The Last War Series Box Set [Books 1-7]

by Schow, Ryan

  We go to work on this Honda Accord, breaking the glass on the second try. Someone nearby says, “Hey, have some respect!”

  Stanton and I fall into a moment’s pause as we eye this woman with two bottles of water half stuffed in her pockets. Macy doesn’t skip a beat, though. She opens the door from the inside, drags the driver out (it’s a twenty-something kid with a scraggly beard and a man bun) then steps over him and gets into the car.

  If only the Accord wasn’t packed in between a bunch of other cars, all three of us could have climbed in, buckled up and fled the scene. But this is just wishful thinking right now.

  The woman with the bottled water stands there fixated on Macy, her jaw hanging slack, disbelief coloring her eyes all shades of red. “Have you no respect for the dead?” she barks.

  “I have more respect for life than death at this point,” Stanton calls out. “Now go back to your own cars before we shoot you in the face and take your water.”

  Mortified, she abandons the hunt altogether, stomping up the street in a huff, muttering things that sound like an argument, then turning and screaming curse words at us that we’re too busy to pay attention to.

  “Would you use it?” I ask Stanton when the crazy lady is gone. “The gun, I mean? Would you use it on another human?”

  “Jackpot!” Macy says.

  After finding nothing useful in the center console or the glovebox, she’s heading for the backseat, squeezing her body in between the seats and wiggling over the center console. In back there’s an old box with the flaps ripped off. Inside is a big blanket that Macy’s pulling out and pressing to her face.

  “It’s not going to be so cold tonight ladies and germs!”

  “In Darwin’s world of survival of the fittest,” I say, “I think we’re going to be okay.”

  “Darwin can suck it,” Macy quips, getting out of the car.

  By now she’s got the blanket draped around her shoulders. She’s pulling it tight across her chest, telling us how warm it is.

  “Maybe you should get his pants, too,” Stanton says. Macy looks past us, at his pants, and says, “Too much blood on them.”

  This silences us. This and the whirring sounds of the drones.

  For a second we all drop to our knees, ready to scurry underneath the car in case those things come after us this time.

  Just ahead is Geary Street which will take us to Laurel Heights. It’s not the Financial District, or a multimillion dollar condo, but the homes there are nice enough.

  Scanning the air, our ears attuned to the sounds of the UAV’s, I see the University of San Francisco and it looks like a bombed out ruin. To the right, just up the street is Raoul Wallenberg High School. Judging by the giant plumes of smoke billowing into the sky, it’s the same story there.

  Forcing myself to think of circus clowns or whatever (a beautiful steak dinner), I try not to think about all the murdered students. About how many are still in there. About their families, the ones living in other states or countries who have no idea what’s happening here.

  “They’re gone,” Stanton says, speaking about the drones.

  We get to our feet then finish searching the cars. Now more than ever, I’m feeling how sticky my lips have become, how my throat is so dry not even the summoning of saliva is enough.

  “We need water,” I say.

  Seconds later a pair of drones zoom by not fifteen feet over our heads. Macy and I duck into the backseat of a nearby Ford F-150; Stanton jumps into the front passenger seat next to a dead guy who’s face down on the steering wheel, the spider-webbed windshield painted red.

  When they’re gone, Stanton says, “Check the glovebox.”

  Inside is a map of the city, a two-pack of Bic lighters and a locking lug nut for his custom wheels. I grab the lighters and the map.

  “Get the lug nut,” he says.

  “Why?”

  He rolls his eyes and I get it.

  “Macy, open the driver’s side door for me, please.”

  She gets out and does just that. Stanton gets on his butt, braces himself, then uses both feet and his leverage to shove the man over. The dead guy spills out of the car without an ounce of grace. He lands on his head, his body not quite making it out.

  With his head wrenched sideways, half his face is smashed into the pavement, but his body is propped up on the truck with his legs half in the air. It’s like a handstand of death, but with no hands. Macy looks away. Maybe it’s his position, but maybe it’s that one of his eyes was shot out.

