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

by Schow, Ryan

  “What’s her name?” the first little girl said.

  “Let’s do show and tell first. Show me your backpack, then tell me where the food and water is and then we can be on our way.” Everyone stepped out and four of the seven had backpacks. “Boys, let’s go fill these backpacks with water and what’s left of the food and any supplies you might have.”

  True to the little girl’s word, there was very little food. Enough for all of them for a night or two. Breakfast and dinner, no lunch. When they all congregated out front, when she finally convinced them to follow her, it was only after she asked how long they’d been there and if they’d seen their parents lately. All of them shook their heads and for a second, Maria registered an emotion surging through her that was either pity or compassion. Seeing these little kids, knowing they’d have no parents, that they were going to grow up as orphans in a world where most of their species was dead, filled her heart with a terrible sadness she did not like. She felt the tears building as she studied each and every one of them, then she said, “You, the little boy with the red hair, go get a black Sharpie.”

  “Sharpie?”

  “Permanent ink pen. Check your teacher’s desk drawers.”

  The kid came back a few minutes later with a handful of pens. She found the one she wanted and had him drop the rest.

  “Line up,” she said. They did. Looking at her girl, she said, “You, too.”

  She did.

  Starting with the girl she’d taken long ago, she drew a large number 1 on her forehead, then moved to the next kid and drew a 2 and so on until she reached the end of the line with an 8.

  “Now I don’t care what your names are. As far as I’m concerned, your names don’t matter. They only hold you to a past you’re going to have to let go of. I’m going to read your number off and you’re only job is to remember that number.”

  “So I can’t be—”

  “Don’t say it!” she barked, startling all of them. Then, softer of tone, more patient, she said, “Your names are things of the past. This is the present and we’re about to take on the future and we will do so with both order and simplicity. You are not Tyler or Jane or Mary or Brad. You’re named One through Eight. Got it?”

  “But my name is Jonathon,” one of the boys said. Another added, “And I’m Greg.”

  “Jonathon and Greg,” she said, her tone pumped full of irritation, her pistol coming from her person, “get on the ground and put your noses on the pavement before I get done counting to three or I’m going to shoot you both in the head.”

  Her gun was trained on Jonathon, whose eyes were bulging, and one of the kids might have been wetting her pants. The two terrified boys got down quickly, then stayed there, noses on the pavement, not speaking.

  Now those still standing just stared at her, some of their eyes glistening with fear—or the onslaught of myriad emotions—and some of them were ogling her like she’d just given birth to a baby elephant.

  “So everyone gets the rule about numbers and names, right?”

  No one said anything. She took a deep breath, forced herself to put the gun away for fear of using it as a “motivational tool,” i.e., shoot one to get the cooperation of the others.

  “Your second job is that when I ask a question,” she said through clenched teeth, “you ANSWER ME! Now, do you understand? Say it!”

  “Yes,” they all said in unison, even the two reprobates on the ground.

  Smiling wide, suddenly pleased, her hands out as if she’d just performed a magic trick, she said, “Well now aren’t you the best little group of monsters this side of wherever. Follow me, kids. We’re going to blow this popsicle stand.”

  She looked down at the rat that called himself Jonathon (Five) and said, “What’s your number, boy?”

  Both boys looked up at her. She pointed to the puke formerly known as Jonathon and said, “You.”

  “My name is Five.”

  “Good,” she said. “Get up. What about you, Mister?”

  “My name is Three.”

  “Oh, boy. Look how well we’re learning to follow rules. See, if they had guns in the classrooms, if they could use them as a teaching apparatus, imagine how well behaved you’d all be?”

  No one said anything, so she said, “It seems the schools have been too lax.” Smiling big again, her charm and extraordinary beauty almost disarming to the kids, she excitedly said, “Are you guys ready for an adventure or what?” There was a smattering of half-hearted cheers. “Oh come on now. You can do better than that!”

