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

by Schow, Ryan

  It was already down. The man had officially been defeated.

  He walked in through the front entrance, an entrance that was now smashed wide open because something had driven right through it. Maybe it was a car. Or a truck. He walked inside to a wash of sloughed-off rubble and tons of destruction.

  He was hit with a short snap of vertigo at the sight. This was once The First House. Now it was just a dilapidated house. Something vandalized to prove the country was over. That there was no power left, no structure, no society.

  That they were on our own.

  Daylight cut in through broken windows and crumbling walls. The building suffered substantial damage, but it was unclear whether it was from drones or from people. If he had to guess, he’d say it was people.

  Would folks have come here looking for help? Would they look for their leaders as proof their world was still functional? Would others have come here to lynch him?

  It was possible.

  On the other side of the first floor entrance, Ben saw the rusted, baby blue pickup truck that had smashed through the front door, the reception desk and into the Blue room.

  It really was the Blue Room now. Blue walls, a few surviving blue drapes, a non-functional blue truck. On closer inspection, the old Dodge’s front door hung open on rusted hinges. There were cobwebs strung throughout the inside of the truck, reaching all the way to the hinges which held a furry bundle of spider’s eggs. He walked around to the hood. It was visibly damaged, propped open with its age and destruction on display. There were more cobwebs. Lots of rust. It was a wonder this thing even ran. Beneath the engine, there was a sticky puddle, long since dried and turned black.

  A few passing clouds blotted out the light from the sun, throwing shadows over the space, leaving it feeling glum, like something you’d see in a video game about the apocalypse, or a Resident Evil movie. The feeling was so unfamiliar and long, he had a hard time shaking it. He walked away from the scene, the disconnect too difficult to comprehend.

  A small headache was forming just above his left eye.

  “C’mon girl,” he said to Daisy, who’d put her front paws on the seat and was sniffing the fabric.

  Dutifully, she followed him.

  The family dining room next to the north portico was caved in, sections of the outer wall having fallen away, leaving it exposed to the elements. There was a damp smell, moldy, but not like a household mold, something dirtier, more earthy. There were weeds growing along the corners of the wall, and plenty of rot near the more damaged sections.

  All these rooms—the Blue Room, the Green Room, the Red Room and the dining room—were not only suffering structural impairment, they’d been vandalized and looted, too. The chandeliers were gone. Like someone cut them away at the ceiling and carted them off along with the furniture. Most of the drapery and the hardware was gone, but some fabric remained in place, torn. He had to watch where he stepped, because the once polished floors were now marred and littered with filth. Leaves, dirt and in some places, human feces speckled here and there. In two of the rooms, someone tried to pull up the corner of the carpet, but hadn’t gotten very far before giving up.

  Walking through the White House showed him a great many horrors, the worst of which was that the once pristine white walls of places like the East Room were now tagged with the kind of graffiti his wife and kids would be horrified to see. The montage of penises spray painted across the walls was enough to both sicken and enrage a true patriot, and in the shadows of the back corner of the one room were two dead people. The bodies were huddled together and badly decomposed.

  Daisy looked on, started to wander their way. “No,” he said. She stopped, looked at him and gave a low whine.

  He gave her a look and she came back to his side.

  Ben and Daisy took the long hallway leading to the west wing, which was also in bad shape, but passable amidst structural rubble, some displaced and obviously damaged furniture, and the kind of scattered garbage you see from squatters.

  The Oval Office was worse.

  Ben stood outside his former office trying to still his hammering heart. The traitorous Secret Service agent that had been killed at the start of this coup was where they’d left him. The body in his office was spoiled, all the life and moisture dried out of him. His skin was like beef jerky, his body nothing but a human compost pile in the making.

  Daisy looked up at him; Ben shook his head no and Daisy obeyed.

  The office windows were broken outward, giving him an unobstructed view of the rose garden and the south lawn, both of which were suffering greatly with neglect. The sun broke through the midday clouds, illuminated the surreal state of the White House landscape.

