The Complete Last War Series

by Ryan Schow

  With the drones closing in on us, my brother and my husband injured and our lives in the hands of a stranger behind the wheel of a truck that may or may not be eviscerated when I push this red button, all I can do is pray.

  Taking Macy’s hand in mine, I can’t get a sunny thought to enter my mind. I look at her, memorize every feature as if I haven’t already done this a million times before.

  This is my daughter, I tell myself. All that’s left of me. This is the girl I will die protecting, if only dying was enough. Looking down at the red trigger, I fear what’s ahead. What pressing it will mean.

  “Now!” the driver screams.

  Squeezing my eyes shut, bracing for…something…I press the button.

  Our truck dies suddenly, all power gone. Eyes back open, I look behind us, out the broken window, in time to watch the drones fall from the sky. EMP. Electromagnetic pulse. Meaning I just killed anything and everything with electronics in it, including this truck.

  A deep sigh escapes me. My relief is palpable.

  “We need to go,” the driver says, grabbing a few things before kicking the door open with a booted foot. With him, there’s not a moment to spare. For a short second, I think: definitely ex-military.

  Rex is coming back around, but that’s only because I’m half hanging over the seat shaking him awake. Shoving his shotgun back into his hands, I shout his name directly into his face. His eyes flutter. Doing the only thing I know how to do, I slap his cheek with all my might.

  “We have to go! Now, Rex!”

  He wakes up, takes my extended hand then sits up and crawls out of the truck, wobbling a bit before staggering onto solid ground. He nearly falls but manages to stay on his feet.

  “You’re like a newborn calf,” I tell him. He smiles, but it’s weak. He has no idea where he is.

  The four of us and the driver are on the move, not a single word between us. We clear the main road, hustle past some burned out houses, make our way into a field of damp, waist high grass.

  Rex seems to be coming around. And Stanton looks like he might be okay, too, although I’m not sure where we’re going. The rain drops to a light mist, still it’s wet and nasty and it’s making a bad situation worse.

  The driver’s on the move, cutting through the field faster than we can keep up. He breaks into a run. We follow his lead. He looks back, puts on a slight burst of speed, but not so fast that he loses us. He knows we’re trying. He also knows Rex and Stanton are holding us back.

  “Keep up with him,” I tell Macy, not sure how much more we’re going to have to keep this pace, if where we’re headed is a destination or if we’re running from everything coming after us.

  Macy doesn’t do as she’s told, as usual.

  She hangs back with me while I’m hanging back with Stanton and Rex, now certain they’ll both get us all killed. Stanton being out of shape and injured, and Rex being off his game because he’s been shot, is telling.

  Up ahead, through a clearing in the only expansive patch of green in sight (although it’s coated with a glob-like layer of wet ash, so it’s not as much green as it is a muted sage color) is a large helicopter, an old-school Huey painted a flat, forest green. Already its rotors are turning, the noise of the engines rising to a roar.

  When you can’t escape the bombing raids, when the city seems to be suffering the mother of all apocalyptic events, when low level radiation may be the weather forecast and at any time you’ll either be killed by drones or assassinated by gang bangers posing as cops, the only escape is to escape the city itself. This was Rex’s plan for us and he’s come through. Now, God willing, it appears we might survive this thing after all.

  Something in me feels reinvigorated. Like this wasn’t all for nothing.

  I think of Stanton who said we were already dead, and I think of this world that’s trying with all its might to end us, and then I think that we’re finally leaving this war zone behind. It’s a good feeling that doesn’t last long. In the back of my mind, I can’t help thinking we’re also leaving our home, our jobs, the grand summation of our lives. Is this what going savage means? You can only care about the things you can reach out and touch?

  “I’ll hold our ride!” I shout before picking up speed. “Don’t stop!”

  Grabbing Macy’s hand, knowing Rex will make it even if he’s not moving at a hundred percent, the two of us fight to catch up to the driver. After all, he’s our ticket out of this place.

