The Last War Box Set, Vol. 2 [Books 5-7]

by Schow, Ryan

  Did he have as many rounds between his guns? He thought so. But no one was going to just stand there and let him shoot them. They’d turn this place into a shooting gallery! Marcus ditched his cart in back and ran for the now barren soda aisle. All that remained was a twelve pack of “healthy” sodas that were both warm and looked like the worst flavor ever.

  Ginger lime.

  When Marcus was in college and his old man insisted he either enlist or earn himself a scholarship, Marcus chose baseball. He was a great outfielder, but not great when it came to batting percentages. He was always trying to kill the ball rather than just connect with it. Looking back, he only played ball so he could not enlist. Naturally, this pissed off the old man. What angered his father more, however, was not Marcus’s desire to avoid going into the Marines, but the fact that when he did enlist, Marcus did so in the Army. Now, with a broken open twelve pack of sodas in his hand, he was drawing back on those two years of outfield experience and hoping his arm and his aim would serve him well.

  The minute he had the advantage, Marcus began overhanding the sodas at the heathens. Aiming for their heads, the first two sodas hit their marks. The push of action suddenly changed from going after the fleeing masses to going after him.

  Marcus went through the entire twelve pack, hitting those he was aiming for in one capacity or another. This slowed the oncoming rush, but it did not stop it. He ducked out of sight, hustled to the end of the aisle, found himself face to face with two very angry hoodlums. One had an angry red knot on his forehead. Both men got the sharp end of his blade. The first across the neck; the second in the gut first, then the neck.

  Two more appeared.

  They had guns they were shooting at him. He rolled left, withdrew his .357, came up in a kneeling shooter’s stance and shot both of them in the chest.

  More appeared. He shot them as well. With his heart throbbing mightily, he snatched up what guns he could, shot another in the back of the skull heading for the door (shameful but necessary), then made a beeline for his grocery cart. By now much of the crowd had dispersed. Shoving his cart forward, he pushed past all the bodies, heavily armed and ready for any further resistance.

  Out the back door, in the loading docks, he saw two black Suburbans and all the desperate shoppers on the loading docks either bleeding or bled out. Most of them were on their knees, sobbing, obviously roughed up. While he was inside trying to contain the action, more skinheads had pulled around back to take what they’d come for. Two guys were loading stolen groceries into the SUVs. The skinhead with the blue eyes and the tattoo on his neck stood between the injured masses and the Suburbans, supervising.

  Marcus put two rounds into the two loaders with his Beretta, then he turned the gun on the skinhead—the one he’d talked to earlier.

  “You the cream now?” Marcus asked, moving on him quickly.

  “Always,” he said, grinning.

  “Your men are either dead or incapacitated,” Marcus said replied, glancing down at a dead woman and two dead boys. Both expired of gunshot wounds. Disgusted by this needless loss of life, he said, “And you’re about to be the crap that sinks to the bottom.”

  The skinhead whipped his hand around his waist, going for what Marcus was sure was a gun. Marcus fired twice, both shots hitting the man square in the chest. The blue eyed demon staggered backwards, a surprised look on his face.

  “People like you who shamelessly prey on the weak don’t deserve to live,” Marcus said, closing the last few feet between them. When he was face to face, he put his gun to the skinhead’s eye and said, “Told you where I’d put this bullet.”

  The crash of gunfire sounded like a cannon inside the loading docks. It also startled him at how easily he’d killed this man. The deafening roar of the gun brought with it a dreadful silence. He turned and looked around. People were beat up, injured and shot dead. All around, their carts were scattered. They were just people.

  They were hungry.

  He put his hands to his temples, his gun still smoking, the residue of blood spatter heavy on his face. He glanced around meeting the eyes of the downtrodden, the defeated, the victimized and that’s when one of the women pointed to the first Suburban.

  This wasn’t over…

  With his weapon out, he covered the SUV moving forward. He wasn’t even sure if the gun he held was still loaded. He prayed it was.

