The Last War Series Box Set [Books 1-7]

by Schow, Ryan

  For a second, as delightful as the orchestra is (the brilliance of the strings, the magic of the flutes and clarinets, the crash of the cymbals and the big bass moments, all perfectly spaced in soft interludes and swift, near frantic runs) I imagine if I close my eyes, I might be able to feel myself there. In the Theater am Kärntnertor. Experiencing this symphony for the first time in Vienna one hundred and ninety-five years ago.

  May 7, 1824 to be precise.

  As good luck would have it, the parking gods seek to grace me with a place to park right in front of the market (it only took fifteen minutes). A brand new Mercedes Benz S63 is leaving. Hitting my turn signal, I wait the appropriate distance behind the big car, then (mistakenly) check the rear view mirror once or twice to see how much traffic is backing up behind me (a lot…don’t stress, Sin…it’s okay).

  Parallel parking in San Francisco always makes me nervous. It feels infinitely worse after I’m done with my shift because I feel a bit jittery and out of sorts.

  A horn behind me honks. I just sit here.

  Until it honks again.

  Still waiting for the Benz to go, I feel my heart jumpstart a bit. “Can’t you see my turn signal?” I finally mutter. Glancing back at the offending vehicle three cars down, a frown settles over my face and I say, “There are two more lanes to choose from!”

  The second the Mercedes-Benz is clear of the spot and driving off, a shrieking projectile flashes overhead, piercing the sedan’s back window in a fiery explosion. The blast furnace wave of heat, glass and metal is a concussion wave that cracks my windshield and rocks the SUV backwards into the car behind me.

  The symphony suddenly stops, and that’s when the chaotic sounds of the city flood in through the open sunroof.

  Stunned, not believing what my eyes are seeing, all I hear for one long moment is the thundering sound of my own blood rushing in my ears. Other sounds emerge as I catch my breath. Car alarms, more explosions up ahead, then the screaming.

  Lots and lots of screaming.

  Pushing open the door, staggering out of my Land Rover, I haphazardly check for traffic before moving around the front of the SUV and onto the sidewalk. Bodies are strewn everywhere. Some are writhing in pain; others are completely still on the ground and thrown against things. There’s a lot of blood. There’s wailing, crying, sobbing. A woman is wandering around in a daze with half her face melted off, looking as though she misplaced her purse, or her child.

  Out of the Benz’s windshield, the driver—an older matron—is half flopped onto the hood, dead, her body engulfed in flames.

  That’s when I hear them: two huge drones zipping overhead. Several blocks ahead, two more cars explode and a white, thirteen story apartment building is strafed by something that looks like gunfire. Another drone is closing in from a distance, its long wings outfitted with four black dots that I fear are missiles.

  “No,” I hear myself say.

  Anyone looking at this thing can see the future and how bad it’s going to be for everyone inside that apartment. The missiles fire from the wings, heading right into the tower. The devastating explosion that follows feels like a punch to the chest.

  Broken glass, plaster and showers of flaming debris rain down onto the sidewalk and street below. I can’t be sure, because at this point I don’t trust my eyes, but I think maybe I saw half a body mixed in with the debris.

  The ground beneath my feet gives a hearty kick and I’m thinking, earthquake? In San Francisco, earthquakes are entirely possible, but this can’t be a coincidence. No way. Kneeling lower, I spread my arms for balance. It’s not the roll of an earthquake. It kicked and it’s done. That’s when the building shifts, buckles up top, then begins its descent in huge, dusty pillows of rubble.

  Turning away, confounded, almost like I’m having an out-of-body experience where I’ve transported myself into someone else’s nightmare, I ignore my responsibilities as a nurse as my eyes gaze up the street and see fleets of smaller attack drones scouring the city. There are dozens upon dozens of them, possibly a hundred spread out as far as I can see. Destruction blooms in their wake.

  Moving on unsteady legs, I get back into my SUV, crank the motor, then step on the gas and roar past stopped traffic, slowing only to nudge other cars out of the way, honk at people in the sidewalks or find alternate pathways because the air is turning brown and traffic is quickly becoming congested.

