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

by Schow, Ryan

  “My name is Jagger, by the way. Jagger Justus.”

  She didn’t look at him, and she didn’t offer up her own name. He didn’t blame her. After what she survived, after what she told him they’d done to her, he wouldn’t blame her if she never uttered another word again.

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Rider shows up for us just after noon. I’m ready. We’re all ready. Macy is on her feet and feeling better, telling Stanton she’s got everything she needs. We all head next door to grab Lenna, who is still wondering why the boys are staying behind with Atlanta, Indigo and Rex.

  “Like I said,” Rider answers, seemingly for the second or third time judging by her expression, “you don’t want to move large crowds through unsafe streets. We can move quicker, quieter and hide better if we’re a small unit. Besides, it’s only three miles away.”

  Lenna has that panicked look in her eye.

  “Rex is active military and Indigo saved our lives,” I say. “The girl is beyond competent, heavily armed and prepared for this.”

  “Is Rex going to join us?” Lenna asks. “I mean, he’s your brother, right?”

  “Most likely,” I say. “He and Indigo have a thing.”

  Hagan and Ballard charge down the staircase and show up in the doorway half out of breath to give their mom a hug and tell her they’ll be okay.

  “We survived on our own while you were hurt,” Hagan says, eyeing Macy who is eyeing him back. “We can make it another afternoon.”

  I turn in time to see Macy giving him that smile; glancing back at the older boy in the door, I catch him returning the smile. Wow. Looking at my husband, I’m seeing him seeing this and now he’s smiling at me, like I should be optimistic. Should I be optimistic?

  Oh, how I want to be…

  Lenna pulls both boys close, kissing them on the cheeks the way you’d kiss someone you’re never going to see again. Hagan looks up, embarrassed, then smiles sheepishly and waves at Rex who’s walking over from across the street where he’s been staying.

  My brother’s hair is getting too long, but then again, all the boys’ hair is getting too long. In another six months, if we don’t do something about it, all these boys are going to look like girls, which can’t happen!

  “Hey sis,” he says, hugging me and giving me a kiss on the temple.

  My heart leaps thinking of leaving him behind. I want to ask if he’s going to come to the college when Rider returns later that day, but I don’t. I won’t. Last night when we spoke about this, he said he wasn’t sure, that he was going to talk to Indigo, but that she probably wouldn’t leave.

  “It’s because of her dad,” he says as we sat together on the back porch looking at a horizon full of fluffy storm clouds.

  “I get that,” I say.

  “She cries at night,” Rex finally admits, almost like he didn’t want to share her secret, but had to so I would understand. “She cries in her sleep at night, then pretends in the morning there’s nothing’s wrong. I can feel it. How sad she is all the time. She gets really quiet and there’s this incredible melancholy that sweeps through her.”

  “And that’s when she goes out back and shoots that hay bale with her arrows?”

  “Yes,” he says.

  Now that we’re standing here, now that he’s come to say good-bye I’m starting to wonder how long this little fling of theirs will last. Will this be his last fling? Will she like him and will they want to keep each other now that things like bars and clubs and dating websites are no longer?

  I look at him and it’s like I’m seeing this other person, this other life. Deep down, I know I’m going to lose him. The idea of this has my insides crawling with fear.

  Turning into him, I give him a long fierce hug and say, “I don’t care how you do it, you need to find your way back to us. We’re your family. Family sticks together, Rex.”

  “I know,” he says.

  When we leave, Macy looks back once more at Hagan who gives her the briefest of waves. She waves back then says, “When are they going to join us?”

  “Tonight or tomorrow depending on how things go. Just focus on yourself for a second.”

  “I’ve been focused on myself all my life,” Macy says.

  “Then this should be easy.”

  “What’s the big deal anyway?” Macy asks. “He’s my age, we obviously like each other’s looks, plus…it’s not like boys are plentiful anymore.”

