The Last War Box Set_A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survivor Thriller

by Ryan Schow

  I start the engine, creep out of the stall, take a right on 14th and an immediate left on Lincoln then head back home, trying to keep my emotions at least halfway in check. I roll down the window and even though the air is smoke smelling and a touch acrid, it’s also cool and not as piss-smelling as the cabin of the Olds is now.

  When I come across the dead guy on the side of the road—the one those three maniacs beat to death earlier—I get so sickened by it that fear transforms into the onset of rage and I begin to obsess about what I should have done, that I should have at least tried to do something.

  But I didn’t. You didn’t.

  He could be alive, I tell myself. I have to stop the car. Pulling the Olds to a stop, I kill the engine, get out and lock the door behind me. Looking left and right, my Glock at the ready, I walk over to the guy, my stomach seizing when I see him.

  “Oh, God…”

  He’s sprawled out on the concrete, face up to the sky, his body a broken mess. His mouth hangs open showing me a broken row of blood stained teeth. He’d been kicked so hard one of his eyes was popped loose and his nose was smashed almost flat. His face was full of lacerations and open gashes. Unable to tear my eyes from him, the sheer horror of it seeping into me, I look down and think, this is my fault, I could have stopped this, but I didn’t.

  I was a coward. I am a coward.

  And now this coward can’t stop seeing the vision of this man’s beating. How I did nothing. Nothing!

  My eyes are wet, but my heart is furious. Looking at what was done to this man, to a human being, how he was killed and just left on the road to die, drags from the deepest wells of anger a sick and terrifying rage.

  I feel…I’ve never felt like this before.

  I stomp back to my car, my teeth gnashing, my grip on the Glock extra tight. In the car I fire up the motor, stomp on the gas, then tell myself to calm down.

  But I can’t.

  The next block up, I see them. All three of them are walking. Something in m pops loose, like the explosive parts of me now have a place to go, a target. The muscles in my back are suddenly gripping my spine and I feel my jaw flicking. As I approach, half of me is knowing exactly what I want to do while the other part of me is telling me to keep going, mind my own business.

  But the gun is coming up and it’s pointing at the men.

  And then it’s firing off two rounds.

  All of this is happening and only half of me can believe it. Two men are ducking for cover while the third staggers, takes two steps left, then falls—one knee buckling first as he crashes over sideways.

  Then smash!

  Everything stops and my body cashes into the steering wheel, both sides of the wheel hitting me in both boobs, my chin slamming down on the top of the wheel.

  Dazed, I look up and see that I’ve hit a parked car.

  The engine’s stalled out. I turn the key but it’s sluggish to catch. Glancing over, panicked and mentally frazzled, I see the two thugs I didn’t hit cutting through the abandoned cars. They’re dropping f-bombs and their faces are quaking with fury. If I said I was anything other than crapping-my-pants terrified, I’d be lying.

  I keep twisting the key, keep working the gas, but the motor won’t catch. All the rage and fury in me has suddenly turned to a blinding fear that’s got me whimpering and praying and probably flooding the car.

  I turn and see them. They’re jogging toward me and the look in the closest one’s eyes attacks me somewhere down low. With no choice left, I start shooting.

  I tell myself it’s okay because this is self-defense, but there’s that hesitant part of me that’s saying I did this—that I shot first.

  No, they did.

  Both men drop because, let’s face it, I like to shoot things and I’m pretty good at it. Target practice isn’t the same as taking a life, though. My grandfather and my father warned me of this on numerous occasions.

  Both men are down.

  I study them in shock. I know they killed that guy, but now I’m having an out of body experience and thinking, I’ve just become them.

  No, it’s not like that.

  One of them moves, lets out a low, guttural moan.

  They’re not dead yet, but they will be if I don’t do something. I’m not sure how I’m going to live with any of this, but I need to do something.

  Can I save them? Should I?