  Moving into position, he saw a young man crouched in the SUV’s front seat holding a shotgun. The blast went off the second he saw Marcus. Fortunately for his face, he managed to pull back fast enough. Through the high-pitched whine in his ears, he heard another click.

  The chamber empty.

  Rookie.

  Gun out, ready to fire if necessary, Marcus moved back into view and said, “When I say so, throw the weapon out the window, climb into the driver’s seat and buckle up.”

  The Suburban was still running. Marcus reached in, shut off the SUV, pulled the keys from the ignition.

  “Now, homeboy.”

  The twenty-something kid tossed the shotgun out the window and climbed over the center console. Marcus cautiously made his way around the front of the SUV. He climbed inside, handed the skinhead the key, then said, “Where are you staying?”

  “Like me personally?”

  Marcus cracked him on the skull with the gun, then aimed it at him again.

  Wincing, trying to look hard and not to show the pain, he said, “We’re at the Ramada Inn, just off E. 17th and Superior, across Newport Blvd.”

  “Start the engine, take me there.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s where you’re stockpiling all the stuff you steal, right?” Marcus asked. When the kid refused to answer, he smiled and said, “Good, take me there.”

  Holding his head, angry and hurt yet surprised by the demand, he started the SUV then said, “You don’t want to go there, man. Trust me on this, you do not want to go there.”

  “I just took out your whole crew. And your leader? He’s got an extra hole in his face.”

  “That wasn’t our leader,” he said, pulling out of the loading docks and into the light. “He was low level, man. You go to the Ramada, you’d better have balls the size of cantaloupes, or a serious death wish.”

  Looking down at his pants, Marcus said, “No cantaloupes here.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “My family is gone, my friends are gone and I don’t have a job or a home to go back to,” Marcus said. “So yeah, I guess I have a death wish.”

  They hit the main road and the driver brought the SUV up to speed. Marcus glanced in the back of the Suburban, found it packed with food and supplies. There were even a few weapons. Turning back he asked, “How many of you are there?”

  “Enough,” he mumbled. “Like I said, man, you don’t want to do this.”

  “You think I’m worried?”

  “You’d be an absolute moron not to worry,” he said, staring at the big man with a ton of conviction in his eyes.

  “This isn’t a coordinated attack to sack a city or overtake a base, bro. This is mass slaughter. People are the targets. Men, women, children, dogs, cats and even scumbags like you and me. The machines aren’t discriminating. I saw a whole family gunned down in the first twenty minutes of this. I’ve seen hundreds of corpses now. In cars, on the side of the road, in hotels brought down on hundreds of innocents. You think your little pack of street slugs gives me even a second’s pause?”

  “It’s your funeral, pal.”

  Just before they hit Newport Blvd, Marcus saw a Sprouts Market and a Rite Aid on the left. “Why couldn’t you guys just go shopping there?”

  “Already did,” he said, po-faced and docile.

  “You sacked Sprout’s and Rite Aid?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “And Von’s, the Urgent Care Medical Center, the Starbuck’s…this is our turf, bro. This is where guys like me feed and guys like you bleed.”

  Marcus leveled him with a bitter stare.
“That some sort of catch phrase?”

  “I just made it up.”

  “Yeah?”

  “How’d it sound?” he asked with a bitter grin.

  “Convincing. Time will tell if it’s truth or just bluster.”

  “What’s bluster?”

  “Hot air,” Marcus said.

  “It ain’t bluster,” he responded, more serious now.

  “Tell that to all your dead friends back there,” Marcus grumbled.

  As they crossed over Newport Blvd and turned left on Superior, his prisoner/hostage/guide said, “Time for reckoning, ese.”

  “Will you stop with the theatrics already?” Marcus said as the guy pulled to a stop.

  The kid started to speak, but in that second two things happened. One, Marcus saw the Ramada Inn, and two, he struck the kid with the butt of the pistol so hard he fell sideways and slumped over. Marcus got out of the SUV, walked around and pulled the kid out of the driver’s seat. He left him like tossed trash on the side of the street, then took a deep breath and readied himself for war.