  He brushed dirt off the chair, blew off the last layer of dust, then sat down, Daisy laying beside him, panting.

  “This is where everything first went wrong,” he said. Daisy looked at him, tongue out, blinking. “You’re such a good dog, you know that?”

  Daisy gave a soft bark, then let Ben lean down and scratch her side. The word failure was scratched into the desk with what looked like a knife. Beneath that was the word traitor. The office was spray painted with a spectacular array of what he was starting to think of as “genital art.”

  “How did it ever come to this?” he said aloud.

  Daisy looked up at him.

  He’d taken to talking to the dog, not because he thought she’d understand, but because it seemed to make her feel loved, appreciated and closer to him. By then, the two of them had become inseparable.

  He stood and Daisy stood with him. Together they wandered around the White House a little more, the memories competing with the current state of things, the reality stamping those memories into a state of flux. The initial shock of seeing his former home was petering out, but there was one last thing to do: he had to say good-bye. He needed closure, even though the thought of what he was about to do frightened him.

  “I have to,” he said to Daisy. With her head held low, she seemed to know what was coming. What this meant to him.

  Finally they trudged upstairs to the bedrooms, to the one he and his wife shared before all this happened. Their bed was gone, the room in shambles. The wall their headboard used to stand against was now tagged with the name Dante “Dirty” Sanchez. At least Dirty was a good artist. At least his letters were colorful. This did nothing for his mood, though.

  Spiraling downward, feeling that one last thread of hope disintegrating, he walked like a zombie to their closet, sagged with defeat when he found it empty. Not a single shirt or even a pair of socks. Everything that was once his or his wife’s was gone.

  A hollow, pained sound escaped him. It was the sound of crushing disappointment. It was the echo of true failure. His head was nothing but memories of his wife and kids. His heart was nothing but a steep and unrequited longing for them. An unanswered love that followed him from the last world into this one. To say he missed them was obvious, but to know the emptiness in his heart—to know the fullness that was once there—was to know how badly Ben had been broken.

  This trip was never for nostalgic purposes. It was simpler than that. Simpler yet more complicated.

  He needed something of his wife’s to hold, to press against him. Something to remind him of her, to keep close to his heart while he decided if he wanted to survive in this world.

  A blouse, a scarf, a coat. Something to connect him to her.

  This is what kept him going. This is why he was there. But no. All her clothes were gone. Her clothes were gone, and his memories were fading entirely too fast.

  Sitting down on the floor in resignation, Daisy sitting beside him while at the same time nuzzling up to him, the big break finally came. The final fissure. The tears welled hard and fast behind his eyes, a thousand pinpricks to remind him life was truly over, that his heart was no longer working for him but against him as this giant, always-breaking mass.

  He would never have closure. There would be no good-byes. Not now
.

  Not ever.

  So he sat there sobbing like a child, shaking, Daisy pressing her body against him but looking away. He sat there struggling to remember her, the lines of her face, the light in her eyes. He managed to grasp a glimmer of her, but this was like trying to hold a breeze. She was gone, fading and clarifying, then fading and blurring.

  The weight of his remorse was a lead blanket, dragging his soul into the mire, sucking him dry of hope, or even the motivation to carry on. What was life if not to be with the people you love? And when they’re gone, when you’re all alone without purpose, what the hell was even left? The impossible, crappy burden of it all, that’s what.

  At this point, Daisy knew his sadness, knew he needed to have it alone, but she refused to peel herself from his side. He could have his pain, but he would not be having it alone so long as she was with him. He’d rescued her when she needed it, now she was trying to do the same for him. At least, that’s what he imagined she was thinking.

  But who could really read a dog’s mind?

  Certainly not him.

  The girls would have loved her. His wife would have loved Daisy, too. Wiping his eyes, looking at this lovely beast, he said, “You would’ve liked my family.”

