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

by Schow, Ryan

  The car with no front wheels and no jacks to hold it up then fell on him, crushing his body against the concrete garage floor.

  While he was gurgling to death under thousands of pounds of metal, she took several deep breaths, waited until the last little twitch left his leg, then walked around the front of the home where a few steps led to a porch and the front door. Before ascending the stairs, she worked up a few tears and some tremors in her hands.

  When she was ready, she went and rapid-fire knocked on the front door.

  A woman who looked to be in her mid-thirties answered the door. Behind her, deeper in the living room, was a five or six-year old little girl.

  “That man out there, I…I think…the jacks gave way, and I think the car fell on him!”

  Eyes pumped full of fear, she turned, told the young girl to stay inside, then shut the door, pushed past Maria and hurried to the front driveway where the car was indeed sitting on the man’s body. She cried out, dropped to her knees, began calling his name.

  The grieving wife was kneeling down, sobbing, calling his name, but only for a moment. When Maria grabbed the woman’s head and gave it a ferocious twist, her struggle came to a close. All the pain she would have felt was spared her.

  “My condolences,” she said as she stood and walked around to the front door. She opened it up, saw the child.

  “Get your coat and your shoes, you’re coming with me.”

  “Where’s my mommy?”

  “With your daddy. Come with me so that you know why you’re coming with me.”

  The little girl was hesitant at first, but then Maria walked her around the front of the house where she saw her daddy’s legs sprouting out from the car. Her mommy was lying in front of the car, folded over on her side.

  “Mommy?” she said, shaking her mother’s shoulder.

  “She died of a broken heart,” Maria said. “The loss of her husband, your daddy, was just too much for her to bear.”

  “Mommy?” the girl started saying louder, tears in her eyes and in her voice. She shook her mother’s shoulder harder, but the woman was no more.

  Maria cracked her knuckles simply by flexing them. Then she put a sad smile on her face and said, “Let’s go cry inside while we get your shoes and coat.”

  “I don’t want to go anywhere with you!” she turned and yelled, her eyes bubbling over with tears.

  Maria knelt down, grabbed a fistful of the girl’s unwashed brown hair—tight to the scalp so her message was clear—then said, “Your mommy didn’t die of a broken heart, she died of a broken neck. See that bulge in the skin right there?” Maria pointed to a push of broken bone pressing up against the skin from the inside. “That’s your proof she’s gone. Now if you really want to be with your mommy and your daddy, then you’ll have to be the same way they are. Dead. Do you want to die?”

  Bawling now, clawing at Maria’s hand because the grip was really, really tight, she wailed, screaming out the word: “No!”

  “I can give you the same broken neck as your mommy,” she said, shoving the girl’s head as she let go of her hair. “It won’t hurt at all, but then you’ll be with them. Is that what you want?”

  “No,” she said, quieter now.

  “If you don’t go get your shoes and coat, I’m going to drag you in there by your hair and get you dressed myself.”

  The child just sat there, sobbing, not answering. Finally Maria grabbed a handful of the brown hair and started dragging her down the sidewalk, kicking and screaming because Maria was not burdened with a conscious, nor was she burdened by the concept of right and wrong. If she was going to be half human and live this new life, she would do so following the principle that progress will be made “at all costs.”

  She finally let the girl go, stood over the bawling child and said, “Time’s up. Am I going to kill you or are you going to get dressed?”

  “Dressed!” she said, sobbing, holding her head where it hurt.

  “Good, Now get your ass up and go get dressed!”

  The girl did as she was told, returning only moments later. The child’s cheeks were bright red, her eyes soaked with tears. All the whimpering she was doing was dimpling her chin, making her look so very, very sad.

  Maria smiled big and said, “You and me are going to go on an adventure to the big city, do you want that?”

  The girl said nothing.

  “You want me to level with you, you silly, silly nuisance? Fine. I suppose after what happened to your parents, I owe you at least that.” She took a deep breath, then said, “I need you.”

  The child just looked at her, saying nothing.