  The Ramada’s portico was partially caved in. Half the rubble was cleared away leaving one, maybe one and a half car widths to drive through. Inside the Ramada’s parking lot he saw several big Suburbans, a Pontiac Trans Am from the Smokey and the Bandit days, and a older looking big rig with a sleeper cabin and a giant triangular cattle guard, the kind you see on trains. The big rig looked so damn mean he couldn’t stare at it for too long without having flashbacks of the most recent Mad Max film.

  Marcus drove into the lot, his heart rate slightly elevated.

  A guy came out to greet him. He was a thirty-something with a bandana and a distinct cholo look about him: checkered flannel (buttoned only at the very top) over the tucked in wife-beater; ironed slacks with a military flip and a pair of Nike’s. Except he was white. Not Mexican.

  Poser.

  The faux-cholo sauntered up to the tinted window, gave it a knuckle tap. Marcus rolled it down and stuck the Reaper2 blade into his throat the second the faux-cholo registered surprise. In the background, from the row of motel rooms, loud music was pumping hard into the still afternoon air. As he was sitting there with the blade still stuck in this guy, he realized it was two different motel rooms making all the noise. One was gangster rap, the other heavy metal. Both rooms had the doors or windows open to some degree. Wasting no time, he jerked the blade clean out, letting the man collapse on the concrete.

  Marcus got out of the truck and quickly wrapped the bandana around faux-cholo’s neck to staunch the bleeding. He dragged him around the other side of the SUV. Moving with purpose, he began stripping off the dead man’s clothes, hoping to get them blood-free. Once he was done, Marcus dragged the corpse behind the Trans Am and stuffed him where, for the next few minutes, he wouldn’t be found.

  He returned to the SUV, then eased it up to the big rig, a 50’s or 60’s style Mack truck with a sleeper and no trailer in sight. There were four gas cans next to the tank and what looked like a fresh weld done, fitting the cattle guard to the front. He tugged on the contraption. It felt rock solid. He checked the big rig’s door and it opened; the keys were tucked up on the visor.

  “Morons,” he muttered to himself.

  In the sleeper, he changed clothes, getting into the flannel, the jeans and the wife-beater. The shoes were too small, the pants too tight. And if he flexed just right, it would probably tear the arms clean off. Still, he needed the moment of distraction if he wanted to get the jump on these knuckleheads.

  If he could pull this off, Marcus hoped he’d have loot for days. And possible even the weapons cache he’d been dreaming about. When he stepped out of the Mack truck’s cabin, some guy was already walking toward him. He was carrying a gun at his side.

  “What the hell?” he asked, seeing Marcus.

  “Just dropping off parts for the rest of the weld,” he said. “Didn’t want them being stolen since the place is pretty much wide open.”

  “We gotta handle on things, man, so why don’t you hustle your big ass outta here.”

  The Reaper2 caught homeboy across the face, creating a wide flap of skin. Marcus spun around and, with the full force of his weight and momentum, drove the blade into the nerve bundle just below the man’s sternum. He immediately twisted it then tore the blade loose, snatched the man’s gun and dragged the dying body over to where the other one was.

  He was looking up into Marcus’s eyes, almost like he had a question. Like he wanted to say, why?

  “You brought this on yourself, scumbag,” Marcus growled.

  He didn’t know if that was true or not, but the skinhead was part of a murderous gang of thugs robbing and killing people, and he was carrying a gun as more than a loosely veiled threat. He learned that in his time overseas.

  Early on in the second Iraq, right after Afghanistan, his crew hit a terrorist cell they’d managed to infiltrate. Thirty insurgents perished. Five of Marcus’s men died along with them. They stacked the insurgents’ bodies in a huge pile, just threw one body on top of the other until they were all there.

  All this over a boy sent out into the street with a gun.