  Lenna looks over at us and I give her an almost sheepish look followed by a smile that barely reaches my eyes. We’re at the end of Dirt Alley and Rider’s taking us right. He says the college is San Francisco City College, the John Adams campus. I’ve driven by it a couple of times in my former life, but apparently I never really knew what I was looking at. It’s situated just north of the Panhandle on Hayes and Ashbury. A big brick building shaped like a U, which Rider says makes for a good defensive position.

  “I think my daughter likes your son,” I tell Lenna as we’re turning onto 23rd Ave.

  “Mom!”

  “It’s true,” I tell her.

  “I think my son likes your daughter, too, so I guess we’re sort of in this together,” Lenna says.

  “Really?” Macy asks.

  She smiles, then focuses on the road ahead, her head obviously in the clouds. We’re heading through a barren neighborhood with a few bombed out houses and a lot of shattered windows. Overhead the canopies of telephone wires are the only things in the sky. That and some strange looking clouds.

  “When you guys are done with the whole Love Connection business back there,” Rider says, “we need to keep our eyes open.”

  “Are you expecting trouble?” Stanton asks.

  “Always,” he says.

  Rider’s got his gun out, but he’s had it out since the beginning. Stanton has his out, too. It’s fully loaded and he’s got a spare magazine in his back pocket. I’ve got a shotgun slung over my shoulder and Macy’s got her gun. Lenna is the only one who’s unarmed.

  “Up ahead, on 23rd and Irving, from left to right is the S & B Supermarket, a housewares and restaurant store, the Wok Store and the Guangdong Barbecue Restaurant,” Rider says, like he’s some kind of tour guide. “With the exception of the restaurant supplies store, all these buildings are two story buildings with windows.”

  “Look around, Rider,” I say. “This whole city is full of two-story buildings with plenty of windows people can shoot us from.”

  “I’m less worried about the people hiding in thousand square foot homes and more worried about large restaurants where crowds can congregate.” No one says anything so he continues on his train of thought. “The intersection spans four directions, and though it’s not a big one, it’s an intersection nonetheless. Plus Indigo said you took down the Walgreen’s and its band of morons, which is up ahead. They seemed like lightweights based on what she said, but they were members of The Ophidian Horde anyway.”

  “You think they’ll retaliate?”

  “You killed the guys in the school, right?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “And didn’t Indigo carve her name in one of the shooter’s forehead?”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Atlanta told me.”

  “You talked to her?” I ask. Then, before he can answer: “She doesn’t talk to anyone.”

  “The point is, getting out of here makes sense, so the further we can get from here the better.”

  We pass through the intersection at 23rd and Irving without incident. We continue on through a neighborhood that has been flat out eviscerated. There are smoked telephone poles, hanging telephone wires and burnt down trees; there are caved in homes and the charred husks of cars—one of them with a small family huddled together inside. They’re all practically black with ash. Macy starts to look inside.

  “Don’t,” I say.

  She does anyway. I grab her good arm, gingerly nudge her along. For the next few blocks, all the way to Lincoln and halfway to
ward the Panhandle, she says nothing.

  “They were burnt to death in that car,” Macy finally says.

  By now we’re halfway down Lincoln. There are houses on the right and the park on the left and a lot of abandoned and destroyed cars all along the road. We’ve passed a half a dozen people steering clear of us because we still have our guns out. Well, Stanton and Rider. Mine’s still on my back and Macy’s is still tucked in the back of her pants under her shirt and jacket.

  “At least they went together,” Lenna says.

  I know she’s thinking of her husband. Knowing she doesn’t know if he’s dead or alive must be killing her. Being away from her boys right now, it’s got to be the reason she’s so introspective. Or maybe she’s just scared. Thinking she did the wrong thing. Then there’s Indigo. Her father is still missing, as in no contact at all. When I think of that family together, burning to death in each other’s arms, I wonder which is worse: dying together or living without knowing what happened to everyone you once loved.

  I’d rather die together, which is why I feel sad for Lenna and Indigo.

