out of the van door and came around back where he retrieved an extra box of ammo and a canteen. They’d found a bunch of nine-millimeter ammunition in Deadhorse in the back of a FedEx truck. He had been surprised both that FedEx shipped ammo and that they delivered anything this far north. He crammed the box of fifty rounds in his pants pocket, his extra mag in the other, and slung his canteen across his neck and shoulder. He gripped his pistol. He knew, if he wasn’t too late, he’d be needing it. Then he shoved it in the back of his waistband and took off toward the pipeline.

Nick reached the bottom of the valley and crept up to the pipeline and found the markings he’d left for just this purpose the last time he’d come this way. Once you’ve seen one section of the pipeline, you’ve seen them all. At least he was in the right place now. The hard part to navigate, he knew, was through the woods.

He aligned himself east, perpendicular to the pipeline, then an additional eighth-turn south. He now realized his careful positioning wasn’t necessary; a dark billowing cloud of smoke rose from the mountain where Pete’s village was. Nick’s heart sank. That was no cook fire.

Nick hurried onward into the tree line, trying as best he could to keep his bearings. He was going uphill; that much he was sure of. And every few moments, there was a break in the canopy and he saw the smoke again. Each time, it seemed to have grown larger, more monstrous than before.

Finally, he reached the little stream he recognized. Nick turned left and followed the subtle trail. The woods thinned, and he knew he was getting close. He imagined seeing Lusa break from behind a tree at any moment or a group of kids come running. Instead, there was silence. Not a bird. Not a cricket. Just the soft crunch of pine needles under foot.

After the trail turned right again, he recognized the clearing that he had so oft admired, except this time it was bathed in red and black: the edge of the woods near the village was on fire, and the village—what was left of it—looked singed and beset by ashes.

Nick pulled out his Springfield and checked to make sure it was cocked. His impulse was to rush forward and search for Lusa or anyone else who might have survived, but he realized that whoever had done this could still be here. He needed to keep his wits about him.

When he’d reached the fire, he realized he could cross it if he moved quickly enough. The flames licked up the sides of trees, burning off dry bark, but most of the flames came from the dried clumps of grass scattered here and there. It resembled a controlled burn, one that creeped along at a reasonable pace until the forester wanted it extinguished. It would likely burn itself out in the coming hours, Nick figured.

He pointed himself to the spot with the weakest flames. Then he sprinted forward, his heavy pistol causing his arms to pump out of balance. When he reached the line of fire, he leaped over and landed, rolling into some ashes. Instantly, he felt a hot spot, and he scrambled and flopped like a fish out of water, trying to escape the offending hot coal he sat on.

Nick tried to stand but choked on the thick smoke. It didn’t smell like a campfire but had a strong chemical scent to it. He ducked down, trying to avoid the worst of it, but his burning eyes and tight chest told him it was an insufficient gesture.

He scanned his surroundings, spotting the rocks and outdoor oven. Up ahead were smoldering buildings. His mind felt lazy, and he found himself contemplating questions about whether he could remember which buildings had had traditional thatched roofing and which had been made of metal. Had it been those that were bermed with earth or those with plain concrete blocks? But then he regained focus on why he was really here: Lusa. Where was she?

Nick moved uphill toward the building next to the radio tower. That’s where she had been, he knew. He charged forward, still not being able to make out the tower through the smoke.

As he raced, he noticed the smoke clearing, and he could see and breath more easily. He stood upright and quickened his pace.

But then he froze. There was the building: a crude block house with no windows and only one door, which was wide open and filled with smoke.

“Lusa,” Nick said aloud. Nothing but the sound of pops and cracks from the smoldering inferno.

Slowly, he stepped closer to the building. He didn’t know why he did it—maybe it was out of reverence to the loss he had assumed, or maybe it was because he no longer thought he was in danger—but he holstered his gun in his waistband. He looked into the dark room, but his eyes couldn’t penetrate the billowing curtain of smoke. He squinted, as if trying harder would allow him to see. He didn’t want to see, not if it meant seeing Lusa’s charred remains. But he had to know.

Nick stepped closer, into the threshold and prepared himself to explore further. But he was stopped by new sounds, a scuffling of leaves followed by dull thumps.

Before he could turn around, he heard, “They took her.”

In one combined motion that had become second nature over the past year, Nick twisted around and drew his gun. Out of the smoke clouds emerged three figures.

CHAPTER 5

“PUT THAT THING down,” growled a familiar voice.

“Is that you, Pete?” Nick questioned, still pointing his Springfield at the men.

“Are you going to put that down, or do we have to shoot you?” came Pete’s response.

Nick dropped his aim. He started to say something like, I’m sure glad to see you, but even his stress-riddled mind knew better than to speak those words.

“Let’s get out of the smoke,” Pete said plainly.

The three men with rifles turned and Nick hurried to follow them. Further uphill, the ring of fire was weaker, and the four of them easily stepped out of the camp and into untouched forest. The contrast was striking, and Nick felt like he’d been in this burning world for ages, fully forgetting what untouched greenery looked like and what clean air smelled and tasted like.

His personal revelation was cut short by Pete. Those stone-cold eyes were harder and fiercer than he’d ever seen them before. Pete maintained his gaze; it wasn’t a glare. It was too stoic, too emotionless. Finally, Nick broke the silence. “What happened?”

“I told you,” Pete answered. “They took her. They took all the women and children. The men were slain.”

Nick felt a flood of mixed emotions; he was shocked, confused, and elated all at the same time. Lusa might still be alive. “But where were…” He stopped himself.

“We were hunting,” Pete said. “Didn’t know anything was wrong until we saw the smoke. By the time we returned, they were all gone. The bodies are over there,” he pointed.

Nick looked toward what could have been a brush pile that had nearly gone out. It took a moment for him to realize Pete and the men had burned the bodies of their deceased.

“But why didn’t—” Again, Nick stopped short. This wasn’t his world or his people. They had their own ways of doing things. And Pete had just lost family and friends and maybe his daughter.

“Go after them?” Pete completed.

Nick nodded.

“There were more than twenty men slain,” Pete said. Nick expected him to go on, but he didn’t. Apparently, this was all the explanation Pete thought was necessary. Then Nick grasped his reasoning: if twenty were no match for these people, three didn’t stand a chance.

“I’m sorry,” Nick said, “but I still don’t understand what happened. How did crazies find this place? How many came? They don’t exactly partner up usually, and they certainly don’t take prisoners.”

“These weren’t ordinary crazies,” Pete offered. “First off, most of them were barefoot.” He walked a couple paces away and pointed to the ground. “See here? Those are human prints. Best we can tell, there had to be fifty of them, at least. And they attacked the village from all sides; they coordinated their attack.”

Nick let it all sink in. He realized Pete could tell such things by the tracks, by the signs in the woods, all the stereotypes about Indians that Nick had tried not to think were true.

“What’s the significance of them being barefoot?” Nick asked.

Pete shrugged. “When’s the last time you saw a crazy without shoes?” Then he added, “after the thaw.”

Pete had a point, Nick realized. The crazies that had survived the winter had all been fully clothed and holed up in shelters. At the last mining camp he and Jimmy had cleared, he hadn’t seen any of the barefoot nut-jobs he remembered seeing last summer. The cruel winter must have been hard on crazies just like it was on everything else, he decided.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Nick finally said. “These attackers would have gotten frostbite over the winter.”

Pete gave an almost imperceptible nod. “Whoever or whatever they are,” he said, “they acted with purpose, and they didn’t want us calling for help either.”

Pete gazed over Nick’s shoulder, back down at the camp. Nick turned and spotted the same building where Lusa had contacted him.

“So, the radio’s shot,” Nick concluded.

“Generators too,” one of the other men added.

Jimmy! Nick suddenly remembered that his brother was expecting him to call by radio. “I’ve got to go back,” Nick said.

“You don’t want to go after them?” Pete said with the first tone of emotion in his voice.

“It’s not that,” Nick said. “I’ve got to tell Jimmy what happened. Look, why don’t we all go back and get him. We’ll get more supplies and then go after them.”

Pete shook his head. “That will take too long. We must go to my cousin’s village. It’s the closest one, a day’s walk northeast of here. There we can get help. We can double back and track them to wherever these…” He stopped as if saying the word was difficult. “… these people live.”

Nick knew he was right, but every instinct inside said otherwise. Jimmy was waiting for him, might even try to mount his own rescue attempt if he didn’t hear from him soon. He couldn’t just leave Jimmy in the dark.

“What about radios?” Nick asked. “Does the neighboring village have shortwave?”

He could tell by Pete’s expression before he’d even finished asking that the answer was no. “Sorry,” Pete said simply. After a moment of Nick spinning his inner wheels, Pete offered, “Look, the choice is yours. Do what you want. I’m going after them the only way I can.”

This wasn’t a problem, Nick understood. Problems had solutions. All this situation had was tough choices. And the choice he had to make included abandoning his brother, leaving him with no clue about what had happened, where he was going, nothing. When he believed Pete would wait no longer, Nick said, “Okay. Let’s go get her.”

CHAPTER 6

THE TRAIL TO the neighboring village was invisible to Nick: nothing but briars and brambles interspersed between rocky cliffsides. The path, if it really was one, didn’t look like it had seen foot-traffic in years, and Nick couldn’t help but wonder if these friends or relatives weren’t so close to Pete’s village after all. Maybe Pete was grasping at straws, and they’d all be better off doubling back and picking up Jimmy.

Nick mulled it over in his mind: it would take three hours to drive to Deadhorse, three more hours to drive back, which meant it would be evening before they’d even return to Pete’s village. Yeah, it wasn’t a good plan, but there were problems with Pete’s plan too: it was taking a day to reach the village, and how would they be able to track Lusa and the others? Would they have to return to Pete’s village and start from there? If so, they’d be pushing the clock too. All Nick knew was that he was along for the ride, that it was someone else’s plan, and he didn’t like it.

Much to Nick’s surprise, when the sun started to hug the horizon, Pete and the other two men never slowed their pace. He kept expecting one of them to break ranks and decide to setup camp, but apparently that wasn’t the plan.

When Nick saw the first stars in the sky, the party of four exited a tree-lined hillside out onto grass-filled tundra. It was a welcomed change of scenery, though it brought with it its own unsettling realities. Unlike in the mountains, this flat grassland had little topography to obstruct one’s view. So, in the murky summer night, the horizon faded gradually out of view. Nick often lost himself in thought, staring at these infinite vistas but was brought back to the present when he would catch sight of some darting, reflective figure; some movement a hundred yards out that was gone as quickly as it had arisen. The regular cold-chills that ran up his spine were enough to wake up his sleepy mind. Whatever was out there—it could have been caribou or crazies or his imagination—it was out of his control, out of sight, but not out of his mind.

That was like Lusa, he thought. She was still inside him, in his thoughts. But he didn’t know if she was even still alive. Maybe this group of whatever-they-were had killed the rest by now. He thought about her, let the gut-aching feeling come back so he could remember why he was doing all of this. But then a far more cynical part of himself arose and pointed out he was abandoning Jimmy. What if Jimmy tried to come find him? He’d have no chance of catching up with them. He could get attacked by crazies along the way with no one to watch his back, and it would all be Nick’s fault.

It was moments like these when Nick pushed all his thoughts down, the pleasant and unpleasant alike, and focused on the task at hand: marching forward. If he kept his eyes off the horizon, he found his surroundings—the sounds of soft steps and a warm gentle breeze—hypnotic. It would have been soothing if he could only forget he was in the middle of a post-apocalyptic nightmare.

Many hours passed in this manner, like swimming in a vast ocean of nothingness with no bearings, no external signs of progress, and only the wordless sounds of your fellow travelers to keep you company. Finally, when Nick felt like he was sleepwalking, his feet and hands stepping and swinging numbly, something changed. He noticed they were climbing a small hill now, and when Nick felt the first stone underfoot, it sent a shockwave through his nervous system. This was new terrain, he realized. Maybe they were getting close.

No one spoke, but all four men increased their pace, the new geological cues beckoning them forward. Soon, Nick found himself climbing, first in a subtle way, then literally grabbing trees, shrubs, and hand holds in rocks as they ascended a small mountain. His arms and legs burned and screamed for glucose and oxygen, and his huffing-puffing lungs produced metallic tasting expellant.

Nick, the rear member of this caravan, reached the top of the cliffside and was greeted by Pete whose teeth glowed white in the moonlight. All four were out of breath, but Pete seemed to swallow his compulsion as he reached his hand out to Nick and pulled him up the rest of the way. Pete slapped Nick on the back affectionately, and Nick couldn’t help but sense it was from lack of judgement on Pete’s part, something he ordinarily would refrain from doing if he wasn’t half-crazed by the trek and trials.

Pete’s fatherly touch quickly evaporated as he pushed through the panting men and barked, “Come on. This way.”

Now, atop this mountain, the terrain was less rugged, though nothing like the grassland. Between patches of trees, Nick occasionally spotted views of the sun that threatened to begin its ascent in earnest. There was enough light now that he could make out what he thought were the hills where Pete’s village was, or had been. By the looks of it, they had traveled on foot farther than he would have thought possible.

Leaving the cliffside views, Pete lead them into the interior of the mountain-top woods. Unlike Pete’s village, Nick didn’t get the sense they were near human habitation here—just the opposite, actually. The woods seemed to grow thicker with undergrowth, vines, and thickets. But then, just as Nick wondered if Pete had gone mad and entirely fabricated this second village, the four travelers spilled out of the arctic jungle onto a clearly beaten path. It was a breath of fresh air, and Nick knew they were close now.

Through indirect light, Nick saw cracks in the ceiling above, the canopy of branches and leaves. Birds began whistling softly, first a single song maker, then a chorus of competing voices. The path curved left, then right. And before Nick realized it, they simply walked into the sleeping village.

In fact, Nick was confused when Pete stopped. It was only when he examined his surroundings more carefully that he spotted the shelters on both sides of him. They were dugouts; rather than earth-bermed block houses, these structures disappeared under the ground with only the Alaskan thatch of fur boughs showing on top. From the entrance of each home was a set of descending steps with carefully placed stones for stairs, each piece looking like it had been chiseled from the side of the cliff face they had climbed.

“They’re still sleeping,” Pete whispered. Nick wondered what they would do, how long they would have to wait before someone woke up. But then, without warning, Pete stiffened and let out a booming bellow in his native tongue. It was very alarming to Nick, and he couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be wakened by the sound.

At first, it was just like it had been before, except the songbirds had been silenced. Then, Nick heard scurrying sounds from nearby shelters, and soon several men emerged out from the animal-skins-for-doors. They were shirtless, and Nick wondered if they had had to put on pants.

One of the men came to Pete. The concern in the man’s face was easy to see, and Pete grasped the man with both arms like they were about to wrestle. Instead, Pete spoke in their tongue, and Nick could hear the tale told, the buildup of emotion and lament despite not recognizing the words.

When Pete had finished, the man closed his eyes for a moment, maintaining the braced contact with Pete a little longer. Then the man broke away and turned to address his village who were all awake now. Women and children huddled around small oil lamps in the dugout stairs of each home while the men stepped forward to the common area.

The man Pete had spoken to bellowed loudly, his phrasing dictated by his lung capacity, the wind escaping rapidly at his extreme projection. Nick wondered if this was something about living without electricity, amplification, and the like or if this was cultural or just this man’s manner of delivery.

His thoughts shifted from the uniqueness of the moment to the real content of the man’s speech as Nick picked up on the wavering tone in the man’s voice, accompanied by short, muted cries from some of the children. He was telling about the lost villagers, the dead villagers, Nick knew. And it brought the reality back to Nick’s mind. He saw the burning buildings, the ring of fire, and the heap of burned bodies. And he imagined Lusa and the kids being dragged off by whatever monsters did this.

His sleep-deprived mind seemed unable to process the fresh emotions, like the inner source—organ, gland, whatever—that was called upon when grieving hadn’t recovered from the last tear-filled episode. A nerve was struck, Nick felt the tightness in his throat, then—just as quickly as it had come upon him—the emotions left him, empty, passive.

When the man had finished, the men in the village all moved quickly into their homes, and Nick knew they were preparing for what would come next. Nick watched one of the women scratch flint and steel together near a fire pit that looked much like the one at Pete’s village. He figured they were going to start breakfast early, and though it made him feel somewhat guilty for not being more concerned about the lost villagers, he was glad at the thought of eating.

The man who Nick figured was the leader of this village returned to Pete with wet eyes. Their gaze locked on one another. Then, the man did a double take when he noticed Nick in the somewhat brighter morning light.

“He’s with us,” Pete intervened. “He can be trusted.” Nick felt mixed emotions at the words, and he thought about his secrets about the seed vault.

“Very well,” the other man said in English. “We need every man we can get right now.” He paused, then said directly to Pete, “There’s something I need to show you.”

The man turned and began walking. Pete eyed the rest of the group, which Nick intuited meant to follow him. They did. And after a couple minutes of walking away from the village they reached another cliff’s edge. This wasn’t the same side of the mountain that they had ascended, Nick realized, because the easterly sun was to their right.

“There,” the man pointed. Nick squinted out onto the grassy tundra. Finally, he found what didn’t fit the scenery: puffs of smoke from what Nick guessed was an old oil-field camp, one not too dissimilar to the camp he and Jimmy had cleared recently.

“How long?” Pete asked.

“We saw smoke there three days ago,” the man answered.

“And no one has checked it out?” Pete questioned.

The man gave the subtlest head-shake no. “That’s where they are,” he said softly. “I’m sure of it.” Then after taking a deep breath, the man said, “I’ll see you back at the village. We’ll be leaving soon.” Then he brushed past them back into the woods.

The four men stared out onto the northern horizon, like if they tried hard enough, they could make out details of the camp, maybe even see the villagers or the people who had taken them.

Pete turned to Nick. “Do you know where you are?” he asked.

Nick was confused by the question. He looked with fresh eyes at the view. “We traveled northeast to this village,” he answered.

Without approving or disapproving, Pete pointed left to the northwest and said, “You can just barely make out the pipeline from here. Further north, several hours by foot is Deadhorse.” That was all he said, and Nick couldn’t help but feel like he was being given a coded message, that this was more important than it seemed at first glance.

Pete looked at Nick, reading him with those same scrutinizing eyes. Nick felt pressure to do or say something, to prove that he understood or was ready or whatever it was Pete was after. Finally, Nick assembled a response: “We’ll find her. We’ll get them back.”

CHAPTER 7

IT WAS DÉJÀ VU all over again. Or, at least it was at first as Nick and the thirty or so natives descended the mountain and began their trek onto the grasslands. But now, they weren’t night travelers, and although Nick hadn’t slept, he felt the second wind of a new day kick in along with the endorphins produced by a full stomach and physical activity.

As they moved in a single-file line, Nick no longer felt small, defenseless, as he did with Pete and the hunters. Now, there was safety in numbers. But that was just a feeling, and Nick knew it. The cynical, practical part of his mind should have recognized that whatever group had sacked Pete’s village had been strong enough to wipe out a similar number of armed men. Not only that, this group possessed enough members to be able to carry off the women and children, which Nick knew would be no small task. But these kinds of thoughts only came in spits and spats, his sleep-deprived mind seeming to reduce itself to a more primitive, emotion-driven state.

At mid-day, the march halted long enough for the men to open their thin cloth sacks and share a meal. Nick suddenly realized he was unprepared, having only his canteen of water that he had replenished at the village. Pete and the other two villagers were quickly invited to share in the meal, which from a distance appeared to consist merely of salted meat. It was meager fare, but after the last twenty-four hours Nick was ravenous.

He sat down in the grass, much like the others, except he was alone. Pete, his only father-figure left in the world, was absorbed in conversation with men from the other village. Dark thoughts emerged inside Nick: why was he here? What difference could he make? There were thirty of them; if they couldn’t do without him, they couldn’t do it with him either. He should be back with his brother. These people didn’t care about him. He was an outsider. Did Lusa even like him?

The last question stuck with him. They had talked over shortwave every week since the tradition had been established, but it was always following a conversation with Pete. Nick had interpreted it as being equivalent to being greeted at the front door by a girl’s father when you went to pick them up for a date. But that may not be the way they thought of it. They may have just been bored, the reason Lusa talked with him. Pete wanted the intel, not to mention the barrels of wheat that Nick had volunteered. Maybe Lusa had felt obliged to entertain Nick so that they would get more food from him in the future. She didn’t know about the vault, but two barrels of grain had to come from somewhere, and Nick and Jimmy had vehicles and dominion over Deadhorse where there were more modern, western resources. Maybe it had all been a lie, and Nick was the biggest sucker in the world.

“Did you eat?” a young man asked.

Nick looked up, startled as if he’d been asleep. “No. Not yet,” came his reply.

“Here, have some of mine,” the man offered as he sat down in the grass next to Nick.

Nick moved slowly, examining both the offer and the one who offered it. The young man couldn’t be any older than he was. Finally, like a scared stray dog, Nick reached out his hand and took a morsel of meat from the open cloth sack.

“Thank you,” Nick said simply.

The young man smiled, then said, “Did you know Lusa?”

Nick didn’t like the way he asked the question in the past tense. “Yeah, I know her. I talked with her every week over shortwave.” He felt the need to establish his turf a little.

“She was my cousin,” the young man said. “I hope we find her.”

“We’ll find her,” Nick affirmed. “I just hope we can get her and the others out. That’s all.”

The young man considered his words, then nodded. “My name is Aaron,” he said finally.

“I’m Nick,” he answered with a second mouthful of meat.

“Can’t have too many friends, I always say,” Aaron said.

Before Nick could agree or comment, a loud whistle came from the head of the pack, up where Pete and the leader of the village were.

“Looks like we’re moving,” Aaron said, as he jumped to his feet. He then extended his hand down to assist Nick. Nick studied his hand for a moment before taking it and joining the group.

THE REST OF the trip passed uneventfully except for the blisters that were forming on both of Nick’s heels. He couldn’t remember ever walking this far, and on no sleep to boot. By the time they neared the camp where the missing villagers were believed to be, the sun was closing on the horizon and the light of day had a different color. It was one Nick always loved, a time when he could see clearly without having to squint, when the softer light was goldilocks right and the world around him seemed benevolent and inviting.

But the world wasn’t benevolent, Nick knew. He’d thought a while about why the light seemed so perfect at dusk and dawn and hadn’t come up with an answer until after several months at the vault when he noticed arctic foxes, occasionally wolves, and other predators come out to hunt at these times. Nick figured people were just like them. We must like the softer light because that is when we are meant to hunt.

This diurnal instinct made further sense as Nick and Jimmy’s eating habits had changed, no longer eating three square meals a day but rather switching to a late breakfast and pre-bedtime dinner. Those were the post-kill times, Nick had decided. That was when people were hardwired to eat, and the mid-day lunch must have emerged as a by-product of agriculture, the need to escape the midday sun and replenish energy stores before laboring in the field for several more hours.

His mind shifted through tangential thoughts like these but snapped back to the moment with near panic intensity. This was real, he reminded himself.

What else was real was the difference in the men as they closed in on the camp. He could sense they were nearing it without anyone having to say so, and he imagined everyone else could too. They became more rigid, more erect, their bodies sensing the danger long before their minds could find reasons to.

Nick found himself experiencing a strange exhilaration, a mixed emotion of fear and bloodlust. He was the hunter, or so he hoped. He was deliriously tired, and he imagined this added to his inability to filter out these baser instincts. They had come a long way, and he knew the culminating moment was near.

Suddenly, the train of hunters stopped, the village leader in front raising one hand into the air. Everyone listened. Then Nick heard it: a screeching sound he didn’t recognize. He thought it could have been a hawk at first, but it was too shrill and guttural. It made him think of the blood curdling sound of a dying rabbit, something he’d first heard out on the snowy tundra almost a year ago.

Then the sound changed, no longer the drawn-out wail. Nick heard what was clearly hoots and hollers from some nearby human. He tried to aim his eyes ahead of the pack, toward the sounds, but the gentle hill they were climbing peaked onto the horizon, and the sounds seemed to come from beyond his line of sight. The camp must be right over there, Nick thought.

The leader turned and faced the group. He made hand gestures that reminded Nick of those he’d seen Navy Seals use on movies. The message was clear and, apparently, universal: fan out.

Nick felt someone grab him by the arm. To his surprise, Pete had come from behind him—he didn’t know he had been back there—and whispered in his ear, “Stick with me.”

Unlike when Pete had first suggested going to the neighboring village, now Nick was all too happy to follow Pete’s lead. More than ever, he wished he had a father, someone to take up the slack when he couldn’t carry his load. Someone to think when he couldn’t.

The men dispersed left and right, but always upward toward the crest of the small hill. Nick followed Pete through the tall grass, and soon he felt like they were alone, though if he looked to either side, he could spot other hunters.

Nick took out his Springfield and tried his best to see the reflective white pin in the rear action that indicated the gun was cocked. He thought he had cocked it miles ago, but he didn’t trust his memory right now.

Suddenly, Nick felt himself smash into the backside of Pete. Pete had stopped walking, and Nick hadn’t noticed.

“I’m sorry,” Nick said quickly.

Pete turned and shooshed him with a finger raised to his lips. Then he pointed at the ground and then up toward the top of the hill.

Nick didn’t understand until he saw Pete get down on the ground and begin crawling up the hill on his belly. Nick fell to the ground, his tired mind and body barely feeling the impact.

Awkwardly, he crawled up the hillside, his pistol in his right hand. He had to use his right elbow like a hand, and his gait was uneven, unbalanced because of it. He was keenly aware of the danger of accidently firing off a round. It was a mistake he couldn’t afford to make, and he kept his index finger elongated parallel to the barrel, outside the trigger guard.

Moments later, Nick and Pete lay at the top edge of the hill. After the monotonous landscape of the past several hours, Nick’s mind turned flips trying to interpret the visually rich scene before them.

The camp had been an oil-field alright. That much was clear; heavy trucks and machinery littered the view, and Nick even spotted a small stationary pump, the kind that was often seen along the side of the road as he drove the Dalton. He wondered if this pump had recently been online. In the center of the camp were cargo crates, the kind of metal containers that were eight-feet tall and thirty or so feet long, all laid out side by side.

