The Last War

by Ryan Schow

  “You could have gotten killed!”

  “But she didn’t, sis,” Rex says softly. “None of us did and that’s always been the point.” To Gunner, he says, “You coming with us or staying here?”

  “Coming with,” he says in a meek voice.

  “Good, get your stuff, we’re getting out of here. And double-time it!”

  “Guess he’s done expecting his parents to come home,” I say.

  Rex gives me a proud-papa nod. “Yeah, we finally had the talk a few days back. He cried, got it all out, and now he’s looking like he’s turning a new leaf. Not being so much of a milquetoast.”

  Stanton starts to come around.

  “Get me a cold compress and the kit,” I tell Macy. She’s on it. “Just sit still, baby,” I tell Stanton, cradling his sagging body. “You’re going to need stitches.”

  “He’ll need to hold for a few,” Rex says. “I’ve got us a ride out of the city.”

  I look up at him. “For real?” I ask.

  “Time to blow this pop-stand,” he says, grinning.

  “Let me just stitch Stanton up—”

  “Cincinnati,” Rex says, softly, “we don’t have time. We need to leave now if we’re going to get to the rendezvous point. That’s why Gunner didn’t have to run far. I was already on my way over to tell you this.”

  I can’t leave, yet we can’t stay. I know this.

  Taking Stanton’s head in my hands, looking eye to eye at him, I can’t believe we’re going to have to go with him looking like he’s lost in outer space.

  “Just give me ten or fifteen minutes,” I say.

  Rex takes a hold of my arm. Roughly, he hauls me to my feet, grabs my face and turns it so we’re eye to eye.

  “You’re not hearing me, we have to move, now!”

  I shove his hands off me.

  “We’re not going like this!” I shout, grief stricken, so juiced with hatred for what happened my organs feel pulped, like they’re boiling over with acid.

  I would have died for him. I guess I planned on it the second I shot the fake cop, the second I shot the second one, the second I saw Macy come out and realized if I died, she’d at least have another parent.

  This man sitting before me is my whole life.

  “How can I just let him bleed like this, Rex?” I ask, my voice so small, so wounded. I wipe away the start of tears, but the flood is as persistent as the pain of seeing him hurt.

  “I’m so sorry, Cincinnati,” he says, his eyes wild and jumpy, but unmistakably afraid.

  Shaking off Rex’s loosened grip, I sink to all fours, take Stanton’s face and kiss him right on the mouth. Tears drip down my cheeks. His glassy eyes find mine; his mouth starts to move.

  “Who’s blood?” he’s trying to say.

  “Not mine,” I answer. “And not yours.”

  I knew I caught some of the blood when fake-cop number three lost his head, but not that much. Looking down, my shirt is flecked with red spatter.

  Macy brings me the medical backpack. “Cold compress, now,” I tell her. She knows exactly what I’m talking about.

  “We have to go, Stanton. You need stitches and we shouldn’t move you, but Rex says there’s a way out. He says we’ve got a quick ride.”

  He looks over at Rex. “This true?”

  “Took them a minute to find a clear route out of the city, and another minute to get the right vehicle for the run, but these guys are resourceful and good under fire. So yeah, we’ve got a way out.”

  In the background, bombs start to drop. They sound nearby. Too close. By the time we’ve got everything we need to move, the smoke and ash from the fires is like a fresh winter’s snow, except it’s gray and dry and will probably end up in our lungs.

  “Ready?” I ask Stanton. He nods. “Let me know if you get dizzy, or if you start to feel sick, okay?”

  “I’ll be fine, Sin. It’s just a cut.”

  “It’s more than that,” Macy says. “It’s like a huge vagina on your head.”

  I draw a deep breath through my nose, try not to laugh, but also contain myself from screaming at her.

  Rex isn’t so discreet. He bursts out laughing while Gunner says, “Looks like it’s on its period though,” and then we’re all in stitches. Well, everyone but Stanton, who’s just looking at Macy shaking his head like he can’t believe she just said that.

  “On that fine note…” Stanton says.

