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

by Schow, Ryan

  As fast as he could, because the men would now advance on him having seen where he’d gone, he washed the blood out of his eyes. Looking in the mirror, red water dripping down his face, he was a red nightmare.

  “Keep it together,” he said, his eyes drilling into his reflection’s eyes.

  Turning around, leaning against the wall in the hallway just outside the bathroom, he saw several stacks of ammo next to a shotgun.

  “Well Jesus take the wheel,” he mumbled with a tempered grin on his face.

  He grabbed the shotgun, started jamming ammo into the tube, then he racked a fresh load and waited. Too much time passed. What the hell? Popping his head out, he didn’t see anyone advancing just yet, so he continued to wait.

  Seconds later the sound of automatic weapons unleashing hell erupted in a deafening burst. Holes peppered the wall outside the bathroom and he waited, listening beneath the roar of gunfire.

  Were they closing in on him, or standing at the front door, scared?

  They should be scared. He was. Marcus didn’t like war. He loved it. What he hated though was what it did to him. The kind of animal it freed up. He was a beast conditioned by Uncle Sam for war and he was good at it, as evidenced by the mounting body count, but it had taken its toll on his mind.

  The noise stopped. He heard them approaching. When they sounded like they were about ten feet away, he popped out, split the space between them and fired a round. The spread caught them both, tearing holes in their necks and cheeks, but not doing any fatal damage.

  Two more shots put them both down.

  Three rounds for two men. He couldn’t afford any more of that. Or could he? He started measuring the bodies against his original head count.

  Twelve or thirteen minus five, maybe minus the leader whose ear he shot, minus two more. Was that right? Maybe there were four or five left. He could handle that. But in this very moment of contemplation, a mechanical clamor arose and seconds later one of the SUVs smashed through the front of the motel room, bouncing up over the stacks of bodies and crashing halfway through the motel’s back wall.

  It all happened so fast.

  One minute there was a halfway intact motel room (albeit one that was riddled with bullets), then there was a gaping hole in the front of the room and a black Suburban stuffed to the roofline through the back wall.

  The SUV jolted to a stop right in front of him.

  Without hesitation, he leveled the shotgun, fired into the passenger seat hitting the passenger and the driver, both of whom had their faces smooshed in the airbags. The overhead sprinklers then decided to come on, drenching the lot of them.

  Sliding his weapon over, he fired three more rounds into the back seats killing two more men, both whom were dazed from the botched vehicular assault.

  “Idiots!” he screamed, not because he needed their bodies to know he thought they were beyond braindead pulling a stunt like that, but because he had so much anxious energy and adrenaline built up he needed an outlet.

  Instead of hunkering down to wait out the rest of the cavalry, he scuttled around the back of the SUV, collected the box of shotgun shells he’d left behind. He didn’t load the weapon just yet. There wasn’t time. Yanking open the SUV’s door, he jerked the passenger out of the front seat, tossed him outside the vehicle where he lay dead in and around bits of what looked like broken cinder blocks and obliterated drywall.

  Inside, the windshield was webbed. Marcus kicked it out in two tries, then scurried through the hole, scrambling over the hood and dropping down into what looked like an auto repair yard. A tied up Rottweiler that was black as night and terrifying lunged at him. Marcus jolted back, then breathed a quick sigh of relief when the dog’s collar yanked him back.

  And here he thought his heart couldn’t take anymore…

  Instead of taking on the dog, which was barking furiously and gnashing its teeth at him, he loaded the shotgun and stuffed the rest of the shells into his pockets. He needed a moment to properly catch his breath.

  The Rottweiler was now frothing at the mouth, lunging, practically choking itself out trying to get to him.

  As far as he could tell, the only way out was to either jump the fence (which stood higher than he preferred) or shoot the dog. That was an easy decision. He’d never shoot the dog, or even harm an animal for that matter. So it was the fence.

  Getting a running start, he leapt over the fence. Okay, in reality it took him two tries and he nearly tore his sack on the second try, but at least he landed hard.

  Marcus found himself in a narrow, smaller repair yard that looked like it serviced only German automobiles. A small patch of green grass and the street lay beyond a bunch of dusty BMW’s and a spiked, wrought iron fence. Getting a running start, he launched off the hood, barely cleared the fence, then landed on the soft grass and promptly twisted his ankle. The shotgun fell from his hands as he rolled across the sidewalk and out into the road.

  Fortunately there was no traffic otherwise he’d be bumper bait for sure.

  Getting up, hobbling but telling himself to suck it up, he grabbed the shotgun, hobble-jogged around the front of the Ramada Inn and came through the broken portico once more. He had no cover, but he had a stolen pistol with two or three or four rounds left and a shotgun, which had a wide burst at short range but was basically useless from afar. He’d be screwed if he couldn’t cover the distance between the portico and the destroyed room before taking fire.

  Three men outside the motel room had their guns drawn and were cautiously heading inside. There were young girls everywhere. Most of them scantily clad and standing in front of the second story railing watching, hoping.

  “Get back in your rooms!” one of the guys screamed, but the girls stayed put. “Get!”