  Kicking open the car door, the smell of propellant wafts into my nose. I’m familiar with the smell from the gun range. I might even like it. But usually I catch this same scent when I’m sighting down a target or emptying out a magazine on the range. Certainly not when I’m looking down at two men writhing in pain and bleeding out on the street.

  God my boobs hurt. And my chin is rattled to all hell. Gun out, cautiously approaching the downed men, still reeling in disbelief, I stare down at the mess I’ve made with abject horror. What have I done? The question reminds me that these guys beat a man to death not a half an hour earlier.

  Kneeling before the first guy, a forty-something who’s face-down on the asphalt and dying, my eyes zero in on the blood leaking out of his mouth. His breathing is ragged, difficult. With every weak exhale, dust puffs up off the black asphalt road. One eye finally rolls up to look at me. This is the freak who couldn’t stop staring at me.

  “Why did you kill that man?” I ask.

  “You bitch,” he says, his voice grounding out the words in a wash of utter hatred.

  “Why?” I ask. His eye rolls back down to the ground where his breathing is becoming more and more labored. Asking again, I say, “Why did you do that?”

  “He was my neighbor.”

  “And he stole something from you?”

  Nothing. No answer. A bit more panting. A kind of resigned settling of his body around the idea that his life was all but over.

  I tap his head with the Glock’s muzzle; he comes back around, but only barely.

  “Cheated us at poker last year. Thought with…with e’rything going on…payback was in order.”

  “You killed him over a card game and a few bucks?”

  This revelation seems to still the man, but then he barks out a noise, and one bark becomes a raspy chortle and that raspy chortle turns into a riot of dead man’s laughter. Spitting out blood and coughing painfully, he tries to turn his head up to look at me, but he can’t.

  “Yeah,” he finally admits, “I guess we did.”

  I want to end him so badly right now, but I can’t. I’m mentally not tough enough to pull the trigger, so I leave him to his maniacal laughter and his pain. Back at the Cutlass, it takes a few minutes working the ignition and the gas pedal before the engine finally turns over.

  The engine roars to life and I give it some gas. Slapping the beast in reverse, I try to slowly dislodge the right corner of my fender with the other car’s rear bumper.

  I look over at the two men. They aren’t moving. Or breathing.

  With some work, I tear free of the other car, but not without doing considerable damage to the Olds. My front bumper is twisted out on the right side, but not pried loose. At home, maybe I can kick it back in place, or pound it in with a sledgehammer. As for now, I vacate this depressing scene, navigating my way back up Lincoln before seeing one of the concrete lamp posts and getting a bright idea.

  Nudging my car up to the street lamp, I touch the front bumper to the heavy concrete base, then press the gas. The bumper gives a touch, but not enough. Using more gas, the back wheels break loose and start to spin and smoke. The rear end slides the tiniest bit, but the bumper finally snugs up to the frame the way I envisioned it would. I let off the gas, back up, then get out to survey the damage.

  It’s ugly, both front and back, but at least the bumper isn’t looking like a jagged tooth anymore.

  Standing outside, looking around, marveling at what this city has become, my thoughts go back to shooting those guys. I can’t stop seeing it. My stomach starts to turn, and then it comes charging up my throat. B
ent over, I wretch all over the ground, getting it all out.

  When it’s over, I don’t feel better. Actually, I feel worse.

  Rather than heading home though, I try my mom on the cell phone. All circuits are down. I try my dad’s phone and it rings through. My hope soars, but then it crashes back down when the call goes to voicemail. The sound of his voice makes me start crying again, which sucks because I’ve already been crying way too much these last twenty-four hours.

  I sob out a message, telling him I’m safe but worried, that he needs to call me on the home phone if he can’t reach the cell phone, and that I love him and miss him and hope everything’s okay.

  When I go to hang up, it seems the call has already been dropped, which leaves me to wonder if my message even got through. This above all else, is so disheartening I can’t even put it into words.

  I find myself driving over to Tad’s and my mom’s house. Tad’s white Tesla is parked on the opposite side of the street in front of his house, but my mom’s car is no where to be found.

  My eyes zoom in on Tad’s new ride.

