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

by Schow, Ryan

  Rider and Sarah are pregnant, too, as are Marcus and Amber, who were married in our first official “wedding” two weeks ago. Abigail and Corrine are thrilled, the two of them inseparable these days.

  Nick and Bailey are happy and together all the time, too, and for some reason, this has taken the hard edge Indigo has had since I knew her and softened it immensely. I barely even remember who she used to be. She’s going to be a mother soon, which has turned Rex into a different person as well. He still has his moments when the war haunts him, but he comes out of them easier now and without so much drama.

  The horrors all of us knew—the impossible pain that we walk with each day—is starting to feel distant, like its breath isn’t so hot or foul, and its grip on our hearts has loosened some, letting in light and possibility.

  By all rights, Margot’s cancer is gone. We can’t exactly figure out why, but more than a few people attribute this to no sugar, plenty of fresh air and no electronics. Other people say it’s a miracle, and still there are those who refuse to believe in such holistic or spiritual measures.

  In the end, it doesn’t matter because Margot is finally at peace with herself. It’s clear to see she loves Bailey, but that secretly she wishes she could be with Nick again. But now she’s met a man, William, and she’s starting to settle into the idea of a new relationship. He’s a good man, an attentive mate and most of all, Indigo and Nick approve.

  From time to time, we’re haunted by the devastation of losing people close to us, like Gunner and Charity, like Six, like Corrine’s father and Tyler Bateman—the boy who died at the hands of The Warden. Even Gunderson has those moments when you can see his eyes fall into that thousand yard stare. In those moments, we all know he’s thinking about his family.

  He never got over Lisandro rejecting him with such disdain, such cruelty, but maybe this is what he needs. If there was ever a hint of ruthlessness in him, it’s all gone. He’s a model citizen, kind to everyone and pleasant to talk with. He spends a lot of time by the creek though, by himself just thinking, meditating, and on some days, crying.

  The man has demons, like the rest of us, but in the end, forgiveness is ours to give and we learned to leave judgment to God, for who are we to cast blame on anyone? We’ve killed to survive. We’ve stolen things, lives, parts of our soul to make it this far and all of us have blood on our hands. Gunderson more than most. So we leave him to his private moments and we smile when we see him and now we know he is ours, with us, part of our family. The good thing is, he believes this, too.

  Privately, I pray this will heal him.

  In the end, we can never let our pain die off completely, because forgetting those most important to us is the same as tearing out long swaths of our past. Eventually we’ll let go, just as Atlanta is doing, and Corrine is doing, and eventually we’ll heal, just as Margot’s body has healed, just as Indigo’s relationship with her mother has healed, just as my marriage with Stanton has healed.

  This is a different life, not what we wanted, not what we expected, but now we have two other communities to learn from, and friends in each of them.

  As people, as a community, we started small, grew a little larger, and now we’re expanding even from here. This has allowed good men like Rider, Rex, Jagger and Marcus to unburden themselves from the soldiers’ tension.

  World peace starts with inner peace and I am at peace. This is a world where love can flourish, a world where family is more important than career, and in so many ways, this is the world I have always wanted to live in. So we have our families, our friends and our neighbors, and now we have our homestead and a future, too.

  Just then, class lets out and the kids come flooding out of the freshly constructed school room. It isn’t much, but it’s a place, a destination, and Maria is a wealth of knowledge. It’s almost impossible to know how much she knows, which is why we nominated her to be the children’s educator.

  She taught the kids myriad survival skills, basic math and the reasons they would use it; biology so they understood the land, the forest, the seasons; astronomy so they know about the stars; and geometry for when they have to build their own homes and communities one day.

  To her own satisfaction, the other day she held an entire class on respecting their elders. The way I hear it, she ended the lecture by saying, “If you don’t know what you need to do to be good little monsters, you’re going to get your little butts spanked by me personally, and you don’t want that.”

  I thought about this for a moment and it felt like a return to old times. To better times. Jonathon, (formerly known as Five) told me that the new girl said, “My last teacher said you can’t spank kids anymore,” but then Jonathon said that Miss Maria said, “Yeah, well your teacher’s dead and I spank kids, so you’d best mind your P’s and Q’s.”

  Jonathon laughed. He said, “One through Eight, myself included, think Miss Maria is the best teacher ever.”

  In a moment of slight concern (nothing huge, and nothing nagging—more like a gauge) I pull One aside (she no longer wants to be called Sally) and ask, “When will you be done calling yourself One? Surely a little cutie pie like yourself would rather be called Sally, right?”