  Given permission to interact with him again, Daisy leaned over and gave his forearm a little lick.

  “They would have spoiled you.”

  Now she stood and licked his cheek three times before settling back down and facing him. He should have been happy to have a friend like Daisy, and he was, but it only reminded him of what he’d lost, how much pain he was carrying.

  Daisy gave a little whine.

  She knew she could never fill all the holes inside him.

  He tried to pull himself out of that gloomy place, but he realized he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t see a way out of this dark, morose existence.

  The pain in his chest returned. It took hold of everything ruined and vulnerable in him and spun up the volume. Daisy scooted next to him, but she was not enough. He couldn’t stand this world anymore. He couldn’t take it. Don’t think about it, he told himself.

  Just do it.

  He took his gun out, chambered a round, put it to his head. With a lost and destroyed heart and a lifetime of crushing guilt, he closed his eyes to his dog and said, “I’m coming home, baby.”

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  When the explosions started and the first two buildings partially collapsed, we figured the same morons who were launching dead bodies at us were now playing with dynamite.

  The buildings that buckled were four story residences on Grove and Ashbury. The way parts of the structures collapsed, the rubble from both places spilled into Ashbury, cutting us off from that street completely.

  The security side of our group held an emergency meeting.

  “It’s time to take the gloves off,” Rider says, his eyeballs actually trembling. “I can stomach a bunch of dumb kids playing out their little flying zombie fantasies, but this is ridiculous.”

  “Maybe it’s a one time thing,” Indigo tries to reason.

  “It’s not,” Rex replies. “If it was a one time thing, they’d have gotten the message when we torched their catapult, which was no small thing. I mean, that contraption probably took twenty guys a full month to build.”

  “Yeah,” Macy says, agreeing with him. “They could have stopped after the first round of dead bodies. But then they set them on fire and now they’re blowing up buildings? It seems like they’re escalating, upping the shock value of their attacks.”

  “Seeing flaming dead people was shocking enough,” I hear myself mumble.

  “It’s almost like they want a war,” Macy says.

  Rider stands, paces the room for a second, looks out the window, then turns and says, “We survived the machines. We survived the culling. A few of us have survived mass murder, grievous personal violations and the deaths of love ones. If we don’t take these clowns serious, it’s like laying down in the street and telling them to have their way with us.”

  “No one’s saying that,” Sarah says, reaching for his hand. Rider doesn’t see her doing this, so when she misses his hand, he doesn’t realize that to others this looks like a rebuff.

  “We’re saying this if we don’t do something,” Rider replies. The way he looks at Sarah, you can see he’s trying not to discount her opinion. The way he looks at her, it’s easy to see he’s madly in love with her and wanting to protect her.

  He’s wanting to protect us all.

  Sarah looks at him and there is something in her eyes. Fear, admiration, attraction, love. It’s not just one thing. It’s all of those things passing through her eyes in waves, each separate, each fleeting, all making up the complete picture.

  “There are no more rules, people,” he says, taking her hand and calming down. “This is yet another inexcusable act of war. It’s between us and an enemy who, for no known reason, has decided to target us. So we need to do what we do best.”

  “Which is what?” Stanton asks.

  “Hit ‘em so damned hard their grandkids feel it in their little ballsacks.” This causes a mixed reaction. Someone snickers. It’s Macy I think.

  My hand goes up, almost on its own.

  “I want in,” I tell Rider.

  Stanton’s hand is up beside mine fractions of a second later.

  “Me, too,” he says.

  “Anyone without the stomach or the stones to stand toe-to-toe with these maggots and do to them what they’ve done to us but ten times worse, please stand and leave the room. No one will hold it against you.”

  “But you want to be worse to them than they are to us?” a woman asks from the doorway. We didn’t realize anyone was listening, let alone eavesdropping. “Are we not just like them then? Are we not worse?”

  She brings up a good point.