A fire burned in the center of the camp, and Nick saw shadows of people moving around it. Someone threw something at the flames, and a small fireball erupted into the sky. Shrieks like they had heard earlier followed, and Nick realized these people couldn’t be mere crazies; they were too organized. They had fire, knew how to throw fuel on it, and seemed to relate to it, worship it almost.

There was movement to the right from the shadows, and Nick’s inner alarm started screaming bells and sirens. He felt Pete’s arm grab his as if he intuitively knew Nick needed to be settled or restrained. Nick watched as two men dragged a long spruce log toward the camp. They yelled nonsensical utterings, and soon two women and another man came to them and helped them pull the load.

They’re collecting firewood and working together, Nick thought. He noticed how so many of them had tattered clothes, and all the men had year-long beards. He couldn’t tell from this distance, but he was pretty sure many of them were shoeless. Mere crazies, they were not. Not like any he’d seen before, anyway. And he didn’t think they were just some band of unaffected humans either. They were too… his mind searched for the word… wild.

“Where are they?” Pete whispered to Nick. Nick searched the camp, not understanding at first who Pete was referring to. Then it hit him: where were the villagers?

They waited as patiently as anyone in their position could. Then after several minutes of observing these wild people, Nick felt Pete’s elbow in his ribs.

“There,” Pete whispered as he pointed toward one of the metal shipping containers. Nick watched as one of the people opened the door, removing the long metal bar that acted as its lock. Another person waited beside the first, carrying a heavy stick.

Then, after the door was opened, Nick heard high-pitched cries and wails unlike those he’d heard before. The first man entered into the shipping container. More cries sounded. Seconds later, he re-emerged, dragging a small child out who kicked and screamed. Nick saw hands from within the cargo container clutch the child’s legs and feet, trying to hold on to him. Then the man with the club bashed at the grabbers.

It all happened so fast Nick couldn’t believe his eyes. But there was the evidence that it all had really happened: a chubby little boy that he thought he recognized from the village. Pete’s people were in those containers. Lusa was in there.

Nick watched in dreadful silence as the two men dragged the little boy toward the fire. When Pete turned, Nick saw terror in his eyes. His stoicism lost, Pete mouthed the word, “Cannibals.”

CHAPTER 8

TWICE SINCE THE little boy had been grabbed, Pete had run up and down what Nick’s sleep-deprived mind considered the line of scrimmage: the crest of the hill upon which all the natives were scattered. When Pete had first jumped up, Nick thought he was running away. Everyone has their breaking point, after all. But Pete, today’s quarterback, had called an audible, an impromptu plan of rescue that needed to be executed now, before supper was served.

Once Nick had realized Pete wasn’t abandoning the group, Nick had turned to watch the horror show before him: real life cannibals. The scene which unfolded seemed nightmarishly surreal, the little boy struggling against his handlers as they dragged him toward the fire. Much to Nick’s relief, the boy wasn’t placed directly upon the flames but was first hog-tied, his hands and feet behind him so that he was unable to run or crawl. Just right for sticking an apple in his mouth, Nick’s twisted mind offered.

The encampment itself was huge, much larger than Nick had previously assessed. But the onset of evening meant most of it was veiled in shadows, which prevented Nick from getting an accurate headcount. But he didn’t need one. It was clear by the number of cannibals he could see that Pete’s group was outnumbered. There was no way they could simply overpower these…people.

Nick struggled to classify them, knowing they weren’t mere crazies. Sure, crazies would eat other humans, but they weren’t brain-hungry zombies; they were more like murderous scavengers, opportunists that would dine on anything or anyone, whether that be spam, roadkill, or your best friend. But these cannibals were different. They worked together, planned and cooperated. Cannibal wasn’t a perfect word for them, but Nick knew of none better.

Pete returned, sliding to the ground beside him like Pete Rose stealing second base. It was the fastest Nick had ever seen the reserved man move, but he knew why; time was running out—for the little boy and, soon enough, for the others.

Seconds later, three men dove onto the grass behind them. Surprised, Nick felt an initial jolt of adrenaline that quickly tapered off; his nerves were beyond fried. He looked behind him and found a smiling face: Aaron.

“Are you ready,” Pete whispered.

“For what?” Nick asked. “What’s the plan.”

Pete spoke slowly now, his emotions under his control again, and it seemed to Nick that Pete was somehow disappointed with him for not simply knowing what would happen next.

“We’re going to go get them,” Pete said plainly. “Stick with me and do as I say.”

Nick would have liked more explanation, but this was enough. And he doubted if he’d have the nerve to go through with it if he’d heard the real plan, the details of what they were about to try.

They waited, though Nick didn’t know why. Nick watched some of the cannibals near the fire as they pulled knives from the dirt. Nick’s inner critic spoke up, saying how foolish it was to stick a knife in the ground, how it would dull the blade and rust it in no time. But then he realized he was critiquing incoherent cannibals.

Unlike crazies, these wild people did possess a rudimentary appreciation for tools. They even understood sharpness and dullness. He watched in amazement as they dragged their blades against what looked like large river rocks, effectively sharpening them before use. Not as stupid as I thought.

Nick’s attention turned to the three cargo containers where he’d seen them grab the little boy. That was where Lusa was, and the others. And it was there, he was sure, they would end up tonight. Or die trying.

Suddenly, a shot rang out. Its long reverberation told Nick it was some distance away. The cannibals must have pinpointed its source better than he could, because the entire camp moved as one, a single swarm of running, flailing limbs, toward the sound. Hundreds of new cannibals appeared after the shot. The hornet’s nest had been kicked, and Nick was grateful the mass was heading away from him.

“Come on. Now’s our chance,” Pete said as he rose and rushed the camp.

Nick hesitated, part of him unwilling to stick his hand into the fire. But the bodies behind him moved, and he felt himself scooped up, lifted onto his feet.

“I got you, brother,” came Aaron’s voice beside him. Now they were in formation, Pete running point. He was their leader, the brains of this small unit. Much to Nick’s surprise, the group didn’t head toward the little boy but toward the shipping containers. Nick’s numb mind slowly processed the reasoning: the fire was light, and they needed to stay in the shadows, at least until they’d freed the other villagers.

Like the police training exercises Nick had watched on TV, figures seemed to pop up out of nowhere. Except, these weren’t cardboard figures; these were active targets with the ability to move and murder.

The first came, wheezing like a crazy. Pete didn’t fire on it but used the butt of his rifle as a battering ram against its forehead. The crazy fell to the ground, motionless.

The group continued toward the containers. To Nick’s right was a big Caterpillar bulldozer, from behind which came two more bogies. Nick raised his pistol, but Pete pushed his arm down. “No shots,” Pete said.

Nick was freaked. He didn’t want to fight hand-to-hand. But then he watched as the two other natives stepped forward, drawing from their sides long knives which looked like bayonets. Then, without hesitation, the men cast their blades forward in an underhand motion. The blades reached their targets with incredible accuracy: two knives in the abdomen, two cannibals down, gasping, unable to howl. The natives pounced on the kill and finished the job before replacing the knives in their scabbards.

The group had stopped for the killing, but Pete had moved forward on his own. Nick felt a rush of panic, sensing his leader was too exposed. Nick raced to catch up with Pete who now was at the first container, trying to unlock it.

Just then, Nick saw a cannibal rush toward Pete. It was in Pete’s blind spot. Nick raised his nine-millimeter but then remembered Pete’s admonishment not to fire.

“Pete! Behind you!” Nick yelled as he ran to assist him.

Pete turned back, hearing Nick’s warning, but it was too late. The female cannibal jumped onto Pete’s back and scratched and yanked at his face. Pete staggered around, top-heavy, trying to get his balance. Finally, just as Nick reached him, Pete backed forcefully against the cargo container. The impact made a conspicuous boom that rivaled the gunshots in the distance.

The woman lost her grip and fell to the ground. Pete pulled out a knife that Nick hadn’t noticed before and quickly dispatched his assailant. Nick didn’t know what shocked him more: the murderous cannibals or the natives’ efficient killing of them.

“Help me with this door,” Pete said, wasting no time. “Aaron,” Pete said, looking past Nick. Then he spoke in his native tongue, and Nick saw Aaron run left toward the center of the camp.

By the time Nick grabbed the long, rusty bar that kept the shipping container closed, the other two natives had reached their position and were already working on the last two containers.

“This one’s bound up somehow,” Pete muttered. Finally, the bar gave way, releasing a metal-on-metal screech.

Nick heard voices inside, though he couldn’t make out what they were saying. The heavy door swung open wide, creating more noise, and it seemed to Nick that Pete no longer cared what kind of sounds they made.

From inside the shipping container, Nick saw a little hand reach out, then pull back into the shadows. “It’s okay. We’ve come to rescue you,” Nick said. Then Pete spoke with a louder tone in his own language, and the levy broke, women and children flooding out of their iron prison.

Nick kept watching for Lusa but didn’t see her. The refugees cried and cheered, some hugging Nick and Pete, some simply running into the nearby grass. Pete gave them another command which must have been to keep it down, because the group fell silent.

Nick turned to the second and third containers as the men swung open their doors. He knew Lusa had to be in one of these, and he felt elated.

But then he saw something out the corner of his eye, motion near the central fire where Aaron stood over the tied boy, cutting him free. A big man with what looked like a shovel handle with a sharpened point rushed toward Aaron with deadly intent.

Aaron didn’t see him coming, and Nick wasn’t sure if he could hear a warning shout over the rumble of distant gunfire.

Instinctively, Nick stepped forward, raised his Springfield and aimed at the man. He knew how this worked. He had to lead his target, the bullet taking a split-second to reach him.

Nick squeezed the trigger, and the sonic blast ricocheting off the nearby cargo container wall caused instant ringing in his ears. He stepped forward again, unsure if he’d hit his target.

Aaron turned and, having seen the wild man, prepared to battle him with his knife. But the man lost his footing, like he’d stepped in a hole. With an unsteady gait, he creeped forward, still intent on finishing the kill.

No longer needing to lead his target, Nick fired twice, dropping the man. Aaron turned and locked eyes with Nick, visibly thankful for the help.

As the freed little boy ran toward Nick and the others, Nick’s heart sank. Behind Aaron, the mass of cannibals was returning, no longer fooled by the diversion. They charged forward like a league of demons, a killer horde enraged by those who had come to steal from them.

Aaron must has seen the fear in Nick’s face. He quickly turned, grabbed his rifle off the ground, and began firing pot shots toward the oncoming onslaught as he retreated toward Nick’s position.

Nick turned, looking for Pete and found him with Lusa in his arms. She was in tears, and much to Nick’s surprise, so was Pete. They spoke to each other in their own language, but the meaning was clear to Nick: love and fear.

Pete caught Nick’s gaze and shouted for him to come to them. The emotion in his voice was more startling than had been the blast of Nick’s pistol.

When Nick reached them, Pete spoke quickly. “Take Lusa to Deadhorse. Keep her safe. She’s all I have left.”

Before Nick could ask questions or argue, Pete kissed Lusa on the forehead and forced her free from their embrace. She fought him, not wanting to let go. But once her arms broke from around his waist, she gave up.

Pete pushed past Nick and stood between the villagers and the oncoming cannibal assault. He shouted orders to his people to retreat down the grassy hillside. Meanwhile, Nick saw Aaron get tackled by two closer-by cannibals.

He started to run toward him, but he saw Pete and the villagers continuing to retreat. This was bigger than one person, he realized. Pete was no coward; he wouldn’t leave someone behind unless it meant saving the lives of numerous others.

Nick turned and faced Lusa. They didn’t speak, and he didn’t know what to say. Pete turned back one last time before disappearing over the hillside. “Nick,” he shouted. “Run!”

CHAPTER 9

NICK AND LUSA darted into the woods to the right of the encampment. They raced, knowing their very lives depended on it. Nick didn’t know which direction they were headed, only that it wasn’t the way Pete and the villagers had gone. Being anywhere besides that camp was fine with him.

Once the intermittent gunfire sounded far enough away, Nick and Lusa stopped to get their bearings. She was better at it than he was, and he couldn’t help but think of more stupid stereotypes; she was his Indian guide, his Indian princess, Pocahontas. He hated this part of himself, especially at times like these when he ought to be completely focused on getting them to safety.

After examining the starry sky, Lusa told him they were northeast of the camp now. He looked back at the fiery glow behind them and shuddered at the thought of what and who had been back there. Without talking more, Nick grabbed her hand and began running west. He may not have known exactly where they were, but he knew where they needed to go.

Woods turned into fields, and after what felt like hours of running, the grasslands turned back into forest. They crossed another small mountain, which required considerable effort. The only consolation for the weary travelers was the fact that descending the last mountain meant they could no longer see the cannibals’ campfire in the distance.

When they finally came out of the woods a second time, the still-below-the-horizon sun threw curving orange rays onto the landscape before them. Nick spotted his goal beyond the grassy plains: the pipeline. It was the landmark, his Polaris that would take them home to safety and Jimmy.

They reached a little valley in the field some twenty yards before the pipeline. Down in the gulley, Lusa stopped him.

“Let’s rest,” she said.

Nick didn’t argue, and the two-sided earthen shelter felt comfortable and safe after where they’d been. They lay on their backs and gazed into the bluing sky while listening to the irregular gunfire that now sounded miles away.

After a few moments, Lusa said, “What are we doing here?”

Her tone surprised Nick. She didn’t sound grateful to be alive the way he was. It was more like she’d suddenly realized a mistake.

“We’re going to Deadhorse…” he said. Then he added, “where you’ll be safe.”

“We should be going to my people. There’s another village that—”

“I know,” he interrupted. “Didn’t you see Aaron?”

She shook her head with a confused look on her face. “But my dad must be heading there now,” she insisted. “Where else would he be taking them?”

Nick had been working out that problem as they’d travelled. He was pretty sure he knew the answer, but he didn’t think Lusa would like to hear it.

“You’re probably right,” Nick said.

She sat up and turned to him. “What is it?” She wasn’t buying it. Somehow, she knew Nick was leaving something out.

“I’m not sure, Lusa. You know your father better than I do, but I don’t think he would just run back to the other village. The cannibals would catch up with them, discover the second village, and take them out too.”

She sat quietly, processing his words. He could tell she understood, that she recognized he was right. Finally, she asked, “Then where would they go? They can’t outrun them, not with the little kids with them.”

Nick didn’t answer right away but listened to the gunfire which had become silent. “You want the truth?” he asked.

She nodded, though he wasn’t sure she was ready. “If I had to guess,” he said, “I’d say your dad sent them on to the second village while the men set up a last stand, a final defense to buy the women and children as much time to escape as possible.”

Before Lusa could question him, they both were startled by the eruption of gunfire in the distance. Lusa stood. “We’ve got to help them,” she said as she moved up the gulley.

Nick grabbed her hand, stopping her. “We can’t,” he said. And that was it, all it took for her to grasp the truth. They would never reach them in time, and their help would be a futile drop in the bucket. The thirty or so natives were hopelessly outnumbered and armed with mere hunting rifles.

Fresh tears streamed down Lusa’s cheeks as she realized she might never see her father again. Nick stood and tried to comfort her. He felt awkward, because Lusa wasn’t his girlfriend. Before this evening, he hadn’t even held her hand; and tonight, it had only been to lead her from danger, not to show his affection. Gently, he put his arms around her and let her cry on his shoulder.

Nick listened to Lusa’s sobs subside. And at the same time, the volley of gunfire diminished to only a few intermittent shots, like the last kernels of popcorn to pop. He knew that meant it was over, or at least that the men were out of ammo or time to reload. The end of the skirmish, he knew, would be fought hand-to-hand. As skillful as Pete’s men were, he knew they couldn’t take them all. It was an Alaskan Alamo, and he hoped and prayed that Pete took out as many of those wild people as he could, that he made his sacrifice count. But Nick knew Pete had already made it count; he’d gotten Lusa out of harm’s way. Little did Pete know that their vault in Deadhorse was one of the most defensible positions in North America with food, water, and power to last for years.

“Nick,” Lusa whispered. He thought she was saying his name sweetly, and he tightened his embrace in response. “Nick,” she said sternly as she pulled away from him. “There’s someone coming.”

Nick felt the alarm bells go off. He’d been caught with his pants down, asleep at the wheel. He twisted around and looked for danger. He couldn’t see it.

“There,” she said, pointing south toward the small mountain they’d traversed.

Nick squinted. Despite the comfortable morning light, he couldn’t make out details at that distance. Then he spotted movement, and after a couple seconds more he saw a single figure running toward them. He wished he had binoculars or a rifle’s scope to take a closer look.

“Is that one of ours?” he asked.

Lusa shook her head no. Apparently, like Jimmy, her eyes were better than his. “That’s a cannibal or a crazy,” Lusa said softly. “They followed us?” she said louder as if startled by the possibility.

“I don’t know,” Nick said. “I doubt it. We didn’t hear anyone behind us, and we’ve gone a really long way. And besides, the camp had followed…” He stopped himself from finishing that sentence.

Nick knew what to do. He was back in his element now, the world that he and Jimmy had inhabited for the last year, the world of us and them, unaffected and crazies. And dealing with crazies was simple; you just shot them. One at a time.

Nick climbed the rest of the gulley until he stood on level ground. He raised his Springfield, looking through its sights. He found the oncoming crazy and waited.

Still too far out to fire, he thought. He’d just be wasting bullets at this distance. But soon, very soon, he would put a couple rounds into this monster, turn around, and head home. That was a good idea, he realized. A great idea. And Nick felt a hopeful sensation, one he hadn’t felt in days. A subtle grin spread across his face. He could handle this.

Suddenly, the picture changed, and Nick’s smile vanished. The woods, the dark, wicked woods, came alive. First branches and bushes shook. Then Nick saw multiple figures spill out onto the clearing, following their vanguard.

“That’s impossible,” Nick said, dropping his aim.

Lusa came up beside him. “Those aren’t crazies?”

Nick watched as several more—dozens it seemed—flooded the grassland and raced toward them. They had been followed after all.

“No,” Nick said, dumbfounded. “They’re cannibals.”

CHAPTER 10

SITTING AT THE table, Jimmy stared out the bay windows at the hypnotic grasses in the morning light that blew like ocean waves. He wondered if he’d ever see the ocean again, a warm beach in particular. Like when his family had flown to California, gone to Disneyland, and finished out the rest of their vacation at the ocean. He couldn’t remember the name of that beach, which city it was near. Those were the kind of details that children never worried over, knowing their parents would do the worrying for them. He wished he knew now.

He looked down at the table. Though the knife was now in the kitchen sink with the other dirty dishes, he placed his hand between the fresh scars in the wood from his hours of playing mumblety-peg. It was the kind of thing Nick would kill him for, both because it was reckless—What if you get an infection or bleed out? he could hear Nick say—and because it ruined the table. These were the impulses that he needed his brother to help mitigate.

And where was Nick? That was the million-dollar question. Jimmy had made it back to the vault as quickly as he could from his scouting expedition. But it had been a hurry-up-and-wait proposition. The radio frequency—he had it memorized—had been silent. And he knew he hadn’t missed a transmission, because he’d had it piped through the intercom throughout the entire complex; going to the bathroom, sleeping, even stepping outside for fresh air—there was no place he’d been where a radio transmission from Nick couldn’t have been heard.

Jimmy had waited until dusk yesterday before trying to call Nick over the radio. He knew his big brother would scold him if he jumped the gun. Jimmy didn’t have much information, just that the village had been under attack. But that was enough for his nerves to turn into a big ball of knots.

It was possible Nick had broken down halfway there, that he was on foot and unable to call. That would be one of the best-case scenarios, Jimmy figured. Because if the natives weren’t answering and they had indeed been attacked, then that was bad news. That meant they might be injured or dead or for whatever other reason someone couldn’t use the radio. And if Nick had made it there—even if the village had been decimated somehow—he would have used the radio to call back home. Or if the radio was busted, he would have turned around and driven home.

But that window of time had come and gone now. The period for waiting, for merely doing what Nick had told him to do, was over.

Jimmy looked out the window a second or two more as if he was giving Nick one last chance to top that hill and come home. Finally, Jimmy stood from the table and turned back to the rear wall where the gun rack was. He’d waited this long, but he hadn’t spent it all idly. He’d prepared for this moment. Stacked in the corner of the room next to the vault door that led to the labyrinth of tunnels lay his coat, a bag with food, water, clothes, and couple of extra boxes of ammo. He put on the light coat—August nights could be chilly—threw the bag’s sling over his shoulder and stuffed the two boxes of .30-30 rounds in his coat pocket.

He turned to the gun rack and spotted the Stevens shotgun he’d brought from Fairbanks. He had a momentary impulse to grab it, to go with a faithful and reliable tool. But he knew he needed the lever-action rifle for long distance shots and repeatability. He took the Marlin and headed toward the door.

Along the way, he grabbed keys hanging on a nail on the wall. He exited the vault and turned back to lock the door. This was an odd sensation, because he was never the one to do this. The only time both the boys left the vault was together, and Nick was always the one thinking of these things. Somehow, locking the door just made Jimmy think more of Nick, that his brother was indeed in trouble.

He grabbed the rifle he’d leaned up against the wall and turned to cross what had become their front yard. His mind shifted to the immediate problem at hand: which truck should he take down the Dalton?

After only a few steps, Jimmy’s mind snapped back to his environment. Something caught his attention: movement.

He looked up, south, toward the top of the hill he would climb. He scanned the crest left and right. Nothing moved.

Then a twitch, and he pinpointed the lone figure, standing like a dark clothed scarecrow.

Jimmy dropped his bag, knelt and pulled his Marlin forward to aim. He raised the stock to his cheek and examined the figure over the beaded front sight.

It was a man, but it was no crazy, Jimmy decided. The man was dressed in dark clothes, tactical gear, dark mirrored sunglasses, and carried what looked like a military style rifle.

“Who are you?” Jimmy shouted nervously. “Identify yourself,” he added, trying to sound more confident.

The man didn’t speak but began approaching Jimmy’s position.

“Stop right there,” Jimmy yelled.

The man didn’t, but instead raised his gun to his side, at the ready.

“I’m not kidding,” Jimmy pleaded. “Stop or I’ll shoot.” He wasn’t kidding, but this wasn’t as simple as shooting a crazy. Real, unaffected people were a whole different ballgame. For one, this man could be friend or foe despite his aggressive posture, and he could fire back. If Jimmy fired a warning shot, the man might simply kill him in self-defense. No one had shot yet, and Jimmy was afraid to break that implicit contract.

He thought about turning around, unlocking the vault and retreating. But there wasn’t time. And he’d be a sitting duck with his back turned, an easy target.

Jimmy’s legs turned to jelly as he stood and moved toward the man. This didn’t help his odds of dodging a bullet, he knew, but he felt like he had to maintain a posture of strength. Whoever this was, he needed to know Jimmy wasn’t going to give up without a fight.

Jimmy marched toward the stranger with his gun raised. “Drop your weapon,” Jimmy insisted. “I don’t want to hurt you, but you need to back down.”

The man stopped.

Success! He’s listening.

But the man didn’t lower his gun. Jimmy noticed him turn his head to the side and whisper something. Jimmy stopped his approach and watched. Then he saw the small radio unit attached to the man’s tactical vest. He was communicating with someone. This wasn’t good, Jimmy knew.

“This is your last warning, mister.” Jimmy choked on his words. That was exactly the stupid kinds of things Nick hated for him to say. But it was out there now. “I need to know your intentions. Let’s start with lowering that gun.”

The man didn’t move, didn’t flinch. He stood there as if impervious to threats, fear, or danger. It made Jimmy think of the Terminator movies he’d watched with Nick last year.

More movement. Behind the lone figure. Jimmy saw five more similarly dressed, armed men top the hill and come marching down.

Slowly, Jimmy lowered his rifle. He barely had enough bullets for each of them, and they appeared to have automatic weapons. He didn’t stand a chance.

Then he dropped his gun. It made a dull ker-plunk on the muddy banks of the small summer creek. Jimmy raised his hands slowly. “Don’t shoot,” he whispered. Then in a louder tone, “Please, don’t shoot.”

CHAPTER 11

THE RAGGED COUPLE ran for their lives. Fortunately for Nick’s sleep-deprived mind, they didn’t have to think about how they’d get to Deadhorse. The pipeline was their constant companion as they jogged north on the Dalton highway.

Every few miles, they found an abandoned car or truck and had to decide if they would check it out, see if it had fuel and keys and would start. If they stopped to check, that meant the cannibals were that much closer to them, but if they could catch a ride, they would be out of danger in no time.

After a couple of false checks, Nick resigned to march on. They couldn’t afford to let those people catch up to them, and he knew that if they just kept putting one foot in front of the other, they would eventually make it to Deadhorse and the vault. Then the horde could bang and smash themselves against the six-inch steel door all they wanted. There was no way they could get through, and he, Lusa, and Jimmy would be safe inside.

The sun was high in the sky and beat down upon them as they ran the macabre marathon. Nick struggled to remember what day it was and how many days he’d been awake. He also didn’t know how many miles they had left. No one had seen a mile marker since they’d reached the Dalton. Nick wondered—if there was a purgatory—if it wouldn’t be something like this.

When he turned to check their pursuers—he kept hoping they would simply give up and quit—he could more easily make out their features: the men and women were mostly barefoot, and what few clothes they did wear didn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason to them; some had pants with no shirt while others had t-shirts and shorts, and some were entirely nude. He realized the fact he could see them better meant they were gaining on them.

As if his world wasn’t messed up enough, Nick’s fried brain struggled to explain these people. They weren’t the typical crazies, though they would be glad to kill the two of them. He just couldn’t figure out how they had survived the winter without more clothes. Even if they had hibernated like the crazies he’d seen before the thaw, they would have needed some clothing. And these people worked together, planning and cooperating to achieve their ungodly goals.

When Lusa and Nick finally reached Deadhorse, their worn condition was becoming frighteningly apparent; their pace evidently had slowed dramatically as evidenced by the nearness of the dozens of cannibals behind them. Nick could faintly hear their footsteps on the now gravel road, and occasionally one would snort or holler, beckoning an audible response in kind from the others. It made him think of the way low-flying geese honked, encouraging each other to keep flying. Except these shouts weren’t attaboys; these were we’ve-almost-got-thems.