  On the way out of the house (and I don’t even see this but later I’ll realize what happened, but maybe too late), Macy grabs a holstered pistol from the dead fake-cop and tucks it into the waist of her pants, saying nothing, her expression giving nothing away.

  18

  Half the city away, we see the first of a churning halo of fire lift into the sky. Is this one nuclear? Holy crap, it looks enormous! When the clouds pillow out rather than turn into a giant mushroom, I realize our time hasn’t come just yet, and this makes me even more determined to protect Macy. Within the hour, based on the moisture in the air and the low, dark clouds, it’ll be raining sludge soon.

  We should have brought some coats.

  “Where are we headed?” I finally ask, the words sounding meek on my lips. “Where’s the rendezvous point?”

  “Diversidero and Turk,” Rex says. “We’re running late, so I hope they didn’t leave us behind.”

  “Would they do that?” Macy asks.

  “They’re ex-military. They plan to the half-minute, so yeah…throw off their schedule and the whole op can sour.”

  “They didn’t teach you flexibility in the military?” Macy asks.

  He looks at her dead serious and says, “No.”

  The rain starts. It gets nasty shortly after. People are wandering through the wet muck in a haze of delirium, exhaustion. I had no idea it was this bad. I keep an eye on the sky, but the drones don’t seem to fly much in this kind of weather.

  Silver linings.

  We keep to the sidewalks, using the buildings as shelter, but I’m scared. This is emotional torture, this is fear ripping at me with the same force as grief, or loneliness, or the sense of having abandoned the home we’d just made our own.

  I’m frightened, devastated, crackling with anger.

  Survivors of this war scurry from one place to another, one guy bumping into us and not apologizing, another woman pushing a shopping car with a plastic cover on whatever junk she’s got stashed in there, some guy sitting on a curb holding his head, which is bleeding worse than Stanton’s was and not saying a word about it.

  The downpour is some unspoken signal to humans that it’s safe to move. Without the drones, everyone gets brave. Traffic amongst the abandoned cars picks up quickly, too quickly for a few of these poor souls staggering this way and that. They look like malnourished zombies, some fighting with strangers, some with eyes as large as saucers looking to be somewhere. Just not here.

  Not stuck at Ground Zero.

  Maybe there are a million Ground Zero’s though. Maybe there is no safe zone. This city from top to bottom is hostile territory. But maybe every city is like this. Maybe there are people just like us in places just like this thinking the key to their salvation is a ride out of town.

  Maybe we’re all desperate fools.

  The five of us don’t slow our pace. We weave through the mayhem, hoping the weather keeps until we can get to wherever it is Rex is taking us.

  Looking at Stanton, seeing that he’s keeping up, I say, “You doing okay?”

  He nods. I think he’s in pain. Or thinking he should be in pain. Head wounds bleed a lot, but they don’t always hurt so much.

  We get to Divisadero and the street is pure pandemonium. One minute we’re all sure the raining sludge will stall the drones, but then they’re suddenly there, ready to turn this place into a blood bath.

  Everything leaps into hyper-drive. Panic overtakes the crowd. People start sprinting, smacking into each other and not caring. The drones are whizzing overhead, which freaks out ev
eryone even more. Even the people in cars, where they can get through, roar down the sidewalks, forcing everyone to dive out of the way, even hitting a few unfortunate souls and not stopping to look back.

  Short black missiles hiss off the wings of the drones, cratering a building wall. The air pillows in deep then explodes outward, damn near kicking us off our feet with a punch of heat and pressure we haven’t felt before. We’re running now, too. Even Stanton.

  Tremors rock the earth as structures fall and dust clouds out everywhere. The very cityscape around us is changing by the second as we fight for our lives.

  A building behind us, a three story home on the corner of Ellis and Divisadero takes it hit on the ground floor and suddenly its main supports are buckling and it’s leaning hard. The entire structure starts to go Macy stumbles, the street under her shifting, separating. I grab her hand, pray she doesn’t twist an ankle. The building hits and a whoosh! of atomized debris washes over us in a hot, dusty cloud.