  Now the cheers were vocal and even though it was an act, it was the start of command and control. Drawing from her extensive data base of anything from human emotions to slang to behavioral patterns of kids, she searched through a huge catalogue of songs.

  “Everyone know the Annie theme song? It’s a hard knocks life for me? That song?”

  They all said, “Yes.”

  “Yes, Miss Maria,” Maria said in a scolding tone.

  To her utter delight, they all echoed, “Yes, Miss Maria!” without so much as a fight.

  “Fabulous!” she said. “One, start us off.”

  Her girl started the song and they all joined in, Miss Maria included. After that was done, Six—a waif of a brunette with curly, untamed hair and thin lips—said, “Where are we going?”

  “To the big city, girls and rodents. How does that sound?”

  Everyone laughed when she said rodents, but then they all cheered, and for a second there, Maria actually felt like their joy was genuine and this might work.

  They were not two miles up the street when Three started to whine about his feet. She knew it was coming.

  She could feel it.

  “You are one of three boys,” she turned and said. “One of THREE. That means five of our little group are girls, and you know what? In my world, boys are stronger than girls. Boys suck it up and act like men when women cry and complain and talk about life being unfair. This is unfair. Your species is damn near dead, but if you’re going to survive, kids like you—boys who are supposed to one day grow into men and repopulate the earth—you can’t act like a bunch of sniveling pansies. So stop your bitching about your little sore feet and act like you’ve got a set.”

  “A set of what?”

  “BALLS!” she barked.

  Everyone reeled at her power, at her force, and now Three started to get all shiny-eyed and weak, his little knees knocking together, his little chin dimpling in the center.

  God, what an ugly child, she thought.

  “You little sissy. You BABY. Do you really expect me to believe these girls are tougher than you? Look at them!” Three looked at them, his face scrunched up, his little chest full of tremors. “What if I said you have to fight Five over here to the death and only one of you gets to come?”

  “Which one would come?” a frizzy blonde haired girl asked. She couldn’t be more than four years old, she was so small.

  “The dead one,” she said with an abundance of sarcasm.

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” she said.

  “Shut up, fuzzy!” she roared. Looking around, she said, “Anyone else want to act like a baby, or do you want to act like adults?”

  “But we’re not adults,” Eight said. Maria had her weapon out in a flash and pointed at the girl with a dirty mouth and torn, stained white tights on.

  “Not one more word from you, young lady. Got it?”

  “Yes, Miss Maria,” she said, squeamish.

  “I will either protect you at all costs or kill you all depending on how well you behave. I want no backtalk, no crying and no one falls behind. You slow the group down and I will shoot you. Does everyone understand?”

  “Yes, Miss Maria!” they all said. Everyone but Three. Three barely managed to mumble out his reply.

  “That seemed a little uninspiring, Three,” she said. “It seems your enthusiasm for this life I’m trying to provide you with is severely lacking.” Mocking his sour face, kneeling
down in front of him, she said, “Does your whittle bwain hurt as much as your whittle duck feet? Does your ugwy whittle mouth hurt, too?”

  “No, Miss Maria,” he said, choking down a sob.

  Looking at him, stern, still bent before him and now pointing an accusatory finger in his face, she said, “You fall behind, I shoot you.” Standing up, looking among the faces, she said, “What rule is that for those of you who are counting?”

  Number One said, “Rule number three, Miss Maria.”

  Looking back, her smile genuine, she held the little girl’s eye with pride and said, “Ever the little superstar, aren’t you One?”

  “Yes, Miss Maria.”

  Looking back at the group, Maria said, “It’s sad only one of you remembers.” Then looking back at Three, she says, “Three, get it together or get ready for the longest nap of your life.”

  And he did. Finally.

  “Rule number four,” she announced, almost like a drill instructor would to her troops, “is that One is your leader, and Three is your weak link. You do what One says, and you do the opposite of what Three does, because Three is a bad little soldier as of right now. Is everyone clear?”

