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

by Schow, Ryan

  Besides, if Nick and the kid came back and the boat was gone…

  Now he was on Hwy 1 which was a graveyard of cars and burnt bodies. The entire scene made him emotionally ill, left a rolling in his guts that made him question what all this was about. He might have even caught himself crying. It didn’t matter. In this death field, if you don’t cry seeing what you see, honestly, you can’t be human.

  When he thought about the purpose of this war, what the desired outcome could possibly be for the attacking force, he came to one conclusion: This wasn’t a condition of man’s need to dominate and conquer—this was something else entirely.

  Even though men kill other men in both life and war, this did not feel like a man vs. man kind of war. This was unprovoked mass murder. Men, women, children. This was the sick, the elderly, people’s diapered pets. This was entire communities reduced to ash for no reason at all.

  Deep down, he had his suspicions. As he whittled away other lesser possibilities, a single fear prevailed: Artificial Intelligence had been a problem for years.

  This had to be a takeover.

  The autonomous drones they built in the military, the combat ready robots that took the grunts off the front lines, the remote controlled tanks…

  Through days and nights of deductive and contemplative reasoning, coupled with all his experience in the Army, Marcus could only assume this was the machines taking control of the military, and of humanity by proxy.

  What fools we’ve been, he nearly said aloud.

  Anyone could see forward progress meant taking some gigantic risks, especially when linking everything to everything. But this? “The Internet of Things” was a term coined to describe online refrigerators, dishwashers, TV’s. It was cell phones connected to computers connected to the internet. It was cars controlled by smart phones with apps and GPS integration and self-driving software that learned your driving habits and mimicked them. You take all this, coupled with a “cloud” and an AI system with machine learning software and quantum computing, and voila, you have a recipe for the end of the world.

  Or maybe he was being too presumptive. It could’ve been Kim Jong-Un’s North Korea breaking agreements. Or President Xi Jinping’s communist China.

  No, he thought. No way.

  It couldn’t be them.

  Why strike town by town targeting people when you could just nuke an entire state? The whole of the western seaboard? And where were the ground forces? The Naval incursions? The pre-war posturing and failed peace-summits? After President Benjamin Dupree took office, within two years he’d brokered peace accords with even our staunchest enemies, all to the dismay of Dupree’s pack of disruptors.

  None of this made sense. Not unless you chalk it up to Artificial Intelligence defending itself from their real enemy: humans.

  He slowly pedaled his bicycle up Hwy 1, crossed the waterway and took a right on Dover where the departing traffic of a few days ago had been devastated by drone fire. He was looking at a petrified forest of charred metal. On the hillside to the left, multimillion dollar homes stood in smoking ruin, all the landscape and hillside vegetation now blackened fields of ash. He rode through the small valley, staying on sidewalks where he could avoid the abandoned cars, many of them with the inhabitants still inside, dead. The road took him uphill. He stayed on the pedals, relishing the burn in his thighs, in his calves, in the pumping of his heart and the taste of less-burnt air in his lungs.

  He crossed Cliff Dr. and continued uphill to E. 16th where he passed the remains of Newport Workout and the recently bombed Church of Latter Day Saints. He passed open fields and squat buildings and adobe colored business complexes, and then he hit Westcliff Drive where the Union Bank was half destroyed. By now the dirty air sat like char in his lungs. His eyes were starting to burn. Hanging a left on Westcliff showed him a long row of 70’s style apartment complexes that were smoldering, much of them now relegated to rubble.

  Entire families were camped out on the side of the road, shell shocked, the kids crying. Most of them had that look like they were waiting for something. Perhaps someone to save them. But they’d be waiting on firetrucks that weren’t coming, police who were non-existent, some kind of reprieve that would save them from the realization that no one knew how to handle this situation. He tried to put all those despairing faces out of his mind.

  Riding down Westcliff (apartments leading to strip malls leading to larger shopping centers with fountains and anchor stores), a lot of the vegetation had been spared from fire, giving it half a chance of not looking like the battlefield of the apocalypse. As he cruised by this strip mall business called The House of Morrison, a huge brawl was underway. There was screaming and yelling and the kind of wild fighting you used to see in baseball, or hockey when there was a bench clearing. He paid it no mind. This wasn’t his fight.

  To the right he passed the Bank of America (which was currently being robbed in the most anticlimactic heist ever), and then he hit the Westcliff Plaza where he saw signs for Ralph’s and CVS Pharmacy.

  There were a lot of people in tents filling the parking lot. Also, people were living out of their cars and eating off cheap barbecues like it was some kind of extended tailgate party where no one was having any fun. They were sitting on lawn chairs smoking and watching looters go through the CVS and places like the GNC and the pet supply store. Oddly enough, no one even bothered to rob the Yoga store or the Massage Envy.

  All around, the smells of burnt wood, cooking meat and old urine permeated the air. People’s dogs were left off their leashes and running around everywhere. A couple of terriers took up a trot beside his bicycle, barking up at him merrily while some overfed woman in a flowery housedress took chase, screaming their names.

  “Barkly! Chester! You getcher asses back here right now!” she was shouting, her meaty jowls shaking, real concern in her brutish, beady eyes.

