The Last War

by Ryan Schow

  Reign it in, Sin, I tell myself.

  Sitting up, I rub my eyes and yawn, feel my sore body opposing even that.

  More glass breaking followed by the sounds of laughter. Great. In the distance, the thunk, thunk, thunk of this morning’s bombing gathers steam and I want to cry thinking I can’t take another day of this.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Stanton grouses.

  That’s when I see them. Four guys who look like gang bangers busting out car windows with shotgun stocks. They’re going through gloveboxes and center consoles, pulling everything out, looking for something useful.

  “We have to go,” I say, but it’s too late. There’s already someone popping his head in the window. A fifth man. Maybe the scout.

  “Awe…it’s a Motel 6 on wheels,” the guy says with a creepy, suggestive grin.

  The gun is on the floor by my waist, but I can’t get to it without being too obvious. At this point I must look like death crusted over and for that I’m grateful. As a woman being confronted by a man with tattoos snaking all the way up to his earlobes, a shotgun in hand and in the middle of doing no good, the first thing to pop into one’s mind is I’m either going to be killed or raped.

  He pulls his head back out of the passenger side window, looks up the street and whistles to his friends. It’s a shrill, piercing sound. That’s when I grab the gun and wait for him to stick his stupid head back in the window. It takes all of five seconds.

  Pointing the gun at him I say, “This Motel 6 isn’t for you, so I suggest your move on.”

  He looks amused by my stance. Grinning, his expression full of mocking, he holds my eye until he decides I’m serious. The way I can be, how my DNA defines the translation of my emotions onto my face, my fear can look a lot like rage.

  “My shotgun is bigger than your Glock,” he says.

  “It’s a Sig Sauer, and I’m pretty sure I can put one right between your eyes before you even have that thing pointed in the right direction.”

  He puts up a hand, “Alright, alright lady. Jeez.”

  Backing up, he takes aim at the car and pumps a round into the side of the van. Pellets blast through sheet metal and upholstery, but fortunately it isn’t where all of us are. He shot the passenger door, then laughed as he joined his friends. If he wanted to think he got one over on us, fine, I can live with that so long as he goes away.

  As we’re all sitting there in the van freezing, listening to the far away symphony of destruction taking place in the direction of our home, I’m thinking about that kid. That disgusting thug I’m sure is a gang banger. For a second, I’m not sure if I want to deal with problems on the ground or problems in the sky.

  “He shot the car, Mom.”

  “Thanks for keeping me up on current events,” I answer in a clipped voice.

  “He just shot our car an no one came out to see what’s happening,” Macy says. “Don’t you think that’s strange?”

  “Everyone’s scared,” Stanton says.

  Well, duh.

  “Do you hear any sirens?” she asks. Stanton shakes his head, his eyes showing signs of life.

  “Is your phone working?” I ask Stanton.

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you get an internet connection?”

  He plays with it for a bit, then says, “No. What about yours?”

  “Screen’s cracked. Even if I can get a connection, I won’t be able to see much of what I’m connected to. What about you Macy?”

  She’s somewhere else in her head. It’s like some switch just flipped and suddenly she’s gone Helen Keller. You know, deaf and mute. It’s super insensitive to think like this, but I’m sorry if my PC is lacking. We’re really in it here.

  Looking at her, seeing her face devoid of any pure emotion, I can’t even imagine what’s going through her head and heart right now.

  Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke to the sniffling sounds of her crying. I held her in my arms, grateful for her warmth, but more grateful that she was still alive.

  “He couldn’t breathe, Mom,” she’d said. “It’s like he was dying, but taking a long time to do it and there wasn’t anything I could do for him.”

  “He was lucky to have you there with him when he went,” I told her. I’d felt her nodding in the dark.

  “Do you think I should’ve gone for help? Could I have saved him?”

  “No, sweetheart, you couldn’t have saved him.”

  “I should have tried, though.”