  I have to get to my daughter, to Macy.

  “Call Stanton!” I say to the voice activated phone system.

  The phone begins to ring, but it sparkles with intermittent static, followed by agonizing bouts of silence. Then more noise and broken ringing.

  “C’mon!” I scream, half manic.

  “Sin?” the voice asks.

  Stanton.

  “The city’s under attack!” I scream.

  “What?” he says. “I can’t hear you. Cincinnati, are you okay?”

  My husband works in the Transamerica building, which is nearby, close enough for me to go to him, but I’m all about Macy right now. More worried about her than Stanton.

  He’s a capable man; Macy’s just a child.

  “I’m going to the school,” I shout, my eyes seeing everything, measuring the brief, tight openings, calculating the line I’m going to take in milliseconds.

  Overhead, a fleet of drones race by me. Leaning forward, I strain to see up through the windshield. Lowering my eyes to traffic, I slam on the brakes as someone in front of me hits their brakes, too. The wheels lock up and I skitter to a screeching, near skidding halt, bumping into the car’s rear end.

  “Stanton?” I ask. “Stanton are you there?” I don’t even care that I’ve just had my second accident in only a few minutes.

  The call just dropped.

  Not worrying about traffic decorum, I hit REVERSE, stomp on the gas, swing the SUV around hard, the front of the Land Rover now facing an alley. REVERSE becomes DRIVE. I crush the gas pedal and the SUV rockets through an alleyway, shooting out the other side where I’m clipped by another car, spinning me halfway around into yet another parked car.

  My body jarred this way and that, my head a whirlpool of my own making, I fight to gather my bearings.

  The road ahead is more clear than Bush Street. Sutter is going the reverse direction, but that would take me to Macy’s school, not Stanton’s work.

  At this point, my mind is already made up.

  I hit REVERSE, dislodge the Land Rover from an old Beemer I crunched only a little when I slid into it side-to-side. Swinging the wheel around, an out of control car bumps my front bumper. The SUV kicks around, facing me the right direction. A drone flashes by overhead, catching me off guard. It launches a rocket that blows up the car that just nicked me.

  “Oh my freaking God!” I’m screaming.

  The car explodes, turning it into a blazing slab of death aimed at a long line of undamaged cars while going entirely too fast. The impact is heart stopping. The car hits, flipping end over end while twisting sideways in mid air. For a second, I can’t breathe. My state of mind becomes so fragile I feel things inside me shutting down.

  Then I think of Macy. She grounds me, forces me to get moving.

  I punch the gas and head for Macy’s school, shifting uncomfortably in my seat because right now my entire body feels battered to the bone.

  The SUV’s phone rings, scaring the bejesus out of me.

  “Hello?”

  “Sin, something’s going on,” Stanton says, mostly clear. “I see smoke a few blocks down.”

  Right where I’m at.

  Enunciating each word, I say, “I’m. Getting. Macy. City. Under. Attack.”

  “I’ll meet you there,” he replies, harried and breaking up, but not so bad that I can’t get the message, or grasp his apprehensive tone.

  That’s when the first explosion erupts from the Transamerica building. Stanton’s work. Seeing it brighten in my rear view mirror, I yelp, gasp and whole-heartedly fear the absolute worst all
in half a second flat. Veering toward the sidewalk, stomping on the brakes and double parking beside a motorcycle (someone lays on their horn, but I don’t care at this point), I slam the transmission into PARK.

  I call Stanton back, but the lines are down. A pre-recorded emergency message plays through the Land Rover’s speakers.

  Feeling it all balling up inside of me—the anxiety, the horror, the absolute madness unfolding before me—I drop the SUV into DRIVE, spin the wheel and go, not sure whether I should head for Stanton’s work or Macy’s school. My logic becomes this: if Stanton is okay or dead, he’ll be okay or dead, but Macy…Macy might still be alive.

  I choose Macy, even though the decision sits like a stone in my gut.

