The Complete Last War Series

by Ryan Schow

  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 spun 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.

  Did he have as many rounds between his guns? He thought so. But no one was going to just stand there and let him shoot them. They’d turn this place into a shooting gallery! Marcus ditched his cart in back and ran for the now barren soda aisle. All that remained was a twelve pack of “healthy” sodas that were both warm and looked like the worst flavor ever.

  Ginger lime.

  When Marcus was in college and his old man insisted he either enlist or earn himself a scholarship, Marcus chose baseball. He was a great outfielder, but not great when it came to batting percentages. He was always trying to kill the ball rather than just connect with it. Looking back, he only played ball so he could not enlist. Naturally, this pissed off the old man. What angered his father more, however, was not Marcus’s desire to avoid going into the Marines, but the fact that when he did enlist, Marcus did so in the Army. Now, with a broken open twelve pack of sodas in his hand, he was drawing back on those two years of outfield experience and hoping his arm and his aim would serve him well.

  The minute he had the advantage, Marcus began overhanding the sodas at the heathens. Aiming for their heads, the first two sodas hit their marks. The push of action suddenly changed from going after the fleeing masses to going after him.

  Marcus went through the entire twelve pack, hitting those he was aiming for in one capacity or another. This slowed the oncoming rush, but it did not stop it. He ducked out of sight, hustled to the end of the aisle, found himself face to face with two very angry hoodlums. One had an angry red knot on his forehead. Both men got the sharp end of his blade. The first across the neck; the second in the gut first, then the neck.

  Two more appeared.

  They had guns they were shooting at him. He rolled left, withdrew his .357, came up in a kneeling shooter’s stance and shot both of them in the chest.

  More appeared. He shot them as well. With his heart throbbing mightily, he snatched up what guns he could, shot another in the back of the skull heading for the door (shameful but necessary), then made a beeline for his grocery cart. By now much of the crowd had dispersed. Shoving his cart forward, he pushed past all the bodies, heavily armed and ready for any further resistance.

  Out the back door, in the loading docks, he saw two black Suburbans and all the desperate shoppers on the loading docks either bleeding or bled out. Most of them were on their knees, sobbing, obviously roughed up. While he was inside trying to contain the action, more skinheads had pulled around back to take what they’d come for. Two guys were loading stolen groceries into the SUVs. The skinhead with the blue eyes and the tattoo on his neck stood between the injured masses and the Suburbans, supervising.

  Marcus put two rounds into the two loaders with his Beretta, then he turned the gun on the skinhead—the one he’d talked to earlier.

  “You the cream now?” Marcus asked, moving on him quickly.

  “Always,” he said, grinning.

  “Your men are either dead or incapacitated,” Marcus replied, glancing down at a dead woman and two dead boys. Both expired of gunshot wounds. Disgusted by this needless loss of life, he said, “And you’re about to be the crap that sinks to the bottom.”

  The skinhead whipped his hand around his waist, going for what Marcus was sure was a gun. Marcus fired twice, both shots hitting the man square in the chest. The blue eyed demon staggered backwards, a surprised look on his face.

  “People like you who shamelessly prey on the weak don’t deserve to live,” Marcus said, closing the last few feet between them. When he was face to face, he put his gun to the skinhead’s eye and said, “Told you where I’d put this bullet.”

  The crash of gunfire sounded like a cannon inside the loading docks. It also startled him at how
easily he’d killed this man. The deafening roar of the gun brought with it a dreadful silence. He turned and looked around. People were beat up, injured and shot dead. All around, their carts were scattered. They were just people.

  They were hungry.

  He put his hands to his temples, his gun still smoking, the residue of blood spatter heavy on his face. He glanced around meeting the eyes of the downtrodden, the defeated, the victimized and that’s when one of the women pointed to the first Suburban.

  This wasn’t over…

  With his weapon out, he covered the SUV moving forward. He wasn’t even sure if the gun he held was still loaded. He prayed it was.

  Moving into position, he saw a young man crouched in the SUV’s front seat holding a shotgun. The blast went off the second he saw Marcus. Fortunately for his face, he managed to pull back fast enough. Through the high-pitched whine in his ears, he heard another click.