The road ended, and Lusa hesitated. “No, it’s okay,” Nick told her. “Our shelter’s down here.” She examined his face as if she wasn’t sure she could trust him, then followed him down the grassy hill. About halfway down, Nick spotted the blinking red light that had first welcomed him and Jimmy. “There it is,” he shouted, but Lusa didn’t seem to notice it.

When they’d gotten down to the valley where the summer creek ran, Nick started to point out the vault’s outer door and window that was now visible. But before he could, it opened. He expected to see Jimmy, but instead a half-dozen men in dark combat gear and automatic rifles rushed out.

By the time Nick drew his weapon, the six were spread several yards apart, forming a horizontal line of defense.

“Drop your weapons and get on the ground,” one of them shouted.

They were outnumbered and outgunned, but Nick hadn’t come this far just to lay down. He tried to think of something to say, but his rattled mind wouldn’t give him answers. He noticed his hands shaking from fear or fatigue—he didn’t know which.

Then another figure exited the vault door. It was Jimmy. He came running, his hands waving like a football referee calling off a false start.

“Don’t shoot!” he shouted. “It’s okay. He’s my brother. Put your guns down. Everybody.”

Slowly, they complied. The six first, then Nick. Jimmy came forward to the other edge of the creek. “You made it,” Jimmy said with a smile.

“Look, we don’t have time,” Nick said. “We’ve got trouble.”

“Oh, them. Yeah, well it’s a long story but a good one,” Jimmy said.

“No, you don’t understand.” But before Nick could go on, he noticed the six soldiers raise their rifles again. But they weren’t aiming at the two of them. They were aiming higher up, behind them. Nick twisted around and saw dozens of cannibals top the hillside.

“Run!” Nick shouted, as he dragged Lusa by the hand into the ankle-deep creek.

“Who are they?” Jimmy asked.

When Nick reached his little’s brother’s position, he shoved him toward the vault. “C’mon. We’ve got to get inside,” Nick said.

As the three ran, Jimmy spoke to the six men and told them to defend their position. Unhesitatingly and before the three had even reached the vault’s outer door, the six soldiers spread out into a wider formation and began firing upon the invaders.

Nick held the door open for Lusa and Jimmy who were behind him, then closed it behind them and locked it. “Jimmy,” he said, “open the window, and see if you can take some of them out with your Marlin.”

But much to Nick’s displeasure, Jimmy didn’t follow orders. Instead, he went to the shortwave transceiver and began turning dials. Nick didn’t have time to see what that was about. All he knew was, he wanted to keep the cannibals back at all cost. If they couldn’t keep them from entering their shelter—if they came through the window—they’d have to retreat further back into the structure, behind the second vault door and wait them out. It was an option, at least, but he didn’t want to pull the plug if he didn’t have too.

Nick grabbed Jimmy’s Marlin and rushed to the window. “Let me help,” Lusa said.

“You stay back,” Nick scolded.

“I can shoot,” she insisted. “Give me a weapon.” But Nick ignored her and took up a position near the bay window. Pete had told him to keep her safe, and that’s what he was going to do.

As soon as he opened the bay window—it was one of those old crank deals that seemed to take forever to slide the window an inch—the sounds of automatic rifle fire went from dull background noise to piercing, explosives that hurt his ears.

Nick’s first observation out the window was that the team of six had put down a considerable number of cannibals. He found a target and took aim. The .30-30 round was heavy and dropped quickly; he saw dirt fly some yards before the wild man he was shooting at. The man looked at Nick’s position, noticing the shot, and came running toward him.

Nick cranked the lever action and a hot brass casing spit out the side, plinking lightly on the floor. He shot again, but this time he simply missed, the bullet apparently flying to the right or left of the charging target.

Then one of the soldiers fired at the man: two shots to the chest, one to the head. The target was down, and the soldier had made it look easy. Nick lowered his rifle, surprised by the efficiency of this small team of gunmen. He watched in amazement as they cleaned up the last few stragglers, the last to reach the hillside. Nick was out of danger, he realized. They all were, and it was because of these strangers who had done the fighting for them.

Always the cautious one, Nick cranked the window back shut. He turned around to Jimmy and Lusa. Jimmy was just taking off his headset now, finished radioing whomever. Both boys had big dumb grins on, but Lusa sat at the table with a scrunched-up scowl. Nick wanted to ask her what was wrong, but he quickly played back the last several minutes in his mind and figured she was mad about him telling her not to fight. Oh, well. She can get over it, he thought. I just saved her life. She could be a little grateful. But he also realized she’d just lost her family and village. She had the right to be sore.

“They did it,” Nick said, raising his hand back toward the window. “I don’t know who they are or where they came from, but they did it.”

“I’d say our luck has changed,” Jimmy said.

They both looked at each other, their beaming faces unchanging for several seconds. Then, slowly, they both turned to Lusa. She was the elephant in the room, the unexpected addition to their little family. And her luck had run out days ago.

“Do you need anything?” Jimmy asked. Then, before she could answer, he knelt, extended his hand out to her, and said, “I’m at your service, fair maiden.

For the first time in Nick-didn’t-know-how-long, Lusa smiled as she took Jimmy’s hand. “Thank you, kind sir,” she said.

Jimmy kissed her hand as if she was a princess. “The honor is all mine,” Jimmy said with a fake regal accent.

Well, that’s better, Nick thought. At least she’s smiling. “Look, Nancy,” Nick said, teasing Jimmy, “I think we’ve got more important things to do besides playing tea party.”

Jimmy coughed and stood up as if at attention, donning his most macho affect. Lusa giggled. “Sir, yes sir,” Jimmy reported.

“Care to tell me about your friends?” Nick asked more seriously, his thumb pointing over his shoulder toward the window.

“No. No, I don’t,” came Jimmy’s response. “But I know someone who does.”

Jimmy walked to the window and peered out. Nick turned and tried to see what Jimmy was looking at. Then, as if on cue, a truck crested the hill. Several similarly dressed men jumped off the back of it. Another man who didn’t match the others stepped out of the passenger side door.

“There he is,” Jimmy said, “the man with all the answers.”

CHAPTER 12

“NICK, THIS IS Dr. Vaughn Craig,” Jimmy said. They all were standing on the far side of the valley creek, the one closer to Deadhorse. Nick extended his hand to the man, who eagerly took it.

“Call me Vaughn,” he said. “The days for titles and surnames are over. Anyone worth knowing is worth knowing on a first-name basis now.”

Nick shook Vaughn’s hand and noticed the cool touch of his skin, his long, slender fingers feeling frail under Nick’s grasp. Vaughn had a short brown beard and long slicked-back hair tied in a ponytail. He was several inches taller than either of the boys. His clothes were simple: black long-sleeved shirt and gray pants, matching those of the elite team he seemed to lead. But he looked nothing like a soldier and appeared to carry no weapons or gear of any kind.

“It’s good to meet you, Vaughn,” Nick said. “I guess we owe you big time. You saved us.”

“It may be the other way around when it all gets said and done,” Vaughn said. He stared at Nick as if he should understand. Then he added, “The seed vault. Jimmy gave me the grand tour while you were away.”

Nick was shocked that Jimmy had so willingly shared their secret with a total stranger, and he was now equally embarrassed that the truth was out for Lusa to hear.

“I don’t know how long it would last if we started feeding everyone by it,” Nick said. He hated his own words. They were weak half-truths, and he was playing defense, trying to mitigate risk with Vaughn and cover his tracks with Lusa. He didn’t dare turn and look at her, though he felt her scrutinizing eyes on him.

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of eating the seeds,” Vaughn said. “Food’s the least of my worries. But some day, when the time is right, those seeds may help remake the world, a world we will have to build.”

Nick wasn’t sure about Vaughn. There was something about him that made Nick suspicious, but at the same time, Vaughn seemed competent, confident, and far more in control of his life than anyone else Nick knew. It was oddly refreshing being around someone like this, someone who made Nick feel young again. It was different than it had been with Pete. Pete was fatherly, but the man was poor and lived meal-to-meal. Vaughn was…well, Nick didn’t know yet. But it was different.

Suddenly, Nick realized Vaughn had lost interest in him and was examining Lusa who stood beside him. “Oh, this is my…” Nick stopped himself from saying girlfriend. “…my friend Lusa. She—”

“It’s good to meet you, Lusa,” Vaughn interrupted as he extended his hand. She shook it, and Nick noticed her shyness. It was something he’d seen before, but he’d misinterpreted it as being coy, or stoic. Now, it was plain as day; she was a scared little girl.

“It’s good to meet you,” she said as bravely as she could.

“Jimmy didn’t mention you,” Vaughn said.

“No, I don’t live here,” Lusa answered. “I live…” She looked down, seemingly unsure how to answer.

“Well, Lusa, I don’t know your situation,” Vaughn said. “But I know you’ve lost someone. Because we’ve all lost someone. Nobody alive can say otherwise. That’s one thing that brings us all together.”

She looked up, eyes glimmering with what Nick believed was a combination of pre-emergent tears and hope. “That’s true,” she admitted.

Nick was surprised at how easily Vaughn could positively manipulate her. It didn’t seem malevolent, but the skill involved, the understanding required, was easily apparent.

“Look, I’d love to continue getting to know you all, but I’m needed elsewhere,” Vaughn said. “You have to have plenty of questions, I know. And I’ll answer them all, I promise. But I can’t do it here. Or, at least, it would be far simpler to show you the truth instead of tell you about it.” Vaughn paused, making sure his words penetrated. Then he asked, “Would you all join me for dinner? You’d be my honored guests. And you won’t believe the tableside view.”

CHAPTER 13

NICK SWOONED AS the boat rose and fell with the waves. It was hypnotic, though the patterns were too irregular to allow him to completely fall asleep. A splash of cool ocean water rushed into the boat, waking him from his brief respite.

For half a second, he was disoriented. The bright sunshine reflecting off the top of the blue-green water was blinding, and he felt mildly nauseated. He’d never been sea sick. He hoped that wasn’t what was happening.

He looked over across the small craft and was greeted by his smiling brother. This little adventure was the kind of thing Jimmy lived for, but Nick still wasn’t convinced it was all for the best. Meeting Vaughn seemed fortuitous for sure—they may not have survived the siege at the vault without his help. And the resources Vaughn seemed to command was so considerable, there was no question they should meet with him and consider how they could all work together. It was a no-brainer.

Still, Nick wasn’t sure. It felt like a lucky break. They’d been lucky before when Bob had invited them to Deadhorse last year, but that had ended with Bob going broke and trying to kill them.

Lusa sat quietly next to Nick. She had her eyes closed, exhausted. He felt a voyeuristic thrill at being able to watch her, to look at her intently without having to explain himself or be self-conscious about it. She was beautiful. He’d always known that, but there had been passing moments when he wondered if his infatuation with her was one of circumstance. In some ways, it had to be the case. But she was indeed lovely. There was no denying that now. He hoped they could make a go of it, but he knew the losses she’d experienced could complicate that. It could go either way, he decided. Either they would come closer together, or, if she somehow decided what happened to her and her family was his fault, they would grow apart.

Three men accompanied them in the boat: one drove the manual outboard motor in the rear, and the other two sat forward as if at attention. There was something different about them, but Nick couldn’t put his finger on it. They were soldiers, though not dressed in typical camo fatigues. They were silent, always on duty, always ready to act. Maybe that was it, Nick thought. They were too perfect.

Suddenly, Nick heard the motor change pitch. He glanced back at the man steering their boat; he was unchanged. Then he realized it was Vaughn’s boat, the one that had been traveling in tandem beside them. He turned around, looking over the starboard side just in time to see Vaughn’s craft veer off and change direction.

“What’s he doing?” Nick shouted over the roar of the engine and waves.

“He said he’d meet up with us,” Jimmy replied. “He has to do something on the other boat.”

That made little sense to Nick; Vaughn was already on the other boat. Nick looked forward, and then it all clicked. Before them were two massive ships. The one Vaughn’s boat was headed toward looked to be some kind of US Navy vessel, maybe a destroyer, though Nick couldn’t be sure.

But what Nick’s boat was headed toward was far easier to identify, though it was laughably absurd. Yet, there it was, a surprisingly large craft with its minimalist exterior and sleek design for all to admire.

“A sub?” Nick shouted.

Jimmy’s eyes danced. “Isn’t this awesome?”

AFTER REACHING THE submarine, the trio was led up the ladder that was attached permanently to the sub’s side. True to his word, Vaughn had sent orders ahead of time to have a table set up on the sub’s top deck. The three gladly took their seats around the table that was covered by a canopy, the kind that Nick had seen people take to campsites.

More sailors in black assisted them, and after they had been seated, brought out a spread that exceeded what any of the three could have imagined: salad, fresh pasta, chicken parmesan, and strawberry gelato for dessert.

The three, half-starved, dove into the scrumptious fare, and only after finishing their first plates full of food did they slow down enough to savor the meal or enjoy each other’s company.

With perfect timing, Vaughn’s craft arrived at the sub just as Nick’s spoon clinked the bottom of the glass that had held his gelato. The time Nick had spent waiting for Vaughn to ascend the ladder and come sit with them had been short, but it was long enough for him to ponder several questions: Who was this man, and how could he ever come to control such powerful resources?

“I trust you enjoyed your dinner,” Vaughn said magnanimously as he sat down in an empty chair at the table.

The three erupted in cheers and other non-verbal affirmations of gratitude. Then it became awkwardly silent, and Nick searched for something to say.

“Very well,” Vaughn said, as if he’d made some invisible assessment of the situation and had only then perceived the next move forward. “I suppose you have questions. But why don’t I just lay some facts down, a brief history of how all this,” he raised his hands to either side, referring to the boats, “came to be?”

No one objected. “I’m a scientist,” he said. “Or I was a scientist. I’m not sure if I can call what I do now science, more like survival.” Nick detected contempt in Vaughn’s voice. “I was stationed on this submarine, doing geologic surveys of the ocean floor. Then the update happened, and like everyone else unaffected by it, I had my hands full.”

“You mean the Navy was using the DataMind app?” Jimmy asked.

“You better believe it,” Vaughn said. “We had contract orders for every seaman. Turning barely competent young men and women who would probably otherwise end up in jail into productive cogs in the wheel of war is what Uncle Sam has been doing for over two centuries. DataMind made it even easier. In fact, counting on the tech, the Navy made an unprecedented change of policy; they lowered the IQ threshold for applicants, knowing the app would raise it quickly.”

Again, Nick detected bitterness in Vaughn’s voice, but he noticed that Vaughn seemed to be self-aware and was quickly covering and changing the inflection of his voice after hitting a dark tone.

“But you didn’t use it?” Nick asked.

Vaughn stared at him for a second, like he was reading past Nick’s words. “No,” Vaughn said, “I didn’t need it.” More silence.

Lusa spoke up. “How did you get off the submarine if everyone went broke?”

Vaughn turned to her, his eyes lighting up. “Excellent question.” He breathed in as if he was bracing himself for the retelling of the memory. “The thing everyone knows about subs is that they are meant to go underwater and to do so for extended periods of time.”

“Up to a year, right?” Jimmy asked.

Vaughn smiled. “Yes, that’s correct. Back during the Cold War, the military relied heavily on nuclear subs to underpin its doctrine of mutual assured destruction. The idea was that you could send a sub down to the bottom of the ocean and leave it there indefinitely. Then, if the USSR carpet-bombed North America, a single sub could surface and send a slew of missiles armed with nuclear warheads to hit back. It was part of a strategy that worked. Both sides knew they could never take down the other power without receiving a crippling blow in return.”

“Back to your question, Lusa—the thing people often don’t know about submarines is that they all leak. Small amounts of water are expected to get in; you just pump the bilges periodically to get rid of it. When there are serious amounts of water coming in, that’s not called a leak anymore. That’s a flood, and all crew are trained to hit the flood alarm, which means that every water-tight door gets shut and dogged, and every ventilation damper closes to keep the flooding isolated. The ship’s designed to seal off compartments and carry on—in most cases—quite easily.”

“I don’t understand,” Jimmy said simply. “What’s this got to do with you surviving the crazies onboard?”

“He sealed them off,” Nick blurted out. He felt the negativity flow out of him, and he knew his harshness and impatience was due to his fatigue.

“That’s right,” Vaughn said as he gave Nick an approving look. “After positioning myself…”—he said it like it was a gross oversimplification, and Nick perceived it meant he must have scratched and clawed his way through many lives to get where he needed to be—“I sealed all the compartments from the control room. From there, I holed-up. I had time and plenty of food and water. I studied the effects of the update, looked at the code itself. It was a wild-goose chase at first, trying to undo DataMind’s damage. Ultimately, I discovered there was no way to revert the crew back to their previous states. The only way to control them, to save their very lives, was to overwrite the program.”

Vaughn stopped and took coffee from one of the sailors who waited on the table. It was then that Nick noticed something on the left temple of the soldier. It was partially hidden by the cap he wore over his head. But once Nick spotted it, the object shined like a beacon, reflecting sunlight.

“They were crazies?” Nick asked, pointing to the soldiers.

“Yes,” Vaughn said softly as he sipped his coffee.

“All of them?” Lusa added.

Vaughn nodded as he swallowed. “Every last one.”

“But how?” Jimmy blurted. “I mean, how did you get them to do another update or whatever?”

“He didn’t,” Nick said. “Not with a phone, anyway.”

“Very good,” Vaughn said to Nick. “How insightful.” He turned to the waiter. “D-Seventeen, remove your cap.”

The soldier obeyed, and then everyone noticed the metallic coin-shaped object on his temple.

“Is that it?” Jimmy asked, pointing. “That’s how you control them?”

“Partially,” Vaughn answered. “They each have a chip on their brow which acts as both a CPU and as a transceiver. It overwrites the program, modulates their neural frequencies so the update no longer affects them. They have a basic program of how to act. Simple rules of engagement and from whom to take orders. After that, modifications are made either directly by me or via radio.”

“Walkie-talkies?” Jimmy said. “You control them with walkie-talkies?”

“Not exactly,” Vaughn grinned. “You see that destroyer?” He pointed with his eyes as he took another sip. Everyone glanced at the larger ship anchored nearby. “That’s where the transceiver station is. I run fifty thousand watts through that antenna you see there.” Nick saw the tall tower with its dipole beams. “That gets me up to a ten-mile radius before I can no longer make contact with the drones.”

“Drones?” Nick repeated. “That’s what you call them?”

“What would you call them?” Vaughn asked defensively.

“Maybe, men?” Nick replied more forcefully than he should have.

“They aren’t men anymore, Nick,” Vaughn replied. “They haven’t been men or women since the update itself. They lost their humanity that very day, and since then have been a menace to us all and to each other. They’re worse than animals.”

Nick lifted his hands up a few inches from the table and nodded his concession.

“At least this way,” Vaughn continued, “they can be a force for good in the world.” He took another sip, then said, “the word drone is appropriate. They possess some of the faculties of humanity but not all of them, and they’re controlled by us.” He pronounced the last word with zeal.

“But what about the cannibals?” Lusa asked. “Do the chips work on them?”

“Ah, dear girl. Now that’s the right question,” Vaughn said. “There appears to be a clear distinction between the groups. For whatever reason, those people don’t respond to the chip. But that brings up another point, the real reason I brought you all here.” Vaughn snapped his fingers at one of the sailors who then went to the main hatch and disappeared.

The group sat in silence for a few moments that would have felt awkward to Nick if he weren’t so tired. Instead, he felt his eyes grow heavy and his head nod uncontrollably. When the drone returned, the metallic screech the hatch made woke Nick up again. The drone carried a large rectangular object, which he placed down on the table before them. Vaughn touched the half-inch thick tablet, and the screen came alive with a map of Alaska.

“You’ve got maps?” Nick asked, the sight of it reinvigorating him. He and Jimmy had scouted their area and loathed the fact they couldn’t find one.

“Not just maps,” Vaughn answered as he manipulated the screen with his fingers, “we have live satellite imagery.”

“No way,” Jimmy said. “Are they”—he pointed up to the sky— “still going?”

“You better believe it,” Vaughn said. “They don’t need anything from us once they’re put in geo-synch orbit. Luckily, the sub captain had all the codes to access these.”

Nick wondered how Vaughn had gotten the codes from the captain. Did he get them before or after the update? He decided to let it go for now.

“Here’s what you need to see,” Vaughn said as he dragged the map east, then south of the Canadian border and into the United States. There were red flags scattered all around the map, more so the farther south you looked. Vaughn selected one of the red flags and zoomed in. On screen was a mass of red-white blotches.

“Is that infra-red?” Jimmy asked.

Vaughn nodded. The red-white blotches moved. Most were concentrated in the center, but some came and went like little ants from their hill.

“Those are cannibals?” Nick asked.

“Yes, each of the flags represents an identified group,” Vaughn said. He then pulled back and selected another pinpoint. This time the screen was not covered with red-white blotches.

“Where’d they go?” Jimmy asked.

Vaughn didn’t answer but instead zoomed out part way and moved the screen north. After a couple of finger slides, he stopped. “There,” he said. “There they are.” He paused, letting the trio process the information.

“I don’t get it,” Lusa said, finally. “How’d you know where to look for them?”

“They’re all migrating north,” Nick said.

Vaughn smiled and nodded. “Oh, how refreshing it is to be around people who can think,” he said. “Nick’s right. They all—at least the ones in the northwest portion of the United States—appear to be moving north.”

“They’re coming toward us?” Jimmy asked, perplexed.

“Not all of them,” Vaughn said. “They don’t know we’re here. But they’d be glad to eat us if they did know.”

“So why are they moving?” Lusa asked.

“The same reason they’re not like the crazies around here,” Vaughn explained. He tapped the screen and sifted through a few different tabs until he pulled up a new map. This one had blue cones, most of which had points facing west and bases facing east. “These are nuclear reactor sites,” Vaughn said.

Immediately, Nick felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. He remembered all the things Bob had said about nuclear fallout, melting icecaps, and how Deadhorse could become the Havana of the North. He had turned a blind eye to the problem lately. The shortwave transmissions he’d listened to hadn’t discussed it like they had early on, and he’d hoped it meant there wasn’t a problem. More likely, he now realized, those persons affected by reactors were no longer on shortwave to complain about it.

“Each of the reactors is melting down to varying degrees,” Vaughn said. “They aren’t all equally bad. Some aren’t even emitting radiation yet; they’re just super hot. But many, as you can see from this map, have gone critical and are spewing radioactive isotopes. Now watch this.”

He clicked another tab, and then the previous map with the cannibals overlaid with the nuclear map.

“They’re trying to get away,” Lusa said.

“How do they know to come north?” Jimmy asked.

“They don’t,” Vaughn said flatly. “They’re animals. All you see here are northern migrations for one simple reason. What do you think happens to those that go south or stay put?”

“They die out,” Nick said.

“Precisely. This is a form of evolution,” Vaughn stated. “They have no idea what they’re doing or why, but those that try to escape their toxic environment by traveling north are the ones that will survive. At least until winter,” he added.

“That’s why the cannibals we saw didn’t wear as many clothes,” Nick said. “They were from the south, somewhere warmer.”

“Right,” Jimmy joined in, “and they won’t make it through the winter the way the crazies do. They don’t hibernate, do they?”

“No, fortunately they do not,” Vaughn said.

There was another silent moment as the three all thought things through. As before, the quietest member was the first to break rank. “So why did you bring us here?” Lusa asked.

“Right,” Vaughn exhaled. “You all know first-hand the danger those cannibals represent. But they are a temporary threat. Hold out through this winter, and they’ll be gone.”

“That sounds familiar,” Nick quipped. “Everyone was saying the same thing about the crazies last fall and look where that got us.”

“You don’t understand,” Vaughn said too harshly. He stopped himself, visibly regaining his composure and patience. “What I mean,” he said softly, “is that there is an existential threat greater than cannibals or crazies combined. These nukes,”—he smashed his finger down onto the map— “aren’t going to fix themselves. They won’t go offline unless someone takes them offline.”

“I’m sorry,” Jimmy said. “But we’re nowhere near those reactors. Why do we have—”

“Because it goes up into the atmosphere,” Nick interrupted. “It falls out somewhere else. Plus, it builds up until the clouds are permanent. The whole northern hemisphere can get clouded out, for decades at a time. It’s called a nuclear winter. Didn’t you go to school?”

Jimmy looked injured, but Nick didn’t care. He was too tired to care.

“Nick’s right,” Vaughn said. “This problem’s bigger than all of us. And we have a limited small window of opportunity, one that’s closing rapidly. If we don’t get those reactors shut down in the next couple of months, I don’t think we ever will.”

Everyone waited for him to go on and explain why, but apparently, he wasn’t used to having to explain himself. That made sense, Nick thought. He hasn’t answered to anyone in over a year. He’s probably not even held conversations with anyone since the update.

“What’s your plan?” Nick asked.

“Well,” Vaughn said, “it’s just funny how everything goes against you for so long; then you run into a lucky streak. That’s what you three represent, you see. I came to Deadhorse, expecting to do all this alone, and let me say, it’s a long shot, even with your help. So, very likely, I was going to fail, but it was the only chance I had, so I was going to take it.”

Now, Nick thought, we’re hearing the real Vaughn. This was his inner dialogue out for all to hear.

“We docked here in Prudhoe Bay, knowing it wouldn’t be ice-free for many more weeks. We came to Deadhorse, because the first pumping station along the pipeline is here. The seed vault, well that was just a side trip, something generically labeled as a research station on my map. But finding you three…” He whistled. “Well, all I can say is that we actually have a shot at this…if you help me.”

CHAPTER 14

AFTER VAUGHN EXPLAINED the rest of the plan to the three, he told them he would accept their answer in the morning, after they’d slept on it. They each received pampered treatment aboard the impressively large Navy destroyer. Nick wondered why Vaughn hadn’t put them up inside the sub. He decided it was either because the accommodations weren’t as nice, or—and he suspected the latter—Vaughn had kept the sub for himself, his own submersible castle.

After fresh showers, a second dinner, and brief parting words, the three separated, each going to their private quarters where they gladly slept off the nightmare of the last two days.

Nick awoke with a growling stomach. He stepped out of his bunk—even an admiral’s quarters were still a bunk—and heard talking down the hallway. It was Lusa and Jimmy sitting in an empty room full of chairs and tables. Nick greeted them with a half-wave and smile. He figured this place used to be used by sailors during their leisure time. The skeleton crew aboard the ship now had no use for it, and he wondered how many hours per day Vaughn had them actively working.