  A few of them started back inside, but when the other girls remained outside, all of them followed suit. When all three of the surviving men were inside the room, Marcus hobble-ran after them, using his index finger over his lips to shush! the girls.

  Not one of them said a word.

  When he got to the kill room, he sidled up alongside the giant hole the SUV made. A quick peek in showed him the three men’s backs. He told himself this was beyond reproach—shooting men in the back—but they were doing all kinds of awful things and he reasoned none of these cockroaches deserved honorable deaths.

  He stepped inside the room using the cover of the noisy sprinklers, leveled the shotgun and put every one of those dirty dogs down, not caring for one second the manner in which they were executed.

  Outside, he looked up at the girls, most of them dressed beyond inappropriate, but for reasons he thought he understood.

  “Any more?” he asked.

  Two of the girls pointed down the upstairs hallway. Slowly, he nodded. He then took a moment to assess the pain in his ankle (it was manageable) and his knee (son of a bitch), then he drew a deep breath and told himself to finish this off.

  Hobbling upstairs, he walked past the girls, including Corrine who had joined the other girls and was all eyes on him. At the end of the hall, he turned and said, “How many?” to which several of them held up a single finger.

  Thank God.

  He hit the door with the butt of the shotgun three times, then called through the locked door to the man. He got no reply.

  “If you come out now, I won’t kill you,” he called out. “All your homeboys are dead. I’m counting to three, then I’m throwing a grenade through the window. Either you’ll blow up with the grenade or it’ll flush you out and I’ll shoot you in—”

  Just then the door opened and a pair of empty hands emerged in surrender. “I’m unarmed bro. Take it easy.”

  The skinhead came out, an older guy who didn’t look hard enough to be running with this kind of crowd.

  “Food and weapons,” Marcus said.

  “Down the hall, man,” he said. “Four doors. That’s our storage center.”

  Jamming the shotgun in his face, he said, “Show me.”
r />   “Easy guy, we had a deal, right? I come out, you don’t kill me?”

  “That doesn’t mean I won’t shoot you someplace less lethal than the face. Are you right handed or left?”

  Sneaking his hands behind his back, he said, “I’ll show you, man, I’ll show you!”

  True to his word, he took Marcus to a room that was packed to the walls with food stores and weapons.

  “This it?” Marcus asked, although he was taken aback at what they’d amassed.

  He gulped, then looked into Marcus’s eyes and got scared. “Seven doors down, there’s another room just like this one.”

  “Okay, fine. Take a candy bar and start running. And don’t stop until you’re so far from this place you forget what it even looks like. Am I clear?”

  “Yeah,” he said, taking two bars, “perfectly.”

  When he scurried past Marcus and out the door, the girls flocked in and around the room. There must have been twenty-five of them. They were coming out of the woodwork, looking scared but hopeful, some of them visibly shaking now that they heard their abductors were dead.

  Corrine worked her way toward him, gave him a hug, which he didn’t return because it felt awkward. She said, “I’m sorry I doubted you.”

  “It’s okay,” he replied. Then to the girls, he said, “Grab what you can, take a weapon if you want, then find your way back home. And if you don’t have one, find a vacant room and squat it out. Whatever happened here is happening all along the west coast and won’t be ending anytime soon.”

  The girls got moving, grabbing what they could. Corrine didn’t move, though. She just looked up at him and said, “I don’t have a home.”

  “You told me that earlier,” he said.

  “What about you?”

  “I have a boat, other people to take care of. Friends.”

  “Are you taking the food?”

  “What I need of it, yes, but there will be plenty for you and your friends.”

  “They’re not my friends. We’re all just strangers, held against our will and, well…”

  “What do you want from me, Corrine?” he asked, impatient only because his body hurt. He was bone weary and he still had to load up the big rig and get back to the yacht before someone looted it. Not to mention the emotional turmoil he’d surely face for what he’d done here. For the inevitable unwinding of both adrenaline and emotion, he’d want to be alone.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t want to be alone.”

  He thought back to what Quentin said before he was killed. How Bailey would choose Nick and maybe at some point in time, he would need a woman. Quinten might have wanted a woman, but Marcus didn’t need anything. Still, he was tired of being alone. Tired of being angry.

  Looking at Corrine, her auburn hair long, her eyes a greyish green, all her features soft and pleading, he asked, “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen. I’ll be eighteen in two days.”

  “Jesus Christ help me,” he muttered under his breath.

  “I won’t be a burden, I promise.”

  “You going to see me as your daddy figure? Ask me to take care of you?”

  “You’re not that much older than me,” she said. “Any my dad was older. He just turned sixty. You aren’t sixty, are you?”

  “You know I’m not.”

  “Let me help you,” she said, gently. “I can help.”

  “No.”

  Tears started to well in her eyes and he couldn’t take it. He didn’t want to feel. Wasn’t ready for it.

  “Go get a sweater or something,” he finally said. “Something warm. Do you even have regular clothes?”

  She left and returned with a big off-white sweater that looked good on her. He’d already see her being taken advantage of, and now he was seeing her looking halfway normal. He liked this version better.

  “Where are your pants?”

  “They took them.”

  “Help me load the guns and these boxes of ammo in the truck,” he said, “and then maybe I’ll think about it.”