  Cranking the wheel, tapping the brakes, I fishtail onto Hyde where I navigate my way through six or seven blocks of pure hell heading towards Turk. Traffic is gridlocked, so I jump the curb and hightail it down the sidewalk, plowing (to my outright revulsion) over a dead body shot to death on a toppled bicycle (omigod, omigod, omifreakinggod!), then find an opening in the road and bounce back onto the asphalt where more civilized drivers belong.

  I try Stanton again, desperate for him to answer. Same emergency recording. Screaming, pounding the steering wheel, I close the line, tell myself to hold it together.

  Traffic becomes congested in the Fillmore District, especially down Turk past Webster. Not letting off the gas much, I make a left on Webster. There are a bunch of kids darting in and out of abandoned and destroyed cars on the street. They run out in front of me, too. Standing on the brakes, everything in me going piano wire tight, I skid sideways to a stop before four boys not much older than ten. The hammered bumper nudges one of them. He staggers back, spits on the broken windshield, then flips me the bird before walking off the pain. He’s more concerned with catching up with his buddies than he is in having just been hit by a crazy woman, which almost baffles me.

  Almost.

  Three drones rip by (the ones with the missiles), except these ones have no projectiles on board and are flying low, not shooting at anything. They have to be re-arming. But re-arming where? And by whom? Who’s behind this insane onslaught?

  I don’t have time for this!

  Bumping and knocking my way down Webster, my brand new Land Rover is feeling war torn and beyond repair. I need to hang a right on Fell, but Fell is a war zone. Cars are smoking, turned over, obliterated, and in the distance, the four story tower that belonged to the Church of 8 Wheels has collapsed into the road, its tower having come down on the building across from it.

  “A church?” I all but scream. Sounding completely mad, unable to suppress the emotion, I finally erupt. “Are you kidding me?!”

  I won’t be able to get through, so frantically I continue down Webster until I hit Page. Right on Page. Traffic is heavy here as well, but I’m close enough to the school that I drive up on the sidewalk, mow down a couple of saplings and nearly lodge an abandoned motorcycle under the Land Rover’s wheels. By virtue of the car gods, the SUV finally runs up on the bike, then over it before spitting it out the back.

  The side mirrors are gone. The cracked windshield is spider-webbing hard, and something funny is happening with the transmission. I wonder if it has anything to do with the steam coming from under the hood, but that’s probably just the radiator. Does this thing even have a radiator anymore? At this point it’s fair to say that I know the human body far better than I know cars. That said, the going becomes maddeningly slow and cantankerous, but I’m almost there.

  In the distance, I see Macy’s school. I nearly cry out in relief when it appears untouched. That’s when I see them coming—more drones. They’re flying toward me low and fast, leaving the cars in front of me riddled with bullets.

  One adjusts its course, lining up on me. I already see how this is going to play out and I’m not waiting around to see if I’m right.

  I just go.

  Scampering out of the truck, crawling over the hood of an already stopped car—which immediately gets rear ended by another car—I’m bouncing off the windshield and sailing though the air. At that very same moment, a missile strikes my Land Rover, which explodes into a furnace of heat and directed energy that punches me sideways, launching me into a throng of people sprinting from the attack.

  I slam into them with such force I think I might hear things popping, maybe even breaking. Even though the horde of people cushions my impact, we all go down hard. For a second I struggle to breathe.

  Panic overtakes me.

  I try to tell myself the wind got knocked out of me, but fear has me questioning everything. My breath finally returns. I feel like I’ve been underwater for an hour and now I’m gasping for dear life. In that one second, that moment between feeling that release in my chest and my first gulp of fresh air, I think I smell singed hair. Probably my own.

  Most definitely my own.

  A blanket of bodies sits underneath me. My back feels hammered, my spine punched, and my neck is cranked so hard that it’s pinching a nerve. A quick inventory of my limbs and appendages, however, tells me nothing is broken.

  Dizzy, disoriented and in pain, I squirm my way off them. It’s not going so well since they’re struggling to break free of me, too. The pile of bodies beneath me becomes a complaining, moving thing, which I personally think is far better than a dead thing, although I’m not about to waste precious time or energy explaining this to anyone.

  My equilibrium is off and I feel like I’m slogging through a tilting mud hole, but that doesn’t stop me. Rolling and wiggling over everyone costs me dearly, but I’m working to find that foothold, that way to get off them and back on my feet.