“Good morning, sleepy head,” Lusa said as he sat down with them. The chairs felt so good, the soft supple leather cushions swallowing him and his aches and pains at the same time. And Lusa seemed to be back to her cute, coy self.

“Man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” Nick answered.

“I’ll tell you what this man’s gotta do,” Jimmy said. “Eat!” He stood up, attempting to lead the charge to the mess hall.

“Wait,” Nick said. “I think we need to make our minds up here and now…before we go any further.”

Jimmy sat down. “What’s to decide?” he asked.

Nick felt like he was back in Fairbanks in the basement trying to talk Jimmy out of going to Deadhorse. Of course, in the end going to Deadhorse had been the best thing for them, so Nick wasn’t quite as critical of his brother’s exuberance these days.

“What do you think?” Nick asked Lusa.

“What? You actually care what a girl thinks?” she replied. Nick started to defend himself, but before he could, she went on. “I think we have to do it. We can’t just sit in your…vault and wait for the end of the world.”

Nick knew she was probably right, but he didn’t like the way she had said it, the way she had made him sound like the bad guy. “All I’m saying is this isn’t something to be taken on lightly,” Nick said. “We’re risking our lives. And, Lusa, I know you don’t want to hear this, but what makes you think you can take on this job? I mean, you’re smart and capable and all that, but this is fighting and killing we’re talking about.”

“You wouldn’t know what I’m capable of,” she answered. “And besides, what I do is my decision, not yours.”

He knew she was right; he wasn’t in charge of her. Not like that, anyway. But Pete had told him to take care of her. Nick wanted to say so but didn’t want to bring up the sore subject. She had been friendly a moment ago, and he wanted the sweet version of Lusa to return. Talking about her dead relatives wasn’t likely to achieve that.

“I’m not suggesting we just go home and do nothing,” Nick said. “It’s just, I think we should examine our options and think this through.”

“Vaughn spelled it out for us yesterday,” Jimmy said. “What’s to think through? He did all the thinking for us.”

“That’s the problem,” Nick said.

Vaughn had spelled it out for them: He needed each of them to control a team of drones out beyond the reach of his ship’s radio signal. The grand plan involved clearing the pipeline of crazies. Vaughn had explained how the pipeline had two features needed for his plan: one was the fuel it possessed. Nick was surprised to learn that there were nine pump stations spread out along the pipeline. The first was in Deadhorse, and the ninth was in Valdez, North America’s northern-most ice-free port. Originally, each station had been needed to help keep the oil flowing south, but later, additives were created that kept the oil better lubricated—Nick thought oil was always well lubricated—and the stations had become overly redundant.

But Vaughn wasn’t after the pump stations themselves, per se; he was after the mini refinery that each possessed. Nick couldn’t believe he’d never heard this before, but each of the stations had the ability to turn small amounts of oil into gasoline. The pumps hadn’t been designed to run on electricity; they were self-sufficient, powered by their own locally refined fuel.

This would be useful for obvious reasons, the fact that gas goes bad more easily than diesel not being the least. But Vaughn, yet again, had more fantastic plans. The gas from each pump would be used to power its own radio tower and transceiver, which could be run indefinitely as a relay station for the drone control signals originating from the Navy destroyer.

Once all the pump stations were back online and the signal was relayed from Deadhorse to Valdez, the entire chain of towers would work like an eight hundred mile long antenna. The signal strength of Vaughn’s transmissions would be amplified by an order of magnitude, allowing his drones to enter the rest of North America, shutting down nuclear reactors along the way.

It was a wild plan, and if Vaughn hadn’t already demonstrated his ability to achieve the impossible, Nick wouldn’t have even entertained the idea.

“I don’t like us being split up,” Nick said after a few moments of contemplation.

“Nobody does,” Jimmy said, “but we’re not exactly going to be alone out there. I mean, you saw what Vaughn’s drones can do. Those six soldiers took out dozens of emergents back at the vault.”

Emergents—that was another term contributed by Vaughn. He had explained that these people were once crazies but that the intense radiation from the continental U.S. had altered them somehow.

“Just tell me this,” Nick said, “how did this supposed mutation occur simultaneously across the country? I mean, that doesn’t sound plausible at all.”

“Vaughn said it had been like a switch waiting to be thrown,” Lusa responded. “It’s not like all the crazies turned into emergents. Most just died. Those left are the people whose switch was thrown.”

Nick didn’t like it. He hadn’t had biology class in over a year, but from everything he knew about evolution, this wasn’t the way it worked; it was always a single individual with a chance mutation that gained reproductive advantage, and then over the course of multiple generations, the new DNA became representative of the species. All this, what Vaughn had explained, was something else entirely.

“C’mon,” Jimmy said. “He’s a scientist for crying out loud.”

“I don’t trust him. He’s not telling us the whole story,” Nick said with an elevated tone.

Just then a drone walked by, and the three froze as if the teacher had just walked back into the room of rowdy students. After he passed into the other room, Nick said, “D’you see that? His nose was bleeding. Why would his nose be bleeding?”

They thought for a moment, then Jimmy sat up with excitement. “Vaughn already told us,” he said, pleased to defend the man. “It had to be a side-effect from passing through the Hot Zone.”

There was yet another term given to them by Vaughn. The Hot Zone was that band of latitude that now glowed from radiation. When Vaughn had traveled to Deadhorse—he hadn’t exactly said where he’d come from—he’d passed through the band. He had dived deep enough in his sub to avoid the radiation. But the destroyer had passed through on the surface of the water, and Vaughn said he’d lost many drones in the process, though he didn’t say how they’d died or what their symptoms had been.

“All that proves,” Lusa said, “is that Vaughn is telling us the truth about why we need to go to Fairbanks.”

“Sheesh. You had to say it out loud, didn’t you?” Nick said, squirming in his seat. “That’s the part of the plan that sounds most ludicrous. There must be twenty or thirty-thousand crazies down there, and he wants us to round them up?”

“But we need more drones to shut down the reactors,” Jimmy pointed out. “Otherwise, there’s no point building the transmission relay.”

They were right, Nick knew. Vaughn simply didn’t have the existing manpower needed to shut down all those reactors even if they did get all the stations up and the signal boosted. It just so happened that Fairbanks was near pump station number five, right where they should all meet up. It was a complete, well-thought out plan that Nick had trouble poking holes in. Except, he just plain didn’t like it. The logic was sound, and his critical mind was frustrated that he couldn’t find reasons to validate his emotions.

“Lusa,” Nick said. “Why don’t you just let me and Jimmy do this? I know Vaughn said he needed you, but we’ve been taking out crazies for the last year. There’s no need for you to get involved. And your part of the plan doesn’t sound necessary to me.”

Gone in a flash was any warm feeling or affection from Lusa, and Nick realized that was unlikely to change anytime soon. “I thought he made it abundantly clear why he needed my help,” she said. “And besides assisting you in Fairbanks—something you clearly can’t do without me—there’s more than one reason for me to sweep the eastern oil fields. As Vaughn said, there’s no point in turning on the pump stations if emergents or crazies come along behind us and destroy them. But just as importantly, my people are out there.” She pointed toward the wall, and Nick had the wits to keep his mouth shut and not tell her she was pointing in the wrong direction.

“You may have given up,” she continued, “but I’ve got more to live for than just mere survival. Those emergents are on the move; they’re heading this way and will wipe out village after village if we don’t stop them. The villagers don’t even know what’s coming. They’ve got no one to warn them. At least this way, I can help. I can be out there doing something. Then, after we take Fairbanks, Vaughn will have his army and can destroy the emergents, and my people will be safe.”

“He’s going to turn off the nukes first,” Nick countered.

“What does that matter?” Lusa said, her voice rising higher. “He’ll take out the emergents along the way. Or after he’s done with the reactors.”

“Your sure about that?” Nick asked. “He never spelled that out.”

“Why wouldn’t he?” she said. “Of course, he would.”

“What if there aren’t any drones left?” Nick offered. “You saw that one with the bloody nose. That’s what happens when you simply sail through the Hot Zone. How many drones do you think will be standing after he makes them go inside the reactors and initiate shutdown? Quite frankly, I don’t know if he can pull it off.”

“Well, what’s your plan, smarty pants,” Jimmy asked. It sounded playful, like he was trying to diffuse the tension, but no one found it funny. Nick didn’t answer but kept his eyes fixed on Lusa.

“Why are you against me?” she asked.

“I’m not,” he said, exasperated by the thought. “I’m trying to keep you alive. I’m trying to keep my promise to your father.” And there it was, the slip-up.

Fresh tears came to Lusa’s eyes, though she fought them back and kept them from rolling freely down her face. “And that’s why I have to go,” she said. “He’s still out there. I know it.”

Nick couldn’t believe his ears. There was no way Pete was still alive. They’d both heard the gunfire, how it had abruptly ended with what was undoubtedly Pete’s and the other men’s last stand.

“I know you don’t think so,” she said. “But I believe he’s alive. Out there. He and others from my family. They need me.”

Nick knew it was irrational. It might even be dangerous for her to think this way; she was setting herself up for an even bigger disappointment later, and he might not be with her when she finally realized the truth. How would she handle it then, out there with a bunch of automaton drones to comfort her? But Nick couldn’t think of any way to proceed that didn’t involve letting Lusa go. He couldn’t exactly lock her up and wait for her to come to her senses, though he’d had fleeting thoughts of doing just that—the vault made such things sound reasonable.

And maybe, just maybe, they’d succeed. Lusa did have the easier task. She was far less likely to run into trouble east of the pipeline, whereas he and Jimmy would certainly do their share of killing in the coming days. The part that made him give in was his complete inability to think of a better way to fight off the coming hordes of emergents or a way to keep the northern hemisphere from permanently becoming uninhabitable. Vaughn had a plan, a real plan that could work as crazy as it was. And Lusa, if he was ever to patch up their relationship, needed to work through her loss. At least this way she could put her emotions to good, productive use. She’d search the wilderness, warn all she could, and ultimately come back to him in Fairbanks. And if they could make it out the other side of that part of the plan, she would have gotten much of this irrationality out of her system and would have to trust Nick again. They’d have to trust each other.

“Is everybody sure?” Nick finally asked.

Jimmy seemed to see the crack running down the wall of Nick’s resistance. “Aww, snap,” Jimmy said. “This is going to happen, isn’t it?”

“We have to be all in,” Nick said, trying not to smile. “We have to be committed one hundred percent, or it’ll never work. There’s no turning back once we start this, and if one of us flakes out,”—he gave Jimmy a look— “it may mean the death of us.”

Lusa stuck her hand forward, and Nick gave her a confused look. “What are you waiting for?” she asked. “Are you in, or what?”

Jimmy solved the problem for Nick when he put his hand on hers and said, “I’m in. Let’s do this.”

Nick felt stupid for doing it, but this was better than how it had been, and he wasn’t willing to squash the group’s comradery. Slowly, he stuck his hand out above Jimmy’s.

“On three,” Jimmy instructed.

“Wait, what are we saying?” Nick asked.

Jimmy didn’t miss a beat. “Everyone knows where we’re headed, where we’ll see each other again as victors.”

Nick wanted to verbally sucker-punch his brother but bit his tongue.

Jimmy counted. “One. Two. Three.”

The trio raised their hands upward and shouted, “Fairbanks!”

CHAPTER 15

AFTER MEETING WITH Vaughn and receiving instructions on how to handle their drones, it was time for the trio to say their goodbyes. There was no time for tears or long embraces; they were all as excited as rising freshmen the first day of high school and were ready to be on their way.

Lusa was the first to leave. “Are you sure you’ve got this?” Nick had asked. All she gave in return was a smile and the words, “Still don’t trust a girl, do ya?” And then she was off to the eastern oil fields. The way she had said it, he didn’t know if she was mad at him or was simply taunting him, playfully. He watched her walk away, her blue jeans standing out in a wall of black and grey drone uniforms. At least they would be able to stay in radio contact, he thought.

Jimmy’s goodbye was equally brief, a simple high-five and ‘take care of yourself’ and ‘see you in Fairbanks’ before disappearing with Vaughn. Nick knew this was his little brother’s fantasy come to life: learning to pilot a submarine, commanding a highly trained team of super soldiers, and saving the world. He just wished he could be with Jimmy along the southern half of the Dalton to watch his back and talk some sense into him from time to time. But Jimmy was a different kid than he had been in Fairbanks a year ago. He wasn’t really even a kid anymore, not legally since he turned eighteen.

Vaughn had talked privately with Nick as if he needed special instructions. “Take them out for a spin, someplace that isn’t crawling with crazies,” Vaughn had said. “Stick to the default programming. It should be sufficient for anything you’ll run into out there.”

Nick thought that Vaughn respected him, recognized he was the natural leader of the three, but Nick also felt like Vaughn was threatened by this dynamic. Nick wasn’t fall-over impressed by Vaughn the way Jimmy and Lusa seemed to be, and this alone meant Vaughn had to keep Nick on a short leash, or so Nick thought.

Now, it was time to see what this little crew of crazies-turned-fighting-machines could do. Nick stood before the six drones assigned to him. They were ‘at ease,’ the designation Vaughn had explained was the resting default. This allowed drones to relieve themselves of various necessary bodily functions and to sit or recline more comfortably. Their limitation was that they had to stay within close radio contact.

Nick looked at his small screen that covered his left forearm. The tactical display was his first mode of command; additionally, he wore a radio headset and clear glasses that allowed him to target objects visually. A paranoid part of him questioned whether he wasn’t turning into a machine like the drones, perhaps all part of Vaughn’s plan.

Nick fingered through some of the basic commands on his display and hit the ‘at attention’ command. The drones who were sitting stood up quickly and arranged themselves into a single-file line before him. They stood between him and the jeep behind them that was filled with the supplies they would need to erect the transmission relay.

Nick heard footsteps coming from his right. He twisted sideways and reached for his Springfield reflexively, fearing an unanticipated crazy. His nine-millimeter was missing, and by the time he remembered he’d swapped it out for an assault rifle like the ones the drones used, the sixth member of his micro-army came running up and fell in line.

“Where were you?” Nick asked.

No answer.

“I said, where were you?” Nick repeated. “Anybody? Can’t you all talk? There’s nothing wrong with your vocal cords, is there?”

No response.

He looked closer at his command display. One tab that Vaughn hadn’t covered in his presentation was something called ‘sound off.’ Nick stared at it for a second, afraid to touch it. Before his entire mind was sold on the idea, Nick mashed the icon.

Instantly, the six drones spoke in turn. “One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.”

Nick was puzzled for a half-second. “Six,” he said. To his surprise, the drone that had come in late turned his head toward Nick. It gave Nick a creepy feeling, the way he couldn’t see past the mirrored sunglasses they all wore. It wasn’t so bad when they looked off in another direction, but now that Six was looking right at him, Nick was unnerved by the apparent soulless man.

“Six,” he repeated, “where were you?”

“Using the bathroom, sir.”

Nick was both surprised by the fact that Six responded and by his answer. So, they respond to their names, Nick realized. Nick chuckled when he noticed Six had several feet of toilet paper streaming from his pants.

“Six, go clean yourself up and come back.” As soon as Nick had said it, he wondered if his instructions were clear enough, if the drones could reason and deduce from the situation or if they had to be spoon-fed crystal-clear instructions. But Six stepped away, and as he did, he pulled up the ten or so feet of paper that dragged behind him. “There you go,” Nick said to no one.

“Two,” he said, picking a drone at random. He got the same creepy head turn that reminded him of the bird-like head twist of velociraptors in dinosaur movies he’d watched with his father when he was little. “Who’s in charge here?”

“You are, sir” Two answered.

“Do you answer to anyone else?” Nick asked.

“Dr. Craig,” came his response. That was as Nick expected.

“And that’s all?”

“Yes,” Two said.

“Very well. What’s our objective?”

“We have none, sir.”

Either they don’t pay attention when Vaughn talks to us, or they are programmed not to think along these lines. None of that mattered, Nick decided. All that mattered at this moment was whether he could use these drones to accomplish his mission.

“Two, how do I speak to the whole group? What name do I use?”

“We are programmed to respond to our team insignia.”

Nick didn’t understand at first, but then he noticed on each of their shoulders were star shaped emblems. Beneath the star were the words:

“Delta Three,” Nick mouthed as he read it. He was startled when the entire team thrust out their chests in response to being addressed. Seconds later, Six came running and assumed the same responsive posture.

“Delta Three, get on the ground and give me twenty.”

Instantly, the crew dropped to their hands and feet and pounded pushups. “Okay, stop,” Nick said ten pushups later.

They didn’t.

“Delta Three, stop.”

That worked. Apparently, they had to be addressed before given an order. Nick figured there was a set amount of time that the drones would continue taking commands before they needed to be readdressed. Quickly, hoping he wouldn’t have to repeat Delta Three every time, Nick said, “On your feet.”

They complied and stood at the ready. Nick’s mind wandered, and soon childish instincts surfaced. “Three, slap Four.”

Without hesitation, Three turned and slapped Four harder than Nick could have imagined. “Eww,” Nick flinched, “that’s going to leave a mark.”

“Delta Three, stand on one leg.”

They did.

“Jump up and down.”

In synchronous precision, the six-man team jumped at one-second intervals, and Nick wondered what kind of programming could possibly produce results with that level of consistency.

“Delta Three, ballroom dance with each other.”

Two spoke up, “Unclear instructions, sir.”

“I want you to waltz with a partner.”

“Unclear instructions, sir,” came Two’s response. Nick began to get frustrated by their unwillingness to obey, but then nobler thoughts prevailed: they weren’t here for his amusement.

“Alright, let’s see what else they can do,” Nick said to himself. He scanned options on his command display. Many commands seemed self-explanatory while others he was afraid to touch, not knowing what they’d cause the drones to do.

He found one that looked useful. He pressed ‘defensive position.’

The crew quickly moved around Nick, forming a circle with their backs toward him. Each dropped to a knee and pulled their rifles from around their shoulder sling and began scanning their surroundings for threats.

Mental note, Nick thought: remember ‘defensive position.’

He found another command and decided to try it. He pressed ‘target.’

“Select target,” said an electronic voice over his headset. Suddenly, objects before him started to glow red, and he realized whatever he stared at was being selected by his command display via his glasses. He looked up toward a solitary tree that stood some fifty paces away.

It glowed red, and he waited. Nothing happened. Finally, he asked, “Two, how do I select a target?”

He saw Two’s head turn sideways, though he didn’t break formation and turn around to face Nick. “Sir, when the correct object is highlighted, say ‘target.’”

That was easy enough, Nick thought. The tree continued to glow red as he stared at it. “Target,” he said.

Swiftly, the team rearranged themselves into a forward attack formation. Each member spread out equidistant from his neighbor, and Nick saw leaves and branches fall from the tree as the entire team began unloading their weapons at the target. He watched, amazed at their willingness to attack an obviously unthreatening object with such aggression. It was then he knew he could trust this team to follow orders. They would kill anything and anyone.

The team crawled forward, and before Nick could stop them, two drones pulled grenades from their belts and launched them in tandem at the old tree. Nick hit the deck, looked up and saw the grenades each bounce once, then an unbelievably loud explosion sent Nick grabbing for his ears in pain.

“Delta Three, cease fire,” Nick ordered. The gunshots stopped. He scanned his command display, but he couldn’t find or remember what he was looking for. Finally, he shouted, “Delta Three, at attention!”

Nick’s ringing ears heard faint footsteps grow louder as the team ran back to his position. Nick, still on the ground, looked up and saw the six men standing before him, chests out, and totally unfazed by the fog of war that he was experiencing.

Nick dusted himself off and stood up slowly, testing his back and joints for new soreness. Nothing now, but he suspected he’d feel it in the morning.

If he’d been before regular soldiers, he would have felt self-conscious, embarrassed at recovering more slowly than they did. But he was quickly getting used to thinking of these troops as tools, not men.

“Two,” he said, “what’s the status of the target?”

“Complete destruction, sir,” came his response.

Nick looked over Two’s shoulder and saw the smoldering spot where the hundred-year-old tree used to stand. “I’d say you’re about right,” Nick said.

He walked before them, inspecting them like he’d seen drill sergeants do in movies. The team wasn’t just in shape and in uniform; besides the irregularities of body size—they were all within a couple of inches of each other in height—they were identical: six hard-wired killers that would do anything he told them to.

Nick felt a rush of new adrenaline, not from the excitement of gunfire and explosions but from the newfound power he sensed flowing through him.

He glanced back at the truck stuffed full of gear. It wasn’t all antennas, electronics, food, and water. There were plenty of additional arms and ammunition too, some of which Nick didn’t even know how they operated—they weren’t just rifles and magazines. He thought he even spotted a rocket launcher, and he knew there were claymores and assorted explosives. No, he didn’t know how to use them, but he knew six men who did. Six men who would take a bullet for him, swallow a grenade, or anything else beyond heroic in the name of following orders.

A slow smile spread across Nick’s face. “Delta Three, let’s hit the road.”

CHAPTER 16

THE NEXT COUPLE of days passed as Nick had expected. It was a lot of walking and a little bit of fighting. Though they had the truck to carry the supplies, it was so jam-packed with dipoles and other gear that the crew had to travel on foot. Nick took turns driving the truck, never getting it out of first gear.

There had been a few crazies along the way. These were like drifters, transients that just appeared no matter how many times you cleared a given area. Nick and Jimmy, for example, had wiped Deadhorse itself clean as a whistle. But just getting out of town, Nick and the crew had had to put a couple of crazies down. The best was when he saw them coming from far off; it gave Nick time to thumb through his command display and try out a new tactical approach. So far, the preset commands had all worked fairly well, but so did simply telling Delta Three to ‘attack that crazy.’

The first pump station at Deadhorse was already secured; Vaughn had done that before Nick and Lusa had even gotten back to the vault. Nick reached the second station by the end of their first day of traveling. After a few crazies had been dispatched, Nick started getting nervous, thinking that there would be masses of them at or near the station. But soon enough—and after only a handful of unmemorable killings—the pump station was clear. They spent the rest of the day’s good light shuttling gear from the truck to the pump station.

This part of the job required some thinking. So did managing the team, but that was mostly instinctual for Nick. He was adjusting quickly to his newfound killing tool.

Vaughn had gone over and over how to erect the transmission relay. Nick had felt like he was back in school again where the teachers’ jobs had been at stake if kids didn’t score high enough on standardized tests. They used to preach the test answers ad nauseam. It was so bad that sometimes he could hear their voices in his head repeating the answers as he took the exams.

Now was no different—he heard Vaughn’s words: “Attach the generator to the refining port. Engage generator. Set up tower base. Attach dipole to antenna. Attach antenna to top of tower base. Attach transceiver box to antenna and generator. Engage transceiver box.”

That was it. A bunch of small, simple steps that amounted to little more than hooking two things together or throwing a switch. Vaughn, like his teachers in high school, had done all the thinking for him.

The hardest part of setting up the relay tower was dragging the gear to the station, which was some seventy-five yards or so away from the truck on the road. At first, Nick had joined the crew in sharing the load, his sense of communal self-sacrifice on full display. But then it occurred to him all at once: he didn’t have to be a team player. Not out here. Not for these drones.

He checked the sky, and after deciding there was plenty of evening sun left to get the job done, he instructed his crew to finish bringing the gear to the station while he waited. He probably could have taken a nap, but instead he passed the time sitting in the grass imagining what life might be like when this was all over.

After he and the crew finished setting up the transmission relay—he saw the green blinking lights and tested with his radio to be sure he was getting through back to Prudhoe Bay—Nick had the hard choice of pressing on toward pump station three or making camp for the night. Then the thought struck him: when was the last time Delta had taken a break? Their bladders would surely burst any minute.

“Delta Three, at ease,” Nick said. Had they been regular human beings, even well-trained elite soldiers, they would have made murmurings and sounds of rejoicing and relief like the steam blowing off from a pressure valve. Instead, all Nick heard were the sounds of quick footsteps either toward the edge of the station to pee or even more quickly back to the truck. He figured the latter was either to get food, water, or toilet paper.

The longer Nick waited as he watered his horses, the more tired he became, and he knew that he would sleep well tonight.

“Delta Three, set up camp. We’re spending the night here.” No words of confirmation came back, but Nick knew they had heard him and would swiftly carry out his orders. He was tired, and he knew his men had to be too, even if they would never complain about it.

After eating and finding his tent and bedding, Nick tried to radio Lusa one last time. He’d gotten through to her once along the way. As always, shortwave is problematic: both parties have to be listening for each other. There was always someone back at Prudhoe Bay monitoring channels, so Nick could always get through there. But Lusa was another story. Tonight, he wished he could hear from her, know that everything had gone alright, but she didn’t pick up. Had he been less tired, it would have worried him more, but those thousands of steps down the pipeline had beaten his anxious mind into submission, and sleep came easily.

The next morning after breakfast—the Navy MREs weren’t half bad—Nick and Delta Three broke camp and headed on toward the third pump station. The time taken to load supplies back into the truck felt like wasted day, but soon they were back on the road again.

Most of the time, Nick kept five drones with him as they walked underneath the pipeline. The sixth drone drove the truck. Although they encountered more bogies on the Dalton, Nick remembered Vaughn’s insistence about visually checking the pipeline’s integrity. No oil moving south, no refining, no energy to run the transmission relay. No relay, no point to all this.

After lunch, they reached the third pump station. For whatever reason, this station was more substantial than the last one had been, and Nick got that spine-tingling feeling again, his spidey sense telling him there were crazies nearby.

Not only that, but this pump station was further away from the Dalton, which would make dragging gear from the truck even more tedious and time-consuming, even if Nick didn’t have to lift a finger.

“Four, leave the truck and come to our position.”

A couple of minutes later, Four joined up with them. “Delta Three, follow me to the perimeter of the pump station. Only engage crazies if they are actively attacking us. Everyone, keep your eyes peeled and report back if you see anything.”

Nick checked his weapon. He wasn’t as confident with it as he had been with the Springfield, but its greater magazine capacity and its ability to hit targets past a hundred yards as well as Nick could aim made it vastly superior. He threw the selector to burst, which was the midway between single shots and fully automatic. It was a luxury to know he could afford to waste ammo, that there was a nearly infinite supply back on the destroyer and that Vaughn probably knew where to get even more.