  Stanton gets out of the truck walks around and perfectly deadpan, he says, “Well that could’ve gone better.”

  He grabs a leg and begins unlacing the man’s right shoe. He pulls it off, tosses it over his shoulder then peels a long beige sock off his foot.

  Did I tell you I hate seeing other people’s feet? I do. Most of them…they’re just plain nasty. Especially this guy’s. I don’t even want to tell you what’s up with his toenails.

  “Lug nut?” he says, hand out, palm up.

  I hand him the heavy silver nut and he drops it into the sock, tying the top of it into a knot.

  “Stand back,” he says.

  We oblige him.

  He swings the thing in the air and now I see it. He’s made us another weapon. In case bullets don’t work, we can beat people to death with this here sock.

  Macy’s smiling now, which makes me smile.

  Turning his attention to the F-150, he stands back, swings it as hard as he can and hits the back window, shattering it.

  “Holy cow!” he says, surprising us both with a look of satisfaction.

  “Nice, Dad,” Macy adds, and even I’m nodding my head in approval. He hands the sock to our daughter, almost like he’s handing over the keys to the kingdom.

  “Anyone gets out of line, swing this down on their forehead as hard as you can.”

  “Stanton,” I say.

  “What?”

  “Won’t this kill a person?” Macy asks, swinging it around.

  “You could always go underhand and catch them in the baby maker,” he says.

  “Hold this?” Macy asks me.

  She bequeaths me the gigantic blanket and I take it. She then walks up to the truck and starts swinging the loaded sock backwards, really getting it going. When she’s got the timing down, she steps forward and shoots it at the truck where it smacks the back door with a ferocious bang!

  “Holy crap!” she says, looking at the huge dent the nut left behind.

  “Impressive,” Stanton says.

  And me? I’m having a hard time with my husband teaching Macy how to hurt people. Maybe I’m being too overprotective of her. Maybe Stanton’s right.

  A few cars up, we hit what Stanton believes is an even bigger jackpot. Macy pulls something big and green and tightly packaged out of the center console.

  “What about this?” she says, holding up a brick of weed.

  “I almost want to say yes,” I tell her, “but given that the bottom’s fallen out of this city and we need to be on our toes, I’d say leave it.”

  “Are you kidding?” Stanton says. “We’re taking it with us.”

  “Since when do you do drugs?” I ask.

  “Never. But we’re in gang territory, so maybe this is our get-out-of-death card.”

  Macy’s sniffing it, then turning away and making a face.

  “As much as I appreciate your logic, I’m not toting around a bunch of weed so you’d better make sure you know how to use your gun.”

  “I do.”

  “But would you?” I ask.

  He knows what I’m asking. I want to know if he’ll pull the trigger to protect his family.

  “These are different times. Maybe they won’t always be this way, but right now they are. So yes. If it comes to it, then yes.”

  “Are you guys talking in code?”

  “Yes,” we say together.

  Our eyes meet and there’s a resolve I trust. Slowly I’m nodding my hea
d (I believe you), and he’s giving me a reassuring smile (I’ll never let anything bad happen to you).

  The thing about Stanton is he works (worked) in the Transamerica pyramid inside the financial district about twenty-seven hours a day and I work (worked) in the ER just as much. We live (lived) an affluent lifestyle, but it’s taken a toll on us both emotionally and physically over the years. Our home is (might be past tense, as in was, but the jury’s still out on that one) gorgeous, worth every penny of the three million we paid for it, but now all that might be gone. All things considered—and I know it won’t be easy—I’m starting to think we’ve got thick enough skin for this.

  A second thought crawls over the first, but it sounds a lot like a warning: whatever you’re expecting this to be, it’s going to be far worse than even you can imagine.

  “No on the weed,” I say and Macy tosses it back in the truck. “C’mon Macy. We’re going home.”

  “To our home?” she asks.

  “Whatever home we sleep in, shower in, eat in, that’s our home,” I say. “Got it?”

  Stanton suddenly goes very rigid.

  “Shhh,” he hisses.

