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

by Schow, Ryan

  After awhile, I dress for the cold and head outside. With my bow and arrows and my Glock, I walk the neighborhood, sticking to the shadows, working on making no noise at all.

  An hour after that I’m breaking into another house, grabbing all the loot, finding a few weapons and no sex toys and feeling pretty good about it, though the feeling doesn’t last. I’m still thinking of my father. Still trying to imagine only me in this life. Throwing a tube of toothpaste and a two pack of floss into my black bag, I’m thinking about my father’s terrible timing. Why did he have to go to San Diego now?

  On my way back downstairs I pull to a stop because there’s a man standing in the doorway, his body barely silhouetted by the dim light of the moon. My heart thunders in my chest, but my body is frozen still. Paralyzed, my face is looking at his shadowed face looking back at mine.

  “You have to be better than this,” the man finally says.

  I try to swallow but can’t.

  He steps inside and shuts the door and suddenly we’re both in the dark, each listening for the other to move.

  “I have a gun,” I manage to say.

  “Yes, and bows and arrows, too. But you’re also loud and sloppy, and if you’re going to survive…whatever this is we’re all trying to survive…you’re going to have to be better than this. Certainly quieter than this.”

  He’s saying all this in the dark, which I find incredibly unsettling.

  “So what do you suggest?” I ask, everything in me still piano-wire tight, still ready to shoot, still ready to run and hide.

  “I suggest we head into a room without windows, turn on a light and have a conversation like adults. This in-the-dark business isn’t exactly my style.”

  “Are you armed?” I ask.

  “You’d have to be a fool not to be,” he replies with a trace of laughter in his voice.

  “Are you going to hurt me?”

  “No, but if these were my intentions, I’d tell you the same thing. Or I’d just shoot you.”

  “Fine,” I concede. “You pick a bedroom, turn on the light and I’ll join you if you don’t look like Mr. Creepy McCreepster.”

  I don’t hear him move, but from the other side of the house, a light turns on and it startles me.

  “Ready when you are,” he says.

  The way he got from here to there has my head spinning. Does this guy float? Because he didn’t even make a sound! I slink down the steps, trying to be quiet like him. After I set down my bag of loot, I knock an end table with my hip, then scorn myself for being so loud.

  God, I’m such a novice right now!

  Moving toward his position (but staying in the shadows), there’s a large bathroom casting out a long light. He’s in there. This guy who can float and not make noise. I take my gun out of the back of my jeans, hold it by my side.

  He’s got his guns out, too. One in each hand. He’s got his arms out and his palms up, and both guns are hanging loose. Basically, he’s showing me he’s armed but not a threat. The way he moves, however, tells me he’s definitely a threat.

  My first thought is that he’s a tall man. Maybe six feet tall. With an athletic build, silver hair and old guy muscles, he’s halfway handsome. The problem is his eyes. You can see how he’s got more than a few miles on his soul. How there’s nothing in life left to surprise or delight him. I wonder how he feels about the apocalypse. I wonder if he feels anything at all.

  “What do you want?” I ask.

  “To lay a few ground rules. Let you know what’s what so you don’t end up like the other girls I’ve seen.”

  “What other girls?”

  “The dead ones. The raped ones. The enslaved ones.”

  “Can I call you Dr. Buzzkill? Because you’re not doing anything to put me at ease with you. In fact, you’re sort of scaring me right now.”

  “First off,” he says, not really caring that I haven’t stepped into the light, “you did good with the shadows, but you have to do better about the B&E. And being quiet. Also, you need to learn to see in the dark because I can see the lights in your home from the street. You’re going from room to room to room to the point where I can all but tell where you are from the next block over. I don’t think I need to tell you how dangerous that is.”

  I’m starting to think about how stupid I’ve been. How stupid I am. Did I really think I could just break into people’s homes and drag everything back to my place in the dead of night and not get noticed?