This station, besides having a larger footprint than the last one, had more buildings and infrastructure. It was in these aluminum sided buildings and old, worn-out wood-framed shanties that Nick expected to find crazies who had hibernated here through the winter.

Nick led the team toward a small building at one corner of the camp. He felt the odd sensation of the perfectly synchronized movement of Delta; each step he took moved them a step closer, and each time he paused, they paused. He felt like the world’s greatest puppet master, except the puppets could sling lead at over two-thousand feet per second.

Behind the small shack, Nick rested for a second. He could imagine a crazy only inches away on the other side of the building’s thin aluminum skin. If they made noise, too much noise, it would begin its rampage, he believed.

Nick whispered, covering his headset microphone with his hand. “Two, crawl around this building and take a look.” There was no use putting himself in danger with six drones at his disposal.

After Two made it, Nick waited for some kind of report or for Two to retreat. Nothing happened.

“Two,” he whispered, “what do you see?”

Just then, Nick’s vision flickered, and he realized his glasses could do more than just select targets and waypoints for the team; in one eye, he saw imagery that had to come from Two’s glasses. Now he knew why they all had those shades; it wasn’t just to intimidate people. They must have tiny cameras onboard, Nick understood.

Nick took in the view. It all looked clear, but there were so many places for a crazy to hide—not that they actually did that. They seemed to have no fear or concept of death. Just like these drones, Nick thought.

“Vision off,” Nick whispered, guessing correctly at how to switch off Two’s camera feed. “Alright,” he said to himself. “I can’t put this off forever.”

He stood, and the five men next to him did likewise. “Delta Three, Defensive positions. Keep me safe.”

Quickly, the six-man team formed the circle around him as they had back in Deadhorse. He moved them around the front of the building they had been at and instructed One to kick the door in. Just like in every cop movie Nick had ever watched, One unflinchingly busted the door in. And like Nick had expected, a lone crazy screamed its wheezy screech and attempted to egress the shack.

One pulled his knife that was attached and hanging upside down from his tactical vest and slung the blade expertly toward the mad man. The blade hinged into the crazy, between its chin and Adam’s apple.

The screaming stopped, and there was a surreal moment of quiet before the silence was broken by the loud thud of the crazy falling to the floor. One retrieved his knife and re-sheathed it, blood dripping down his vest.

Nick was impressed by Delta’s ability to kill quietly and the fact that One had elected to do so voluntarily; Nick hadn’t told him not to shoot. But the silence didn’t last. Apparently, the dying crazy’s landing plus the door being kicked in—Nick wondered why he hadn’t checked to see if it was unlocked—was enough to arouse more crazies.

Nick heard doors swing open and feet pound the ground. He turned quickly and saw multiple bogies come into view. “Delta Three, spread out and attack those targets,” he commanded.

The team fanned out and began engaging crazies. Repeatedly, Nick raised his rifle, found a crazy at the end of his front sight, but was unable to fire on it before one of his team took it out. After three failed attempts to find a target, Nick relaxed a bit and simply watched in amazement as Delta swept the station area clean of crazies.

Like a well-oiled machine, Delta not only took out crazies efficiently, they seemed to be watching out for each other, progressing from one end of the camp to the other without getting any of themselves too far out from the rest of the crew. They were brothers in arms, Nick decided; though he wasn’t sure how much of this collective posture was innate and how much came from Vaughn’s programming.

Suddenly, Nick heard a familiar sound behind him; a crazy had emerged—from where, Nick couldn’t say—and Nick realized he was on his own this time. He twisted back and raised his rifle. He didn’t waste time aiming but instead shot from the hip, knowing his burst fire would cover a multitude of sins.

He squeezed the trigger.

Nothing. Not even a click.

As the crazy charged his position, Nick scrambled to arm his weapon. He searched for the safety, found it, and confirmed it was hot. And he could see his magazine had rounds in it by the thin cut-out strip that ran down its length. Only as he felt the impact of the crazy tackle him did he realize he’d forgotten to cock his rifle.

Stupid! came his inner critic. But the inner critic would have to stand in line today; Nick had to get this thing off him before it tore him apart.

The crazy, on top of Nick on the ground, scratched and clawed at him before rearing up and delivering a punch to Nick’s cheek. Nick’s head slammed back against the rubble ground and he lost vision and consciousness for a split-second.

Not good, he thought. Can’t fight with the lights off.

Nick tried to raise his hands to defend himself, but he quickly discovered the crazy was sitting on them, effectively pinning him down like it had done this maneuver a hundred times before.

Besides the sharp pain of his gun jamming into his back, Nick was pain-free, his adrenaline doing its job for the time being. But pain-free or not, he could only sustain this kind of damage for so long.

He squirmed, trying to wrestle his arms free, but the crazy seemed to sense his attempt to escape and became more incensed, more determined to keep its captured pet. The crazy was a large man, probably a late adopter of the DataMind app, because it still had considerable body weight it hadn’t lost. Not before the update and not during the winter. It leaned down, placing more of its body over Nick’s arms and torso.

The momentary respite from getting pummeled allowed Nick to think, though the stench of this man’s year-without-toothpaste breath could have been patented as a knock-out serum. Nick attempted to kick his legs up, to roll backwards and make the crazy lose its balance, but the effort was completely futile; the crazy must have outweighed him two-to-one.

Right as the crazy drew back to punch Nick again, Nick found the answer his riddled mind was searching for: his headset.

“Two, help!”

The crazy posed for a knock-out punch, its fat-hand fist drawn back nearly to its shoulder, which appeared to be a million miles high in the sky to Nick—waiting to descend upon him like Thor’s hammer.

A million thoughts ran through Nick’s mind as time indeed seemed to slow down: Does my headset still work? Is this the end? Where is Lusa?

But right as the guillotine fist began to fall, a bullet tore up the air, a foot above Nick’s head. The crazy received it but froze, suspended in mid-fall.

Two more rounds rang out, and Nick saw bullet wounds in the crazy’s chest and forehead. This time, all the crazy’s momentum was lost, and the fat beast collapsed on top of Nick.

Nick struggled to breath deeply. Both the weight of the crazy and the digging-into-his-ribs pain from the rifle he lay on made it difficult. Finally, he rolled the killer slob off and over to the ground beside him.

He looked up and saw Two standing over him. Nick attempted to get to his feet, but his body skipped a beat, and his mind’s commands weren’t obeyed immediately. “Well, what are you waiting for?” Nick shouted at Two. “Help me up.”

Two remained motionless. “Didn’t you hear me?” Nick shrieked. Then it occurred to him: he wasn’t talking to a man. This was a simple case of user error. “Two, give me your hand and help me up.”

Instantly, Two assisted Nick to his feet. Nick dusted himself off and looked at the dead crazy on the ground. Once dead, these monsters transformed. Not literally, but when the wheezing and animal-like affect was lost in death, the body resumed its human appearance. At least it did to Nick, and he wondered what life this man had lived before the update.

He turned back to Two and realized something: Two didn’t see the crazy as a man or beast; it was just one more object to be acted upon, like the tree they had destroyed. And Two and the other drones were just like the crazy, had been crazies, had had lives of their own, and the only reason Nick saw them as tools instead of beasts was that chip on their temples.

Nick turned and looked back at the camp. The gunfire had slowed, and he saw several of the drones standing in one spot, aiming their rifles in the direction of one of the still active drones who was carrying out the finishing touches of the sweep. After a few moments more, a single shot rang out from behind one of the far buildings. Then the drones began their return back to Nick.

The sweep was complete. The crazies were eliminated, and besides Nick’s dumb mistake of forgetting to cock his rifle and getting clobbered by the crazy, it had been an easy task.

As the crew made it to Nick’s position, something ate at him. He stared at their feet as they trotted toward him. Something was wrong.

“Delta Three, halt.”

They stopped cold in their tracks, but the dull rumble Nick heard continued. It wasn’t their footsteps. Nick searched for the source, for an explanation. He turned in circles, trying to triangulate it.

The rumble grew louder, and soon Nick realized it was the sound of distant engines. He looked to the sky, thinking it could be an airplane, a sight unseen for over a year now.

But then he realized the sounds were coming from behind him, south from over the subtle hill that blocked his view.

He turned, ran up the hill to the top, and saw what looked like an armada of vehicles, the most he’d seen traveling in tandem since before the update. Stupefied, Nick watched the convoy approach, ripping up the tundra plains beneath them.

CHAPTER 17

RUNNING BACK DOWN the hillside, Nick yelled to Delta Three, “Assume defensive positions!”

He reached the bottom and turned to see multiple vehicles burst upon the crest of the hill. They were trucks, but they weren’t the mismatched Dodges, Fords, and Toyotas that Vaughn had commandeered. These were green and olive drab, clearly military vehicles.

Nick stood, gripping his rifle as more than a dozen men in camouflage uniforms spilled out of the trucks, each armed with rifles like his own.

“Delta Three, hold your fire unless fired upon,” he said. The last thing he wanted to do was poke a bully in the eye.

The camo soldiers all fell to the ground, making themselves small targets, and took aim at Nick and Delta.

Nick felt the flood of adrenaline pour through his veins, his legs and hands feeling numb. He wanted to run or hide. Maybe, he thought, he could command Delta to fight, and he could crawl behind one of the buildings and escape.

“Lay down your weapons,” came a voice from a loudspeaker on top of a truck’s cab.

Nick froze, not knowing what to do. They were outnumbered and probably didn’t have a chance of winning. But laying down their weapons seemed unthinkable.

Nick maintained his forward gaze but saw the opposing soldiers crawl left and right. They were being surrounded. No way out.

“I’m warning you,” came the voice. “Drop your weapons, or we will fire on you.”

If it’s a fight they want, it’s a fight they’ll get, Nick decided. “Delta take cover,” Nick commanded.

Quickly, he and the team scattered from their positions, each taking what might be their last refuge behind boxes, buildings, and machinery. It had been a gamble, one that could have ended with them losing their lives, but fortunately they weren’t fired upon.

“Delta, when I give the command, engage target.” Nick carefully tapped his command display, trying not to make sudden moves. Through his glasses he targeted the truck with the loudspeaker on it. “Target,” he whispered, and the truck blinked red—locked in, he figured.

“Down on your faces, maggots,” came the voice again. “You worthless excuses for soldiers better listen, or we’ll do far worse than fire on you. Drop your guns and get on the ground. Now!” The speaker crackled and squelched from oversaturation.

Nick thought the voice sounded like a cliché imitation of a drill sergeant at boot camp, and he knew something wasn’t right about this. The army wouldn’t just roll up and pull their guns out, would they? But then Nick realized he was mixing police procedures with military protocol. They weren’t the same thing.

The voice came back on. “Alright, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Platoon, forward assau—” The speaker squelched loudly before he finished.

Nick, behind a crate that was probably insufficient to block any high-powered rounds, couldn’t see the trucks without sticking his head out from around the corner, something he didn’t want to do now. He listened and heard footsteps. They weren’t the sound of twenty men marching on his position but rather the sounds of a solitary soldier.

He gulped down his fear and looked out. Once he got past the fact that a bullet hadn’t zinged straight between his eyes, Nick’s vision focused on a man descending the hill. The solitary figure waved his hands like he was making a snow angel in the air.

“Don’t shoot,” said the man repeatedly.

Nick watched him, trying to decide if he should step out and meet him. The man didn’t look like the typical soldier; his five o’clock shadow was whitish gray. And though he wore camo fatigues, he didn’t wear a helmet but rather the military version of a ballcap. He stopped his advance, apparently unwilling to stick his neck out any further in his attempt at brokering peace.

Before he had time to think it through, Nick stepped out. He heard the countless clicks and clacks of soldiers regripping their rifles and aiming at him. He instantly felt his heart rate push higher as he gently let his rifle swivel around his shoulder sling in a less threatening posture.

He whispered, “Delta, watch my back. Be ready to cover me.”

“Ah, there you are,” the man said with a warm grin. Nick could see the man’s pitted face, a former acne sufferer. But now the face just seemed hardened, weathered, grin or no grin.

“Here I am,” Nick parroted. He was close enough now he could make out badges and insignias. “United States Army?” he read aloud.

“The one and only,” the man said. “I’m Colonel Ayers, the commanding officer of Thirty-Fourth Infantry Division. And who might you be, Mr. blue jeans?”

Nick looked down at his clothes self-consciously. He suddenly realized he wasn’t a real soldier and undoubtedly appeared to be an imposter of the highest order. “My name’s Nick,” he said plainly. “I’m working with the Navy.”

“Navy?” Ayers huffed loudly for the other men to hear. “Isn’t this kind of dry territory for the Navy? Which fleet, and who’s your fleet commander?”

Nick stammered. “I—I have no idea.”

Ayers examined him, tested him for deceit. His eyes were dark, and it was hard for Nick to tell where his pupils ended and his irises began.

Nervously, Nick confessed, “My brother and I were up in Deadhorse at a research station. But we were picked up by Dr. Vaughn Craig.”

“Never heard of him,” Ayers said simply. “Who’s with you?” he asked, looking past Nick toward the hidden drones.

“Six men,” Nick answered. He felt the instinct to maintain secrecy, to hold back some of the truth. But he couldn’t think of a good reason to lie.

“Let’s see them,” Ayers said, still looking past Nick. The way he said it, Nick could tell he was used to having things his way, unchallenged and the top of the pecking order. Ayers looked back to Nick and grinned. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

Nick’s mind was scrambling too much by the first proposition to be fazed by the off-color remark. “Okay,” he said. Then he spoked over the headset. “Delta Three, come to my position.” He intentionally left out anything about putting the guns down or not staying on alert. Unlike regular soldiers, he didn’t have to worry about them losing their cool. They could stay on high alert indefinitely.

Nick heard the drones’ footsteps behind him and watched the face of the colonel who seemed visibly surprised by what he saw.

“Ah, now these look like real soldiers,” Ayers said. He stepped to one side of Nick, examining the drones up close. “You can put your gun down, young man,” he told Six.

Nick looked over, alarmed. The drones still had their rifles up and aimed at the colonel.

“I said lower your weapons,” Ayers barked.

The drones didn’t flinch.

“They won’t listen to you,” Nick said. Then he added, “Sir,” which felt necessary. “They only take orders from me or Dr. Craig.

“Well, they need to learn—”

“Delta Three, lower your weapons,” Nick ordered.

They did, and Ayers raised his eyebrow and looked at Nick sideways. Nick couldn’t tell if it was a look of newfound respect or disgust.

“They can’t help it, sir,” Nick said. “They are drones.” He stepped over to Six and pull off his hat. “See?” Nick said pointing at the chip.

Ayers didn’t respond for a moment. Then he said, “You mean they’re robots?”

Nick almost laughed at the question, but he kept his wits about him. “They were crazies. Vaughn salvaged them and placed these control chips on them. They respond to my voice or command prompts.” He raised his wrist display for Ayers to see, then tapped the command for the drones to assume the prone position. Instantly, Delta Three dropped to the ground.

“Well, I think I’ve seen everything now,” Ayers said. He turned to the line of trucks behind him and yelled, “Higgs, get down here.”

Out from the truck with the loudspeaker that Nick had targeted came a short stocky soldier. He looked twenty years younger than Ayers, and he stomped the ground with each step he took.

Ayers introduced the man. “This is sergeant Higgs,” my second in command.

“And heir to the throne,” Higgs said with a raspy energetic tone.

Ayers shot dagger-eyes at Higgs who instantly heeled. “And this is…” Ayers paused, remembering. “Nick and his drones.”

“Drones?” Higgs asked as he looked them over.

“They were affected by the update, and this,”—Ayers pointed his finger toward a drone’s chip, and Nick had the distinct fear of watching someone try to pet a dog known to bite—“is how the Navy is trying to overcome the problem.”

Higgs snickered. “All this time, I thought they were the lucky ones, floating in their armored mansions miles from trouble. Guess the grass is always greener.”

Nick was confused. “Didn’t the army use DataMind?”

Higgs bellowed a “Ha!” that was more scoff than laugh.

“I think you’ll come to see,” Ayers said, “that the United States Army does things a little differently than the Navy. We don’t take the easy way out, and we don’t take shortcuts. Too much is at stake. Our chow isn’t always warm, and neither are our beds. But we continue on when others don’t. Survive. Adapt. Overcome.”

“Hooah!” shouted Higgs in support.

Nick was baffled. He’d thought that all the branches of the United States military had adopted the DataMind app; he even remembered seeing news stories about how it allowed more troops to be admitted, the forces knowing they could shape up and ship out applicants whose IQs were ordinarily too low to serve. But here he was, talking with living breathing proof that the army hadn’t taken the blue pill after all.

“That’s good to hear,” Nick said honestly. “I just thought we were all on our own.”

“It’s a good thing for you and the United States Government,” Ayers added. “We may be down, but we’re not out. Continuity of government has been maintained, though we are admittedly scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of leadership. Those yahoos in Washington all went broke like everybody else. But we have a plan and the will to carry it out.”

Nick took it all in. It was a revelation, a game changer, and when he looked at his drones, those men/machines/tools that he was moments ago so proud of and grateful for, all he saw was something he no longer wanted. Ayers was giving him hope, the notion that there was a chance the lights would all come back on, that someone besides he, Lusa, and his little brother would save the world. Someone else could be a grownup. Someone else could be the hero.

“Say Nick,” Ayers said, “what were you boys doing out here anyway?”

“The pump station,” Nick thumbed behind him. “We were making sure it was on line, clear of crazies, and we’re setting up a radio relay system that runs from Deadhorse to Valdez.”

Nick showed him the map on his command display and proceeded to tell him the whole plan, how Vaughn had masterminded it, and what their ultimate goals were.

Ayers listened attentively. Nick was starting to get used to his cool, calm sense of power. It was bridled strength he seemed to possess. And though Nick couldn’t tell what Ayers thought about their mission, he knew the colonel was considering it and its implications to whatever objectives he and the Thirty-Fourth Division were bound by.

After taking it all in, Ayers seemed to chomp and chew on something, though Nick didn’t think there was anything in his mouth. Finally, Ayers said, “Tell you what, kid. Why don’t you finish setting up this pump station’s relay—who knows, it might come in handy for us all one day. I’ll even get my men to help you set it up. Then, after we fill up our tanks,”—he pointed at the truck with the hundreds-or-thousands-of-gallons large tank— “we’re heading back to base. I suggest you come with us.”

A base. The words seemed to reverberate in Nick’s mind. Not a ship. Not a vault. A base. Bases were secure. Bases had people, food, weapons, security. And these people were real people. Normal people.

“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 smells, 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.

“The reactors?” Ayers repeated. He had a suppressed grin as he repositioned his chair. “Let’s just say, it’s an ongoing operation.”

“Vaughn showed us satellite imagery, with the plumes of radiation spilling out onto the surrounding areas.”

“Yes, they’ve gotten hot, but I wouldn’t call them meltdowns. And they’re not abandoned. But…Dr. Craig’s solution does intrigue me. The trouble with shutting these things down is being able to get in close enough to do the work. The fuel rods are down in the basements, the cooling ponds already evaporated in some, and the best we can do at the moment is continue to pipe in fresh water to keep them from going hyper-critical. If we sacrifice some drones, it certainly would help things along. Fortunately, for now, my men haven’t been tasked with any of those reactors. I pity the commands that are down there, but I’m confident they’ll finish the job.”

“What about the emergents?” Nick asked.

Ayers stood up slowly and stepped to the little coffee maker at his desk and began pouring himself a cup. “Coffee?” he offered.

“Sure. Thanks,” Nick said. The last few days had exhausted him, and he hadn’t had the forethought to bring adequate caffeine on the road to extinguish his addiction.

“Tell me what you know about them,” Ayers said as he passed the Styrofoam cup.

“Well, I don’t know much,” Nick said, sipping the piping hot brew. “Except that they’re not crazies. Not the ordinary type, anyway. When we ran into them, we just called them cannibals. Because that’s what they are.”

“What does Dr. Craig make of them?”

“He’s the one that calls them emergents.” Nick pulled up his command display, and he noticed Ayers stiffen, but Nick couldn’t tell if he was alarmed or just intrigued. “Here,” Nick said, pushing his arm over the desk for Ayers to see. “Here’s the satellite map we’ve been using.”

“That’s a live image?” Ayers asked.

“No. I don’t have satellite uplink, but Vaughn does. Back at the ship. These are just the latest maps. You can see here the pump stations. There’s station three, and here we are.”

“I thought you said it wasn’t live,” Ayers said. “How does that know where we are?”

“It’s from the relay transmission. The radio signal triangulates our position against the known points on the map, i.e. the transmission towers.”

Satisfied, Ayers nodded.

“Here’s what I wanted to show you,” Nick continued. He thumbed the map over to the east and south. There were the white-red blotches after he zoomed in. “These are the emergent camps. Vaughn says they’re crazies who have mutated or changed or something due to the radiation exposure.”

Ayers huffed. “Ah. That’s a hard pill to swallow. How does he know that?”

Nick blinked. He didn’t know. “I guess…well, where else did they come from?”

Ayers sat back, no longer alarmed or concerned by the information Nick provided. “Well, you know where they came from. You spotted a couple of,”—he raised his hands in the air and made quotes— “emergents moments ago.”

Nick scrunched his face, trying to understand.

“Those wild ones that tried to escape,” Ayers added. “You see, Nick. There’s an underclass of society that is usually hidden. Two percent of the population are sociopathic. The only thing holding them back, pushing them into the shadows, is that fact that they are afraid of being found out and punished. They don’t feel guilty. They don’t have consciences like you and me. They aren’t bothered by their sins; they revel in them. They’re proud of them. It’s the thin blue line and now us that keeps them at bay, keeps them suppressed. Well, guess what? Most of society went broke, including the police and the other upright citizens who would fight back against them.”

He waited, watching Nick work through it. “So,” Nick started before he’d fully pieced it together, “you’re saying these emergents are just…human?”

“The very worst of us,” Ayers confirmed. “The part of each of us that we don’t want to acknowledge is there. It’s our ancient past, the proto-human savagery that we pretend isn’t still with us. Civilization, modern society has stripped us all of these basic human instincts. We’re soft, weak. But mostly harmless. Well, not these emergents, as you call them. They are having the times of their lives—a veritable free for all. They band together, because now evil outnumbers good, and they know it. They know they can have their way.” He stopped and grinned again. “Until they run into us.”

Now it was Nick’s turn to smile. Ayers’s explanation made more sense than what Vaughn had told him. “Thank God for you all,” Nick said.

Ayers’s smile deepened. Then he said, “So, tell me Nick, what are your plans now?”

“I have no earthly idea, Colonel. I gotta tell you, I’m glad to hear a lot of what you’re saying. It’s good news, something I don’t get very often.”

“Are you going to go on with your mission?” Ayers asked in a dismissive tone.

“I…I don’t know,” came Nick’s response, and part of him wondered what he was waiting on, why he didn’t know. “I mean, it seems like you’ve got things under control.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that exactly,” Ayers said.

“But you have a plan, and I think Vaughn needs to be on the same page with you. His drones should be under the proper authority, not in the hands of one individual.”

Ayers nodded in approval. “Sounds like you do know what you’re gonna do.”

“I need to talk with my brother. And Lusa.”

Ayers’s eyes lit up at the name.

“She’s my…friend,” Nick said. “If I can make contact with them, can they come here? Can I show them the base?”

“Sure,” Ayers said. “Are they bringing drones too?”

“Yes, if…” he trailed off, not wanting to acknowledge the fact that Lusa and Jimmy were probably in harm’s way right now. He hoped he could reach them, get them to safety before it was too late.

“I tell you what,” Ayers said, “bring your friends and their drones. You can all stay here on my dime until you make your minds up. I’m pretty confident, however, you’re gonna leave the soldiering part up to us. If you have a choice, that is, and you do. You can park those drones here and head home or wherever you’d like. Who knows, you may even be interested in enlisting.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Nick said. He had his reservations still, especially about joining the army, but he didn’t want to sound ungrateful. He put his hat and headset back on, stood, and extended his hand, which Ayers took warmly. “I’ll contact them tonight,” Nick said. “Maybe they can be here by tomorrow.”

“That would be great,” Ayers said, releasing his hand. Nick headed toward the door, but before he got out of Ayers’s office, Ayers added, “Hey, Nick.” Nick turned back, still holding the door handle. “Find Higgs. Tell him to clear a room for you and your guests. And stay out of the shadows. I run a tight ship here, but these boys are strung tight these days, and they tend to get a little rowdy at night.” Nick thanked him and headed out.

Nick’s lucky streak continued when he saw Higgs stepping out from the same building he’d seen him enter right before the meeting. Nick relayed Ayers’s instructions, and Higgs promptly took him to an empty barrack. The room was bare bones—cots on concrete floors with crude light fixtures hanging from the ceiling—but Nick imagined it was that way in all the barracks. After Nick thanked Higgs, he called Delta Three who, seconds later, were inside the barracks. He told them to be at ease and that this was where they should be if they didn’t need to use the head or eat. As always there was no argument from them.

Nick thought about what it would be like to be away from them, to no longer have the responsibility weighing on him. Yes, they were powerful and they gave him a sense of protection, especially out in the world among crazies or emergents. But even more exciting was the idea that someone else, someone who’s job it was to fight, could do it instead. Who knew? Maybe Nick’s final act of service would be to bring Vaughn and Ayers together. The thought seemed far more fruitful, far more likely to succeed, than the mission that Vaughn had sent them on.

For the first time in forever, Nick tried to kill time. There was nothing for him to do until tonight when he was scheduled to make contact with Lusa. Back at the vault, the boys had anticipated boredom—there was no TV, no internet, no friends besides each other—but to their surprise, there was always something they should be doing. Work was welcomed in an entertainment vacuum. But here, at the barracks, there was nothing.

Nick tried to remember something his high school history teacher had once told him when his class had complained about their boredom. “Enjoy not being challenged,” had been the recommendation. The idea was that when they had grown up, had gone off to college or had gotten jobs, started families, etc., that the challenges of life would become all too present. And how true that had been, except Nick doubted Mr. Williamson had anticipated any of this.

Nick closed his eyes for a cat nap, but he couldn’t relax. The drones were stealthily quiet, but they creeped him out a bit. He couldn’t forget they used to be crazies; they still were crazies minus the chip in their heads.