  “I’ll change it when Miss Maria is okay with it.”

  “She already said you could change your names,” I remind her.

  “I like One better.”

  “Is Miss Maria a good person?”

  One thinks about it for a moment, then she looks up at me and says, “Miss Maria’s nice, and brave. She saved us. She almost didn’t save Three, but that’s because he was the weak link. But he’s not weak anymore, because Three got strong and Miss Maria is nice. She’s nice and she saved us when really we should have died.”

  “What does she teach you in school?” I ask. Usually I ask for conversation’s sake, but now I ask because there is something…different, about Maria.

  “She says leadership is the most important quality in today’s world. She’s going to be a great leader one day”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because she tells us so. She says one day she’s going to rule the world.”

  A slight chill races up my spine, but I dismiss it the second Stanton joins me. “Run along, One,” I say with a pat on her back. The girl heads back to her friends, which makes me smile.

  These kids started out as other people’s children, but now they’re our children and it’s good to have them.

  Stanton wraps me in a hug, kisses my cheek about a thousand times, then says, “Look at all this,” to which I reply, “I can’t stop looking.”

  “We did good, baby, didn’t we?”

  Smiling, I turn my face to his, kiss him twice on the lips, then say, “This is going to be a good life, sweetheart.”

  “The best,” he replies.

  The best.

  END OF BOOK 7

  Afterword

  A WORD OF THANKS…

  Thank you so much for taking this journey with me (and with this crazy cast of characters on their hell-and-back adventure!). I truly hope you enjoyed reading this series as much as I’ve loved writing it. If you’re like me, you fell in love with a few of the characters, hated a few of them (peaches - LOL) and will be left wondering about a few more.

  As writers, we sometimes live an isolated existence, seldom knowing how readers receive our work, so to hear how the books have impacted you is thrilling for us as writers, both through your reviews and your comments on the Facebook group! Not only does this fuel us, we find some pretty cool people along the way. That said, I’m happy to say that I am a better person for having written this series. I’ve had a chance to meet a lot of great people, not only through your wonderful emails, but through the great stories you’ve shared about yourself, where you are when you’re reading the books and the effect they have on you. This is perhaps the greatest joy of being a writer!

  In truth, I’m quite social in the real world, but between you and I, I’ve always loved the wo
rld of fiction so much better! In between The Infernal Regions and The Killing Fields, I was able to leave my super stressful, 60+ hour per week job to write full time. This has been a dream of mine for two decades (I’m still pinching myself!). I owe much of this to you, so thank you for allowing me to do this with your support, your constant word of mouth, your inspiring reviews, your great comments on my ads (and your shares!), and mostly your friendship!

  Now that the series is over, readers are asking, what next? When one door closes, another opens. That door is called The Age of Embers, and it is the first book in my next Post-Apocalyptic adventure series! And if you haven’t already joined the private Facebook group, please do so now as this is one great way to stay up to date with the details of the new books, cover and character reveals, sample chapters and cool stories that inspired these novels. CLICK OR TAP HERE to jump to that page! But check out the new cover first and a quick final word from me after that. ;)

  Your Voice Matters…

  IF YOU ENJOYED THE LAST WAR BOX SET 2, YOUR VOICE MATTERS!

  Emerging authors always get that writer’s high reading great reviews from readers like yourself, but there’s more to a review than an author’s personal gratification. As independent writers, we don’t always have the financial might of New York’s Big 5 publishing firms, and we’d never shell out a bazillion dollars to Barnes & Noble for that ultra-prime shelf space (yet!).

  What we do have, however, is far more valuable than shelf space or movie contracts or all the marketing money in the world: we have you, the devoted reader.

  If you enjoyed this book, I’d be immensely grateful if you could leave a quick and easy review (it can be as long or as short as you want) when prompted by Amazon, or by visiting The Last War Box Set 2 product page on Amazon.com (just scroll down to the review section of the main page and click or tap, WRITE A CUSTOMER REVIEW, and you’re done!).

  Not only do reviews like yours help this series get the exposure it needs to grow and thrive, reading your kind reviews has become the highlight of my day, so please be sure to let me know what you loved about this book. Please note, the way Amazon’s review system works is five stars is good, four stars is alright, and three stars or less are just degrees of no bueno.

  *Also, if you happen to see any errors (typos, etc…), they sometimes show up uninvited and can get overlooked (sad face!), feel free to shoot me a quick email at contact@ryanschow.com. Thank you!