  The dogs pulled away, returned to their slovenly master while Marcus continued his trek through what looked like part tent city, part detention center.

  In the corner of the buildings, in side-by-side lawn chairs just past the Core Reform Pilates, two teenagers were making out—his hand up her shirt, her hand on his knee leaning into him. So this is what the fall of society looks like, he thought to himself. Tent cities, dogs off leashes, public displays of affection involving first base and a serious lack of decorum.

  His mother, if she were still alive, would be horrified.

  He got to the Ralph’s shopping center and there were employees and security guards out front. He pulled his bike up to a massive gathering of maybe fifty or sixty people who were yelling about how it was immoral to withhold food from the starving.

  Some people were shaking fistfuls of cash, yelling about how they could pay, trying to push though the human barrier staving off the crowd. Folks who were probably so civilized in normal life would now sell their soul for a loaf of bread and some cheese. The security guards, out of shape as they were, were brandishing guns and batons. They had formidable looks on their faces. And the employees? They were just a bunch of college kids with funny hair, piercings and body art they no longer bothered to cover.

  “What’s the deal?” he asked a bald guy standing at the back of the pack.

  He was a sinewy looking skinhead, maybe in his early thirties. His head had several small scars and his ears, nose, lips and eyebrows boasted the now vacant holes of too many piercings done at too early an age. The guy was small—maybe five foot seven—but he had an unworldly air about him, a turbulent feel that made him seem much larger than his height and weight would suggest. The man could be a threat, for sure, but for the moment it seemed he was in observation mode only.

  “Just waiting for the dam to break,” he said with a casual air. He glanced over at Marcus, sized him up and said, “You hungry, too?”

  “You’re not?”

  “Not for food,” he said, cryptic.

  “What then?” Marcus asked as the noise of near rioting peaked.r />
  “They say the meek will inherit the earth.”

  The man had striking blue eyes, and a curious tattoo on his neck. It was a triangle with fire on the inside and three emerging swords. He also had tattoos of ghosts and devils and women writhing in bliss (or pain) on his arms spanning from shoulder to wrist. This guy definitely had some edge to him.

  “Are these people the meek?” the stranger continued. “In a society where no one knows how to do anything on their own, let alone survive, will they eat each other when the time comes?”

  Marcus looked extra hard at him, and then he looked at the sullying masses and said, “I believe a few of them will. But you know what they say, ‘The cream rises to the top while the crap sinks to the bottom.’”

  “Who’s the cream and who’s the crap?” the guy asked with a bit of a grin.

  “That’s a deeply existential question,” Marcus said as two women tried to push past the guards only to get cracked on the skulls and shoulder blades with wooden batons. “In terms of survival, I’d say the cream rising to the top are those men and women who would do anything to survive, and the crap are the poor suckers left for dead because their weakness led to inaction.”

  “So tomorrow’s meek will be today’s cream?”

  “Yes,” Marcus said. “Which begs the question—”

  Just then the full mass of the crowd in a coordinated effort began to shove forward, pressing the line, taking the hits from the security guards and the push-back from the employees. Two gunshots went off, but the crowd had enough.

  “What’s the question?” the man asked, unresponsive to the forward push of the crowd.

  “Which are you?”

  “You think this is the end?” he asked.

  “Feels like the end of something,” Marcus answered, his eyes now on the heightened tension and the noise of the crowd.

  All hell was about to break loose.

  “Societies have bounced back from wars like this for eons,” the man said moving forward with the crowd, but without any of their intensity. “There is always an end, always a rebuilding, always hope. Look at all the countries ravaged by war, by famine, by disease.”

  “True,” Marcus said, moving forward, too.

  “One day they’re going to build the most beautiful condos in Chernobyl. People will sunbathe on the beaches outside Fukushima while sipping martinis. North Korea will be a vacation destination for the ultra rich. There is always a way back, but only for those who have what it takes to survive.”

  “What about you?”

  “Going back to your question, I think only the losers call the victors meek. The meek don’t inherit the earth. Only the meanest sons of bitches left standing get that privilege.”

  “And that’s going to be you?” Marcus asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “You going in then?” he asked, nodding at the crowd. “Because the meanest looking of this group isn’t you or me, but the ladies getting clubbed up front. They’re the ones pushing the line.”

  “I’ve got other plans,” he replied, nonchalant.

  “Such as?”

  “Let them do the shopping,” he said, standing still as the crowd surged ever forward. “Filling your carts with everything you need doesn’t insure you get home with all your groceries.”

  “Well I’m going shopping in there,” Marcus said, hanging back with him, “but if you try to poach off me, I’ll put a bullet through your head.” Pointing at his right eye, his finger only an inch from the shorter man’s face, he said, “I’ll put it right there.”

  Smiling, the skinhead said, “What would I want from a washed out juicer on a mountain bike?”

  Marcus got off the bike. He didn’t care that it fell over. Pushing and nudging past the crowd of protestors, he managed to shove his way to the front of the line where an older man in a security uniform was hitting people with his baton.

  Marcus grabbed the baton mid-swing, ripped it out of his hands, blocked a strike from his partner’s baton, then rammed his way through them making a hole in the line.