  “If you would’ve left him to go get help, he would’ve died alone. But because you stayed, he didn’t have to. You did the right thing.”

  She cried herself back to sleep, and so did I.

  Where Macy’s pain was derived from loss, mine sprung from fear. You want so badly to protect those you love most, but when you can’t, fear can darken into something worse, squeezing from your heart a flood of tears. I felt like I’d been holding back ever since this thing began, so releasing them—even in some dead woman’s van in the dead of night—was the thing my body needed most.

  Now a new day is upon us, albeit one with an unpromising start. My only prayer is that by the end of it we’ll be home, alive and still together.

  “Mom,” Macy says, her sad memories shelved for the moment, “I’m hungry.”

  I look at Stanton and Stanton looks at me, and then he looks at her and says, “Well, you’d best get used to that feeling because it’s going to be awhile before we eat.”

  8

  We get an early start. Well, as early of a start as we can after waiting for those creeps to finish breaking into all the cars up Masonic and leave. It’s still cold outside and Macy is in a skirt with dirty white tights and she can’t stop her teeth from chattering.

  She’s already wearing Stanton’s suit jacket, but it’s doing her no good from the waist down. Before we leave, she gets out of the van (ignoring Stanton’s orders for her not to), drags the dead lady out from underneath it and starts pulling off her fuchsia colored pants. The lady is as stiff as a board, so it’s not that tough a task.

  Stanton looks at me and mouths the words, “What the hell?”

  I shake my head in silence.

  When she puts them on they’re a bit too long, but not too big around the waist. She rolls the cuffs tight enough to hold, then looks up and smiles.

  “Those are hideous looking,” Stanton says.

  I won’t lie, they are.

  “I’m not exactly making a fashion statement, Dad. You know that saying, ‘Necessity is the mother of bad fashion?’”

  “That’s not a saying.”

  “Well it is now,” she says with a quick curtsy.

  “In marketing, the color fuchsia is rarely ever seen, do you know why?”

  “No,” Macy says with a manufactured frown, “but I’m practically bursting at the seams with curiosity.”

  “Because it’s the one color that makes people angry.”

  “I’ll get rid of them as soon as I can.”

  “Well that’s a relief,” he says, then he gives her a return curtsy and they both give a short, half-hearty laugh.

  “Can we maybe do this later,” I ask. “Like when it doesn’t sound like World War III a few blocks over? Those things could come back at any moment.”

  “UAV’s,” Macy says.

  “Drones,” Stanton replies.

  “Aerial assassination squads,” I say as we start walking.

  “Mom’s is best,” Macy says.

  “Yeah,” Stanton agrees. “Aerial assassination squads.”

  The drones do come back, but it’s more like they’re passing by, heading to a destination that isn’t us. We hide anyway. We duck into someone’s stoop and we wait. We don’t even care if anyone is home, that’s how untenable this situation is.

  From what we can see, most everyone who was out in the open when the drones attacked has either been killed, collateral damaged, or pushed one step closer to crazy town.

  So we play it safe.


  Extra safe.

  “Should we look and see if we can find something to eat in the cars?” I ask, talking low in case the people who own the home are here.

  “You must be reading my mind,” Macy says.

  This is the third time I’ve heard her stomach growl and it’s so loud it’s practically deafening. Or is that my own stomach? Who can really tell anymore?

  We’re all starving.

  “Those clowns probably already found all the food,” Stanton tells us.

  “Maybe they weren’t hungry,” Macy replies. “Maybe they were looking for guns or drugs or condoms for their underage hookers.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” I say.

  “It’s true,” Macy says. “Janine says the Mission Street gangs are pimping out twelve year olds to old geezers with blue pills and wads of cash.”

  “Stop with the details,” Stanton says, waving his hand like he’s had enough. “Besides, that’s a bunch of crap and you know it.”

  “Is it?” she challenges.

  “It is,” I say, regretting that I’m even entertaining this conversation. “The real money is in the drugs.”

  That’s when the door opens and an old man with a dusty pistol says, “Get off my porch.”