  “Yes, Miss Maria!”

  “The reason I decided to bring all you wonderful little souls with me is so that I am not held hostage by number One.”

  Pointedly looking at the girl, Maria said, “With all these little kids now, I don’t need you unless you earn the right to be needed. Remember, I only need one.”

  One simply stared up at her, blinking twice, understanding.

  Glancing over the sea of faces, an overly bright and cheery Maria said, “On the way to San Francisco, we are going to practice you liking me. We are going to practice the story of how I came to save you from your guaranteed deaths. You’re going to practice saying that I’m the nicest person ever. That it was so sweet for me to do for you what I’ve done. If we can learn this as a group, if you can be convincing enough, then you just might survive this trip. And if you are one of the lucky ones to survive, then you will have earned the right to live in a community where you will be protected from bad people, given a bed and a belly full of food. But remember, if you tell anyone you don’t like me, or that I’m not nice—which I am—then I will kill every single one of you except for the best behaved child. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Miss Maria,” came the voices, albeit tinged with the kind of fear you’d expect out of pint-sized hostages.

  Moving from face to darling face, absorbing and cataloguing the differences between them, her personal likes and dislikes, her emotional response to each child, she thought, and who says babysitting is tough?

  Clapping her hands together, she said, “Well then, my little monsters, let’s pick up the pace! We’ve got a big city to infiltrate!”

  Chapter Sixty

  Nick stood in the bathroom, his heart with the now deceased Bailey, his only concern the fact that she was gone. That’s when she tried to lift her heel and Nick almost couldn’t breathe.

  “Um, I think I need you out of there,” the woman who’d come to their rescue said. Nick was helped out of there as a low guttural sound came from deeper inside the stall. The woman got in there, gagged, but held her composure better than most anyone else would have.

  “Do you know where you are?” they heard the woman ask Bailey.

  “Jail,” the voice mumbled.

  “Do you know your name?” she asked.

  “Bailey.”

  “Good, Bailey. My name is Jill and I’m going to get you someplace safe, okay?”

  “Nick,” she said.

  Nick was standing above her, emotions roaring through him. “I’m here, Bailey. Marcus, too. We’re okay,” he said. Then for extra assurance, he added: “We’re going to be okay.”

  “Bartholomew,” Jill said, “get a stretcher and prep an IV.”

  “Got it,” he said, then turned and broke into a run

  “Thank you so much for what you’re doing, Jill,” Nick said, unable to tear his eyes off Bailey. He couldn’t stop staring at the skeletal look of her. It was bad when she came out of The Warden’s box after a few days, but this was downright stunning.

  A few minutes later, two large men and Jill’s partner, returned with a stretcher and blankets.

  “Careful now,” Jill said. “She could go into shock.”

  The men gently lifted her on the stretcher, laid the blankets over her body and a cloth over her eyes. “It’s going to be so bright it hurts your eyes,” Bartholomew said. “This will help minimize the sting.”

  She made a noise of acknowledgement, although the faint huff of air hardly qualified as a noise. More like a reverse gasp.

  Corrine moved away from Marcus to the stretcher next to Bailey and said, “Bailey, it’s me, Corrine. We’re here for you. Marcus and Nick. All of us.”

  She touched Bailey’s arm very gently; Bailey’s hand registered a weak response.

  One of the men said, “We’re hooking up an IV, Bailey, to help restore your fluids.”

  “Thanks,” she managed to mumble.

  When they were set, they moved her out of the stink factory and off to one of the Humvees. Corrine walked with Marcus, Jill with Nick. The two men found their legs, but then covered their eyes against the bright light of the warehouse the same way a vampire would cover his eyes against the morning sunrise.

  As Jill’s men were loading Bailey inside, Corrine tried to ignore all the eyes on her, Abigail’s crying and Amber’s sudden, deafening silence.