  We walk the rest of the way down Lincoln, cross 19th Avenue sticking to the walls of The Church of San Francisco, which looks like some futuristic shuttle for intergalactic travel, if there were such a thing. The church is two stories tall and perched at a large intersection. The entire second story is tinted windows. If we ever need a place to hide, someplace with good visibility, I’m thinking it could be there since the place is still in tact. Then again, the building is out in the open and if I have any hopes of survival, I need to start thinking more like a gangbanger and less like a potential victim.

  Déjà vu for like the thirtieth time.

  I take my shotgun off my back, and I feel better already. Some guy is sitting on the side of the street in front of the Shell gas station. He’s neither old nor young, and he looks like he’s fallen on exceptionally hard times, like maybe he’s days, or even hours, away from keeling over.

  He’s looking up at Rider with parched eyes saying, “Mister?” but Rider is just passing by. He looks up at Stanton and my husband says, “We’ve got nothing for you.” When Lenna passes him, he reaches out for her leg, but she steps out of the way. He grabs Macy though, who is too naïve and too injured to be nimble. I lurch forward, slam him in the skull with the butt of the shotgun, snapping his head back.

  “Hands off!” I growl, standing in front of him looking like some deranged survivor. I stand there as he sits back up, a knot forming on his forehead.

  He’s not cut, but he’s dazed.

  “I’m just hungry,” he says, a few of his teeth missing, a few blacked with grime.

  “We’re all hungry, and scared,” I tell him, “but that doesn’t give you the right to grab at people. Especially young girls.”

  “Whenever you’re done with your lesson in morality,” Rider says, stopping the pack.

  “Save it buddy,” I say to him, catching up. “You haven’t got kids.”

  “You don’t know that,” he replies, making me think I should’ve kept my mouth shut, that having a temper also means keeping it in check, even after an outburst.

  Macy’s looking at me funny, but not saying anything. I get it. I’ve changed. The old me is just a shadow of what’s here now. I don’t like this me, but I sort of do, too. There’s a liberation I feel, this part of me that no longer needs to worry about rules or posturing. There is no pecking order of things except whether you choose to live or die. In a world where living is the prize for doing things right, there truly are no rules, no right and wrong, no reasons to ask for forgiveness.

  “What are you thinking?” Macy asks.

  “Nothing.”

  “Your brain’s going about a hundred miles an hour behind your eyes,” she says.

  “Just trying to figure things out.”

  “You didn’t have to hit the guy in the face.”

  “He didn’t have to grab you, but he did, so I did,” I tell her. “And if you want to lecture me on my reactions to people grabbing my daughter, perhaps you should first think of the fact that all of us walked too close to a guy who looked harmless but could’ve been anything but.”

  Stanton says, “Sin, it’s okay.”

  “No it’s not, Stanton. You need to be in back, or you have to let me be in back. And if I’m taking up this end, then be quiet and let me do what I need to do.”

  Everyone got quiet, then Stanton says, “Okay.”

  “I just got rattled is all,” I end up admitting. “I don’t like strange men reaching for Macy.”

  We make it all the way to 16th Avenue before encountering sufficient trouble. We stick to the sides of the buildings where we can, staying out of the phantom line of fire, but then, just before 16th, we come upon a mammoth building that crumbled out onto Lincoln, blocking our path.

  The building is a huge spill of rubble we’ll have to climb over to pass through.

  Rider climbs right into it; Stanton follows. Lenna and Macy head into the rubble and pretty soon I sling my shotgun back over my shoulder and crawl up and over the debris as well. Halfway through the mess, Lenna yelps. Macy stops to look down. There are bodies in the wreckage of concrete blocks and steel and this has Lenna gasping at first, and then sniffling. I imagine the welling of emotion stems from having just been trapped in a collapsed house herself.

  “You okay, Lenna?” I ask.

  “Fine,” she says, wiping her eyes.