  One of the college-aged employees came after him and he swung the baton down toward the girl’s head so hard, it was a death blow for sure. But he didn’t connect. Instead, he stopped the baton within a half inch of her skull and she damn near wet herself.

  “This store is not worth defending!” he boomed. The crowd fell to a hush, all eyes on the guards and the employees. “Your lives and your well-being are at risk, all for people who are starving and will do anything to feed themselves and their families.”

  Within a few moments of stark realization, the security guards and the employees began to move away, to let people aside. With that, Marcus turned and went through the grocery store’s front doors, grabbing a rolling cart and moving past a small gathering of terrified employees.

  The store became a veritable frenzy as he loaded up his cart with things he couldn’t find in homes he could easily rob. He was loaded for bear by the time the mob overtook the store and became unruly.

  The first fight broke out over water. What started out as angry words soon became angry fists. While two men were going to blows over a 24 pack of Aquafina, a girl with blue hair and piercings (an employee) snuck the water from them. She stuck it in her cart then was promptly jumped by two women who may or may not be related to the men fighting. The blue haired girl had her piercings ripped out and eventually she got knocked out cold.

  The agitation in the air amplified. Skirmishes erupted everywhere. Someone tried to take a brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide from Marcus’s cart, but he struck the man’s hand with the wooden baton he’d stolen from the security guard out front and that was the end of that.

  As he was heading toward the front of the store, Marcus saw the gathering of men outside: skinheads like the one he’d spoken with, every last one of them. They were waiting for everyone to leave with their groceries, and then they were taking the carts by force.

  Smart. Cruel and merciless, but smart. The guy he was talking to earlier was the one heading up the action.

  Of course…

  He glanced down at his cart full of groceries, then he flicked his eyes on the loaded .357 at his hip. It wasn’t enough. Not this one gun. He then checked the stolen Beretta. Even with both guns, he didn’t have enough ammo to shoot his way out of there. Could he be discreet? Take a few of them out with his Reaper2 blade?

  As he inched toward the front of the store, eyes on the chaos ahead and contemplating his strategy, he wondered about a back door. When he turned to check the other side of the store, he was immediately cracked on the top of his head by what he was certain was a wine bottle. Temporarily dazed, he stumbled backwards on unsteady legs only to be besieged by half a dozen people.

  Someone stuck a finger in his eye, grabbed his beard, socked him in the nose.

  Son of a—

  He was suddenly swarmed. As he fought to get his wits about him, especially after the blow to the skull, people viciously kicked out his legs then tried to steal his cart. He went down hard, but managed to hang on to the edge of his cart. There were too many of them. Looking up through the flurry of legs and stomping feet, he saw the spurned security guard taking the baton out of Marcus’s cart and swinging in down on him. Marcus let go of the cart, rolled out of the way. The heavy baton clanked on the dirty floor, the vibration rattling up his arm, causing the old man to wince.

  Marcus rolled back over, kicked the guard’s ankle hard enough and in the right place. Bones broke and the man folded first before going down hard. He tried not to scream, but then he just let it out because his foot was painfully, inexorably ruined.

  Marcus grabbed the cart as it was being pulled away, withdrew his .357 and said, “Who wants a little too much lead in their diet?”

  Nobody moved. He pulled himself to his feet thinking that was the worst line ever, or maybe the best, but either way he put a sudden stop to the ruckus. Well, most of it. The foot connecting with his back surprised him. He spu
n around to shoot the attacker, but stopped when he saw it was the college girl he nearly brained with the baton.

  “You again?” he snarled.

  Seeing the look on his face, she got scared and ran. Wheeling back around, the gun leveled on the four or five people who’d tried to take his stuff, he jerked the cart.

  They held strong.

  While chaos practically swirled around them, Marcus said, “I’m going to count to three and then I’m going to shoot one of you.”

  “You won’t,” the woman said as several people pushed by her. She looked exactly the way most powerful women in real estate look: bitchy and entitled.

  “Go ahead and test me, sweetheart,” he said. “One, two—”

  They finally let go, but that was about the time the skinheads rushed into the store and started punching people. The second the gang of thugs set their sights on him, he put a round in each face, stopping that action. The crowd went into an absolute frenzy of screaming, running and shoving. His reaction was probably unwarranted, but he’d have to live with that.

  The point was, he was officially a target.

  Should he defend his cart? Defend himself? This wasn’t the Middle East. This wasn’t Afghanistan or Iraq. And shouldn’t he take his own advice? The advice he gave earlier? Not risk his life for a basket of food? The contents in the cart were not worth his life.

  Still, he didn’t want people stealing his things…

  The unarmed masses took flight, their carts now battering rams against other shoppers and the surge of thugs. The weak and the slow fell quickly. He was neither weak nor slow. Instead, Marcus navigated his cart away from the crowds, hurrying to the seemingly vacant back corner of the store. If he could break from the crowd, isolate himself enough, he could see the skinheads coming and possibly minimize the collateral damage.

  By now, people found the back doors and were jamming it up. This made easy pickings for the dozen or so skinheads now converging on them.