  The chamber was empty.

  Rookie.

  Gun out, ready to fire if necessary, Marcus moved back into view and said, “When I say so, throw the weapon out the window, climb into the driver’s seat and buckle up.”

  The Suburban was still running. Marcus reached in, shut off the SUV, pulled the keys from the ignition.

  “Now, homeboy.”

  The twenty-something kid tossed the shotgun out the window and climbed over the center console. Marcus cautiously made his way around the front of the SUV. He climbed inside, handed the skinhead the key, then said, “Where are you staying?”

  “Me personally?”

  Marcus cracked him on the skull with the gun, then aimed it at him again.

  Wincing, trying to look hard and not to show the pain, he said, “We’re at the Ramada Inn, just off E. 17th and Superior, across Newport Blvd.”

  “Start the engine, take me there.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s where you’re stockpiling all the stuff you steal, right?” Marcus asked. When the kid refused to answer, he smiled and said, “Good, take me there.”

  Holding his head, angry and hurt yet surprised by the demand, he started the SUV then said, “You don’t want to go there, man. Trust me on this, you do not want to go there.”

  “I just took out your whole crew. And your leader? He’s got an extra hole in his face.”

  “That wasn’t our leader,” he said, pulling out of the loading docks and into the light. “He was low level, man. You go to the Ramada, you’d better have balls the size of cantaloupes, or a serious death wish.”

  Looking down at his pants, Marcus said, “No cantaloupes here.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “My family is gone, my friends are gone and I don’t have a job or a home to go back to,” Marcus said. “So yeah, I guess I have a death wish.”

  They hit the main road and the driver brought the SUV up to speed. Marcus glanced in the back of the Suburban, found it packed with food and supplies. There were even a few weapons. Turning back he asked, “How many of you are there?”

  “Enough,” he mumbled. “Like I said, man, you don’t want to do this.”

  “You think I’m worried?”

  “You’d be an absolute moron not to worry,” he said, staring at the big man with a ton of conviction in his eyes.

  “This isn’t a coordinated attack to sack a city or overtake a base, bro. This is mass slaughter. People are the targets. Men, women, children, dogs, cats and even scumbags like you and me. The machines aren’t discriminating. I saw a whole family gunned down in the first twenty minutes of this. I’ve seen hundreds of corpses now. In cars, on the side of the road, in hotels brought down on hundreds of innocents. You think your little pack of street slugs gives me even a second’s pause?”

  “It’s your funeral, pal.”

  Just before they hit Newport Blvd, Marcus saw a Sprouts Market and a Rite Aid on the left. “Why couldn’t you guys just go shopping there?”

  “Already did,” he said, po-faced and docile.

  “You sacked Sprout’s and Rite Aid?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “And Von’s, the Urgent Care Medical Center, the Starbuck’s…this is our turf, bro. This is where guys like me feed and guys like you bleed.”

  Marcus leveled him with a bitter stare. “That some sort of catch phrase?”

  “I just made it up.”

  “Yeah?”

  “How’d it sound?” he asked with a bitter grin.

  “Convincing. Time will tell if it’s truth or just bluster.”

  “What’s bluster?”

  “Hot air,” Marcus said.

  “It ain’t bluster,” he responded, more serious now.

  “Tell that to all your dead friends back there,” Marcus grumbled.

  As they crossed over Newport Blvd and turned left on Superior, his prisoner/hostage/guide said, “Time for reckoning, ese.”

  “Will you stop with the theatrics already?” Marcus said as the guy pulled to a stop.

  The kid started to speak, but in that second two things happened. One, Marcus saw the Ramada Inn, and two, he struck the kid with the butt of the pistol so hard he fell sideways and slumped over. Marcus got out of the SUV, walked around and pulled the kid out of the driver’s seat. He left him like tossed trash on the side of the street, then took a deep breath and readied himself for war.

  The Ramada’s portico was partially caved in. Half the rubble was cleared away leaving one, maybe one and a half car widths to drive through. Inside the Ramada’s parking lot he saw several big Suburbans, a Pontiac Trans Am from the Smokey and the Bandit days, and a older looking big rig with a sleeper cabin and a giant triangular cattle guard, the kind you see on trains. The big rig looked so damn mean he couldn’t stare at it for too long without having flashbacks of the most recent Mad Max film.