  More drones zip by. Bombs destroy everything in their line of fire. An entire city block is leveled, and then in an instant, we’re all dust-blind and stuck in the middle of a choking, brown fog. Fortunately the rain is there to repress it, but the air is turning nasty, coating us with all kinds of muck and filth.

  Overhead the sky breaks completely open and what was once a drizzle quickly becomes a downpour that’s dropping slop everywhere. The pasty mess is in our hair, our clothes; it’s sticking to the insides of our throats.

  The downpour doesn’t last long. It tapers to a light drizzle and eventually we find cover. Hunkering down together, coughing, we’re pulling our bodies close but keeping our weapons ready. By now, my concern for Stanton and his open wound is overwhelming. He lost the compress. It’s now getting dirty.

  “Mom,” Macy cries out, her voice quivering in terror.

  I look at her and her face is covered in soot, her blonde hair coated with…the wet grime in the air. Mine must be just as bad. Worse.

  “Are you hurt?” I ask. She nods her head. “Then be quiet and keep it together.”

  “Are we going to die?” she asks two seconds before a bomb hits the row of homes across the street, adjacent to us by a few colorful structures. We’re suddenly showered with the nearly vaporized remnants of someone’s entire material life. We turn our faces and bodies away from the blast of smoke and shrapnel, struggle to our feet, wobble and totter our way through the destruction-filled haze.

  The ringing in my ears is sharp, high-pitched and painful enough to test my will. Blinking hard, wiping my eyes, I look at Macy and she’s seems okay. Stanton, too.

  And Rex?

  It’s like nothing happened. He’s vigilant, focused, almost like he’s at home in all this. What about Gunner, though?

  “Where’s Gunner?” I shout.

  “With me!” Rex calls back. “Keep moving!”

  We can’t see much out here, and my eyes are burning as a result of the rampant destruction, and this medical backpack is doing my back and neck no favors. At this point all I care about is surviving and staying together.

  Things are moving quickly, though. A bit too quickly.

  Trucks and SUV’s retrofitted for urban warfare push through the chaos of people and abandoned cars and rubble, one of them mowing down an older woman hobbling through the gutters pawing at her eyes. Crushed and splayed out on the sidewalk half a dozen feet from me, her head is completely twisted around, her spine broken in half after being run over.

  The truck didn’t even stop. For a second, I can’t peel my eyes from her. She’s just laying there half on the curb, and no one cares. The smoke rolls over her, bathing her dead body in a cocoon of wet ash. The way things are going, no one will move her, bury her or burn her. She’ll just be left there to rot.

  “Cincinnati, let’s go!” Rex screams, dragging me from my reverie. His voice sounds a million miles away.

  Through the diminishing fog of destruction come four cops packing machine guns. They look like pee-dee.

  They don’t see us, but they’re hassling people along the way, shoving them aside like they own the street. One of the urban assault vehicles drives past them and they light up the back window with gunfire like a pack of idiots. The SUV veers into a mound of rubble and abandoned cars, slams into the side of a Buick and jolts to a stop.

  Three people in the shot-up SUV kick the doors open and flee the vehicle. Drones race overhead. The smaller ones. One unleashes hell upon the driver; the other drone catches the remaining two survivors.

  Everyone hides. Even the crazies and the walking dead.

  I lift the Sig, set my sights on one of the hovering drones. Rex pushes the barrel down, fires me a horrified look.

  “What if you miss?” his hissing mouth says. He’s angry because he’s sure I would. He’s convinced my anger will get us killed if I’m not careful.

  I like to think I wouldn’t miss, but target practice with a pistol in ideal conditions isn’t the same as trying to hit a moving target under the strain of combat. I guess I just wanted to use it against them because of everything they’ve done to us. I’m suddenly consumed with the need for vengeance. Someone should have to pay for all of this.

  The chaos becomes a brief silence that’s quickly broken by some intoxicated woman with huge jowls and a short mop of curly hair. She staggers out in the middle of the street, her face dirty as hell, her eyes turned up to the sky. She’s shouting at the drones in Russian, cursing them, her mind obviously gone soft. The drones take off.

  All but one.