  “People trust someone with kids. They tend to leave them alone,” she reasoned. “Kids get you into places you can’t get on your own, and they instill trust. You will be my child, and if you agree, I will protect you from everything sick and cruel this world has to offer.”

  “You killed my parents.”

  “The died of unnatural circumstances,” she said.

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Do you have food?” She indicated neither yes nor no. “Well, do you?”

  She finally nodded and Maria realized the pangs she felt in her stomach had been triggered by hunger. This new body had a genetically elevated metabolism, and she’d just expended a tremendous amount of energy, so she needed food, too.

  “Good, I’m hungry.”

  “But I don’t want to go with you.”

  “You’re going or I’m going to kill you and find another child. So are we going or are we dying?”

  Finally she said, “Going.”

  “Good,” she said with an animated smile, “let’s get some food.”

  They made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and ate chips. Maria ate seven sandwiches and a whole bag of chips, family size.

  “I need something to drink,” she said.

  The girl also claimed to be thirsty, but said that her mommy told her they couldn’t drink much water because it had to last.

  “Get us two big glasses.”

  The girl came back with a glass for herself and a big glass for Maria. Maria drank the entire thing down and said, “Wow, that was good.”

  “Came from my toilet,” the girl said, eyes cast down, sipping from her own glass.

  Maria took the child’s water from her, drank it and said, “Mine was better. Go get yourself more. Try the toilet this time.”

  The girl left then came back, and by then Maria had eaten another sandwich.

  “Drink up, then let’s go.”

  “I have to go potty,” the girl said.

  “So go potty then let’s go.”

  “Mommy says I have to do it in the backyard because—”

  “I really don’t care where you do your business, just get it done and let’s go!”

  The girl took a napkin and went out back. In the corner of the backyard, she popped a squat and peed. Maria watched as she wiped herself thoroughly, folded the napkin four times, then left it on the backyard porch in a three gallon bucket.

  When she came back inside, Maria was ready to go.

  Reaching out to the child, she said, “Take my hand. Let’s be friends.” Reluctantly, making a pouty face, the girl took the lovely Hispanic woman’s hand, thereby changing the very course and nature of her life.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Four or five shadows in the night move quietly through the neighborhood, going door to door, barely a whisper between them. By now Marcus is moving to the other side of the truck, shotgun in one hand, pistol tucked into his waistband but outside his shirt and ready to go.

  “These guys up here, I think there’s maybe half a dozen. Give or take. They’re checking doors and windows.”

  “They’re headed this way?” I ask, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

  “Yeah.”

  Now we both stand up straight because one materializes from the shadows not twenty feet away. He’s got a gun on us. He’s walking forward, trying to see through the
night, trying to figure out if he’s seeing us just standing here.

  He is. We are.

  My bowels give an involuntary clench. I’m not sure if this guy’s going to just shoot and rob us or if it’s still too difficult for people to shoot strangers. By Marcus’s calm demeanor, I’d say he thinks we’re not there yet.

  “Why you just standing there all quiet in the night?” the guy says. He’s got a Jamaican accent, dreadlocks, all black clothes on.

  “Don’t really care what you guys are doing,” Marcus responds, “so long as it doesn’t include us.”

  Another guy comes up behind him, a slim white guy with dreads as well. We can’t really see their features, but I have a feeling they’re tweakers. They have that look of guys who’ve cooked their brains and are really trying to ride that high through the backside of life.

  “Just shoot ‘em,” the white guy says.

  “They didn’t do nothin’, yet.”

  “So why you talking to them with your gun out?”

  At this point, we aren’t pointing our guns back at them, but I have the feeling Marcus could get the jump on them if he—

  “They armed, too,” a voice says from Marcus’s side. A third man emerges from the dark beside us and now my heart is pumping triple-time.

  “Your side,” Marcus whispers.

  Looking over, I first hear a slight rustling and then I see another man on the other side of us, flanking us. All these guys are closing in on us, yet Marcus still hasn’t even moved a muscle.