After long moments of nothingness, Nick’s mind finally found a thought that transported him away. It was a bittersweet memory—but weren’t they all now? He recalled a moment from childhood when he and his neighbor friend Brad had played in a sandbox underneath Brad’s treehouse. They were too old to be playing with GI Joes, but it was what they were doing. And looking back, Nick realized it was the last time he’d felt like a child. The last time he’d shared that moment with another kid when they wished with all their might that mom or dad wouldn’t come and pick them up, that they could play just fifteen more minutes. He thought they both had known it at the time, because they hadn’t played GI Joes all summer (an activity in previous years that had been a mainstay.) He believed they had both silently agreed to this last pretense. One more time before they were too old.

And just like how that final day of childhood had ended, when Nick had heard distant gravel turning under his mom’s approaching car, Nick’s stroll down memory lane was cut short by the sound of a loud grumbling outside.

Nick froze, analyzing the threat. But quickly he realized it was just a couple of rowdy soldiers stumbling home after too many libations.

His momentary panic was replaced by a rush of positive emotion when he discovered it was almost time to call Lusa. He sat on the bed and waited for the digital clock to turn over to the top of the hour. He felt the excitement building inside; he knew this conversation was more than just a check-in. This could be life changing.

Finally, the time came, and Nick tuned in to their frequency. It wasn’t the one that Vaughn had suggested. Instead, they had agreed to use the same one that Nick and Lusa’s village had used before. Not only did they already have the frequency memorized, there was some small hope that it might allow for a measure of privacy, that Vaughn might not immediately hear them.

Nick pulled up the small telescoping antenna and frowned, fearing it was too small and the power too weak to make contact with her. But just as he finished assembling his portable transceiver, her heard her voice.

“Nick, can you hear me?”

“I hear you,” he said. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” she answered.

They were both silent for a moment, and Nick knew she was probably doing the same thing he was: checking the map on the command display to see their positions. It took a moment for the system to triangulate. Then he saw her position blink a couple times, then settle in to a steady bead. She was northeast of the base, as he had expected. Jimmy’s signal never appeared, but Nick had anticipated that. They shouldn’t be able to contact Jimmy until he was at pump station five, south of Fairbanks. Only then would the relay reach far enough.

“You’re not on the pipeline,” she said.

“No, I’ve found something.” He didn’t know why he stopped short of explaining. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Nick, I went to another village.” She was silent, and Nick knew what that meant: she hadn’t been able to get there in time before emergents had sacked the place.

“I’m sorry, Lusa,” he said. “Really I am.”

“I know. Me too.”

It didn’t feel like a good time to say it, but he didn’t know when it would be. “Listen,” Nick said, “I think you should come to my position tomorrow. Do you think you can get here?”

There was more silence, and he knew she was studying the map. “But we’re not supposed to meet until you get to pump station four,” she said.

“We may not need to go to pump station four,” Nick answered. As soon as the words left his mouth, he cringed. He had forgotten that Vaughn could be listening. “I found people that can help us,” he added. “People that can work with Vaughn and do a better job of cleaning things up than we can. I’m at an army base.” More dread at spilling his secret over the air waves. But he didn’t know any other way to get Lusa onboard, and she needed to know what she was walking into.

“Are you sure?” she asked, and Nick felt something good inside. She was looking to him for assurance, and he imagined that her unpleasant experiences out in the eastern oil fields had rattled her self-confidence. It was a mixed emotion; he felt sorry for her, but he was glad to play the role of hero.

“Yeah, this is going to change everything,” he said.

“Okay,” she whispered. “I’ll come in the morning.”

He fist-pumped the air, celebrating in the dark room. “I can’t wait to see you,” he said before he had time to self-censor.

“Me too,” she said back quickly. Another flood of positive emotion came over him. That was all he needed, all he could have asked for at this moment. The two weren’t far enough along in their relationship—could he even call it a relationship?—to ask for more.

They made a few more exchanges, Nick promising that her trip to the base would be worth it, before saying goodnight. Nick collapsed back onto the cot he was sitting on. Drones or no drones, he lost all sense of self-consciousness, his mind overfull with images of Lusa and hope that this nightmare they had shared would soon be over.

CHAPTER 20

THE NEXT MORNING, Nick realized first-hand that the old saying about how the army got more done before nine a.m. than most people did all day was partly true. Reveille woke him up early, but to his surprise, he felt well-rested. For the first time in a long time, Nick had fully relaxed. And sleep had done its job. The vault was a secure position, but it had always just been the two of them there, and he couldn’t help but feel like he had to always be on guard there. Here at the base, there were fences, armed guards, and hundreds of soldiers chomping at the bit to turn some crazy into bullet riddled hamburger meat.

After breakfast, Nick decided to be a fly on the wall, observing the goings-on of the base without getting in the way. There were crews of men—Nick didn’t know the proper terminology for them. Was it troop or division or what?—doing exercises and drills. Then he saw several convoys leaving the base and hours later, they each came back. Every time there was a cheer at the front gate, he wondered if it was Lusa coming in, but each time it was just another batch of soldiers returning home.

Sometime after lunch, he noticed the base seemed sleepier and quieter than it had that morning or the night before. He guessed that was the cost of getting such an early start to the day. There were only so many hours, and you couldn’t really save time, only spend it. And even army grunts got tired eventually.

Finally, the moment came. He heard a commotion at the gate, but it wasn’t celebratory. Not like the returning convoys had been, anyway. He rushed there and found Lusa and six menacing drones at a standstill with the two armed guards who looked increasingly alarmed. He noticed one was getting on his radio, and Nick feared the situation would escalate.

“Hold on,” Nick shouted as he ran toward the towers.

One of the guards continued talking through the gate while the other who had been on his radio turned back and waited for Nick to reach him.

“It’s okay. They’re with me,” Nick said out of breath once he reached the gate. “Colonel Ayers said they’d be welcomed here.”

The guard didn’t say anything but rather got on his radio and whispered something unintelligible. Nick looked past the man and caught Lusa’s eyes for a split second before she returned to her conversation with the first guard. Nick’s heart leaped, and he felt silly for caring so much about a girl who may or may not feel the same for him. But she was here, wasn’t she? That had to count for something.

After thirty seconds or more, the second guard heard something over his radio and turned back to the first and said, “Let ‘em through. Ayers approves it.”

And with that, the big gate rumbled and squeaked to one side, and the second guard greeted the incoming crew. “Welcome to Fort Greely. Enjoy your stay.”

Lusa came forward, followed by her drones.

“Hey,” Nick said.

“Hey yourself,” she smiled.

He wanted to give her a hug, but he felt unsure if she’d take one. Finally, he said, “You made it. Any trouble? Besides the guards, I mean?”

“No. Not today anyway. This is,” she looked to each side as she mentally measured the place, “big.”

“You can say that again. Come with me,” he said. “I’ll give you the grand tour.”

They walked down the middle of the dirt road, well worn by the constant foot traffic and convoy movement. Nick noticed, however, that the whole camp was without greenery, not just the roads. Every weed and blade of grass had been trampled to death long ago. The rest was dirt, concrete or gravel.

“Don’t guess you get many crazies coming here,” Lusa offered as she pointed at the tall fences with razor wire on top.

“If they do, they don’t make it through the fence,” he assured her. He wondered what she’d seen out on the eastern fields, what unspeakable horrors she might have witnessed. He couldn’t say, but he knew it wasn’t his place to prod. She’d tell him when she was ready, if she ever did. Some things shouldn’t be recounted more than once. Once is enough to lighten the burden, to know that someone else knows your pain and recognizes the struggle you’re going through. More than that only weakens you and doesn’t lessen the load. Or so Nick believed.

“That’s the mess hall,” Nick pointed out, “and that’s the armory over there. And you can see the parked vehicles in that corner. And finally, the barracks, what we’ll be calling home for a while.”

As soon as he’d said it, Lusa gave him a questioning look and smirk, and he realized the way he’d said it sounded like they were living together, shacking up. He started to correct himself but then decided to leave it alone. Was that such a bad idea?

“Fresh meat!” hollered a nearby soldier. Whistles and taunts followed with other men drawing in on Nick and Lusa’s position.

“Who brought in the new catch?” someone shouted.

“Bring some of that over here,” yelled another. “I’ve never had any Native tail.”

Nick reached for his weapon and realized he was defenseless, that he’d left it with the drones back at the barracks. Lusa, however, was well armed and in no mood for playing games. She, undoubtedly, had fought off direct attacks over the last few days and wasn’t afraid of a fight. Especially with the aid of her drone team behind her.

Nick saw her whisper something into her headset, and the drones split apart, setting themselves up in a defensive position and aiming their rifles at the offending party.

“Eww! Fancy,” jeered one from the mob. “How do I get me some of those? Hey, are they all your boyfriends? If so, you won’t mind one more, will ya?”

“That’s enough!” said a voice, and instantly the jeering taunts stopped, and the mini mob dispersed like fleeing cockroaches on a bathroom floor.

Nick turned and was thankful to see Colonel Ayers marching his way.

“This is Colonel Ayers. He’s in charge here,” Nick said.

Lusa reacted slowly, not changing her position right away. First, she tapped on her command display and the drones dropped their aim and reassembled in their previous formation. Then she turned to greet the colonel, but she wasn’t smiling and Nick knew it would take a lot to undo the harm that had just been done.

“You must be Lusa,” Ayers said. He extended his hand and waited. She didn’t move for a couple of seconds. Then, with a face that eerily reminded Nick of Pete, she extended her hand without smiling. She locked her cold eyes on Ayers, and Nick was glad she had never given him a look like that.

“I apologize,” Ayers said. “These men are wound tight. It’s not every day they see a pretty girl like you.”

She wasn’t buying it, or at least she wasn’t flattered by the compliment. “Maybe they need to be on a shorter leash,” she offered.

“Trust me,” Ayers said, looking up and over in the direction where the men had been, “they’ll be punished. And I don’t even have to know which ones were responsible. That’s the great thing about the army; you just discipline the entire base, and soon enough they police themselves; they make the troublemakers fall in line or else.”

“I suppose,” she said as if she was bored by the conversation.

“Colonel Ayers knows about our mission to Fairbanks,” Nick said, trying to inject some positivity into the conversation.

Lusa raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.

“Yes, it’s quite a story,” Ayers commented. “It would have been long odds, but you all might have been able to pull it off. I see you’re also in command of these…” he turned to Nick for confirmation, “drones?”

“That’s right,” Nick answered.

“Look, I don’t want to be rude,” Ayers said, “but I’ve got some important business. And I bet, if you feel anything like Nick did when we found him, you are pretty tired. Why don’t you two settle in? And after dinner tonight, we can talk again, in my office. Nick knows where it is.”

Nick nodded.

“I guess,” Lusa said simply.

“Alright,” Ayers said, his grin coming back. “It’s a date. See you all at say, nineteen-hundred hours?”

“Sure. Thank you,” Nick said. He felt the strange tension of keeping the peace. He was usually the doubter, the one who scoffed at someone else’s plans, but here he was the one trying to convince Lusa to hear Ayers out and he didn’t rightly know how to go about it. Especially not after what had happened moments ago.

After taking Lusa back to the barracks—she was fine with sharing a nearby cot in the same room—the two tried to relax for a couple of hours. Lusa’s drones came along for the ride, and it was humorous to Nick when he saw the two drone crews in the same room together, almost like he was introducing two herds of animals to each other. They looked the same, but they didn’t share the same scent; they didn’t recognize each other as being part of the same team. That being said, there were no scuffles or problems. These weren’t real men, Nick remembered. Once they were all at ease, Nick noticed that they separated themselves into two groups, each occupying a different half of the barracks building.

Nick and Lusa chatted about little things, unimportant things like a flower that she had found out in the fields that was very uncommon. They talked about Jimmy and whether he was okay or not. They talked about the food that was served here and how much they might have in storage and how they were powering the freezers. What they didn’t talk about was the elephant in the room: were they going to go on with their mission or, as Nick was becoming inclined to do, let Ayers and Vaughn figure it out?

They each took catnaps, though unsuccessfully. And when the bugle finally sounded, Nick was up and ready to go. He stood and turned to Lusa. She didn’t move.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. Then he realized she may not know how this worked. “That was our dinner bell.”

“It’s just that…” She wasn’t looking at him, and that bothered him. “I’m not very hungry,” she finally said. “I want to stay here.”

Nick was confused. This was how girls were to him: inexplicable balls of emotion. That’s how he had put it to Jimmy once when he’d complained about Lusa’s moodiness. Nick scrambled to repair the situation, which, since he didn’t understand her motives, was difficult.

“Tell you what,” he said. “You stay here, and I’ll go get supper and bring it back. We’ll be dining in tonight.”

And that did the trick. Lusa smiled, her sweet disposition returning. “That would great,” she replied.

“Be back in five,” Nick said as he hurried out the door. The trek to the mess hall seemed effortless, like he was floating there. That’s how Lusa made him feel—at least when things were going well between them.

He hurried through the line, laying his two trays on the long table that went parallel with the meal stations. The troops scooping out gobs of meatloaf and mashed potatoes looked at him funny for having two trays, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care what anyone thought about him, except Lusa.

Finally, he finished going through the line and realized he was up the creek in terms of carrying everything back to the barracks. He thought about getting help—someone would assist him, if Higgs or Ayers made them. But then he remembered his and Jimmy’s trick they’d used when they first got to Deadhorse and wanted to bring their water buckets down the hill to the vault.

He grabbed apple juice boxes—he was surprised they served grown men such kid food—and stuffed them down into his pants’ cargo pockets. Then he grabbed forks and spoons and knives and gently slid them into his main side pockets. He picked up one tray with each hand and took great care to navigate the hall without bumping into any of the rowdy soldiers.

Exiting the mess hall, the trek back down wasn’t as effortless; each bump and uneven patch of ground threatened to topple him over, and he found himself losing that warm fuzzy feeling he’d left the barracks with.

Finally, he reached the barracks door and realized he didn’t have a hand to open it with.

He said loudly, “Knock. Knock. I’m home.” He regretted his choice of words. It sounded too much like they were playing honeymooners. But quickly he realized she hadn’t heard him.

He kicked at the door and said louder, “Open up. It’s me. I’ve got my hands full.”

Nothing.

Alarm bells went off in his head. Quickly, Nick set down the two trays and opened the door. Like livestock locked in a barn at night, the twelve drones looked up at him expressionlessly.

Nick searched the room. “Lusa,” he said. No response. He rushed through, looking behind the standing drones and in the small restroom in the back of the barracks.

Nick felt his heart rise up into his throat, and it took all his concentration to keep the room from spinning around him. One dominating thought echoed through his mind: Lusa was gone.

CHAPTER 21

“WHERE IS SHE? Where’d she go?” Nick asked Six.

The drone was silent, and then with clenched teeth, Nick remembered he had to address the drone by name. “Six, where’s Lusa?”

“She went to take a shower,” came the unbothered response.

Nick’s mind rushed. She wasn’t in the tiny bathroom in their barracks; he’d checked, and it didn’t have showers anyway. He didn’t know where the showers were, but he knew they had to be close by.

He turned to go check on Lusa—she was probably fine, he told himself. But he grabbed his rifle off the bed, just in case.

Stepping out the barracks, Nick looked left and right. Where were the showers? He listened, hoping he could hear water softly running. He couldn’t.

He stepped right, knowing he couldn’t wait forever. Nick hadn’t gone three steps before he heard sounds, but they weren’t the ones he had hoped to hear: Lusa’s voice rang out above the rumbles of men’s voices. They were arguing, fighting, something not good.

Nick pulsed toward the sound, moving forward on sheer instinct. He turned down one alleyway between barracks, and the voices grew louder. At the end of the alleyway, he turned right again and faced a building that wasn’t in line with the other barracks. The showers, he figured.

The entrance was open, like a public restroom with no doors: tiled floors and a quick U-turn entrance that kept you from seeing anyone inside. He stopped short of charging in once his foot first touched the tiled floor. It made a splattering ping sound. He froze and listened. Whatever was going on, they hadn’t seemed to have heard him.

“Come on, honey. Don’t be like that,” said a familiar voice.

“Get your hands off me,” shouted Lusa.

That was all it took, all Nick could stand before he rushed into the room. He saw Lusa standing against the far wall, and Higgs stood there with her, his hands on her, like he was forcing her to slow-dance. Against the side wall stood a jury of approving, jeering soldiers who Nick knew were just waiting their turn.

“Hold it right there,” Nick said raising his weapon.

“Nick!” Lusa shouted, but it wasn’t a shout of joy or relief. And it wasn’t until an unseen man to Nick’s right pushed down his gun and sucker punched him in the jaw that he understood her shout was a warning.

After reeling in pain, Nick turned to retaliate. But before he made any progress, two soldiers grabbed him from behind and held him. The first attacker then used Nick’s rifle butt to jab him hard in the abdomen.

The wind escaped from Nick’s lungs, and he struggled for several seconds before he could draw another breath.

“Trying to play hero,” Higgs taunted. “Thanks for making things easy on us, Nick. We were going to have to come get you after we were done with your little girlfriend here. You saved us a trip, and now we don’t have to deal with those robot buddies of yours.”

Nick looked to Lusa. Her clothes minus her bra and panties were neatly stacked on the ledge of a window seal along with her headset and command display. She was turned to one side, hugging herself, trying to cover and protect herself from another advance.

Then it hit Nick: the drones. “Delta Three,” he began over his headset, “I need—”

Higgs yanked the headset loose from Nick’s head. “Uh, uh, uh. That’s being a bad boy, Nick. And don’t try that thing either,” Higgs said, pointing to Nick’s command display. “We know all about that.”

Nick struggled, trying to free himself, but all it got him was another sledgehammer punch to the gut before Higgs ripped off his command display.

Lusa, regaining her courage, leaped forward and attacked Higgs from behind. He turned and twisted, resisting the unsolicited piggyback ride as she pounded the back of his head with her small fists.

Finally, he backed up hard against the wall, smashing her. Her head banged up against the tiled surface, and Nick saw her lose her strength as she slid down the wall. Higgs turned and caught her with one strong arm before she fell to the floor. Then he swiftly slapped her hard, blood coming from her lip.

“Now, why’d you make me do that?” Higgs asked. “I was wanting to keep you pretty for a while longer. What’s the point of having first dibs if you’re going to be beat up lookin’ already?”

Higgs nodded to the uncommitted soldiers, and two of them came swiftly, each grabbing her by an upper arm, restraining her.

“Now, where was I?” Higgs said, turning back to Nick. “Ah, yes. I was going to thank you for making our jobs a little easier.”

“Ayers is going to hear about this,” Nick threatened.

Higgs laughed. “Boys, did you hear that? Ayers is going to hear about this.” They joined in the chorus of laughter, and Nick’s rattled mind grew more confused.

“Oh, don’t look like that,” Higgs said, bending down so he was close to Nick’s stooped over face. “You’re so pitiful. It almost makes me feel bad for what we’re going to do to you. Don’t you have more fight left in you?”

Nick spit in Higgs’s face, and the chorus erupted in more laughter, everyone but Higgs who then punched Nick hard in some kind of combination that revealed Higgs’s extensive history as a fighter.

Nick saw the lights go off and back on between punches, and when Higgs was through punishing him, a nauseating pain swept over Nick’s entire face. He was bleeding and it was bad; he just couldn’t tell how bad yet.

“Nick,” Higgs said, tapping Nick’s cheeks lightly like he was trying to wake him up, “Ayers don’t care about you…or your little girlfriend. He don’t even like girls anyway. Ain’t that right boys?”

They nodded, but Nick didn’t think they were so happy about whatever Higgs was talking about.

“The only reason you’re still alive,” Higgs continued, “is so we can figure out how to use your soldier boys. What do you call them again? Drones?”

Nick didn’t answer. “How can you call yourself a soldier?” he finally asked.

Higgs’s jaw jutted to one side, like he was trying to chew through Nick’s question. He squinted as he said, “I guess we can only pretend for so long. There was a time, Nick, when I thought we all had changed, that the update was giving us all a second chance. That’s why we donned these clothes. That’s why we played soldier for so long. But then, slowly, bit by bit, I came to the truth. The real truth.”

He waited for Nick to understand, but he didn’t.

“People don’t change, Nick. They never do. Don’t ever forget that. We’re all dyed in the wool. We can’t change our stripes. D’you hear that, boys?” Higgs chuckled as he turned to his men. “Stripes? I didn’t even mean to do that.”

They laughed approvingly, all but one. “Richards, you’re an idiot,” one of them said to the only soldier who hadn’t gotten Higgs’s joke.

Nick didn’t get it either, but it was clear they were in on some inside joke, one that Higgs’s hadn’t revealed just yet.

“Nick, we didn’t wear stripes before the update. More like fluorescent orange jump suits.” Higgs waited, his eyes wild and on fire with excitement as he watched Nick for the moment when he would realize who they really were.

Nick, his mouth now numb from whatever damage Higgs has caused, muttered, “You’re all—”

“Yes,” Higgs interrupted. “That’s right.” His eyes danced, elated.

“Convicts?” Nick asked.

“Bingo!” Higgs boomed. “Ding. Ding. Ding. We have a winner, ladies and gentlemen. Or, well, actually, a loser if you think about it. Sorry, Nick.”

“None of you are soldiers?” Nick continued.

“Well, that just depends on your definition, doesn’t it? Let’s think here: soldiers and cons. What’s the difference? They both get paid for crap work at less than minimum wage. They both are dead to rights and are told where to go and what to do. They both wear silly uniforms,” he said tugging on his fatigues. “And they both are a bunch of killers. You wanna know the only difference?”

Nick didn’t; but he knew he’d have to hear it anyway.

“The only difference is—correction. The only difference was that cons were the scum of the earth while soldiers were heroes. That’s it. And now, there’s no difference between the two, as far as I’m concerned.”

“You’re no hero,” Nick mouthed.

“What was that?” Higgs asked.

“I said, you’re no hero,” Nick repeated louder.

“Oh, yeah? Let’s see you be a hero.” Higgs stepped over to Lusa and kissed her hard on the mouth. She fought, twisted, repulsed with every fiber of her being, but she could do nothing, the other two soldiers holding her tightly.

Nick responded in like manner, an extra surge of adrenaline kicking in, and he tried in vain to get free from his captors as he watched helplessly as Higgs groped Lusa.

Finally, when he was satisfied, Higgs turned to Nick. “How was that, Mr. hero?”

“Let me free, and I’ll show you!” Nick screamed.

Higgs laughed at Nick’s outrage. “No, you see, that’s my point. You can’t do anything about it. Heroes and losers. They’re all the same. All that matters is your circumstances. When you can’t do anything, when you’re locked up and rotting away your life, they call you a loser, a criminal. All that matters is who’s in charge, who has the power.”

Through clenched teeth, Nick said, “Get this over with. If you’re going to kill us, do it already. I’m tired of listening to you.”

“I’m not done with you yet,” Higgs said. “And you have options, believe it or not. Number one: cooperate. Show us how to control the drones, and we’ll kill you before we have our way with her. Number two: resist and pretend you are a hero after all. Then we’ll make you watch. And when we’re all done with her, we’ll hurt you until you tell us what we want to know.”

Higgs got back in Nick’s face. Higgs’s perspiration drenched the collar of his shirt, and Nick could smell his rank breath. “Which is it going to be?” Higgs asked.

Nick couldn’t think, couldn’t work through his options. He looked at Lusa and shuddered at the thought of what they would do to her. Defeated, he said, “The command display.”

Higgs picked up the wrist console from the floor. “This thing?”

“Yeah. Press the call button. My drones will come here. I’ll show you how to use them.”

Higgs looked back and forth between Nick and the command display until he seemed to understand Nick was telling the truth. Then a sickening grin came over his face as he mashed the button.

CHAPTER 22

THE FEW MOMENTS Nick had to wait were spent thinking of a way out. He looked for weaknesses, holding the situation up in his mind, rotating, looking at it from different angles, and trying to poke holes in it. He couldn’t. Yes, his drones were capable of defeating this band of convicts. But he didn’t have his headset or his command display. And if there were one thing that prison had taught these fake soldiers, it was how to detain someone; he and Lusa were locked up in the strong arms of their own personal guards.

He stared at Lusa. She looked back and then down to the floor. He hated that. He wanted to save her, to come to the rescue, but he could tell by the look in her eyes he was just another figure in her nightmare.

Just then, Nick heard footsteps at the entranceway, and the cons each pulled up their guns defensively. For a split second, hope emerged as he wondered if someone else other than the drones might discover them. But then his heart sank twice over: Delta Three walked into the showers, and he remembered this whole base was full of escaped convicts, men who were pretending to be soldiers for their own advantage, to fool any unsuspecting souls like Lusa and him or, maybe, just to remove the stains of guilt from prison. Either way, no one was coming to save them.

“Alright, start talking,” Higgs said with his knife blade up to Lusa’s cheek. “I’d really prefer it if we could keep her pretty, but it’s up to you Mr. hero.”

Nick looked at her, and she looked back this time and said, “Don’t tell them anything.”

Higgs slapped her hard, and her head slumped down. Then he turned back to Nick and played with his knife blade menacingly.

Nick gave it one last thought—knew he had no chance to escape, no way to avoid being tortured and killed.

“Remember,” Higgs said, “play ball and we’ll make it quick.” Higgs gestured with his knife across his own throat. “And if you don’t, well, you’ll get an eye full,” he said nodding his head toward Lusa.

Nick didn’t need the reminder, but he still struggled with making the choice, either one meaning that his life was about to get much worse. Finally, the path of least resistance became clear. “I already told you; use the command display.”

Higgs picked it back up off the ground and looked at it more seriously.

“You have to thumb through the commands,” Nick explained anemically.

Higgs went through several commands and finally selected TARGET.

“Hey, why aren’t they doing anything?” Higgs demanded.

“You have to tell them what to target,” Nick told him, “either with the glasses or verbally.”

Higgs took a moment, piecing together what Nick had told him. Higgs looked at the command display, which he hadn’t yet put on his own arm, and the glasses and headset laying over on the floor. He stepped toward them, glancing back first at Nick as if to be sure he wasn’t falling for a trick, then picked them up and placed them on his head.

Higgs looked around the room and finally pointed at one of his men and said, “Target him.”