  I let go of Macy’s hand because I can’t sprint at top speed like this. “Stay with me!” I shout over my shoulder.

  My run becomes a full out sprint. If the three of them can’t keep up, I can at least get there fast enough to stall the helicopter, giving us enough time to board.

  I’m fifty yards behind the driver when he jumps into the Huey. He puts a headset on, leans forward and says something to the pilot. A smile creeps on my face for a fraction of a second. Right now my lungs are burning. I have a stitch in my side and my limbs are protesting, but I’m going.

  We’re going!

  The ride out of this cesspool of death and destruction is going to be a new life for us. A fresh start. The driver then makes a circling sign to the pilot with his forefinger, the classic sign for, “Let’s go,” and my heart all but sinks. The big helicopter lifts out of the grass, sending sharp waves of dread coursing through me.

  No, no, no, no, no!

  My lungs are skewered with pain, but that doesn’t stop me from screaming, pleading and cursing. I pull to a stop directly under the helicopter, under the damp, churning winds and it’s still leaving.

  Some kind of visceral moan for being left behind escapes me.

  I drop my hands and just stare up at the belly of the thing, and that’s when four drones appear from where we’ve just come. There are two large ones armed with missiles accompanied by two light artillery drones. From inside the Huey come the boisterous sounds of heavy caliber automatic weapons’ fire. The two largest drones go down, but not before one of their missiles is loosed. Seconds later the Huey explodes, turning sideways in mid-air, then falling out of the sky and crashing onto someone’s home in a fiery wreck.

  The whirring of the remaining drones ignites my nerves. I keep my eyes fastened to the two of them now knowing why the driver wanted to leave so quickly. The EMP had too short of range to catch all the drones and we couldn’t wait any longer to set it off before facing certain death.

  And so we missed these ones.

  Macy reaches me, but in the distance, Rex and Stanton slow to a walk. I’m screaming for Rex, telling him to look up. I’m pointing at the approaching drones.

  Rex sees them, turns as best as he can and starts shooting despite his injury. With the shotgun, he hits the first one, wobbles it, then takes out the other, but not before going down hard in the field and disappearing in the tall grasses. A mortified whimper erupts from me.

  “Rex!” I scream.

  The wobbled drone is diving earthward though, heading toward Macy and me and now Stanton is running for us, screaming. Macy and I start backpedaling, then turn and run for our lives as the thing plows straight into the earth behind us. We’re both diving out of the way the minute it slams into the earth and comes to a stop.

  Getting up, with the Sig Sauer and the last of my strength, I put two rounds into the downed drone, then drop the gun and pray to God I don’t go to pieces. But it’s happening. I can feel it. If Rex is dead…oh, Rex.

  “He has a plan for us,” a voice inside me whispers.

  “No He doesn’t,” I hear myself say, fresh tears standing in my eyes. “There’s no plan at all, unless death is God’s plan.”

  Stanton reaches me in a hug. I barely even feel it. I’m about to run to Rex when Macy does something neither me nor Stanton have ever heard her do: she breaks into a wild, cursing fit of anger that soon becomes a brutal crying jag. All I can do right now is hold her and tell her everything is going to be alright, even though it won’t be.

 
“We’ll catch another one,” I say, composing myself for my daughter’s sake. “One that won’t blow up.”

  “No we won’t,” she says through a fit of hiccups and sobbing.

  “I have to see about Rex,” I hear myself saying. I’m moving out of Stanton’s arms, saying, “He could still be alive.”

  “Are you kidding me?!” she cries, looking at me with sopping wet eyes. “He’s not alive! He’s dead like everyone else!”

  “Macy,” Stanton says.

  I try not to think of all that’s happened—of my injured husband, of Gunner and my now dead brother—and I try not to think about how I’m going to survive this world under these conditions, but I have to. Maybe not now, not in this moment, but I have to look ahead and create a way where there isn’t one.

  Macy pushes off of me, her eyes still soaked, her chest shaking, the persistent sounds of her crying reminding me she may be fifteen, but she’s still so immature.