  It circles around fast, fires a half dozen rounds, and the woman’s head disappears, her body falling like a toppled tree. The drone hovers for a moment longer, looking on the now empty street. Then it’s gone.

  Wow. Suicide by drone.

  Minutes later a huge, fortified SUV barely manages to avoid running over the decapitated woman before skidding to a stop, guns blazing. The four pee-dee who shot up the SUV that led to three unnecessary deaths dance a second or two as they’re slayed by a hail of bullets.

  The felonious foursome is suddenly the dead foursome and that right there is a wonderful feeling. A hardened looking man who has clearly seen too much combat jumps out of the big truck, collects the pee-dee’s weapons. When he looks up, he sees us and smiles.

  “Rex, thank God man!” he shouts. “We were just headed your way. Grab what you can and let’s go!”

  My hearing, along with my balance, is coming back now. One look at Macy and I can tell it’s the same for her.

  “This is our ride,” my brother says, half grinning, his face blackened by soot except for his eyes and flashing white teeth.

  Our “ride” is a lifted black Chevy Suburban with large black wheels and a fortified brush guard. That makes this SUV solid, but it doesn’t make it functional. Well, not until you consider the cow catcher. Attached to the frame just below the brush guard is a large triangular “shovel” like the ones they used to put on trains to push cows off the tracks when the animals ignored the warning whistles. Except this isn’t a barred structure. This cow catcher is made of large steel plates, heavy welds and huge rivets. The way it looks, you could probably push a building out of the way with this thing.

  The five of us climb into the truck. Rex and Gunner are first in, taking the back seat. I shove the medical backpack over the seat at Rex; he takes it and stows it on the floor between him and Gunner. Me, Macy and Stanton pile into the second row bench seat, pull the door shut and buckle up. The driver stomps on the gas, jerking us so hard my neck wrenches, and then we’re off.

  Macy turns to Rex and says, “Where are we going?”

  “Away from here.”

  There’s now an emptiness in her eyes I’ve never seen before. I wonder if she’s looking in my eyes and seeing the same thing. How all of this is doing irreparable damage to our minds and our souls.

  Wiping wet hair out of her face, cleaning some of the paste off her cheeks and chin, I feel pieces of my sanity being t
orn away.

  “You doing okay, sweetheart?” I ask.

  She just looks at me.

  Her eyes are bone dry. Not a wet shimmer of emotion anywhere to be found. She must be so lost right now. Is she still in shock? I scrape more of the muck off her face, then pull her close to me and say, “Honey, I love you so much.”

  Something passes through her eyes, then: “I love you, too, Mom.”

  The emotions reeking havoc on my already unstable sensibilities threaten to overwhelm me. I can’t stop seeing the cut on Stanton’s head, how it’s gashed open and packed with that crap from the air. I look at him now and his eyes look every bit as lifeless and Macy’s, which is most likely the same way mine look. It’s that empty stare, that perpetual unblinking.

  “You okay?” I ask Stanton.

  “Yeah.”

  He isn’t. No one could be in times like these. Turning to Rex and Gunner, I see they are gripping for something so I turn around and see us coming up on traffic that’s going to need shoving. The SUV slows for impact, then hits the outside car, pushing it out of the way.

  The front seat passenger turns to me and says, “We mapped most of this out by drone over the last few days, but it’s gonna get a bit rough. As least until we push further out. The going will get easier then.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “For all of this.”

  He gives me a grin and a thumbs up, then he’s eyes forward as the Suburban finishes shoving three or four compacts out of the road.

  Smashing through the debris, rolling over the dead, grating past the carcasses of other cars and buildings, the passenger keeps a vigilant eye out for drones and presumably pee-dee (based on how quickly he shot the last four fake-cops).

  Twice we hear the plink, plink! of rounds hitting the side of the truck. Everyone braces for more, but we’re okay and the driver and passenger don’t seem terribly worried. If they are, they’re amazing at not showing it.

  All along the horizon, the sky is the color of beaten concrete, the rain poisonous, but still holding at a steady drizzle. My heart sinks thinking of our situation. If the outside world is like this, we’re going to die no matter what we do.