The man immediately reacted, nearly jumping straight up in the air with fright. “Hey, Higgs man, what ya doin? Cut it out.”

“Alright,” Higgs said, “cancel that. Target…” He spun around the room, “him,” he said pointing at Nick.

The drones didn’t move or react. “I said, target him,” Higgs repeated. Then he mashed the same button again on the command display and repeated the verbal command. After the drones remained still, Higgs turned on Nick. “Hey, what’s this? You trying to trick me or something?”

“No. No trick,” Nick said honestly. “I don’t know why—” Then he caught Lusa’s gaze out the corner of his eye. She was trying to tell him something, nodding her head at Higgs. Mouthing something that he couldn’t quite make out.

“Cause this deal is starting to go south,” Higgs came back, “and it’s like my daddy used to say, there’s only one thing worse than a thief, and that’s a liar.” He stepped closer to Nick, the tip of his knife placed up against Nick’s Adam’s apple. Then Higgs added, “I hate liars.”

Nick felt the prick of the blade promise to puncture his skin and windpipe, but he couldn’t help the slow smile from spreading over his face.

“You better wipe that grin off,” Higgs said, “or I’ll wipe it—”

“There’s something I forgot,” Nick interrupted, and he felt Higgs remove some of the pressure from his blade.

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“You have to address them by name before they will follow orders.”

Now it was Higgs turn to smile. “Oh, that makes sense. What’s their name, Mr. hero?”

“Delta Three.”

“Okay then,” Higgs said, “Delta Three, target this man.” Higgs stepped back several feet from Nick and pointed at him as if he needed to get out of harm’s way. The drones didn’t move.

“There’s one more thing I forgot,” Nick said, still smiling. “They only follow orders from Vaughn…or from me.”

The words had barely been spoken before Higgs began to charge Nick’s position.

Quickly, Nick shouted, “Delta Three, kill these men!”

Before Higgs reached Nick, one of the drones stepped between them and engaged him with his own knife blade. To Nick’s surprise, Delta Three began carrying out his orders without the use of their rifles.

Nick saw the two men holding Lusa each receive a tossed knife blade into their abdomens, and Nick knew they would have howled with pain if their punctured diaphragms had allowed them to breath, let alone scream.

The two men holding Nick released him, knowing they were under a greater threat from the drones. Nick looked for a weapon, not trusting his hand-to-hand fighting abilities.

The row of bystanders that had lined the wall was quickly being cut down, one by one. The drones apparently had superior fighting skills than the cons, and Nick wondered if this was navy training or, more likely, something Vaughn had built into the chips.

Nick saw one of the guards that had been restraining him get punched in the face, his head bopping backwards, and then, before he could regain his focus, the drone grabbed his head with both hands and twisted. Nick heard the sound of crunched celery over the cacophonous shouts, grunts, and punches.

He picked up the dead man’s rifle and looked for a target. As before the drones were hyper efficient and were taking out convicts faster than Nick could aim. Plus, he didn’t really want to fire if he didn’t have to; the sound would be conspicuous, and he was already contemplating their ultimate escape.

At the far end of the room, he spotted Higgs, still fighting blade-to-blade with the drone Nick recognized as Six. Higgs retreated several steps back and slung his blade toward Six who dodged expertly but fell to the floor in the process.

In a flash, Higgs snatched a pistol off a dead con, and much to Nick’s horror, grabbed Lusa from behind and raised the gun to the side of her head.

“Any one move, and she gets it!” Higgs shouted.

The room became quiet, and it was only at that moment Nick realized Higgs was the last con alive, at least if you didn’t count the crying man lying in the corner who was bleeding out faster than a stuck pig.

“Okay, let me tell you how this is going to go,” Higgs said. “I’m gonna move real slow like, and—”

Suddenly, a knife blade flew through the air and stuck into the side of Higgs’s neck. The con stood there motionless for a second, then Lusa pulled away from him, and he dropped his weapon and appeared to be reaching for the knife. His eyes bulged, and his lips moved. But no sound coming from his mouth. Then Nick saw Two walk up calmly and retrieve his blade from Higgs’s throat.

The blood spattered against the opposing wall, and Higgs grabbed for his throat with two hands before falling to the floor and spasming. A few seconds later, he stopped moving, and Nick realized it was all over. The drones had killed the cons without firing a single shot.

CHAPTER 23

“ARE YOU OKAY?” Nick asked Lusa.

She didn’t answer and quickly began dressing herself. Nick watched for a moment, noticing her smooth brown skin contrasting with her white bra and panties. Then he looked away, realizing he was gawking. He felt guilty even seeing her this way, especially after what Higgs had done to her, what he would have done to her.

“Delta Three, defensive positions,” Nick said. “Two and Four, go outside and cover us. Lay low so no one notices you and tell us if someone’s coming.”

The team scattered, demonstrating yet again far more intelligence than Nick had given them credit for. Nick remembered how they had elected to engage the cons sans gunfire. Nick hadn’t had time to even consider it, but somehow, they had made the better choice given the situation. Maybe they weren’t so dumb after all.

“Didn’t you see me?” Lusa asked.

Nick thought she was referring to him watching her get dressed, so he was confused.

“When I was trying to get your attention?” she went on. “With Higgs. What took you so long?”

Then Nick understood. He had had the answer the whole time but hadn’t realized it. The drones wouldn’t take orders from Higgs. Not then. Not ever, unless Vaughn reprogrammed them.

“I guess…I’d given up,” Nick confessed.

Lusa’s disapproving look softened. “Don’t do that again,” she said. “We can’t ever give up. Not like that.”

She was right, and if Nick hadn’t been elated to be free from death’s grip, he would have felt intense shame.

Lusa placed her arm on his shoulder, and he raised his eyes to meet hers. Her eyes were warm, kind again, the ones he remembered seeing first around the campfire. “What now?” she said.

He regained his focus. “Now, we get out of this place.”

“Should I send for my drones?” Lusa suggested as she put on her glasses, command display, and headset.

“No. Not yet. It would make too big a commotion. Someone might wonder where they’re headed and come find us.”

“Then what are we going to do? We can’t stay here.”

“Right,” he said. “We gotta move.” He thought for a second. “There’s one way into this base and one way out: the front gate.”

“Yeah, but how? I mean, they’re not just going to stand there and wave goodbye,” she said.

“I know that. We need a diversion.” He grabbed her by the shoulders like he was going to shake her and said, “I’ve got a plan.”

“DELTA THREE, REPORT,” Nick said over his headset. One by one, the drones chimed in. Lusa sat on the truck’s bench seat next to him and did the same thing for her team of drones. When they were done, she turned and gave Nick a look.

“Ready?” he asked her.

“No. Are you?”

He smiled and said, “I never am.” Then he felt electric shock run up his arm as he realized Lusa had grabbed his hand. She leaned over and kissed his cheek lightly.

“For luck,” she whispered.

“For luck,” he repeated. Then he gripped the wheel and tried to ready himself for what would come next.

When waiting became more painful than his fear of moving forward, he tapped his command display. Up came a blinking command labeled DETONATE. His finger twitched and he hesitated before tapping it. Swallowing the last of his fear, Nick smashed the button, and instead of waiting for confirmation of the orders, he grabbed the keys to the truck and turned over the engine.

Lusa reached for his hand as if she was concerned about him making the noise, but then explosions shook the glass window and they both saw the fire in the sky erupt from the northwest corner of the base.

His truck’s engine rumbled loudly, though the continuous daisy chain explosions that were working their way around the perimeter of the base made it sound like a whisper.

“Alright, Delta Three. Let’s roll,” Nick said over the headset. Lusa made similar commands to her drones.

Lights flickered, and Nick saw the headlights of the two tanks beside them come on. Then on the other side of them, another troop transport truck, like the one Nick was driving, came alive and he knew it was game on now.

The first tank rolled forward, then the second. Now it was Nick’s turn. As he tried to get it into first, he felt the gears grind and scrape. This old truck either needed an overhaul, or there was some trick to driving it that he didn’t know. Finally, he felt first gear catch, he popped the clutch, and the low geared truck jumped forward.

Nick turned the wheel to get in line with the forward two vehicles and realized he needed to catch up with them. He shifted into second gear prematurely, and the truck bogged down. He mouthed expletives, the pressure mounting. But as soon as he got into third gear, he realized the old truck would make up the distance he’d lost.

Nick checked the rear-view mirror and saw the drone operated truck follow behind them. It was the last vehicle in the caravan. Nick had decided on the configuration because of road trips he’d taken with his dad before Jimmy and his stepmom had come along. His dad had called this cruising pattern a meal ticket, the idea being that speeding vehicles moving together gave you a measure of protection from getting pulled over and ticketed. Not if you were first in line. No, you needed some idiot hotrodder to hold that position. And you didn’t want to be second either, because a cop might pull out after seeing the first car and grab you because they couldn’t catch the leader. You also didn’t want to be last for a similar reason.

But Nick knew the stakes weren’t about getting pulled over. If someone managed to stop his truck, it was likely he and Lusa would pay for it with their lives.

“Here we go,” he announced. Lusa manually rolled down her window. It felt like a mistake, especially after he and Jimmy had been on so many trips in crazy infested settlements. Windows up was the normal operating procedure, but this was different and they needed to be able to fire on whomever.

The detonations continued at ten second intervals, and Nick knew their diversion was soon to end. He saw cons-turned-soldiers rushing about, trying to respond to the unexpected explosions. Some even crossed their paths but didn’t seem to notice or care who they were or where they were going.

As Nick saw the final explosion blow in the southwest corner, the four vehicles turned right in the center of the base and faced north toward the main gates. The two tanks split apart, forming a forward line of assault. And for a brief moment, Nick felt like he was back in high school playing quarterback.

The lights from the two guard towers, which had been searching in all directions for the invisible enemies, suddenly turned on the caravan. Smoke from nearby fires rolled over them and made the lights less blinding. A voice over the loudspeaker came on.

“Unidentified convoy, halt.”

“Delta Three, light ‘em up,” Nick commanded.

He saw the barrels of each tank rise in synchronous perfection before both fired on the towers. The shots surprised Nick, both the all-consuming sound and the physical recoil.

As the convoy moved past the smoke cloud, Nick saw that the tops of both towers had been blown out. If not for the broken brick ruble lying on the ground below, there would be no proof the towers had ever been there.

“That’s a problem,” Lusa announced.

“What is?”

“The debris in the road,” she said.

Nick understood. The tanks could cross over, no problem. But their trucks were a different story.

“We need to change plans, Delta Three,” Nick said over the headset. As he searched for another unencumbered stretch of fence, Lusa’s gun erupted in deafening fire. He glanced right and saw her firing on men who were taking cover.

“They’re on to us,” she said.

Tell me something I don’t know, was what Nick wanted to say but didn’t. “Delta, follow me,” he commanded as he dropped down into first gear and began a U-turn.

The convoy’s momentum ceased, and it seemed like the entire base was upon them. Weapons fire sounded, both from the drones in the back of the two trucks as well as the surrounding soldiers. Nick knew they couldn’t last like this for long. Just as he straightened up and punched the gas, two bullets zinged through the windshield and landed on the bench seat between them.

Nick and Lusa looked at each other for a frightening moment, then turned back to the job at hand. She fired out at any and all targets while Nick tried to peer through the shattered glass that now seemed like it was permanently covered by frost.

Nick led the team back to the center of the base and turned west. He could see it now, a clear, barren stretch of fencing at the end of the road. Just as he began accelerating, a new object came into view. A slow, creeping vehicle that Nick knew had to be armored before he even saw its barrel.

“Six, take out this bogey in front of me,” Nick pleaded more than commanded.

He stomped the brakes and turned the wheel hard to the left, trying to retreat and give Six room to bring forward his tank. But Nick forgot to downshift in the turn, and the truck’s engine died. The truck stopped at a ninety-degree angle, its entire length exposed to the oncoming enemy tank.

“Get out!” he shouted. He might be panicking. It might all be premature. But he was acting on instinct, the same kind he’d used playing ball, the same instinct that defied logic and reason and told him to run out of the pocket and avoid the unseen blitz.

“Delta, get off my truck. Take cover,” he said as his foot first touched the ground. He and Lusa ran to a nearby building and crouched down.

They watched as the rest of Delta Three, minus Six and Two who were driving the tanks, spilled out the back of the truck and retreated.

Six’s tank plowed by right as the enemy tank fired upon Nick’s truck. The explosion caused Nick and Lusa to jolt, covering their eyes with their hands and arms as the massive troop carrier rolled over onto its side, forever broken.

Right then, Six’s tank fired upon the enemy. A bullseye blow, but apparently, the charge wasn’t strong enough or, as Nick’s fog-of-war mind reasoned, it wasn’t armor piercing.

Nick watched in surprise as Six’s tank revved its tractor-like engine higher and in mere seconds reached the enemy tank, ramming it hard. It made the loudest metal-on-metal impact Nick had ever heard.

Six’s tank somehow ended up partially on top of the other tank, and Nick realized both armored giants were still alive, still trying to move but were seized up in eternal gridlock. Their treads undoubtedly were warped and at opposing angles to each other.

“That’ll hold them back a while longer,” Nick hoped.

“But what about them?” Lusa said, pointing toward the oncoming onslaught of troops from the center of the base.

“Two,” he said over the headset, “punch a hole in this fence, then turn around and buy us time.” He wondered for a split second if he’d need to explain his orders, but then the blast of cannon fire and the resulting breech in the fence proved otherwise.

“Bravo Squad,” Lusa commanded, “pick us up.”

As the remaining troop carrier stopped, Nick yelled, “the rest of Delta, come with us.”

He, Lusa, and the rest piled into the truck. Nick watched as Two’s tank accelerated past them toward the center of the base. The men with rifles were no match for it, and Two’s machinegun fire laid waste to any who were dumb or brave enough to forego cover.

Still, Nick knew it wouldn’t last. Soon someone would counter Two and would use the right tool for the job.

“Let’s get out of here,” Nick pleaded. He needed Lusa to make the command.

“What about them?” Lusa asked, pointing back at Two’s tanks.

“They’re not people anymore,” he yelled over gunfire. “They’re machines. And I want to live.”

He could tell she didn’t like it, but he also knew they didn’t have much choice. This was the only way to escape. If Two’s tank tried to retreat with them, they’d be followed by the mass of men in vehicles and would get run down somewhere out on the plains. This way, they had a chance.

“Bravo Squad,” Lusa said, pounding the rear wall of the truck cab, “let’s go.”

The truck lurched forward, and they grabbed onto each other to keep from falling. As they approached the hole in the fence, Nick said, “Get him to slow down.”

Lusa complied, the truck slowing.

Then Nick spoke over the headset, “Six, are you there?”

Nick jumped out the back of the truck and turned to the mashed up, mangling of two tanks. From atop one, the lid opened, and out came Six.

Nick looked at the tanks’ treads; both tanks were still running, still digging with their rolling feet, and he knew at some point soon one tank would give out and the other would break free. “Come on, Six,” he waved.

Six climbed down, and Nick heard footsteps behind him as Lusa joined him. She gave orders to her drones aboard the tank to get in the back of their truck.

Nick turned to her and half-smiled. They were going to make it, he knew. But she wasn’t celebrating. She didn’t like losing drones, didn’t like sacrificing their lives, he knew.

Suddenly the look on her face changed from discontent to panic. “Look out behind you!” she shouted.

Nick twisted around and saw men exiting from the enemy tank. He grabbed for his rifle and realized he’d made the stupid mistake of leaving it in the truck.

“Six, defend me.”

Nick hugged the dirt as the first man out of the enemy tank raised a pistol and fired at him. He felt white-hot pings on his legs, and he knew he’d been shot.

Then he heard Six return fire, swiftly dispatching the enemy crew before coming to Nick’s position, crouching, then scanning for additional bogeys.

Nick looked around for Lusa and saw her lying on the ground beside him. He tried to roll over, fearing his legs wouldn’t work, but to his surprise they did and he didn’t feel any pain. That’s how it works, he told himself. You don’t feel a gunshot wound, not at first anyway.

He grabbed Lusa who was lying face down and shook her. He feared the worst, but she came alive with a gasp like she’d been swimming under water too long. When she turned over to meet him, a bead of blood rolled down her face, and Nick saw that she’d hit her head on the ground.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, I think so,” she said woozily as she raised a hand to her head.

“We’ve gotta go.”

“I know,” she said, slowly getting to her feet.

Only then did Nick look down and see his legs; he wasn’t bleeding and there weren’t any bullet holes. He had received blowback—non-penetrating shrapnel—from the nearby gunshots, he decided. And with great relief, he jumped to his feet, grabbed Lusa’s hand, and ran toward the back of the truck.

As they climbed aboard, they turned and watched Two’s tank continue to engage the soldiers. The tank wasn’t sitting still but instead seemed to have a definite waypoint in mind as it moved toward the barracks and armory.

Nick had a sneaking suspicion, a guess, at where Two was headed and what he was planning to do. As much as they sometimes were painfully dependent on orders—having to tell Six to defend him was an example—the drones had repeatedly demonstrated more intelligence than mere machines could possess.

Sure enough, as Two’s tank neared the armory, Nick watched its canon fire on the large holding tank, the one Nick had seen the refueling truck empty its fuel into when he’d first arrived at the base. A massive fireball erupted into the sky as all the liquid fuel ignited at once, and immediately the bright lights throughout the base went dark.

“They knocked out the power,” Lusa said.

“Not only that,” Nick whispered. “Listen.”

Like someone had lit a never-ending string of firecrackers, they heard continuous rumbles and pops of man-made thunder and lightning.

“What is it?” Lusa asked.

“The armory is on fire. All their ammo’s going off,” Nick answered.

The drones aboard the tank had done them all a great service. Not only had they given their lives fighting off the enemy, they’d made their sacrifice maximally effective. With the lights out, escape was assured. Whoever was still alive in the base had bigger problems now.

“Let’s go,” Nick said finally.

CHAPTER 24

THE REMAINING TEAMS fled into the night, the drones packed in the back of the truck like sardines while Nick and Lusa rode up front. Their speed was limited, both because they were off-road and because Nick had decided not to use headlights at first, just in case. It made their travel over the snow-free tundra an adventurous one, to put it lightly. Bumps and potholes came out of nowhere, and Nick feared he’d put the truck in an unseen ditch at any moment.

When the burning base was only a distant glow on the horizon, Nick turned on his headlights. He’d hoped it would make a considerable difference, but all it really did was ruin his night vision. These fields simply weren’t meant to be traversed by anything other than feet or hooves, he thought.

Finally, Nick and Lusa found a familiar landmark, the pipeline, it’s grey-black color camouflaging it in the dark. “How do we get across that?” Nick asked.

“What do you mean?” Lusa answered.

“I mean, we walked under it last time, remember?”

Lusa said something in her native tongue that Nick guessed was a swear word. “It’s okay,” he realized. “We don’t have to use the Dalton; at least, we don’t have to drive on it. It still helps us navigate even if we have to stay on this side of the pipeline. It’ll be okay.”

Lusa didn’t respond, but he sensed her calm a bit. They were both rattled, exhausted, and any little problem now seemed like an insurmountable challenge.

“We need sleep,” he said.

“But they’ll catch up with us,” she replied.

“I don’t think anyone’s coming,” he said. He pulled the truck over parallel with the pipeline so that they could both see the base’s red glow out the driver’s side window. “They’d be crazy to follow us tonight,” he added.

“But they’re convicts,” she insisted.

“They’re cons, not crazies. Their moral compasses may be broken, but they still have the instinct of self-preservation. Whoever’s still alive there has their hands full putting out that fire.”

“I guess,” she said, sounding unconvinced. “What now?”

“Now, we get some rest.”

“No, I mean what are we going to do tomorrow?”

Nick had thought the answer was obvious. “What choice do we have? We have to finish the mission.”

She nodded silently. “Just wasn’t sure if you were still on board,” she said.

With each sentence she spoke, Nick could hear the sandman knocking louder on her door, sleep beckoning. “Look,” he said. “I was wrong.”

She stiffened, his words seeming to catch her attention.

“I thought Ayers was the real deal,” he continued. “It seemed like an answered prayer, one that had seemed so impossible I wouldn’t have even thought to pray it.”

“It’s not your fault,” she said sympathetically. “How could you have known?”

She might have been right, but it didn’t make much difference to Nick. He’d screwed up, and he knew it. “But look what happened to you,” he said.

Lusa slid next to him and wrapped her arm under his. She laid her head on his shoulder and whispered, “But look who rescued me.”

He hadn’t been fishing for those words, but Nick was glad to hear them. They weren’t even true, not literally. It had been the drones that had yet again saved them. But it was how Lusa felt, what she believed, that mattered to him. Her words, her touch made the knot in his stomach untie and a flood of warmness come over him. For this very moment, gone was all the insanity of this broken world: all the crazies, emergents, cons. For an instant, all was right as rain.

CHAPTER 25

NICK AWOKE IN a flash of panic. A single, searing thought resounded in his mind: Did they still have the transmission relay equipment?

He knew that it had been in the back of one of the trucks, the same truck he and his drones had ridden into the base on, but he couldn’t remember if that was the one they had now or the one he’d had to ditch during their escape.

He swung open the truck cab door—it squeaked the way only old, metal-on-metal doors could. Slumped over in the passenger seat, Lusa bolted awake and said, “What’s wrong?”

“I just gotta check something,” Nick said. His heart pounded from fright, but he didn’t want to worry her for nothing. It was a coin toss, he told himself. A fifty-fifty chance.

When he got to the back of the truck, he threw open the draping canvas and squinted into the shadows of the bed. He climbed up the rear bumper, and once he’d stuck his head inside, he made out the antenna and transceiver piled up in a forward corner.

He wiped real sweat from his brow as he exhaled in relief.

“Still got it?” Lusa asked from behind him.

He turned and saw her grinning in the morning sunlight. He jumped down. “How’d you know what—”

“You’re not the only one with a brain around here,” she teased. “I checked it last night when I…when I was getting ready for bed.”

He suppressed a chuckle, amused at her for not wanting to say that she had gone out to pee. On the one hand, she wanted to be seen as a warrior, an equal in this life or death struggle. But she also wanted to retain her modesty. It was endearing to Nick.

His warm fuzzy feeling shifted into dread as he turned and looked south. They were heading into danger, and he hoped they were both left standing when it was all said and done. He couldn’t afford warm and fuzzy feelings right now.

“Guess we better get a move on,” he said.

“I guess so,” came her response. “Right after breakfast.”

He smiled, then added, “And coffee.”

It was only then that Nick realized how much they would have been up a creek had they been driving the wrong truck. Not only would they not have the transceiver and antenna, they also would be without food and water and would have been forced to radio back to Vaughn for help.

After breakfast, the convoy drove south alongside the pipeline. Fortunately, during this stretch the pipeline closely paralleled the Dalton. It was unlike the more mountainous portions of the pipeline further north. Nick was grateful they didn’t have to choose between scaling mountains to stay with the pipeline or abandoning their vehicles and walking the highway on foot.

When it was close to lunchtime, Nick spotted a structure in the distance. It was hazy, the late summer sun making waves in the air, but he recognized it none the less. It was Fairbanks’s tallest building, the Polaris building. Nick remembered it having a red blinking light on it before the update, much like the one that was still working back at the vault in Deadhorse.

He thought the first sign of Fairbanks would fill his heart with dread—he surely hadn’t been looking forward to this part of the mission. But it didn’t. He felt a subtle boost, a release of dopamine and hope as he considered that they were almost there and that if they could pull this off, things could be different. The life he wished he had with Lusa could be his. Plus, this meant they were getting close to the fourth pump station, and that meant one more thing: they should be close enough to make radio contact with Jimmy.

Moments later, Nick and Lusa realized they were nearing the fourth station. Up ahead, a deeply recessed gravel road cut underneath the pipeline. And they knew that the pump station lay out of view, west between the pipeline and the Dalton.

Nick stomped the gas pedal and charged the truck toward their penultimate hurdle.

“Shouldn’t we…um, think about how we’re going to do this?” Lusa questioned.

Had it been the first or second station—heck, if they hadn’t gone through what they had at the base, Nick would have agreed. But he was over this, and he had complete confidence in Delta Three to handle the situation.

“Watch this,” he said, before turning right under the pipeline and driving into the pump station. As soon as they’d stopped, he saw the first door from one of the nearby shacks fly open. They know we’re here, he thought.

“Delta Three, clear this station of crazies. Go!”

Immediately, four of Nick’s drones jumped out the back of his truck and began engaging hostiles.

“Let’s see if our boys can play nice together,” Lusa said. “Bravo Squad, engage crazies. Assist Delta Three.”

Then her team joined the fray. The combined forces worked together seamlessly. If Nick hadn’t spent a few days with his drones, he wouldn’t have been able to tell the two teams apart. He noticed one new distinction: the drone named Three had picked up new armament. Nick didn’t know when it had happened or why Three had decided on it, but the new gun that he carried was oversized and heavy. It was an M249 magazine fed squad automatic weapon (SAW).

Nick laughed when he saw a single crazy—apparently the last one—charge Three’s position. Three started up the machine gun, and Nick saw the tip of the barrel lift from the recoil. The heavy machine gun chut chut chutted, first ripping up dirt and gravel before finding its target and turning the approaching beast into hole-riddled dead meat.

Nick and Lusa watched the camp for signs of life. Delta and Bravo continued searching buildings, checking behind structures, but gone was the gunfire. And when several of the drones returned to the truck, Nick knew the sweep was complete.

“That was easy,” he said.

“Yeah,” Lusa agreed. “I hope Fairbanks goes this smoothly.”

Nick knew better than to hope for that. A smooth time wasn’t an option. Survival—that would be a good goal. The two of them still possessing life and limbs—that would be something to hope for. But wishing for more was counterproductive, he believed. It was like a heavyweight champ hoping he doesn’t have to get punched in a title fight. Getting banged up was part of the deal, and they were about to enter a war zone. No, correction—they were about to create a war zone. And war meant casualties. Plain and simple.

They coordinated their efforts, instructing their teams on how to set up the transceiver relay and hook up the generator to the existing micro-refinery. Nick thought about filling up their vehicle’s fuel tanks—the truck was about half full—but he knew they were close enough to Fairbanks that it wouldn’t matter.