  “You guys looking to score,” Marcus asks, “or you just want a place to squat?”

  “It’s a take-what-you-like world now,” the guy beside Marcus says.

  “On that I won’t disagree,” Marcus replies.

  “Your little friend’s tongue broken?” white dreadlocks asks.

  “Morning, fellas,” I say.

  It felt like the right thing to say at first, but in reality it sounded too white for these Rastafarian brethren. What makes it worse is no one says anything and now I really feel like a clown.

  “That thing work?” the first Jamaican asks, motioning to the truck.

  “It does.”

  “Whatcha got in it?”

  “Food, supplies, weapons and girls.”

  They all start laughing and I’m not sure how to take it. A fifth man appears out of the shadows. Two of them now have guns on us and still Marcus hasn’t raised a weapon beyond loosely cradling his shotgun. What the hell is he doing? I swear, I’m practically wetting myself right now, but this is Marcus’s world, so I have to trust he isn’t trying to get us killed.

  “To answer your question,” the one to the left of me says, “we’re always looking to score, but if we find a nice place along the way, we’ll squat.”

  “The nicer places are on Ocean, not back here.”

  “We been up Ocean looking for the riches,” white dreadlocks says, “now we down here looking for the candy.”

  They all start laughing, but Marcus and I don’t join them.

  “Well we don’t have any candy, and you won’t see anything here you like, so feel free to move on through, problem free of course.”

  “How you know we won’t like what we see?” he says, nodding to the truck. “We haven’t looked.”

  “We don’t have your drugs here,” Marcus says, stern. “Not on us. Not in the truck.”

  “We gonna look anyway.”

  “You try to look, I’ll put a hole in your head the size of a fist. And then all your buddies can stand and marvel at how stupid you really are. Or you can prove me wrong. Be smart for once in your life and move on through.”

  “You all big talk,” the one on Marcus’s side says. The way he says it, it’s like he wants Marcus to react because it seems he wants to shoot him.

  “It’s not me you have to worry about,” Marcus says. Then, nodding my direction, he says, “It’s him. See he don’t look like much, but a guy like that? You only run into him once in a lifetime. And for a lot of guys, it’s their last time. See we’re both ex-military, both Special Forces. You think things are bad right now. All these beach cities hit by drones, no power, no cops, no law. But this is still a million times better than some of the garbage we used to crawl through.”

  “You ain’t Special Forces,” one of the guys says and Marcus starts to laugh.

  “Says the tweaker with rat status,” I say forcing myself to act the role even if I can’t live the role.

  “I ain’t got rat status,” the white guy says, suddenly offended.

  “Yeah, well you ain’t showered and shaved are you?” I say. “You crawled out of the gutter for some smack and you’ll go back when you’re done. Like a rat. Rat status.”

  “Pass through, fellas,” Marcus says.

  “You ain’t even lifted your gun,” one of the guys says. Looking at his buddies, he says, “He ain’t even lifted his gun.”

  “That’s because I could draw down on you and put two in your face before you even think to pull the trigger. I do this for a living. You’re something someone should have aborted.”

  Now they look serious.

  “You trying to provoke us?” the guy to his right asks.

  “Kind of,” Marcus answers with a sly grin, looking right at him. “And if you’re wondering, I can get you and him before these two draw down on us, but by that time my buddy will have put all three of your buddies down.”

  “What about me?” another voice asks. He’s well built and much taller than the other five, and he walks with an air of importance.

  “I’m going to shoot you first,” Marcus says, his grip on the shotgun changing.

  “Yes, but you won’t get us all,” he says, grinning like he knows something. “Someone will get you no matter how much chest thumping you do.”

  That’s when four or five more black men emerge, all of them armed. “Yeah,” the first one says, “but we’ll get what they don’t. So do like he says and move on.”

  I don’t show it, but thank God for Lucas, Davis and the crew. The air about them completely changes, the tides turning in our favor. The tweakers lower their guns, telling everyone to just calm down, that they didn’t mean nothing by it.