  We all look up and say, “We’re sorry. It’s just—”

  “I know what it is,” he says, cocking the hammer but not looking terribly scary doing it.

  I think about showing him my gun, but Macy says, “My mom has one of those, too, but hers is bigger, nicer.” She says this and then she just stares up at him, smiling.

  “What did I tell you about talking to others?” Stanton says.

  “Respect my elders.”

  “So is that anyway to talk to this nice man? We’re on his porch after all. Technically we’re trespassing.”

  “I was just telling him Mom’s gun is bigger and she’s clearly not afraid to use it.”

  Shaking his head, Stanton looks up at the man and says, “I’m sorry, sir. We’ll leave.”

  “I’m sure it’s safe,” he says, some of the intensity gone from his watery hound dog eyes. “Well, safe enough anyway.”

  “Do you have anything to eat?” Macy asks.

  “I do.”

  After a long bout of very uncomfortable silence, Macy says, “Are you waiting for my stomach to ask you? Because it’s been talking all morning.”

  “Wait here,” he says, shutting the door. He comes back out with a granola bar and Macy is finally acting like a lady.

  “That’s very kind of you,” she says, sugary sweet. “Thank you.”

  He nods, starts working his gums like he’s a cow chewing his cud, then says, “You need to go now. Don’t want you attracting them to my house.”

  We all go and only when Macy’s gobbled down half the bar does she think to ask us if we’re hungry.

  “Of course we’re hungry, dummy,” I say, and she reluctantly splits the rest of the bar in half, handing me and Stanton our respective pieces.

  “We need to move faster,” Stanton says, chewing his bar. “There’s no cover here.”

  He’s right, of course. You only have to insert your entire body up the tailpipe of a Christmas tree once to learn that lesson.

  Masonic is starting to look like a poor choice of roads to travel.

  On the left, it’s all houses that are built so close together you can’t wedge a slip of paper between them. On the right there’s an elevated parking lot with a beautifully painted, waist-high wall depicting people and activity. It’s all bright colors, ethnic and racial diversity, and a message of the unification of people. I love it already, but it’s not going to offer us anything in the way of safety if we’re attacked again.

  We come up on Grove Street and nearly startle ourselves to death as we look left at a hefty man holding the biggest machine gun I’ve ever seen.

  He sees us and puts it down immediately.

  “Sorry ‘bout that ladies,” he says. He’s got his pickup truck parked on the sidewalk and he’s standing in the bed with enough fire power to turn us all into Swiss cheese. The truck is old, a white and red Chevy that’s seen better days about a hundred years ago and is now just a running heap on balding tires. “Can’t be too careful right now.”

  “That’s for sure,” Stanton says.

  The man pulls off his hat (which says “I survived Fallujah!”), rubs a buzz cut head, then slides it back on with a slight adjustment.

  “Iraq?” Stanton says.

  “What gave it away?” he laughs.

  Although I’m not mad at the man for finding humor in anything, perhaps he can laugh because he hasn’t see what we’ve seen, or survived what we just did. But then again, if he was in Fallujah, from what I know about that hell hole, it would seem we’ve seen nothing the likes of which he’s seen, suffered and survived.

  “Thank you for your service,” I find myself saying to him.

  “You’re quite welcome.” Pointing to my pants, he says, “Whatcha got in your pants there?”

  “Sig Sauer.”

  “What caliber you using?” he says. I shrug my shoulders. “You even fired it yet?”

  “She took it off a dead cop,” Macy says, which earns her a stern look from Stanton. “What? It’s true?”

  “Can I take a look?”

  “Will you give it back?” I ask him.

  “Do I look like I’m starving for weapons over here?” he asks. Taking a few steps toward him, I take a peek inside the bed of his truck and it looks like the mother of all armories.

  “I guess not,” I say, handing him the weapon.

  He ejects a round, looks at it then nods his head. He then sights a tree and fires the weapon making me and Macy jump. Stanton doesn’t even budge.