  He loves his overpriced electric car, specifically his gunmetal gray rims and red brake calipers. He said the wheels gave it a masculine stance. I didn’t say anything when he first uttered such a thing, but my thought was this: if you have to tell me your car looks masculine, then it’s probably not. No one ever looked at Detroit muscle and said, “Boy, that’s a masculine looking machine.” Freaking Tad. If you need to understand anything about this clown, it’s that he’s a tad bit of a pretty boy. A tad bit of a wiener. Already I’m shaking my head at the thought of him. Already I’m holding down what’s left of my breakfast at the thought of seeing him.

  I pull up behind the Tesla, throw the Olds in PARK, then just stare at Tad’s ash covered embarrassment, specifically his stupid license plate: TADSXY.

  As in Tad sexy.

  “What a douchebag,” I mumble as I’m nudging open the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The second I get out of the Cutlass, I hear this rowdy noise coming from up the street. I bump my door shut with my butt and press my body against the car as some idiot in a seventies Camaro comes barreling down the street toward me. I pull out the gun, let it hang at my side, just in case.

  The car makes no move in my direction and I’m all eyes on the driver, ready to dive out of the way if at the last minute he decides to swerve into me.

  As this primer colored rust bucket barrels past me, I find myself staring at a terrified kid in the driver’s seat. He can’t be a day older than fourteen. Down the road, he comes to a cross street, stands on the brakes and spins the wheel, sliding around the corner out of control.

  The second he’s out of view, I hear a huge crash, a sputtering engine, and then the steady rumbling of a car now stopped entirely too fast. Gears are grinding, then the heap is going into reverse, revving up, tearing free of whatever it slammed into. After that it’s a steady grumble, first gear, a heavy rev on the engine and finally the sound of wheels leaving rubber on the road.

  “Wow,” I mutter to myself, barely believing what I’m seeing.

  I look both ways then cross the street, climb the steps onto Tad’s porch, then dreadfully take a breath and ring the bell. Standing there alone, my weapon loaded and in hand, I steady myself and pray my mom is inside.

  The thirty-something Neanderthal answers the door a moment later. He’s looking worried with mussed hair, puffy eyes and two days beard growth. Even looking this ragged, pretty doesn’t define him. Gorgeous is more like it. We’re talking dark hair, athletic build, the kind of GQ face girls my age simply gush over.

  This is why I hate him.

  I hate him for how good he looks, for all the money he has, for the fact that he took my mom from me and my dad. Most of all, I hate that I don’t know what’s happened to my father and that I have to come looking for answers from my mom and this idiot.

  “Indigo,” he says, glancing down at my gun, then over my shoulder at the Olds. “Are you all right?”

  “Where’s my mom, Tad?”

  “Do you want to come in?” he asks. I give him a firm nod, no. If my mom were here, he wouldn’t have invited me in. He would have stepped aside so I could walk in on my own. Looking past me once more, he says, “What the hell happened to your car?”

  “I was attacked by a drone. You know, those things killing people and blowing up most of downtown? Then I hit another car while I was preoccupied with two men dying. I should have been paying better attention, but whatever. It is what it is.”

  “Why do you have the gun?” he says, those dreamy blue eyes leveled on me.

  “Protection.”

  Those same blue eyes dip down and look at my pants.

  I can’t help but roll my eyes. “Yes, Tad,” I say smugly, “I wet myself. It’s a long story I’m not interested in telling you.”

  “I wasn’t saying anything,” he replied, hands up in mock surrender. Then: “Is it that bad out there?”

  He’s clearly not himself. He’s not looking at me like he wants me—I know he doesn’t even like me—but seeing him like this, vulnerable and not talking about all his accomplishments in life, I might understand why my mother was drawn to him.

  Shifting from one foot to the other, zeroing in on him with a pair of no b.s. eyes, I say, “Where’s my mom, Tad?”

  “I—I don’t know. I haven’t heard from her.”

  “Well, have you gone out looking for her?” I ask, my body stiffening with disbelief. “I mean, have you even tried?”