  When Bailey was safely loaded inside, Jill said to Marcus, “We’ll meet you at base camp. I want to see you and Nick in the infirmary as soon as you arrive. We have to get you fed, hydrated and checked out.”

  “Yeah, sure, no problem,” Marcus said.

  When the truck took off, Marcus just stood there, Amber hugging him and finally crying into his chest. Abigail was holding Corrine’s hand, and they were both crying, too. Nick, however, stood all alone, a wraith, looking at all those people. None of them looked as emaciated as him, although they were in a rough state from being caged for so long.

  When Abigail reached up and took his hand, he looked down on her, a strong almost jarring memory bowling over him. For a second, and maybe it was his delirium, he looked down and saw Indigo when she was that age.

  He blinked a couple of times and started to wobble on his feet. Corrine moved quickly to his side, wrapped an arm around him and said, “I got you.”

  “Indy?” he said, looking down at the girl.

  “Abigail,” she said, suddenly nervous. She let go of his hand and went to her mother. He didn’t blame her.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I knew that. Abigail.”

  “We’ve been rescued, Nick,” Corrine said. “We’re being rescued.”

  “I know,” he said, patting Corrine’s arm where she held him. Then looking down, knowing he must be a sight, he said, “Are you okay?”

  “I will be as soon as you and Marcus are fire-hosed down, because holy crap, you two stink.”

  “Had unflushed toilets for air fresheners.”

  “Yeah, it smells like it.”

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Corrine bit back the tears. So rich was her emotion, it continued to well up inside her, her memory producing replay after replay of this morning’s events. She couldn’t stop seeing all of Bailey’s bones. Or Nick as he looked on in horror. The pain in his voice, the texture of it, how there was so much fear just churning beneath the surface of each word, haunted her.

  And Marcus…

  The man barely said a word. Looking at him, he almost seemed to revel in it. Like he could have taken another month. Like maybe he wanted another month just to prove he could have lasted that long.

  She blinked away the memories, suddenly aware she was looking at Marcus and he was looking right back. He was like that, able to sneak up on you, almost like nothing he did so much as even stirred the air between them.

  “Your
beard has become its own animal,” she said with a slight smile.

  He snorted out a weak laugh, then followed with a curl of the lips so slight she had to look closer to tell if he was smiling at her or bemoaning his condition. It had to be a smile, because men like Marcus don’t complain, or bemoan anything. After a moment, his eyes went vacant. Like his soul was taking ten.

  “You guys ready?” one of the rescuing soldiers asked.

  Marcus’s eyes cleared and he said, “We are.”

  “I have strict orders to get you and this gentleman to the infirmary.”

  “He needs it more than me,” he said, giving a head nod Nick’s way. But Nick was zoning out. Just standing there taking it all in. All those people, hundreds of them, being organized, matched with others, put in lines.

  “They all coming?” Nick asked.

  “No.”

  “What about the kids?” he asked, cognizant enough to be concerned about others. Corrine liked that about him. He was a different kind of man than Marcus, strong in his own ways, caring in places where Marcus couldn’t be.

  “We have people who will take the kids. A lot of our women are mothers who lost their kids, and though there is no replacing a child, we’re going to need experienced women to love and care for them.”

  “What about the men who lost their kids?” Nick asked.

  “You a father?”

  “I am,” he said, his eyes finally clearing.

  When he zeroed in on the soldier, there was life in those eyes once again. There was also that dark thing residing on the outer edges, that part of him that was holding out hope that his daughter was still alive, that he could find her, that he wouldn’t be left with the not knowing.

  “The not knowing,” he’d told Corrine before all this, “is every parent’s worst nightmare.”

  “Is your son or daughter here?” the soldier asked Nick. “At this facility?”

  “San Francisco,” he replied, weakness overtaking him. “Where we’re going.”

  “Well I hope she’s okay, and I hope you find her. First we need to get you checked out, get you your strength back. You’re looking like you’re on your last two drops of gas.”