  He’s listening with an ear to the sky and that’s when three blocks up Masonic a huge pair of drones carpet bomb the six or seven story Public Storage building, a nearby big box retailer and rows upon rows of nearby homes. Public Storage collapses onto Masonic street in a heap of smoke and powder, spilling its bricks and damaged contents out over dozens of abandoned cars.

  “Let’s go!” Stanton says, breaking into a run.

  We follow as fast as we can, cutting down Turk Street, but the earth is shaking beneath us and the bombing raids have anyone caught outside running in doors. Someone’s left a one gallon jug of water on the roof of their car in a panic; I sprint across the street to grab it and keep running.

  “Cincinnati!” Stanton yells over the noise.

  “Water!” I scream.

  By the time I catch up, I’m out of breath and that’s when a fleet of drones appears up the street. Stanton turns us into a narrow stairway leading up a hillside, a stairway that’s fairly well hidden. It’s made of concrete and flanked by two homes and tons of trees and foliage. For whatever reason, I think of the stairway in The Exorcist and this gives me a second’s pause. Did I tell you I hate horror movies? Yeah. I’m a big chicken when it comes to demonic possession, serial killers, inbreeding hill people.

  Sin, the drones…

  I keep moving. As the three of us hustle up the stairs, my legs feel more destroyed than ever and I swear to God, my lungs are on fire. Stopping means dying though, and this has me pushing hard. The rapid concussion sounds of dozens of bombs being dropped isn’t lost on me.

  The drones zip by and we all heave a collective sigh, but at the top of the stairs are two rough looking guys who are glancing down past Stanton to get a good look at me and Macy. Macy is in front of me. All I can see are those ugly pants of hers.

  They aren’t going to save us.

  What I’m thinking at this exact moment is that we aren’t unattractive women, not by any measure. I’ve been considering this for the last few hours. Will our slovenly condition mask our good looks, or will guys like these see through them?

  I think I can handle myself, but Macy? I can’t even begin to tell you how much I worry about her innocence.

  Now I’m thinking of my child not from my own perspective, but from a boy’s viewpoint. No, a man’s viewpoint.

  She’s very cute in the face and at the age where she’s no longer too young for the consideration of older boys and younger twenty-somethings. That’s to say she’s got her boobs and her hips are coming in, taking her from boyish straight toward the more curvy look of a woman. Honestly, she’s growing up too fast. She’s becoming a woman.

  Considering the lawlessness we’ve seen so far, I’d bet my last breath this terrifies Stanton about as much as it terrifies me. Maybe more. Neither of us have spoken about this, but I can feel it in his soul as much as I’m sure he can feel it in mine.

  “There are two of them,” one of the guys says to the other, his tone betraying his intentions, “and two of us. We just need him out of the way and I think we’ll have a love connection.”

  These guys are about five steps ahead of Stanton with the high ground; the one talking has a shotgun at his side. The other is looking over his shoulder, perhaps at the neighborhood that was almost bombed into the Stone Age.

  “I think you guys can be each others’ love connection,” Stanton jokes, even though I can tell he’s agitated, not amused.

  “I’m into girls,” the one toting the shotgun says. “Young girls. Blondes especially.”

  “Right now survival is the flavor of the day, fellas,” Stanton says. “In case you hadn’t heard, all that smoke in the air isn’t from guys like you lighting up blunts and listening to Snoop Dogg in your grandmother’s basement or whatever. There’s actual death happening out there.”

  “Yeah?” one says to Stanton in a sick, mocking tone. Then to his buddy, he says, “About to be one more on the dead guy list, don’t you think?”

  Stanton draws the pistol, pulls the trigger and the guy drops. He shoots the other one before he can run, then scampers up the last few stairs in case there are more of them on the other side. Fortunately for all our sakes, there aren’t. Right about now I can’t breathe.

  Is this really happening?

  My eyes watch as my husband drags the second kid off the sidewalk, both of them moaning in pain. He grabs the shotgun, tosses it to me (which I catch on my way up the stairs) and tells Macy to look away. He waits for more bombs to drop, and when they do, he puts a single round into each of their heads.

