by Ryan Schow
The Last War
Ryan Schow
River City Publishing
Copyright
The eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy so that you may read it with a clear conscience and not one day end up in hell over a shitty technicality. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
THE LAST WAR
Copyright © 2017 Ryan Schow. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, cloned, stored in or introduced into any information storage or retrieval system, in any form, or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this eBook via the Internet or via any other means without the express written permission of the author or publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Author’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents—and their usage for storytelling purposes—are crafted for the singular purpose of fictional entertainment and no absolute truths shall be derived from the information contained within. Locales, businesses, events, government institutions and private institutions are used for atmospheric, entertainment and fictional purposes only. Furthermore, any resemblance or reference to an actual living person is used solely for atmospheric, entertainment and fictional purposes.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Cover Design by Milo at Deranged Doctor Design
Visit the Author’s Website: www.RyanSchow.com
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Contents
Other Works Of Fiction By This Author:
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
Leave Your Mark
The Zero Hour - Cover Reveal!
The Zero Hour - FREE Chapters!
Other Works Of Fiction By This Author:
The Swann Series Novels (In Order):
VANNIE (PREQUEL)
SWANN
MONARCH
CLONE
MASOCHIST
WEAPON
RAVEN
ABOMINATION
ENIGMA
CRUCIFIED (Winter, 2017)
The Last War Series (In Order):
THE LAST WAR
ZERO HOUR (FREE!)
THE OPHIDIAN HORDE
1
Forget who you were. What you did for a living. That fancy title on your business cards. Forget your paycheck, your overpriced car, the upscale neighborhood you lived in because there’s no such thing as upscale anymore. Or society. Or even civility for that matter.
Oh, and if you’re looking for a sense of community? Honestly, don’t hold your breath. This is San Francisco, 2019.
Welcome to hell.
To survive in this post-apocalyptic cesspool, you have to un-know yourself. You have to strip away that which makes you human: your empathy, your enormous heart, all the ways you used to be and feel so special. How things are now—the big cities being stamped into ruin, relentless bombing runs, the onset of hunger and the spike in crime—you need to understand your life in this city is a death sentence.
The circumstances being what they are, doing unforgivable things, unspeakable things, is the norm. It’s what you do to stay breathing. Not to belabor the point, but if you don’t subscribe to the philosophy that if you’re weak, you’re a corpse, then honest to God, the window between right now and your demise is probably already closed, you just don’t know it yet.
My husband, Stanton, recently told our fifteen year old daughter, Macy, “If someone’s in your face and you don’t feel right about them, if something feels off, just shoot them. Don’t even think about it. Just do it.”
Two weeks ago this would have been the most irrational statement in the world, but the way Stanton says it, you can almost believe that he believes he sounds completely rational. To think he was once the voice of reason in our little family of three...
Oh and me? I’m an ER nurse. Well I was, past tense. My name is Cincinnati McNamara and I spent my career at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital. I used to save lives, not take them, so hearing my husband so brazenly speak of murder is a pretty big pill for me to swallow.
We’ve killed though. We didn’t mean to and we certainly didn’t want to, but if we weren’t wanting or trying to kill people and we did so anyway, what does that say about the times?
It says plenty.
Speaking of matters of life and death, before the collapse, every life had value. Even the junkies, the criminals and the homeless. Now the only lives with any value are mine, Stanton’s, my daughter Macy’s and my younger brother Rex’s. I don’t like thinking like this, but we really are in a survival-of-the-fittest type of world here.
I suppose we could lament our situation, this sour turn of events, but we try not to. We can’t afford the mental breakdown. Even though it’s coming. We tell ourselves we’re not those kinds of people, the kind who just lay down and die when things get tough. We tell ourselves we’re survivors, fighters.
Perhaps this is true. It could be a lie.
Either way, we are our own cheerleaders as we slog through what will surely become some urban wasteland if someone doesn’t stop the brutal war being waged on mankind. Can it even be stopped? Are we the ones to do it?
Probably not.
So we navigate the streets of San Francisco, squatting where we can, eating what’s available, and we try not to comprehend this city’s monumental fall from grace. Instead, we set our jaws and dig our heels in, grappling against impossible odds, grinding against the gears of our sometimes frail and overworked minds. We do this while hiding from enemies who have taken to the streets and who kill from the air, and we do our best to ignore the voices in our heads telling us to go ahead and give up, just quit, end it once and for all and just eat that bullet.
You may be wondering, why press on when things seem so dismal? I’ve asked myself that same question a hundred times now. Maybe more. I have an answer, but it’s flimsy, propped up on faith and desperation alone. We’re praying that when the smoke clears and all the bodies have been stacked and properly burned, there will be something left to hang on to, some semblance of hope for a new life, a new future, a brand new world.