  Marcus drove into the lot, his heart rate slightly elevated.

  A guy came out to greet him. He was a thirty-something with a bandana and a distinct cholo look about him: checkered flannel (buttoned only at the very top) over the tucked in wife-beater; ironed slacks with a military flip and a pair of Nike’s. Except he was white. Not Mexican.

  Poser.

  The faux-cholo sauntered up to the tinted window, gave it a knuckle tap. Marcus rolled it down and stuck the Reaper2 blade into his throat the second the faux-cholo registered surprise. In the background, from the row of motel rooms, loud music was pumping hard into the still afternoon air. As he was sitting there with the blade still stuck in this guy, he realized it was two different motel rooms making all the noise. One was gangster rap, the other heavy metal. Both rooms had the doors or windows open to some degree. Wasting no time, he jerked the blade clean out, letting the man collapse on the concrete.

  Marcus got out of the truck and quickly wrapped the bandana around faux-cholo’s neck to staunch the bleeding. He dragged him around the other side of the SUV. Moving with purpose, he began stripping off the dead man’s clothes, hoping to get them blood-free. Once he was done, Marcus dragged the corpse behind the Trans Am and stuffed him where, for the next few minutes, he wouldn’t be found.

  He returned to the SUV, then eased it up to the big rig, a 50’s or 60’s style Mack truck with a sleeper and no trailer in sight. There were four gas cans next to the tank and what looked like a fresh weld done, fitting the cattle guard to the front. He tugged on the contraption. It felt rock solid. He checked the big rig’s door and it opened; the keys were tucked up on the visor.

  “Morons,” he muttered to himself.

  In the sleeper, he changed clothes, getting into the flannel, the jeans and the wife-beater. The shoes were too small, the pants too tight. And if he flexed just right, it would probably tear the arms clean off. Still, he needed the moment of distraction if he wanted to get the jump on these knuckleheads.

  If he could pull this off, Marcus hoped he’d have loot for days. Possibly even the weapons cache he’d been dreaming about. When he stepped out of the Mack truck’s cabin, some guy was already walking toward
him. He was carrying a gun at his side.

  “What the hell?” he asked, seeing Marcus.

  “Just dropping off parts for the rest of the weld,” he said. “Didn’t want them being stolen since the place is pretty much wide open.”

  “We gotta handle on things, man, so why don’t you hustle your big ass outta here.”

  The Reaper2 caught homeboy across the face, creating a wide flap of skin. Marcus spun around and, with the full force of his weight and momentum, drove the blade into the nerve bundle just below the man’s sternum. He immediately twisted it then tore the blade loose, snatched the man’s gun and dragged the dying body over to where the other one was.

  He was looking up into Marcus’s eyes, almost like he had a question. Like he wanted to say, why?

  “You brought this on yourself, scumbag,” Marcus growled.

  He didn’t know if that was true or not, but the skinhead was part of a murderous gang of thugs robbing and killing people, and he was carrying a gun as more than a loosely veiled threat. He learned that in his time overseas.

  Early on in the second Iraq, right after Afghanistan, his crew hit a terrorist cell they’d managed to infiltrate. Thirty insurgents perished. Five of Marcus’s men died along with them. They stacked the insurgents’ bodies in a huge pile, just threw one body on top of the other until they were all there.

  All this over a boy sent out into the street with a gun.

  Pissed off and heavy on losses, he and his men soaked the bodies of the dissidents in gasoline then set them on fire. They stood there listening to the screaming of a few left alive. As rich as his hatred was for his enemies, their suffering had gone on too long. Even now he heard their phantom screams, smelled the cooked flesh and the smoke, and tasted a bit of the blood on his tongue.

  Looking down, faux-cholo number two was now gurgling in his throat. Marcus’s head cleared. He made the decision. Without hesitation, he drove his blade into the man’s throat then ripped it out and told the man he’d go quicker, that this way he’d die a cleaner death.