  I have to say, so far, my efforts feel pathetic.

  My eye catches a nice looking man crossing the street to help us. He’s hurrying, looking more than worried. To my absolute relief, he’s heading right for me. We lock eyes.

  Oh, thank God, I think.

  By now drones of various shapes and sizes are moving in and the streets are all but gridlocked. The smart drivers abandon their vehicles because when you see cars getting shot to smithereens and exploding all around you, and you don’t know why, you don’t want to just sit around picking your nose until it all sorts itself out. You want to get to cover as quickly as possible.

  A pair of drones swoop down low, moving fast.

  These small drones appear much larger when they’re dusting the roads, and that’s when I see what looks like modified machine guns attached to their fuselages.

  The flash of muzzle fire erupts and I’m gritting my teeth and slamming my eyes shut. It’s the end, I just know it.

  My end.

  Behind me store windows shatter, bullets thwap, thwap, thwap into bodies and everyone starts to scream. I open my eyes in time to see my would-be rescuer’s face open up in a sick horror show of red.

  He’s close enough that a wet mess catches me across the face, getting in my eyes and mouth. The man drops dead in front of me and I paw the blood from my eyes. Spit it out of my mouth.

  The drone is there and gone, leaving bodies in its wake. I don’t even have the mental fortitude to consider the loss of life because the pile of people beneath me is now dragging itself to its feet. I somehow manage to get off of them, not caring whether I push off someone’s head, grab a polyester-covered knee, or dig an elbow into someone’s spine who’s army-crawling their way out of this mess.

  All I know is I can’t be this exposed. I can’t be in the line of fire. When no more drones appear, I crawl on hands and knees to the dead man. Rolling him over, I avoid looking at his face and instead see the badge attached to his belt. He’s an off-duty cop by the look of him.

  “He dead?” a Chinese woman behind me asks. She was part of the pile, and is clearly uninjured beyond a few bumps and scrapes.

  “The two holes in his head says he is,” I answer, as if it’s not obvious.

  “So yes?” she asks.

  “Are you okay, or did you hit yo
ur head extra hard?”

  “I just asking.”

  “Well now you know,” I remark, my tone rattled with impatience.

  She frowns, then turns and joins the others in a frenzied cackle. In that moment, I’m pretty sure the dead cop won’t mind if I relieve him of his weapon. I take it just as someone stops and looks down at me. I can feel them hovering over me. Glowering at me, the gun thief.

  “Are you actually taking his weapon?” the woman asks. She’s a hippie with John Lennon eye glasses and most likely a bunch of armpit hair, although at this point I’m at my wits end and judging her without evidence to support it. Without even letting me answer, and much louder she says, “Oh my God, is he a cop? Did you kill him?”

  I’m thinking, there are far more important things to think about right now lady! Like blown up cars and dead people and this massive, coordinated attack on the city. I’m thinking of something I heard on some show Stanton used to watch, Oz maybe, or some other prison-based show. Snitches get stitches.

  “No I didn’t kill him,” I sneer, my tone too sharp even for me. “That thing killed him—”

  “I don’t see a ‘thing,’” she answers, using finger quotes when she says, “a thing.”

  For one brief second I can’t believe this idiot is standing here, lecturing me in the middle of an attack so brazen and so catastrophic, nothing like it has ever happened here in America, much less San Francisco. I want to shut her mouth with my foot. Instead, I realize people process trauma in different ways. What I also realize, and I’m embarrassed to admit this, is that a lot of people are morons capable of fantastic stupidity in the most unusual of times, this being one of them.

  “You’re right,” I say, sliding the pistol into the waistband of my jeans (which now feel extra tight after being in scrubs for half a day), “you didn’t see a thing.”

  And then I’m off, moving like some sort of hobbled creature, feeling new bumps and bruises from being launched off that windshield and pitched into a mob of strangers.

  “Hey, that lady killed this cop!” the woman is screeching, and I swear to the good Lord above, I almost turn and test the pistol on her, just to see if it’s loaded.