If you could see what I see, how this city turned upside down in a single afternoon, how devastation has now spread to every corner before me, perhaps you’d understand these things I’m telling you. Perhaps you’d know what I mean when I say faith and desperation.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Putting the cart before the horse if you will.
Let me start at the beginning…
2
Four twelves in the ER and no one died. Hallelujah. The work week is over though, and I’m
Jonesing for ten hours of uninterrupted sleep. To my SUV, I say, “Beethoven’s Symphony Number 9.” It’s perfect music for almost going home. Almost. From near silence to sound, one of Beethoven’s most energizing symphonies begins.
Did I tell you I’m exhausted?
Yeah, I’m depleted.
Everyone at work was like, “What are you going to do on your three days, Cincinnati?” and I was like, “Sleep, sleep, and then sleep.”
First, however, I need groceries. Specifically coffee. Not for now, but for later, when I try to wake up.
Macy—our fifteen year old—she’s taken to telling her friends her mother is a zombie. I have to be honest here, forty-eight hours in the ER is like sixty or seventy hours working a regular job, so yep, I absolutely feel like a zombie.
I feel like the entire cast of The Walking Dead.
It’s noon, Macy’s still in school, Stanton is halfway through work, maybe more. And me? It’s all about shopping, sleeping, cooking. Yawning deep, trudging through another afternoon in the slurry of San Francisco traffic, I creep up Bush Street looking for a place to park. Twice I pass the Market Mayflower & Deli (my destination!) and twice I fail to find a spot (C’mon already!).
This is why I put on Beethoven.
To renew me.
The music is getting into my bones now, seeping delightfully into my soul. This is the kind of nourishment nothing else on earth can provide. Closing my eyes for a second, I relax my shoulders, focus on my heart rate. Drawing deep stabilizing breaths seems to help, but only if I allow myself to unwind completely. Can I do that? Is that even possible anymore? I roll my neck, popping two vertebrae, then open my eyes and make fists of my fingers, cracking a few tight knuckles as well.
Just let go of the day, I tell myself.
As Symphony 9 unfolds on the Land Rover’s sound system, I feel most of the tension leaving me. I open my sunroof and though it’s not exactly fresh air outside, it’s more outdoor air than I get at work. Which is none.
The Land Rover’s open sunroof lets in the sounds of the city, sounds I can’t exactly hear over the music, unless you’re talking about a honked horn, or the beep-beep-beeping of a delivery truck backing up to unload its contents street-side.
The sound system instantly compensates for the change in environment, making the sounds of Beethoven deeper, fuller, richer. The lost peaks and valleys of the symphony are found once more. Smiling for the first time in well over a day, I find myself looking forward to my time off.
For a second, as delightful as the orchestra sounds (the brilliance of the strings, the magic of the flutes and clarinets, the crash of the symbols and the big bass moments, all perfectly spaced in soft interludes and swift, near frantic runs) I imagine if I close my eyes, I might be able to feel myself there. In the Theater am Kärntnertor. Experiencing this symphony for the first time in Vienna one hundred and ninety-five years ago.
May 7, 1824 to be precise.
As good luck would have it, the parking gods seek to grace me with a place to park right in front of the market (it only took fifteen minutes). A brand new Mercedes Benz S63 is leaving. Hitting my turn signal, I wait the appropriate distance behind the big car, then (mistakenly) check the rear view mirror once or twice to see how much traffic is backing up behind me (a lot…don’t stress, Sin…it’s okay).
Parallel parking in San Francisco always makes me nervous. It feels infinitely worse after I’m done with my shift because I feel a bit jittery and out of sorts.
A horn behind me honks. I just sit here.
Until it honks again.
Still waiting for the Benz to go, I feel my heart jump start a bit. “Can’t you see my turn signal?” I finally mutter. Glancing back at the offending vehicle three cars down, a frown settles over my face and I say, “There are two more lanes to choose from!”
The second the Mercedes-Benz is clear of the spot and driving off, a shrieking projectile flashes overhead, piercing the sedan’s back window in a fiery explosion. The blast furnace wave of heat, glass and metal is a concussion wave that cracks my windshield and rocks the SUV backwards into the car behind me.
The symphony suddenly stops, and that’s when the chaotic sounds of the city flood in through the open sunroof.
Stunned, not believing what my eyes are seeing, all I hear for one long moment is the thundering sound of my own blood rushing in my ears. Other sounds emerge as I catch my breath. Car alarms, more explosions up ahead, then the screaming.