  “Go two blocks up, then you can go back to doing whatever it was you was doin’,” Lucas says.

  “For sure, brother,” the Rastafarian says in his thick, Jamaican accent. “Just be cool. Ain’t no need for a break in civility.”

  “Yeah man, it’s cool,” the white guy says as he passes by us.

  “Rat status,” I mutter, just loud enough for him to hear.

  “I ain’t no rat,” he says, his voice rising.

  “He isn’t saying you’re a snitch, mon,” his friend says, “he’s saying you stink. Which you do.”

  “Oh,” he says and then they’re gone, moving past us, disappearing into the night.

  “Thanks guys,” Marcus says as our temporary posse heads back inside.

  Lucas fist bumps me then says, “You really Special Forces?”

  “I used to be a pro skateboarder and now I sell pharmaceuticals,” I tell him.

  They all start laughing, then Lucas says, “The big boy is one hell of a salesman. You sell drugs, too?”

  “Used to,” he says with a grin. “But only the legal kind.”

  “And before that, let me guess,” Davis says, “personal trainer at Twenty-Four Hour Fitness?”

  “No,” I say, “this one really was Special Forces.”

  Now they sober a bit.

  “My-my-my, how the world is changing,” Lucas says. “Good thing my wife likes beans. Too bad for her I ate too many.”

  A few of the guys start snickering, then Davis says, “At least she’s warm tonight!”

  “I’ll take watch from here,” I tell him. What I don’t tell him is my heart is still cranking at twice its normal beat, and I’m too juiced to sleep.

  “I just need an hour,” Marcus says.

  “You want me to wake you?” I ask,
not knowing how I’ll even calculate an hour now that I have no electronic means of doing so.

  “The nightmares will wake me,” he says, going back to the lawn chair he was sitting on.

  Marcus pulls a thin blanket over his body, sets the shotgun across the arms of his chair and the pistol on his lap, then he closes his eyes and I stand watch.

  When I think back to the way I was raised—not as some entitled little brat with a wall full of participation trophies, but certainly more balanced than Marcus’s upbringing—I realize I’m not cut from the same cloth as him. I have staying power, though. The truth is, I don’t want to hurt people, but I’m pretty quick to decide the difference between right and wrong. That doesn’t guarantee I know how to survive this world, but it does mean in this climate I’m going to have to play judge, jury and executioner all in a matter of seconds.

  I wasn’t willing to admit that to myself before, but I’m ready now.

  That has me thinking about The Warden. I waited too long to kill him. I hesitated. Was I really going to leave Bailey there and come back when I was better equipped to deal with him? The embarrassing thing is, I was. The truth is, I was scared. Most people will never kill someone. They won’t want to. Or they won’t be able to. If not for seeing Tyler dead, what would Bailey’s fate be? Would I have come back? I would have. With Marcus.

  Looking at that big freaking animal asleep on a folding chair, doing nothing with his life but protecting people and bitter that he can’t let himself love anyone, I wonder if that will ever be my life.

  It won’t be, I tell myself.

  It can’t be.

  But I’m becoming something different. I’m finding my way home, but I’m also building a new life along the way. I now have friends, a woman who likes me and kids who depend on me. This is like a family, and as much as family bickers and fights, as much as there’s a pecking order to them, I realize I want these people in my life. I want them as family. And if push comes to shove, I’m going to protect them the same way I’d protect Indigo, or even Margot. And that’s why I know for sure, I wouldn’t have hesitated to kill these men. This should scare me, but for some reason it doesn’t.

  True to his word, Marcus jolts out of a restful slumber, grabs his gun and almost draws it, but on what? On whom? I spent so much time idolizing him and hating him, but I never really realized what it might be like to be him. Dead mother, tyrant for a father, honed to an emotionless, fully functioning, government sanctioned mercenary in the Army. It makes sense he’d have nightmares. I’ve seen Tyler twice now, maybe in the fog of a dream, or maybe for real—I don’t know. These are my nightmares. All this from one traumatic event. Marcus’s life is filled with them.