  “It’s not a discussion point, Brenda,” Indigo says. “This is a decision for those willing to defend this community at all costs. Now I get that you don’t like the messy side of war, most sane people don’t, but I will tell you wars like this are not stopped through diplomacy. And we are not like them because we didn’t start this, and we’re not escalating it out of some sadistic need for a challenge. These are our people. You are our people.”

  “I get that,” she says. “But you’re not even trying to be diplomatic.”

  “Next time you have to scrape up a dead body that almost killed one of your kids while you were eating lunch,” I find myself saying, “you come talk to me. But you don’t have kids, do you Brenda? It’s just you.”

  “I’m sorry for what happened—”

  “Then show us by getting the hell out of here and letting us get on with the business at hand,” Macy says.

  Eyes wide, I turn to her and say, “Respect for your elders, please.”

  Macy looks at a visibly startled Brenda and says, “I’m sorry for being rude, Mrs. Carter.”

  With a huff and a straightening of her ill fitting blouse, the woman turns and storms down the hallway.

  “That went well,” our nighttime head of security, Rowan, mutters.

  Rider looks down the line at our family of four—five if you include Indigo and six if you include the baby growing inside her—and he says, “I’m sorry we’ve been brought to this place in our lives, but I have to say, I’m proud to have you on this team, in this community, and I’m proud to have your back, and I trust you at mine.”

  This is the highest honor he can bestow upon us. Seriously, wow. I nod my head slowly, then smile.

  “I need volunteers,” he says. “More than just the McNamara’s.”

  Indigo’s hand goes up, but Rex says, “Not tonight, lover.”

  “I’m not handicapped, Rex,” she protests.

  “But…”

  Ignoring Rex, Indigo says, “I’d like to be included in this, Rider.” Rider looks at Rex and Indigo says, “Don’t look at him. I’m in and I don’t want to hear a single word to the contrary.�
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  Rex raises his brows, takes a breath.

  “Put me with her,” Rex finally says.

  “Good idea Rex, you’ll need her protection,” Rider jibes, giving Indigo a quick wink.

  After a moment and plenty of volunteers, Rider has four teams of two for eight total. Using a roughly drawn sketch of the neighborhood, he places each of our teams in strategic positions around the outside of the school.

  “What about inside the perimeter?” Macy says.

  “Our vets will hit the four corners of the roof. They’re all good at five hundred yards out, so we’ll have the high ground covered giving us a superior position. Rowan, you head them up.”

  “Got it boss,” Rowan says.

  Macy and I are first out because in a world of testosterone fueled masculinity, we’re always trying to be first, hit hardest, shoot more accurate. For all of us girls, this is the unspoken creed. It’s the way we agreed to work.

  Rider assigned us the corner of Hayes and Masonic. As we’re heading down Masonic, we see a line of cars blocking the six lane road where we’re to take point.

  “Mom?”

  “Yeah,” I hear myself saying. “I see them.”

  The adrenaline kicks in. When there’s a choice between fight or flight, I’ve learned to choose the fight. That doesn’t mean I’m not scared. I am. Anticipating the worst, shot though with fear, I keep Macy on my heels as I withdraw my Glock and quietly jog with it at my side.

  Sticking close to the colonnade of trees, using them and a few cars here and there for cover, I keep my eyes peeled. That’s when I see them. Two people. One guy, one girl—both young. Twenties maybe? Thirties? Before I can say anything, Macy ducks behind an abandoned Mitsubishi Mirage, waits a beat or two, then crosses the street, crouched low, her weapon at her thigh.

  This is the part I hate most: trusting Macy to be better than her opponent.

  The girl is relentless, however, always working overtime with Rex and Rider on hand-to-hand combat, tactical measures and maneuvers, shooting, and clearing of both open spaces and tight spaces such as rooms, homes, businesses. She likes to tell me about each and every bruise, and she was once quite proud of a black eye Rider gave her after she got a kick in on his balls.