Lots and lots of screaming.
Pushing open the door, staggering out of my Land Rover, I haphazardly check for traffic before moving around the front of the SUV and onto the sidewalk. Bodies are strewn everywhere. Some are writhing in pain; others are completely still on the ground and thrown against things. There’s a lot of blood. There’s wailing, crying, sobbing. A woman is wandering around in a daze with half her face melted off, looking as though she misplaced her purse, or her child.
Out of the Benz’s windshield, the driver—an older matron—is half flopped onto the hood, dead, her body engulfed in flames.
That’s when I hear them: two huge drones zipping overhead. Several blocks ahead, two more cars explode and a white, thirteen story apartment building is strafed by something that looks like gunfire. Another drone is closing in from a distance, its long wings outfitted with four black dots that I fear are missiles.
“No,” I hear myself say.
Anyone looking at this thing can see the future and how bad it’s going to be for everyone inside that apartment. The missiles fire from the wings, heading right into the tower creating a devastating explosion you can feel like a punch to the chest.
Broken glass, plaster and showers of flaming debris rain down onto the sidewalk and street below. I can’t be sure, because at this point I don’t trust my eyes, but I think maybe I saw half a body mixed in with the debris.
The ground beneath my feet gives a hearty kick and I’m thinking, earthquake? In San Francisco, earthquakes are entirely possible, but this can’t be a coincidence. No way. Kneeling lower, I spread my arms for balance. It’s not the roll of an earthquake. It kicked and it’s done. That’s when the building shifts, buckles up top, then begins its descent in huge, dusty pillows of rubble.
Turning away, confounded, almost like I’m having an out-of-body experience where I’ve transported myself into someone else’s nightmare, I ignore my responsibilities as a nurse as my eyes gaze up the street and see fleets of smaller attack drones scouring the city. There are dozens upon dozens of them, possibly a hundred spread out as far as I can see. Destruction blooms in their wake.
Moving on unsteady legs, I get back into my SUV, crank the motor, then step on the gas and roar pass stopped traffic, slowing only to nudge other cars out of the way, honk at people in the sidewalks or find alternate pathways because the air is turning brown and traffic is quickly becoming congested.
I have to get to my daughter, to Macy.
“Call Stanton!” I say to the voice activated phone system.
The phone begins to ring, but it sparkles with intermittent static, followed by agonizing bouts of silence. Then more noise and broken ringing.
“C’mon!” I scream, half manic.
“Sin?” the voice asks.
Stanton.
“The city’s under attack!” I scream.
“What?” he says. “I can’t hear you. Cincinnati, are you okay?”
My husband works in the Transamerica building, which is nearby, close enough for me to go to him, but I’m all about Macy right now. More worried about her than Stanton.
He’s a capable man; Macy’s just a child.
“I’m going to the school,” I shout, my eyes seeing everything, measuring the brief, tight openings, calculating the line I’m going to take in milliseconds.
Overhead, a fleet of drones race past me. Leaning forward, I strain to see up through the windshield. Lowering my eyes to traffic, I slam on the brakes as someone in front of me hits their br
akes, too. The wheels lock up and I skitter to a screeching, near skidding halt, bumping into the car’s rear end.
“Stanton?” she asks. “Stanton are you there?” I don’t even care that I’ve just had my second accident in only a few minutes.
The call has dropped.
Not worrying about traffic decorum, I hit REVERSE, stomp on the gas, swing the SUV around hard, the front of the Land Rover now facing an alley. REVERSE becomes DRIVE. I crush the gas pedal and the SUV rockets through an alleyway, shooting out the other side where I’m clipped by another car, spinning me halfway around into yet another parked car.
My body jarred this way and that, my head a whirlpool of my own making, I fight to gather my bearings.
The road ahead is more clear than Bush Street. Sutter is going the reverse direction, but that would take me to Macy’s school, not Stanton’s work.
At this point, my mind is already made up.
I hit REVERSE, dislodge the Land Rover from an old Beamer I crunched only a little when I slid into it side-to-side. Swinging the wheel around, an out of control car bumps my front bumper. The SUV kicks me around, facing me the right direction. A drone flashes by overhead, catching me off guard. It launces a rocket that blows up the car that just hit me.
“Oh my freaking God!” I’m screaming.
The car explodes turning it into a blazing slab of death aimed at a long line of undamaged cars while going entirely too fast. The impact is heart stopping. The car hits, flipping end over end while twisting sideways in mid air. For a second, I can’t breathe. For a second my state of mind becomes so fragile I feel things inside me shutting down.