  Pissed off and heavy on losses, he and his men soaked the bodies of the dissidents in gasoline then set them on fire. They stood there listening to the screaming of a few left alive. As rich as his hatred was for his enemies, their suffering had gone on too long. Even now he heard their phantom screams, smelled the cooked flesh and the smoke, and tasted a bit of the blood on his tongue.

  Looking down, faux-cholo number two was now gurgling in his throat. Marcus’s head cleared. He made the decision. Without hesitation, he drove his blade into the man’s throat then ripped it out and told the man he’d go quicker, that this way he’d die a cleaner death.

  He didn’t wait for the man to pass.

  With unknown hostiles inside the Inn and the possibility of copious amounts of firepower, he’d need to be sharp and on his toes.

  Moving toward the two story motel, he made his way toward the room playing heavy metal music. The door was cracked open, the shades shut. When he entered the room, the sweltering heat was like a fist squeezing his lungs. Just beyond the door, on the queen sized bed, some guy was railing his girl. Pants to his knees, Nike’s still on, his wife beater soaked. Using the man’s grunting for cover, Marcus slipped inside and drove the knife into the man’s kidney. The girl took a breath to scream, but he quickly stuffed a bedsheet in her mouth. The man he killed arched his back, reached for the knife that wasn’t there, but Marcus finished it fast.

  With more than a dozen kills inside and hour, he was suddenly having second thoughts. This was entirely too bloody. This was beyond gruesome.

  When the girl scrambled out from under the dead man, she covered herself, looked at him, and then said, “Thank you,” over the blaring music.

  He turned the music down, but didn’t shut it off entirely.

  He needed the cover of noise.

  “What?” he asked, knife still at his side, not sure what the young woman said or what to do with her.

  “I said thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “We’re not their girls,” she said breathless, her hands and legs shaking violently, her eyes already red and flooding with tears. “We’re just…girls.”

  Marcus locked the door and pulled her into the back bathroom where he said, “How many?”

  “Of them or us?” she asked, wiping her eyes, old mascara trailing down her cheeks.

  “Both.”

  “Two of us to every one of them,” she said through a hiccupping jag of tears. “I think there’s maybe twenty of them.”

  “How’d they get you?”

  “They just took me,” she said, sniffling and wiping her nose. “They took me from my father, and then they did…well…apparently they’ve been doing this for a couple of days now. Are you here to save us?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Corrine,” she said, gatheri
ng up her bra and panties. “How many are here with you?”

  He looked away while she dressed, doing what he could to preserve what modesty she had left. Besides, his head was an outrageous wreck right now. Flashbacks from his time overseas were persistent, which dragged down his spirits and left him feeling extra hostile and a bit jumpy.

  “It’s just me,” he said, looking up.

  He glanced in the mirror, saw what she saw and blanched. His face was bruised and that wet rolling feeling on his traps was blood from when he was hit with a bottle back in the Ralph’s supermarket. None of that even accounted for all the blood spatter blown back on his face from when he shot the skinhead in the eye.

  “You’re not going to be enough,” she said, even though he looked hellish and mean.

  “That’s what my dad used to tell me,” he murmured.

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Just stay here,” he said, opening the door again. “Stay here until I tell you it’s okay to come out.”

  “I have no one,” she said to Marcus.

  This stopped him. He looked at her one last time, and she looked at him with a lost, desperation in her eyes. This look arrested him. Held him. Her eyes were pleading, chock full of fear.

  “You said they took you from your father?”

  “They killed him in front of me. These are not good people. They’re evil.”

  “What about your mom?”

  “She left us.”

  He didn’t have time for this.

  “In times as lawless and chaotic as these, all the decent people go into hiding while the killers, rapists and opportunists wander the streets. That’s why I don’t want you coming out until I say it’s okay.”

  “And if you don’t make it?”

  He never considered the notion that he wouldn’t make it. To Marcus, it was only a matter of how bad of shape he would be in when all was said and done.

  “If I don’t make it,” he said, “then good luck to you.”

  “My family is gone,” she said again as he walked toward the door. Looking back, he turned up the music, went through the door and headed to the room blaring the gangster rap.