After the blinking light on the tower came on, they both looked down to their command displays. Soon their screens showed the new connection link up with the existing relay. And then, much to Nick’s satisfaction, a new series of connections appeared, showing the rest of the pump stations south of Fairbanks all the way to Valdez.

“Jimmy did it,” Nick pronounced. “He got the rest of the relays up.”

“That’s good news,” Lusa agreed.

“You bet it is. Now, the chain of towers is complete and even if one goes down, Vaughn said the towers can still make the connection. Every other one could go black and the network would still work.”

They both heard a sound over their headsets that was brand new. They looked at each other questioningly as if the other one had done something to create the soft electronic birdcall they both heard. Finally, Nick saw the INCOMING CALL message light up on his display.

Hoping it was his brother, he hurried to smash the button and open up the shortwave channel.

“Hello,” Nick said.

“Nick, you did it.” It was Vaughn’s voice, and Nick was a little disappointed. Still, the congratulatory tone made the moment a positive one.

“Yeah, I guess so,” he replied.

“And Lusa’s there with you?”

Nick knew that Vaughn already had the answer, that his network triangulated their positions. “Yeah, she’s here.”

“Hi, Vaughn,” Lusa chimed in.

“Great,” Vaughn said, “It’s wonderful to know you’re both alright. As I’m sure you can see, the transmission relay network is complete, which means we should be able to patch Jimmy in if he’s got his ears on.”

Nick snickered. That was the kind of expression his brother liked to use, old trucker CB jargon, and here was Dr. Craig saying it. But Nick knew the real reason he laughed was because of positive anticipation of hearing his brother’s voice again.

Seconds later, Nick and Lusa heard a pop and crackle followed by the tail end of a transmission: “…little late, don’t you think? What took you guys so long?” It was Jimmy’s voice.

“Little brother,” Nick said, “we hit a few snags, but we’re good now. Lusa and I are both here at the fourth station.” Nick had eyed Lusa knowingly when he had said snags. He hoped the army base didn’t come up, though he knew Vaughn might have noticed their detour if he had been monitoring them closely.

“Better late than never,” Vaughn said. “Tell me, you three, how is everyone? Are you ready to proceed with the plan?”

There was a slight pause over the airwaves, and Nick and Lusa looked at each other, taking stock of their resolve.

“I’m ready,” said Jimmy. “These drones are awesome. Nothing could touch us down here. Let’s do this.”

Jimmy’s exuberance was both refreshing and made Nick cringe. It was the wrong attitude to have; what they were up against shouldn’t ever be taken on lightly. For what it was worth, Nick knew that Jimmy’s part probably would be easier or, at least, would involve less direct conflict with crazies. But Nick and Lusa would have their hands full.

“Yeah, I think we’re good,” Lusa said. Nick looked at her, surprised by her grabbing the reins.

“Alright. That’s good to hear,” Vaughn said. “From now on, our communications should remain crystal clear. So, if you get in over your head, you need to let me know. I’ll do what I can to assist you from my end.”

Nick interpreted Vaughn’s message: it really meant, you’re on your own, because Vaughn was several hundred miles away on his ship in the Prudhoe Bay. Or at least, that’s where he’d said he would be after dropping Jimmy off in Valdez. For some strange reason, Nick noticed he couldn’t get a ping on Vaughn’s position on the map. He understood it was almost certainly by design. Nothing about Vaughn or his plans were left up to chance.

“Wish us luck,” Nick said ironically. “We’re going to need it.”

“Just keep to the script,” Vaughn admonished. “You should be fine if you follow the plan exactly.”

Nick took Vaughn’s words to mean that he knew about their movements to the army base. It was a wink and nod indicating Vaughn was the one in charge, the all-seeing eye of Horus who meted out justice and mercy as he saw fit.

Nick wanted to push back, to argue that it was easy for Vaughn to say that, out of harm’s way on his floating castle. But he bit his tongue.

“Moving on to Fairbanks,” Lusa said, again taking charge when Nick waited too long. He didn’t like it.

“Moving on to Eielson Air Force Base,” Jimmy announced. “Nick, I’ll radio you from there before you pull the trigger.”

Now it was Nick’s turn to send some childish trucker talk his brother’s way, something he knew would make him smile. “Roger that, good buddy. I’ll catch you on the flip side. Delta Three, out.”

“Charlie Five, out,” came Jimmy’s cheerful response.

“Bravo Squad, out,” Lusa spoke, joining in the pretense.

Surprisingly, Vaughn didn’t speak. Nick imagined that the always serious scientist was puking his guts out over the ship’s bow, repulsed by their childishness and the fact that he had entrusted this operation to three kids who hadn’t been old enough to buy alcohol or rent a car before the update. Yet here they were, handling drones, using state-of-the-art technology, and saving the world.

Lusa, taking the lead once more, touched Nick’s hand. As before, the electric shock rose up his arm. She leaned over to repeat the ritual, but Nick turned his head at the last second and kissed her on the mouth. She pulled back, surprised but with a grin.

“For luck,” Nick said. “We’re going to need all we can get.” Then he leaned in and kissed her again, knowing it might be the last chance he’d ever get.

CHAPTER 26

“HEY, KEEP IT on the road, Bubba,” Jimmy said from the back of the Volkswagen bus he’d commandeered a few miles back. The original truck they’d been using since Valdez had overheated, and Jimmy couldn’t think of a better replacement vehicle than this one. The drone he’d renamed Bubba looked up in the rear-view mirror and quickly back down at the road.

“I saw that, Bubba,” Jimmy growled. “You keep up those dirty looks, and you’ll be walking the rest of the way.”

All that was missing was a real audience to enjoy his chicanery. Another bump in the road, and the flower-power bus with giant peace signs hand painted on each side panel shuddered like its wheels would come off their axels. One nearby drone nearly fell out of his seat.

“Keep it together, Bubba,” Jimmy said. “Ten and two. Head on a swivel. Defensive driving. Steve here almost got hurt. You wouldn’t want that, would ya?”

As much fun as Jimmy had had messing with his team, he’d learned quickly that they didn’t reply to questions that weren’t painfully simple. Yeah, they knew how to think through a combat scenario just fine, but sarcasm was totally lost on them. And asking them to tell you about their life aspirations or whether they got enough hugs as children was pointless. He knew; he’d tried.

Stretched out on the back seat, what had been some hippy’s bed once, Jimmy took small comfort in the irony that he was transporting a pack of terminator-esque killers in a make-love-not-war emblazoned vehicle. If only Nick were here to see this, he thought. But soon enough they’d be together again.

The van slowed, and Jimmy sat up. “What’s happening, Bubba?”

“Approaching Eielson, Supreme Chancellor and Viceroy to the Galactic High Command,” said Bubba.

Jimmy’s new title was another little tweak he’d made with the drones. “Charlie Five, titles off,” he instructed. There wouldn’t be time for games if they got into a fight. And he was expecting just that. He glanced over at the pile of supplies on the bed and ran over in his mind the sequence of steps he was supposed to take with them.

He saw the base up ahead. It was understated, like the small one his stepdad had gone to one weekend a month when he was part of the National Guard. And for a second, Jimmy questioned whether this was the same place. He couldn’t remember.

The bus slowed down on the highway, and Jimmy saw the fenced-in base with its training obstacle courses, parked vehicles, hangars, and a runway. Sure enough, there were a couple of cargo planes parked at one end, and Jimmy’s heart skipped a beat as he knew Vaughn’s plan would work.

“Pull in, Bubba. Charlie Five, look alive,” he said. The team of drones, minus Bubba, racked their rifles and began scanning their positions. “Silencers on,” Jimmy instructed. They were getting too close to civilization to make unnecessary noise. If he got bogged down here with too many crazies, he wouldn’t be able to complete the mission.

The bus pulled into the open gate, and Jimmy had the team roll down the windows. It increased their vulnerability, but it also gave them more fighting power. Jimmy eyed an oversized Hummer and its bullhorn speaker mounted on top as they passed by it. Then he heard the Volkswagen’s squeaky wheel pipe back up. He’d noticed it before when they’d first taken the bus, but as they’d sped up the squeak had stopped. Now, at the worst possible moment, it had returned.

“Move toward that plane, Bubba,” he said pointing. “Say, Raoul,” he said to another drone, “do you know what kind of plane that is?”

“It appears to be a C-28,” Raoul said.

“Shut up, Raoul,” Jimmy said. “Darn know-it-all.” If there was one thing, one piece of trivia these chip driven humans knew, it was models and specs of military equipment. Jimmy imagined that Vaughn had somehow uploaded every military field manual into these chips. He wondered if the knowledge was still inside the chips or if the drones possessed it internally.

“Bogeys,” announced Bubba.

“Charlie Five, engage,” Jimmy said after he spotted the aggressors: a couple of crazies from a nearby warehouse charged their position.

Bubba kept the bus moving, and the team expertly put down the crazies. These kinds of killings had become commonplace, and Jimmy wondered if this was what it was like a hundred years ago, to be on the last few days of an African Safari when the killing had gotten uninteresting, even boring. A flash of stupidity made him laugh as he imagined mounting the heads of crazies he’d slain on the wall of his future abode.

“Okay, Bubba. Stop here,” Jimmy instructed. The bus creaked to a stop, and Charlie Five and its leader scanned their surroundings. No movement.

“Shut off the engine,” Jimmy said.

Nothing.

“Aw, crap. I forgot, Simon didn’t say. Bubba, shut off the engine.”

The statuesque drone complied, and Jimmy listened carefully. A far off click clack sound caught his attention. He tried to zero in on the source, twisting his neck and body around. Finally, he spotted a sign hanging on the distant fence that read: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Missing a tie-down, it flapped in the wind.

“Alright Charlie Five, everybody out.”

The crew moved swiftly as if this command was just as important as killing a crazy or defending their leader. Indeed, Jimmy figured, the drones cared equally about every command. That’s why they were so effective at killing; they didn’t care more or less about it. It was just one more thing they had to do, one more emotionless job.

Jimmy counted the planes. There was some embedded variability built into Vaughn’s masterful plan. Just as had been predicted, there were three planes that looked like they could do the trick. The problem really was that the runway was so tiny, there would be a considerable lag in between takeoffs.

“Bubba, Steve. Do you think you can fly that?” Jimmy pointed at the twin-propeller C-28 airplane already parked on the runway.

“Affirmative, sir,” Bubba said.

Jimmy stood with his hands on his hips enjoying the thought. “Well then, you know what to do. Get to work.”

CHAPTER 27

A PAPER BLEW across the street, scraping loudly as it went, and Nick felt resentment toward the inanimate object. They didn’t need more sound right now. Any false move, any sudden noise could blow their entire plan sky high.

He looked across the street and caught Lusa’s gaze. She gave him a smile that he gave back with cloaked insincerity. This wasn’t a game, he thought. Sure, their drones were a measure of protection, an insulative buffer from the would-be attackers, but four or five drones each was no match for the twenty or thirty thousand crazies that may be here in Fairbanks.

They were still north of downtown, north of the Chena River and its bridge that led to the Golden Heart Plaza and Griffin Park to the east. This section of town hadn’t presented them with many bogeys: a couple strays here and there that the drones put down with their less-than-lethal dart guns. But of course, this section of town hadn’t been the most congested area before the world went broke either.

The tranquilizers were a feature of Vaughn’s plan that Nick had always questioned. Even elephant tranquilizers took time to have an effect, Nick had thought. But Vaughn had promised the poison in these loads acted via a neuro-chemical pathway rather than the bloodstream itself. It was comparable to cyanide except for its nonlethality.

Fortunately, Vaughn had been right, and the darts had put down crazies with only about a two second delay. It had seemed odd to see a running crazy wheeze and whine, then suddenly fall on its face. Nick thought it seemed unnatural to take down a crazy without spilling blood or guts first.

The thing that most troubled Nick was the fact that the tranquilized crazies weren’t really dead. Vaughn had promised the effects were long lasting, but what if the neurotoxin wore off faster than anticipated? What if all the crazies woke up?

Nick saw the old Immaculate Conception Church on the east side of the street where Lusa’s team walked. It had been an icon of Fairbanks. He wondered if it still possessed clergy inside, if they too had taken the DataMind bait. He guessed many people had stopped attending church altogether after they’d experienced the downloadable nirvana.

“Is that it?” Lusa whispered over the headset.

Nick looked over and saw her pointing up ahead. He topped the small hill she stood on and spotted the bridge over the Chena River.

“Yeah, that’s it,” he said. Nick thought he’d be excited as he had been earlier that day when he’d first laid eyes on the Polaris Building, but now he felt disillusioned by it all. Things were going to go bad; he just knew it.

They reached the end of the city block and hugged the sides of the buildings, scanning their surroundings for threats. This was where things could get hairy, Nick knew. They had to get out on the bridge without being noticed by too many crazies. The coast seemed clear, but that was usually the case until it wasn’t.

“Let’s get this over with,” Nick said. And the two teams went to work. Nick sent Delta Three to the far end of the bridge, the end they would need to take to proceed into downtown Fairbanks, and Lusa stationed her drones on the north side to cover their rear.

Nick tried to take the heavy PA speaker from Lusa’s hands.

“I’ve got it,” she said. “You’ve got your own to carry.” She gestured with her head toward his backpack.

He relented. All he was trying to do was help, protect her, and keep his promise to her father, but all he seemed to get for it was grief.

When they reached the center of the bridge, they knew they had to hurry. They couldn’t stay out here in the open forever.

“Now what?” Lusa asked.

Nick bent down on one knee, and as he did, he had the insane thought of this is what it’s like to propose to someone and then does anyone in the world still do that? Then he said, “Climb up.”

Lusa seemed to understand immediately and carefully stepped first on his back, then onto his shoulders. Nick then lifted up the heavy speaker, and for a brief moment they nearly lost their collective balance.

“Ready?” he asked, grasping her ankles with his hands.

She said she was, and soon the two were moving skyward. It reminded Nick of playing chicken in the pool. And then it occurred to him, that was exactly what they were doing. Except instead of pushing against another two-person column with the loser falling into water, they were pushing against a multi-thousand column of blood thirsty maniacs. And the consequences…

“How do I—” Lusa stopped, answering her own question.

Nick strained his eyes and head to look upward and watched as she held the speaker with one hand—he could tell it was a strain by the muscular tremors, and he feared she would drop it and ruin the whole plan. She looped the oversized plastic tie-off over the bridge bracing. Once she had completed the loop, she cinched it tight and released her grasp.

The PA speaker swung precariously for a moment, then the two of them swung in a similar fashion before Nick dropped down again on one knee and let Lusa off.

“We did it,” she said.

He stood to examine their work, and a twinge of pain caught him before he could straighten his back. “Yeah,” he said, reaching a hand behind him to rub the soreness. “I guess so.” The speaker was now motionless despite the gusts of wind that recurred, and Nick believed it would last long enough to get the job done.

He looked around and marveled that they hadn’t been accosted by crazies yet. “Come on,” Nick said, “we gotta move.”

They went south over the bridge and brought their drones with them. As Nick stepped left onto green grass, he felt a sense of exhilaration, the same feeling he used to experience playing football when he would narrowly dodge a tackle. This might just work, he thought.

Holding Lusa’s hand, Nick led the teams east to Griffin Park. When they’d reached a shady spot under a large oak tree, they stopped. Nick looked back toward the bridge. He could barely make out the white plastic encased PA speaker hanging at its center.

He then retrieved a case from one of the drones and took out the only weapon they still had that shot live rounds. He began assembling the rifle, locking the barrel into the receiver.

“You sure you can do this?” Nick asked. He could tell she didn’t like the question.

“Yes, and I don’t need that,” she said eyeing the rifle. “Vaughn said to leave those behind.”

“This is just a little insurance,” Nick insisted. “If things go badly, you may need to fight your way out of here.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “One of these days, you’ll trust me.”

Nick bit his tongue. He didn’t want to get into an argument. Not here. Not now.

After handing her the assembled weapon and putting two extra magazines in her pack, Nick pulled up his command display. He was glad to see that the radio relay was still fully functional.

“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 increasingly 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.

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.

He waved back and looked forward to the moment when he’d get to embrace her. Then he saw her bend over to the rooftop floor. The drones followed her lead, doing the same. Then they all stood with gas masks on, and Lusa made exaggerated gestures toward the street below. Nick realized she was trying to warn him about the rising gas but didn’t understand that he was entirely without gear. Nick raised his hands palms up and shrugged. Oh well, he thought. He’d had his wisdom teeth out last year. Getting gassed wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

Then Lusa started waving her hands wildly like she was doing jumping jacks. Nick gave her another what-do-you-want gesture. Then she started pointing at him. Behind him.

Nick turned and spotted a figure in the doorway. In all the commotion, he hadn’t heard it open. He cursed himself for being so stupid. He had known the door’s lock was broken, but he’d been mentally lazy and forgotten.

The crazy was big, muscular, a former meat head. And Nick wondered why it wasn’t attacking. He watched the bald crazy in a wife-beater undershirt as it turned its head, seeming to notice the thunder from down under on the street, then turning back to Nick. It was trying to make its mind up, Nick realized.

Nick stood motionless, hoping the thing would be a good little crazy and do what all its brothers and sisters had done and hit the street. But there it stood. A moment later, the crazy locked eyes with Nick, and it was then that the decision seemed to have been made.

The crazy grunted, lowered its shiny head, and charged Nick.

Nick scrambled, unconsciously reaching for his absent weapon, and by the time he got his wits about him, the crazy impacted him, slamming him back to the ledge.

Nick felt his feet first slide, then go airborne. Then he realized he was going over the side.

A strong hand grabbed his shirt, stopping him. When the crazy had Nick sufficiently detained—half his body hanging over the edge, half sandwiched underneath the muscle-bound killer—it commenced pounding him.

The heavy fist came around with dreadful regularity. Just as Nick thought he could shake off the last punch, another crashed into the side of his face. Nick felt his jaw go numb, and he had the fleeting thought that it was broken.

Apparently satisfied with the beating, the crazy pulled Nick back a couple feet so that his back was painfully wedged against the corner of the ledge. The beast moved slowly now, like a butcher after the kill, moving on to skinning and gutting.

Nick felt the large man’s legs straddle his waist and then wrap his two giant hands around his throat and squeeze. The sensation wasn’t one of choking, of gasping for air. There was no air to breath. There was nothing. Nowhere for what little air that was left in Nick’s lungs to go.

Nick felt like his eyes would burst out of his head as he searched in vain for someone or something to help him. He saw the metal pipe laying in the corner several feet away. If only he could reach it.

He tried to grab the man’s hands and peel them off his throat, but the vicegrips were locked on, and Nick thought he saw the crazy smile at his feeble attempt to free himself.

Nick kicked and squirmed in futility like all dying prey animals do.

Then Nick lost something. The panic disappeared, and he felt his extremities go numb. If he was still flailing, he could no longer tell.

Staring into the eyes of his killer, Nick’s world began to fade. The light became dim. Nick looked past the crazy at the waning sun, which he noticed no longer hurt his eyes. Nick’s vision narrowed, growing black from the periphery until all that was left were pinholes of sunlight. Then nothing.

CHAPTER 33

NICK’S BODILESS SELF moved higher into soft warmth. He was there, though he didn’t know where there was. Nor did he care. He simply was without needing to be, without needing to remember where he had been or know where he was going next. Was there a next?

He felt himself move. He was drifting. Somewhere. He didn’t know where. Then the warmness dissipated without warning, and Nick knew he could stay here no longer. In a microsecond, Nick’s consciousness flashed downward.

He gasped and felt the fiery fuel of oxygen burn his lungs. Life returned with a vengeance along with the conscious suffering required to sustain it.

Nick opened his eyes, squinting at the orange, yellow glow that surrounded him. The sun—where was the sun? he thought. He found the golden orb closer to the horizon, and it was only then he realized he wasn’t looking at the sky. Not directly, anyway. He was looking through cloth or canvas, inside a temporary shelter, a tent that was illuminated by ambient daylight.

He turned his head and felt stiffness that he soon discovered was not isolated to any one joint. He was in bed, and there was a row of empty beds beside his. On the other side of the drafty room was another row of empty cots. As he swung his legs out from under the sheets, he noticed he was wearing a hospital gown. He felt a sudden flutter in his chest as his heart seemed to only now be waking up and was working double-time to maintain pressure.

As he stepped down with bare feet onto the cold, concrete floor, he felt the tug of an attached IV in his left hand. Nick stared at it for a moment, trying to make sense of it and the rest of his surroundings. He barely knew who he was, let alone where he was or how he had gotten there.

Sufficiently dissatisfied, he pulled off the multi-layered tape that had held the IV port into the top of his hand. Sharp pain taught him to remove the adhesive strips from both sides of the port first and then pull out the inch-and-a-half long needle. He dropped it, and the port hung from the mobile pump station, stopping a foot from the ground where it swung and dripped.

“Hello,” Nick spoke cautiously. He called out again, louder this time, as he passed the foot of the bed. Just then, through the flaps at one end of the tent emerged a figure that made Nick wonder if he was dreaming. The bald, muscular man resuscitated Nick’s memory, of the past several days, of the update, of Jimmy and Lusa and the Polaris building and this man in front of him, his killer.

Nick jumped back with wobbly legs, grasping the bedframe at the foot of the bed for support. He wanted to run, to arm himself, something. But soon, his mind calmed as he realized the crazy wasn’t attacking, wasn’t presenting any threatening moves at all.

Nick looked him over more closely. “Well I’ll be…” he said. Then as the wave of relief swept over him, Nick chuckled, then belly laughed.

He walked up to the man, examined the chip in the side of his head and said, “Not so tough now, are you?” He paused, savoring the moment and rewinding his most recent memories. Apparently, the gas had reached the top of the Polaris building in time to knock the two of them out. And, Nick recognized, with no time to spare.

“Where is everybody?” Nick asked the new drone. When it didn’t answer, he realized he didn’t know its name and wouldn’t get anywhere playing Simon-says.

Nick heard the sounds of footsteps outside, so he moved past the beastly drone. He squinted as he exited through the flap, his tender eyes adjusting to brighter light. He shaded his eyes with one hand and surveyed his surroundings. He was still in Fairbanks, he realized—up near the Immaculate Conception Church north of the Chena river bridge. Covering the street in organized rank and file was a drone army, uniformed and under complete control.

“Aw, there’s sleeping beauty,” said a voice. Nick turned just as a gust of wind tried to blow his gown into a more embarrassing configuration. He patted down his already conspicuous clothing, feeling like he was in that classic shot of Marilyn Monroe over the street grate.

“Vaughn,” Nick said when he saw the man. “Am I glad to see you.”

“I bet you are, young man,” Vaughn said taking Nick’s hand in his as warmly as the cold fingered doctor could. “I guess you’ve got some questions for me,” Vaughn said.

Nick knew he should, but his mind worked slowly, still partly asleep. Nick started, “How long…”

“Let’s see,” Vaughn said, checking his command display. “You’ve been unconscious for just over seventy-two hours.”

“Three days?” Nick exclaimed.

“I told you the gas was effective,” Vaughn smiled.

“Yeah, but…What about all these?” Nick waved his hand at the thousands of drones in the impromptu training yard.

“We didn’t exactly wait around for them all to wake up,” Vaughn explained. “Fortunately, I already had drones ready to help plant chips on the new recruits. Took a solid ten hours from when I first got here.”

Nick simply stared at his surroundings, taking in the moment and trying to appreciate what success looked like. From across the way, he spotted another familiar face. Jimmy stood at the head of a group of drones, addressing them with commands that Nick couldn’t hear.

“I can see you’ve got some catching up to do,” Vaughn said, seeing Nick’s focus. Then he called for Jimmy who turned and at first gave an aggravated look, which melted immediately after spotting his brother.

Jimmy ran over, and Nick attempted to meet him halfway, but the rough road under his feet slowed his pace. The two brothers embraced in a hard bearhug.

“Easy,” Nick begged. “I’m sorer than that time I got sacked by Michael McLaney.”

Jimmy released him and said, “You mean ole butter butt?”

The two brothers laughed and carried on like it was old times until Nick had a flash of concern. “Where’s Lusa?” he asked.

“She left,” Jimmy answered. “Went to intercept emergents before they reached her people.”

Nick raised his hand to his head, feeling the strain. “I thought she’d gotten that out of her system already. And besides, wasn’t the whole point to send our new drone army to do the dirty work? Now that the transmission relay is up, we don’t need handlers on the front lines, do we?”

Jimmy looked over at Vaughn who was back to work with his drones. “That’s what we told her,” Jimmy said. “But she wouldn’t listen. Once she saw the number of emergents heading toward one of the villages, she and Vaughn got into it, and she said she was going. But don’t worry, big brother. She took two dozen drones with her.” A big magnanimous smile broke out on Jimmy’s face. “Can you imagine the destruction you could create with twenty-four drones?”

Nick realized Jimmy was right. A hundred emergents were no match for that many drones. Lusa would be alright, he figured. Though he really wanted to see her and was troubled that she hadn’t waited for him to wake up. It’s not all about me, he told himself.

“I guess we did it,” Nick said finally.

Jimmy’s smile waned, and he said, “I think we’re just getting started.” He paused, and his face grew even more solemn. “That’s right,” he said. “You haven’t seen him yet, have you?”

“Seen who?” Nick asked.

Jimmy grabbed him by the shoulders, bracing him for what he would say next. “Nick, they found Dad.”

THE END

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The story continues in Tomorrow’s Cost (Final Update: Book 3).

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Table of Contents

- CHAPTER 1
- CHAPTER 2
- CHAPTER 3
- CHAPTER 4
- CHAPTER 5
- CHAPTER 6
- CHAPTER 7
- CHAPTER 8
- CHAPTER 9
- CHAPTER 10
- CHAPTER 11
- CHAPTER 12
- CHAPTER 13
- CHAPTER 14
- CHAPTER 15
- CHAPTER 16
- CHAPTER 17
- CHAPTER 18
- CHAPTER 19
- CHAPTER 20
- CHAPTER 21
- CHAPTER 22
- CHAPTER 23
- CHAPTER 24
- CHAPTER 25
- CHAPTER 26
- CHAPTER 27
- CHAPTER 28
- CHAPTER 29
- CHAPTER 30
- CHAPTER 31
- CHAPTER 32
- CHAPTER 33