  “So he’s been around weapons before, but you two haven’t.”

  I nod. His father was part of the NRA.

  The thirtysomething clicks on the safety, tosses the gun to Stanton who catches it. He then leans down and tosses him a big box of ammo. It says Elite Performance and shows some up-close pictures of bullets on it.

  “There’s fifty rounds of nine millimeter in there. Won’t hold off an army, but maybe if any of these Mexican turds come after you, you can put the fear of God into ‘em.”

  “That’s racist,” Macy says.

  “No, that’s a fact. The Sureños and the Norteños are loosely related to the Latino gangs of the same name from the late 1960’s. Latino is Mexican. Just like my wife. Born and raised on the streets of Ciudad Juarez.”

  “That’s not an easy place to grow up,” Stanton says.

  “Near impossible.”

  “How’d you two meet?” I ask. I’m a sucker for a good love story.

  “She snuck over the border into El Paso one night with friends. We met, spend the whole night talkin’ and kissin’ and in the end she decided to stay.”

  “Do her parents know where she’s gone?” Macy asks. “That she’s with you?”

  He laughs and there’s enough warmth to it to know he’s a good man. “Her father was beheaded and left for dead in the middle of an intersection and her mother was running drugs for the cartel to make ends meet. Being here is better for her. Telling her mom was her choice, but that didn’t make it easy.”

  “How long have you been married?”

  “Four years next week,” he says, his eyes still moving, still assessing the streets around us. “Assuming there is a next week.”

  “Why are you out here?” Stanton asks. “Shouldn’t you be inside keeping her safe?”

  “See that building back there?” he says, hitching a thumb over his shoulder.

  All we see is the tall brick building we’re standing in front of and a city road with a slight grade and one blown up car that’s now just a charred skeleton on melted wheels.

  “There are a lot of buildings,” Stanton says.

  “That’s a city college that’s set up like a fortress, even though it wasn’t intended that way. It’s been evacua
ted, so last night we moved in. Me, my Army buddies and our wives and their children. You see, it’s fortified. Me being out here is me keeping her safe. Got a buddy up at the end of the street doin’ the same. We served together.”

  “The college is a big target,” I say.

  Sitting down on an old, turned-over milk crate, he says, “Yeah, but it’s also an empty target if you’re thinking like the enemy. See, the drones don’t want big targets, they want catastrophic loss of life if you’re following the patterns. Now that everyone’s running home, they’re targeting the homes, not so much the buildings where people used to be.”

  “So you’re out here…” I say, letting the statement hang.

  “Watching out for gang bangers and keeping the skies clear in case the MQ-1’s start sniffing around, or heaven forbid, the RQ-1’s.”

  “What are the…MQ—”

  “Predator drones. The MQ-1’s are aerial reconnaissance. Strictly observe and report. The RQ-1’s are tactical. Well, so are the MQ-1A’s if you want to get technical.”

  “We don’t,” Macy says.

  He gives a hearty laugh, then says, “They’re basically the big drones with the big missiles that are hitting everything. Those are Hellfire missiles that were first designed for anti-tank applications. They’re no joke.”

  “So the government’s doing this?” Macy asks.

  “No,” he says. Looking at me, he says, “I like this little firecracker.”

  “So do we, most times.”

  “Who do you think is behind these attacks?” Stanton asks.

  Just then the former soldier with the stolen Mexican wife stands up, fully alert, and stares straight ahead. We turn and see a threesome of thugs walking down Grove toward us. He puts up his machine gun and they stop and show us their pistols.

  Moving so fast I can’t hardly comprehend the speed, the man has the barrel flipped over, the butt of the weapon in his armpit and his sights set on the incoming trio.

  They all flip him the bird until he puts a round right at their feet. They turn and run and he says, “Pretty soon they’ll be back with their friends. You don’t want to be here when that happens. Oh, and don’t go down there. Not unless you want your daughter becoming one of their—”