  “Here’s a tip,” he says. “A little something from me to you, free of charge. Do your recon and bag your loot during the light of day. Then, after the sun sets, you can take your haul in the dark, making it less likely that you’ll be seen.”

  I move into the light, gun trained on him. It’s a good idea he’s got—being smarter about my nocturnal behaviors—so me stepping into the light is me trying to trust him.

  “That’s right,” he says, eyeing my stance, but not my body parts. “I can tell you’re a shooter. But I can also see in your eyes that you’re not going to shoot me.”

  He slowly holsters his two weapons, relaxes a little.

  “There’s fear and uncertainty in your face. You can hide that by making your eyes go dead. Doing this will literally rid you of emotion. That way when people look at you they won’t be able to tell that you’re really a good person and don’t want to harm people who aren’t harming you.”

  “I killed some men,” I say, embellishing on the facts a bit.

  “Were they bad men?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then it’s a start,” he replies with a smile.

  “They beat a man to death over a card game that took place long before the chaos. It was unnecessary and cruel.”

  “And you found that distasteful?”

  “Reprehensible, actually.”

  After a long moment of us looking at each other, he says, “You are an attractive young woman, competent, and these streets are crawling with men who will like what they see in you.”

  “I can pass for a boy,” I say, thinking of what Tad said.

  “No you can’t,” he says with a grin. “And even if you could, why would you want to?”

  “Not get dead. Raped. Enslaved.”

  He smiles an empty smile, not blinking at all, not taking his dead eyes off me for even a second.

  “I’m glad you brought me back to that,” he says. “A girl like you can’t be lazy in this world. Not for one minute. The second you lower your guard, someone will be there to take advantage of you. Women have it bad in these situations. Girls have it worse.”

  “These situations?” I ask, really absorbing what he’s saying.

  “I’ve been through a few ethnic cleansings. This is different only that the machines aren’t cleansing a population because of racial or religious affiliations. They’re cleansing the population because it’s human. But before they wipe out every last one of us, the lawlessness that’s now been foisted upon us leaves girls like you ripe for the taking. If I raped you now, which I’d never do because I believe sex should be a mutually enjoyable experience, who would hear you scream? Everyone’s screaming. Who would care if they found you dead in the street? There are hundreds of dead bodies in the street, thousands more if you head inside the war zone. Who would lament the loss of your virtue, or even your life? No one. Your parents are gone, it’s just you.”

  “Are you some kind of a shaman or something?” I ask.

  “I am merely observant. You need to be observant, too, Indigo. You need to really turn yourself into a shadow. Squelch the last light from those eyes of yours. At least for now.”

  A cold chill spreads over my skin, tightening everything into goosebumps, but not in a good way. The chill even reaches my neck that’s how freaked out I am that this stranger is here, in this house with me, telling me my life’s history, using my name.

  “You’re a loner, right?” he says.

  “I have friends.”

  “No you don’t. You
have weapons, food and your instincts. But you’re showing your hand too much. And not just with me.”

  “What do you suggest?” I finally ask.

  “Think like them. Then be something worse than them.”

  “The machines?”

  “No. The deviants. Those who would do you harm for their pleasure or their gain. If you can think like them, you can begin to understand them, and if you can understand them, then perhaps you have a chance against them. And if you can understand them and if you want to survive them, you will have to become something far worse that them.”

  “I have my weapons,” I say. I can’t think of anything else to say because what I want to say, what I can’t say, is that I am a good person and I don’t think I have to become something cold and monstrous to survive them.

  “One day your weapons won’t be enough.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” I ask. “Because if you’re right about people—especially deviants, as you call them—and you’re grabbing all the little details of my life, including my name, then what’s to say you’re not going to do to me what you’re claiming others are doing out there?”

  “Because I’m not.”

  “But you’re helping me anyway,” I say.

  “I saw what you did to those men back on Lincoln Street. The sore card players. I followed you to see what you were about and I have to say, you seem very resourceful. You should have finished them though, right there in the street. You didn’t because you’re still naïve.”