  Corrine picked up two metal ammo boxes by the handles, struggled at first with the weight of them. She was determined, though, so she managed to get them downstairs and out to the big rig without totally gassing out. He followed with an armful of rifles and a bag of pistols. If there was ever the perfect score, it was this one. He only had to sell his soul to get it. Hopefully it was worth the cost. Somehow he feared it wouldn’t be.

  He looked at the girl.

  Corrine.

  Could he help her, maybe find a way to help others? Would that absolve him of his laundry list of sins? Probably not. Thinking of what he’d just done, how he’d become such a dead shell of a person to do things like this, stateside no less, began to bother him. Keeping this girl around would only serve to remind him of this afternoon. She couldn’t go with him.

  There was no way he could take her.

  When they were done transferring the weapons down to the truck, they went to work on the food. The girls took what they needed, some of them opting to stay at the motel because they had nowhere else to go, and then there was everything left over. To say there was plenty of food and weapons left over was an understatement.

  Marcus and Corrine stocked up the rig, gassed it up with the cans of diesel next to it, then an hour later, without so much as a peep from neighbors or any other occupants, they fired up the rig and set out to go.

  When Corrine jumped in the passenger seat, he said, “You can’t come with me.”

  Her relieved face bent with worry once more, then confusion, and then anger. “I did not just move all that crap to be denied a ride.”

  “I’ll take you wherever you want,” he said, straight-faced and cold.

  “I’m going with you,” she said, firm, “so just go where you’re going and I’ll be there.”

  “No.”

  “Why?” she asked, her entire world hanging on Marcus’s next words.

  God, she looked so innocent, so abused. Was he doing her more harm than good brushing her off? He made a promise. He should keep that promise, even if it wasn’t in her best interest. The one thing his father said to him that wasn’t hateful or critical was that a man was only as good as his word. Still…

  “Because it’s not safe with me,” he finally admitted.

  “I was not safe when you found me and it looks like I won’t be safe for a long time to come. Besides, look at what you did. Look at how you saved all of us!”

  “How I did it was unforgivable.”

  “No, it was courageous, necessary, warranted. You have no idea what they were doing to the other girls.”

  “When did you get there?”

  “The guy you killed,” she said, her voice taking on the slightest tremor, “the one on top of me? He was supposed to break me in. Sexually. Him and four other guys is what he said.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Why do criminals do anything criminals do?” she asked, glum.

  “True,” he said.

  “We aren’t working girls. We’re just girls. You saved all of our lives back there. Don’t you get it?”

  Jerking his head around, he practically growled at her. “No, I don’t get it!”

  Didn’t she understand?!

  Inside his head, flashes of the war began funneling in. All the wars he waged, all of them blending together, playing unevenly and frightfully in his head.

  “Jeez, man. Chill.”

  The noise in his head peeled back, lost its hold on him. He stared at her, wordless. Perhaps she could come with him, but only if things were safe. She could stay with Bailey, if Bailey was even alive, or in Quentin’s room, since he wasn’t. For whatever reason, maybe because the battle was over and he was feeling again, he started to feel for Quentin. For a freaking nerd, the guy had a ton of courage. He sort of missed his dry humor, his stupid hair, his innate sense of not belonging. Damn. And what about Nick?

  Frowning, he thought: When the h
ell did I start caring about these people?

  “I made it out of San Diego with three others,” he finally confessed. “We made it out alive when thousands of other people didn’t. We defied the odds. We stuck together.”

  “I’d like to meet them,” she said, tears all but standing in her eyes, waiting to either dry up with good news, or drain down her cheeks with bad news.

  “One was shot twice in the chest and is now dead. Another was beaten mercilessly and kidnapped. I think she may be dead, too. And the third went after her and he wasn’t back when I left. The people around me are dying, Corrine.”

  “Look around—” she started to say.

  “We may die, too, but I don’t want to see you die.”

  “Then protect me!”

  “What if I can’t?” he asked in a surprising moment of both vulnerability and truth. “In times like these, the good people hide, like I told you, and the bad people come out and do what they do. It’s like the Scumbag Super Bowl where there are no cops, no rule of law, only chaos.”

  “With you, I’ll be—”

  “With or without me, it’s dangerous as hell for a girl like you. For any cute girls in fact.”

  “I understand the predilection of guys,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “The hell you do!”

  “I’m not a kid anymore!” she said, snapping back. “I know what boys want, what they’ll do to get it. I’ve been seeing it firsthand!”

  “Those aren’t all guys. They’re the worst of the worst, Corrine. That’s what’s out there! People like them, people like me.”

  “But you’re one of the good guys.”

  “Depends on who you ask,” he muttered.

  “My point is, if I die, then I die. I would have died sooner or later anyway.”

  “Yes, but I don’t want to see that,” he admitted. “I can’t see that. Not again.”

  “You a vet?”

  “Army vet yes, dog vet no.”

  She looked at him, not a single emotion crossing his face, then she laughed and the ice between them seemed to fracture, maybe even break a little. He even found himself trying to smile for the first time in a long time.

  “You have a tough time at war?” she asked.