  Nearby, I hear the sounds of more drones.

  “Run!” Stanton yells, pointing to a grove of trees nearby.

  Beyond him, around the clearing, also taking cover from the drones are five men with guns. What the hell? I can only think one thing: the helicopter going down and the shooting must have attracted attention. But then I think something else. I wonder, are they here to help, or will they be a problem?

  By the hard looks of them, I’m thinking they could be a problem.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Wasting no time, Macy, Stanton and I run for cover, which is really just a canopy of trees weighed down with the gunky residue left behind by the toxic rain. I don’t know if other drones will find us here, or if the men in the field will follow us. I hope not. We’re not exactly safe anywhere. At least we’re not out in the open though. Crouching down at the base of a tree, Stanton joining us, we wait in absolute silence. Seconds tick on.

  Entire minutes pass.

  “I think we might be okay,” Stanton whispers. His head wound has opened up again and is bleeding, but I’m not as concerned about the blood as I am the possibility of infection.

  He really needs that thing clean and stitched up.

  It’s in this brief moment of safety that I start to consider all the other dangers around us. If the drones don’t kill us and the bombs don’t kill us and the gangs don’t kill us, chances are pretty good—when enough people get hungry enough and desperate enough—that our own kind will set upon us as a last resort.

  This is what we’ve feared most: the moment society turns on each other. I’m surprised it’s not worse than it’s been, but the truth is, it’s bound to get much worse before it gets better.

  If other cities are enduring this the way we’re enduring this, then that begs the question: will we live long enough to see “better?”

  If civilization has truly fallen, can we come back from this?

  For all of our insecurity about our future, for all our fears, Rex has given us combat wisdom and Stanton has blessed us with his business acumen. Rex got us this far, but now that he’s gone, we need to rely on Stanton and Stanton seems to have the right idea about how to handle things.

  Crouched down, waiting for a clearing, and a plan, I can’t stop thinking of something Stanton said a few days back. He said the apocalypse is proving to be a lot like the business world: if you’re not the hunter, then you’re bound to become the prey.

  As I sit here feeling like prey, I realize our survival depends on me becoming the hunter. For whatever reason, maybe because Rex is gone and Stanton is injured, I find myself stepping up to the task. Standing up, I tell Macy and Stanton it’s time to go. I’m not exactly sure where we’re heading, only that doing something—even if it’s the wrong thing—is better than hiding here and doing nothing. We can always self-correct.

  “Slow down!” Macy says as we trudge through the trees and meadow grass toward a clearing, and a neighborhood. “Wait!”

  Stanton and I turn around and level her with raised eyebrows.

  “Where are we going?” she asks, like she can’t grasp the reality of this situation.

  “We’re going to circle around and see about Rex, and after that, I don’t know. There’s a hundred houses to choose from. Maybe a thousand. Basically we’re going to find some place where we can clean your father’s head wound before it gets infected and we have to amputate.”

  Wait, holy crap. Did I just say that? Wow. Talk about terrible gallows humor! Even for me. Stanton and Macy just stare at me. I don’t blame them.

  Then after that awkward pause, I make a proclamation. “We’re leaving this godforsaken city one way or another. I’m not sure how we’re going to do it, but mark my words, it’s happening.”

  Macy looks up at me, then beyond me, and what my daughter can’t say in that moment is that we might not be going anywhere. Seeing her eyes shocked wide open, seeing myriad emotions cross her face in lightening quick progression, I turn and follow her gaze.

  Not fifty feet away, tromping out of the same grove of trees are five creeps with guns and hard eyes all the sick signs of trouble. To both my relief and my horror, they have Rex. He’s on foot and alive! But he’s being held at gunpoint and not looking terribly happy about it.

  “This gringo piece of mierda here says he doesn’t know you people,” the guy holding him hostage says, “but the worried look on that cute little blonde’s face clearly says he does.”