  “Aren’t we all?” I ask, the gun feeling extra heavy at this point, and my arm extra shaky inside. I switch hands, knowing I’m a lousy shot with my left. He doesn’t know that. And honestly, the way he’s not looking at my gun, it’s like he could care less. Like the threat was never there in the first place.

  “No, Indigo, not everyone is as naïve. Most people see the sword bearing down upon them, so they panic and in this panic they freeze, which easily affords the swordsman his fatal cut. You see the sword, however, and you move, and in moving, you counterstrike. That’s impressive for someone so young. It also leaves you overconfident. Makes you think you are enough for these new times and I’m here to tell you that you are not. Not yet.”

  “I’m not that young,” I say.

  “Show me a gray hair then tell me again that you’re not that young.” When I say nothing, he says, “If you can develop that skill—the art of moving silently in shadows while being uncompromisingly lethal—then you might stand a chance of surviving this world. But you have to change, Indigo. You have to let go of the you that existed before this.”

  “All this destruction, and this looting…it has to end,” I tell him. “In all of history, wars happen like books. There’s a beginning, a middle and an end. People always return to reasonable. You’re talking to me like history means nothing.”

  “By the time opposing forces climb out of their grievances and their wars—and you’re right, history proves they always do—one force is the winner and one is the loser, and the losing faction always returns to a ravaged population and worlds of sorrow. If you take a moment to look around, the machines are winning.” Spreading his hands wide, he says, “This is the ravaged population. These are our worlds of sorrow.”

  Making my eyes as dead as his, I say, “So I ask again, what do you want from me?”

  He drops his hands to his side, fixes me with a look. “Only to deliver that message,” he replies. “I’m just passing through.”

  “So then you won’t be upset if I thank you for your advice and head back home?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I’d ask you your name, but honestly, what would be the point?”

  “It’s Rider,” he says.

  I laugh out loud, not even meaning to. He doesn’t even flinch, much less blink. “Rider is short for what?” I ask.

  “It’s short for Rider.”

  “No last name?”

  “Last names no longer matter.”

  “What does it say on your birth certificate?” I ask, pressing the point, even though I know I should be shutting my mouth right now.

  “It says Rider,” he replies, deadpan.

  I give him a contemplative nod, narrowing my eyes. I’m trying to get a read on him while at the same time knowing that it’s time to go, that there’s nothing left for us to say to each other. He tilts his head, shows me another one of those empty smiles.

  “It’s been a pleasure, Indigo,” he says.

  “I’m sure it has, Rider.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  They say in a modern society, if civilization falls, it’s only a matter of days before everyone reverts to their more primal instincts. Inside of a year, ninety percent of the population dies. That’s what they say. Who could imagine such a probability exists?

  Not me, that’s who.

  In these last several days I’ve broken into my neighbors’ homes, stolen their private possessions, and I’ve shot at some scumbags. By society’s standards, someone like me would barely even qualify as human.

  Maybe that’s making me less likable, but then again, perhaps my chances of survival are skyrocketing, too.

  Moving on the streets in a car is dangerous, but I’ve found that spending time at the archery range is therapeutic and relatively safe. Who would dare hunt the hunters? The journey to the range—short as it is—is starting to feel like an unnecessary risk. That’s why I decide to steal a bale of hay and all the paper targets I can find.

  The Golden Gate Archery Range is now located on Dirt Alley right behind my house until otherwise notified.

  Naturally, with my dad’s car gone, there’s plenty of room in my garage for the hay so that’s where it’s stored. In the early mornings, I shoot both quivers of arrows three times through just to stay on my game. Twice I’ve split an arrow, but none of the good ones. I got done being amazed with myself inside of seconds.

  By now I realize my big dramatic feats aren’t archery accolades as much as they’re proof that I might actually be able to hit the things I’m aiming at.