  Chapter Ten

  Leaning over the boys’ bodies, Stanton goes through their jeans (pocket knife, lighter, three shotgun shells—he crushes and discards half a pack of smokes). Every so often, glancing up at the ground-level neighborhood we popped up into, my brave, reckless husband looks perfectly poised.

  This scares the absolute crap out of me.

  He barely even hesitated. Who is this man that I married? He looks at me and I’m scared at what he’s seeing in my eyes. He returns to the bodies.

  “You didn’t even give them a chance,” I all but whisper.

  Without looking up, he says, “You heard what they said, right? Didn’t you see what I saw? How they were looking at you and Macy? And that one idiot saying he likes young girls…that was reason enough.”

  “That’s not proof they’re rapists,” I say.

  “Not now maybe,” he says. “But guys like these are opportunists, and today there are more than enough opportunities. You two won’t be theirs. And neither will I.”

  I find myself pacing in a tight line.

  He just killed them.

  Stopping, looking down at them, I can’t believe they were breathing a moment ago, and now they’re not. How is Stanton not freaking out?

  How am I not freaking out?

  Macy comes up behind me, takes the water jug out of my hand and drinks. “Not too fast,” I say.

  She lets up, burps, then says, “Man I needed that!”

  I drink a bit myself, then hand it to Stanton who waves it off because he’s busy. I take another sip, hand it to Macy and tell her to ration it.

  She knows exactly what I mean.

  Looking everywhere else, not even flinching as things explode a few blocks away, I see a neighborhood that looks relatively untouched by the chaos.

  “This is nice,” I hear myself say. “The houses here.”

  I turn around and see Macy looking down at the two boys. Stanton is standing up. He’s got another shotgun shell that he’s stuffing into his pocket. I hand him the water. He drinks, slowly. It’s just several sips while he’s looking around. His eyes are roving—going to windows, cars, potential hiding places.

  After he decides we’re not in imminent danger, he relaxes his eyes, his demeanor.

  “It is nice,” h
e says. He adjusts the contraband in his pockets, then: “Let’s see if we can find ourselves a house.”

  “What if there are more of them?” Macy asks.

  “I don’t think there are,” Stanton says. “Otherwise you’d see a lookout, some other evidence of gang activity.”

  “You think they’re gang members?” I ask.

  Stanton fires me a look. Apparently, as far as he’s concerned, if they carry guns and talk about having sex with young girls in front of said girl’s parents…they’re gang bangers. It’s a stereotype, sure, but it’s his stereotype.

  Frowning, I pull Macy aside.

  It’s not the bullet holes or the blood that tells the story of these two knuckleheads. It’s the tattoos. They’re all skulls and names and numbers. They’re full sleeves. The ink spanning from wrist to earlobe…on both arms. One of them has three tear drops tattooed under his right eye.

  “It’s good you shot them,” Macy says, and this saddens me. Actually this crushes me inside. I thought I raised my child to have more respect for life than this.

  Is she thinking of Waylon, the Iraq war vet, and what he said about the neighborhood gangs? Is Stanton? Perhaps these were the types of kids he was warning us about. Or perhaps we’ll never know.

  “You shouldn’t feel like that,” I tell her.

  “Yes, she should,” Stanton says, looking up and down the block. “You can’t be this soft, Sin. Not now.”

  “This isn’t the wild west.”

  He turns and snaps at me. “Look around, Cincinnati. It sure as hell is!”

  “Dad,” Macy says, calming him down a bit.

  We step into the neighborhood, round a corner and see a trio of bodies. This is residential, so we expect to see something like this, but nothing prepares you for seeing the body of a small child.

  My eyes focus on the girl.

  She’s wearing a pink dress and one of her white shoes had come off her foot. It has a small silver buckle. The minute I see her white tights—her little foot twisted sideways—I turn away, stifle a cry. Something in my soul cracks, breaks. The image is in me now, burned into my brain. She can’t be more than three years old.