  I give Macy a nudge, but mistakenly look down to see the dust-coated hand of a human casualty, buried in the debris. My eyes find a bare knee, half an exposed face. The skin is dusty looking, the same brownish-grey color of the concrete.

  God, I can’t stop looking at the face. The eyelid is pulled open, but you wouldn’t know it right away because the eyeball—like all of the face—is coated with dust. For whatever reason, I can’t stop wondering what the eye would be looking at if there was a soul in this body.

  The more we work our way over the spilled wreckage of this collapsed building, the more we witness sights like these: exposed body parts, severed arms and legs, half a head, plus little things like dusty dolls and dead animals, a crushed aluminum walker and the upturned wheels of a motorized wheel chair.

  On the other side of the pile, we find steady ground again. As we walk, we walk together, silently, all of us shaken, none of us are terribly anxious to deal with the true revulsions of this city: hundreds of thousands of dead people trapped in buildings, burnt to death, shot to death, smashed in the debris of more than a few toppled buildings.

  When we reach Kezar Drive we head into Golden Gate Park, cutting through the southern corner of the park where we’ll end up just north of the Panhandle. In the park there are tents everywhere. There are fires going and lots of people mulling about, but everyone looks miserable, lost. This is the saddest scene ever. It’s nothing like before where the park meant having fun with kites and Frisbees and picnics and the dog. Half these people don’t own any of that. Most of them probably lost their entire family and now all they have is this—a wayward community of survivors.

  “Mom,” Macy whispers back to me, “I almost want to cry for these people.”

  “Me, too,” I say. “Me, too.”

  We cross Stanyan Street, end up on Fell, then take a left on Ashbury three blocks later. It’s a one block walk up a slight grade before we hit Hayes and that’s when we see it: the college. It’s a large, three story brick building that takes up nearly the entire block.

  “It’s huge,” I say.

  “It’s nice inside, too,” Rider adds. “There are some extra beds we’ve been collecting, but you’ll need to find a classroom, or a lounge, and make it your own room. Over the next few days, we can help you find blankets and whatever living supplies you need. There’s no shortage of homes nearby, but we don’t go out alone, either. There’s always someone to escort you, wherever you need to go.”

  Rider walked them through security, ushering everyone insid
e the college. He found them rooms next door to each other with a little space from everyone else. He wanted them to have their privacy as they got to know the place.

  Deep down, he ached to see Sarah, but he was nervous, too. Rather than heading over there right away, he helped Lenna and the McNamara’s gather cots and blankets. When there was nothing left to do, he made his way to Sarah’s office where he found her inside with a book in hand. His heart absolutely melted at the sight of her.

  How is she even possible? he wondered.

  She was reclining on a gray chaise lounge she took from one of the teacher’s lounges, her body stretched out with a medical manual in hand and natural lighting highlighting everything great about her. She was just about the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. When she turned her big, gorgeous eyes on him and smiled, he would swear his spine went so soft he nearly collapsed.

  “Rider!” she said in her sexy Cuban accent.

  She stood and fell into his arms and started kissing him all over. Then she buried herself into him, hugging him so tight he almost couldn’t breathe.

  “You are so beautiful, for a second I think my heart actually stopped.”

  She pulled back and looked at him. He could see it in her eyes, how much she missed him, how deeply she needed him, how certain she was that they were meant to be together.

  “You always have the right thing to say,” she said.

  Smiling, he said, “Right now, all I want is these lips on those lips.”

  Leaning forward, she kissed him, melted into him, reconnected with him. When their mouths came apart, she said, “I was so worried about—” But then the words just stopped and he could tell she was tearing up.

  “It’s okay,” he said, pulling her into him again. “I’m okay.”

  After a few minutes of just being together, she pulled away, wiped her eyes and said, “Tell me you’re going to stay with me.”

  He took a deep breath, then explained the situation with Rex and the kids. He said he’d have to go out again in the next few minutes to get the rest of the group.

  “Then I’m coming with you,” she said, firm.