  That in itself holds value.

  To be honest, I’ve stopped thinking of the targets as things and now I envision them as people, or machines. It helps that in the distance, fires are raging and the sky has basically become a thick pall of smoke. And the noise of war? This is a reminder that people are dying on the other side of the city while I sleep and play war and hide from fleets of drones and a pack of would be robbers.

  After three runs through both quivers of arrows, my draw arm is basically a rubber hose. And my forefinger and middle finger? Exhausted. I tell myself it’s not enough, but there’s no use wearing out my fingers for practice when I might need them for battle at any given moment.

  When I’m done shooting, I collect my arrows, drag the bale back into the garage then head to bed. I’m all about the cat naps. When I wake up, I arm myself for anything before taking a walk around the neighborhood. I want to see who’s home. I want to see which houses are truly abandoned.

  At the first four homes I ring the doorbell several times each. No one answers. I make mental notes, commit the addresses to memory. On the fifth residence, an old woman pulls back her curtains only to realize I’m not worth the effort of answering the door. I try not to get all butt hurt about being slighted because the woman genuinely looks scared. I knock again. Nothing. Using my outside voice, I tell her I mean no her harm and that us neighbors have to stick together. This old lady isn’t buying it. Then I tell her how the neighborhood hooligans look nothing like me. But the problem is, I’m armed to the teeth and I’ve got that dead look in my eyes, the look I’ve been practicing. Through the door, she finally speaks to me, but in a foreign tongue with the clunky accent to boot.

  “All you hippie kids and junkies look alike. Now leave my porch young man before I have you arrested.”

  Young man? Oh, my God.

  Irritated—no pissed off—I slap the flat of my hand on her front door, even thoug
h I don’t blame her for the choice she’s made. In response to my outburst, she opens the curtains just enough to frown and shoo me off.

  Whatever lady.

  I’m suddenly not in the mood for stupid, scared people. The next block over, at the house across Dirt Alley from mine, I give a less than patient knock, and then I wait.

  The girl in the window, the one the five douchebags casing the neighborhood were spying on, she lives here but she’s not answering. I knock and knock and knock until she finally decides I’m not going away.

  There’s a commotion behind the door, then it cracks open ever so slightly.

  “You’re a persistent one,” she says. Only half her face is visible, but that’s all I need to see to know that she’s much prettier than me, but nowhere near as brave. This one is timid for sure. A real home sitter.

  “I saw you the other night,” I tell her.

  “So?”

  “Did you happen to see a group of men wandering down the alley scoping out homes to rob? Because they saw you. We all did.”

  Her brow furrows. “What are you trying to say?”

  “Don’t turn on your lights after dark. You become the only glowing thing on this block, and you’re a girl.”

  “Yes, I’m a girl.”

  “Look, all I’m saying is be careful.”

  She starts to shut the door, saying, “I appreciate the advice.”

  When it’s all the way shut, I lean into it and say, “Then make sure you take it!”

  Over the next few days I find my groove. I go shopping in the morning (that’s what I call my string of robberies so I don’t have to feel bad about becoming a regular thief), shoot three rounds at the hay bale in Dirt Alley, then sleep the afternoon away. After that, I eat dinner, gather my weapons, then head out after nightfall to collect my loot.

  At this point, my house is just about full of other people’s things.

  I’ve even started packing stuff into the garage as well. My dad’s bedroom is full of food, batteries, water filters, clothes, books; I have guns and knives and more ammo than I know what to do with; I have a corner of the living room filled with cases of bottled water and soda. There’s also wine and whiskey and half a dozen baggies of pot, which I got just in case someone’s got a medical condition and it might help. In the garage, there is outdoor cooking gear, a camp stove, propane, sleeping bags and tents. Plus I’ve collected blankets and umbrellas and tons of nice shoes. In the bathrooms are shampoos and lots of different soaps and an absolute crap ton of toilet paper.