  He looks down. My eyes narrow and I feel my jaw clenching.

  “You absolute pussy,” I mutter. “You haven’t gone out, have you? Because you’re scared. Because big bad Tad’s a tad bit of a wuss.”

  “I watched people get shot,” he says, likes he’s thinking about a bad dream rather than making excuses for himself.

  For a second, he’s no longer mysterious, sexy Tad; he’s making-excuses-for-himself Tad; he’s selfish Tad with a soft spine; he’s delicate-hands-and-hurt-feelings Tad.

  “I see you managed to get that piece of crap electric car home and parked cozily across the street without so much as a scratch on it while people are being murdered out there.”

  “I work at home these days,” he says sheepishly.

  “While homes and cars and buildings are being destroyed, you’re hunkered down in here with no pretense of bravado, safe from the world, worrying.”

  His open mouth becomes a pursed slash.

  “This isn’t about being tough, Indigo, this is about staying alive and hoping your mother makes contact with me.”

  “Justify all you want, but I—”

  “What if she comes home and I’m not here?” he asks (this is please-understand-me Tad). “You know your mother! You know how badly she’d panic!”

  “What if she never comes home and you’re still here waiting, huh Tad? What then? You’ll be alive and your car will be fine and you’ll never have to assert any real masculinity, you beet juice drinking crank. You wouldn’t have even had to try.”

  “Fine, you want to go?” he snaps (defensive Tad). “Then let’s go looking for her!”

  “Not if you’re going to act like a big baby about it,” I say, unmoved by his wide range of manufactured emotions. “I can look for her myself.”

  “I’m not being a baby, he says to the child,” Tad replies, doing that annoying thing he does with his third person point of view. “The adult is simply being responsible in the face of the child’s tantrum. Oh look, the child wet her pants.”

  Would the real Tad please stand up?

  “Did you ever stop to think that she’s alive but doesn’t want to come home to you because you’re like this?” I ask.

  “Like what?” he retorts, clearly ready to argue.

  “Tad, you’re a wet fart.”

  He bursts into some sort of bitter laughter, but I don’t join him because there’s a snide edge to his humor I don’t
like.

  When he’s done laughing, I say, “You’re the right brand of useless and we all see it, my mom included. Perhaps she’s not coming home to you because you’re not the kind of person who would ever go looking for her.”

  “You think she thinks that?” he asks, halfway amused, halfway offended. “Because she hasn’t said that to me. In fact, she’s said nothing of the sort.”

  “You’re not worth telling the truth to,” I assert. “At least to her. But to me? Oh, Tad, I’m happy to give you the truth in spades. The truth is you’re nothing but a lifestyle and a pretty face, but when it comes down to being a man, someone like you would never have a family because all you care about is yourself, your hair, and all your expensive toys.”

  “And this is why we don’t get along,” he says, crossing his arms and leaning a shoulder on the door jam.

  “And this is why you’re a wet fart.”

  “You already said that.”

  “Well I hope this time it sinks in,” I say, tapping my temple with the gun, just to let him know it’s still here.

  “If you’re right and your mom doesn’t like me so much, then she won’t want to be found by me. So go find her yourself you flat chested she-boy.”

  I blanch. I can’t help my reaction. He steps back and slams the door in my face. Stunned, wounded by words I fear to be true, I back up and put two rounds through the front door, screaming out the kinds of words and fury that defy description.

  Huffing and puffing, stomping down the stairs, I cross the street to my car, but all I can see is Tad’s bright and shiny Tesla.

  “It’s not even a real car,” I grumble.

  Climbing in the Olds, I fire up the engine, back up ten feet, then pull to a stop. Me and my car sit here, both of us grumbling and at an idle, both of us contemplating my next move.

  What is my next move?

  My molars gnash against each other, my hands flexing into fists around the steering wheel. Eyes locked on the Tesla, nostrils flaring, a quick snort escapes me. NEUTRAL becomes DRIVE and my foot stomps on the gas.