  This scumbag, this bald thug with a tattooed face and piercings and a criminal’s sense of fashion (white sneakers, grey slacks, white tank top), he clanks the barrel of the shotgun on Rex’s head one, two, three times.

  “Yeah, I knew by the look,” he says to me, head turned sideways, chin jutted forward and pointing a finger at me, “I saw it in your eyes, you guys are lovers.”

  Rex shakes his head and says, “That’s my sister, bro.”

  “So that’s your niece then,” he says, the tone full of meaning.

  Everyone starts to snicker, not boisterous, but like they’re in something that will be good for them, but not us. You don’t have to be a genius to know what any of these fools is thinking.

  “Looks like it’s play time ese,” he says, his body saying yes to all the many things he’s thinking.

  My blood is officially boiling.

  I can’t stop the rage building inside me and I know right now I need to keep a cool head. But the way his predatory eyes are giving Macy the once over, it turns my stomach and ignites something in me, a violent protectiveness I can’t explain. To my sheer horror, looking back at all the times we’ve been confronted by men, their eyes always go to me, to Macy. Is this a symptom of the future? Will my daughter’s good looks always make us targets?

  Refusing to show fear, I lock eyes with him, and only then do I become afraid. There is nothing in those eyes. No sense of right or wrong, not an ounce of benevolence or humanity, only an emptiness born of greed and the need to hold everything around him in a stranglehold of his own making.

  He sees me seeing him, thinking this, and he laughs. It’s a sanctimonious chuckle that tells me all I need to know: he has no soul.

  We’re screwed.

  Looking from Macy to me, and never really at Stanton, he says, “You two girls are going to clean up nicely. I can tell. You’re going to be the two prettiest princesses we’ve ever had. We’re going to pass you around over and over and over again (pointing to each of his boys as he says this) until your insides fall out from all the fun we’ve had with you. And then you won’t be pretty princesses anymore. You’ll just be a couple of mutts we pulled off street.”

  Beside me I feel Stanton tense. I already know what he’s going to do, which is why I flash him a look.

  Two or three of this scumbag’s pals snicker, grabbing my attention. They’re all a bunch of soulless cretins, entertained only by the humiliation and tormenting of others.

  In situations like these—unimaginable situations, downright terrifying situations—you can’t even find the words to sa
y, much less utter a single intelligible sentence. This is why Stanton shot those boys back on The Exorcist stairway. Now that the roles are reversed, the choice becomes easy. I would shoot every single one of these men in the face.

  But five on four? Not so much.

  Instead of pulling my gun and going all Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, I find myself tumbling through a flurry of horrifying possibilities. I’m looking at the men promising to rape me and my daughter into oblivion and I’m thinking of all the viciousness I’m going to unleash, but then I realize it’ll do no good because his friends are like him in that they like the fight, that they want the fight, and so whatever I have, I know it’s not enough.

  It won’t ever be enough.

  “Look at Daddy over there,” the scumbag teases, “looking like he’s wanting to come out of his skin. You wanna watch, pretty boy?”

  “I think he wants to join,” someone else says with laughter in his voice.

  I grab Stanton’s arm, knowing he’s being baited, wordlessly begging him not to take it. I feel his muscles relax the slightest little bit.

  The torrent of possibilities ripping through me quickly becomes just one acceptable truth: whatever’s about to happen, it’s going to be bad. And if by some miracle we survive to see the other side of this thing, we won’t be the same people. We won’t even know who we were before all this.

  “My God,” he says looking right at me, wonderment and humor in his expression. “You just rose up against me then fell into defeat right before my eyes. We haven’t even had an ounce of fun yet and already you’re beaten.” Turning those ugly, hooded eyes on Macy—not even bothering to mask his intentions—he says, “Let’s pray this little slice of heaven has more fight in her than her mother.”

  “Come here, sweetheart,” he says, all eyes on Macy. Macy turns her scared eyes on me.

  Frantic, a wicked frenzy building inside me, I turn to Stanton and he’s got that murderous look tucked away behind almost blank eyes.

  “Stay put,” Stanton tells her.