The Last War Box Set
Ryan Schow
River City Publishing
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THE LAST WAR BOX SET
Copyright © 2018 Ryan Schow. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, cloned, stored in or introduced into any information storage or retrieval system, in any form, or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this eBook via the Internet or via any other means without the express written permission of the author or publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Author’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents—and their usage for storytelling purposes—are crafted for the singular purpose of fictional entertainment and no absolute truths shall be derived from the information contained within. Locales, businesses, events, government institutions and private institutions are used for atmospheric, entertainment and fictional purposes only. Furthermore, any resemblance or reference to an actual living person is used solely for atmospheric, entertainment and fictional purposes.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Cover Design by Milo at Deranged Doctor Design
Visit the Author’s Website: www.RyanSchow.com
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Copyright © 2018 by Ryan Schow
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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Also by Ryan Schow
Note to the Reader
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
The next adventure begins in May, 2018!
Also by Ryan Schow
THE COMPLETE SWANN SERIES:
SWANN
MONARCH
CLONE
MASOCHIST
WEAPON
RAVEN
ABOMINATION
ENIGMA
CRUCIFIED
THE LAST WAR SERIES:
THE LAST WAR
THE ZERO HOUR: INDIGO
THE OPHIDIAN HORDE
THE INFERNAL REGIONS
Note to the Reader
I was never a Pinterest person, but my wife is and she was on it enough for me to grow curious. When I got my own page, I found a crazy amount of inspiration for both the stories and the characters within them. I never wanted to keep this to myself, so I started a Pinterest page for every book in this series. These inspirational pictures include most of the character models, the cars and the places where my characters reside. If you’re signed up for Pinterest (which is easy and free!) then stop by and take a look around at the different boards for The Last War, The Zero Hour, The Ophidian Horde and The Infernal Regions by clicking or tapping HERE. Also, if you haven’t joined the closed group Facebook page for The Last War series, please click over there now as I post regularly with series updates, character pictures, sneak peeks at the new books, sample chapters of works currently in progress and some of the real life stories that inspired this series. You can request to join this private group HERE.
Chapter One
Forget who you were. What you did for a living. That fancy title on your business cards. Forget your paycheck, your overpriced car, the upscale neighborhood you lived in because there’s no such thing as upscale anymore. Or society. Or even civility for that matter.
Oh, and if you’re looking for a sense of community? Honestly, don’t hold your breath. This is San Francisco, 2019.
Welcome to hell.
To survive in this post-apocalyptic cesspool, you have to un-know yourself. You have to strip away that which makes you human: your empathy, your enormous heart, all the ways you used to be and feel so special. How things are now—the big cities being stamped into ruin, relentless bombing runs, the onset of hunger and the spike in crime—you need to understand your life in this city is a death sentence.
The circumstances being what they are, doing unforgivable things, unspeakable things, is the norm. It’s what you do to stay breathing. Not to belabor the point, but if you don’t subscribe to the philosophy that if you’re weak, you’re a corpse, then honest to God, the window between right now and your demise is probably already closed, you just don’t know it yet.
My husband, Stanton, recently told our fifteen year old daughter, Macy, “If someone’s in your face and you don’t feel right about them, if something feels off, just shoot them. Don’t even think about it. Just do it.”
Two weeks ago this would have been the most irrational statement in the
world, but the way Stanton says it, you can almost believe that he believes he sounds completely rational. To think he was once the voice of reason in our little family of three...
Oh and me? I’m an ER nurse. Well I was, past tense. My name is Cincinnati McNamara and I spent my career at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital. I used to save lives, not take them, so hearing my husband so brazenly speak of murder is a pretty big pill for me to swallow.
We’ve killed though. We didn’t mean to and we certainly didn’t want to, but if we weren’t wanting or trying to kill people and we did so anyway, what does that say about the times?
It says plenty.
Speaking of matters of life and death, before the collapse, every life had value. Even the junkies, the criminals and the homeless. Now the only lives with any value are mine, Stanton’s, my daughter Macy’s and my younger brother Rex’s. I don’t like thinking like this, but we really are in a survival-of-the-fittest type of world here.
I suppose we could lament our situation, this sour turn of events, but we try not to. We can’t afford the mental breakdown. Even though it’s coming. We tell ourselves we’re not those kinds of people, the kind who just lay down and die when things get tough. We tell ourselves we’re survivors, fighters.
Perhaps this is true. It could be a lie.
Either way, we are our own cheerleaders as we slog through what will surely become some urban wasteland if someone doesn’t stop the brutal war being waged on mankind. Can it even be stopped? Are we the ones to do it?
Probably not.
So we navigate the streets of San Francisco, squatting where we can, eating what’s available, and we try not to comprehend this city’s monumental fall from grace. Instead, we dig our heels in as we grapple the impossible odds and grind against the gears of our sometimes frail and overworked minds. We do this while hiding from enemies who have taken to the streets and who kill from the air, and we do our best to ignore the voices in our heads telling us to go ahead and give up, just quit, end it once and for all and just eat that bullet.
You may be wondering, why press on when things seem so dismal? I’ve asked myself that same question a hundred times now. Maybe more. I have an answer, but it’s flimsy, propped up on faith and desperation alone. We’re praying that when the smoke clears and all the bodies have been stacked and properly burned, there will be something left to hang on to, some semblance of hope for a new life, a new future, a brand new world.
If you could see what I see, how this city turned upside down in a single afternoon, how devastation has now spread to every corner before me, perhaps you’d understand these things I’m telling you. Perhaps you’d know what I mean when I say faith and desperation.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Putting the cart before the horse if you will.
Let me start at the beginning…
Chapter Two
Four twelves in the ER and no one died. Hallelujah. The work week is officially over and I’m Jonesing for ten hours of uninterrupted sleep. To my SUV, I say, “Beethoven’s Symphony Number 9.” It’s perfect music for almost going home. Almost. From near silence to sound, one of Beethoven’s most energizing symphonies begins.
Did I tell you I’m exhausted?
Yeah, I’m depleted.
Everyone at work was like, “What are you going to do on your three days, Cincinnati?” and I was like, “Sleep, sleep, and then sleep.”
First, however, I need groceries. Specifically coffee. Not for now, but for later, when I try to wake up.
Macy—our fifteen year old—she’s taken to telling her friends her mother is a zombie. I have to be honest here, forty-eight hours in the ER is like sixty or seventy hours working a regular job, so yep, I absolutely feel like a zombie.
I feel like the entire cast of The Walking Dead.
It’s noon, Macy’s still in school, Stanton is halfway through work, maybe more. And me? It’s all about shopping, sleeping, cooking. Yawning deep, trudging through another afternoon in the slurry of San Francisco traffic, I creep up Bush Street looking for a place to park. Twice I pass the Market Mayflower & Deli (my destination!) and twice I fail to find a spot (C’mon already!).
This is why I put on Beethoven.
To renew me.
The symphony is getting into my bones now, seeping delightfully into my soul. This is the kind of nourishment nothing else on earth can provide. Closing my eyes for a second, I relax my shoulders, focus on my heart rate. Drawing deep stabilizing breaths seems to help, but only if I allow myself to unwind completely. Can I do that? Is that even possible anymore? I roll my neck, popping two vertebrae, then open my eyes and make fists of my fingers, cracking a few tight knuckles as well.
Just let go of the day, I tell myself.
As Symphony 9 unfolds on the Land Rover’s sound system, I feel most of the tension leaving me. I open my sunroof and though it’s not exactly fresh air outside, it’s more outdoor air than I get at work. Which is none.
The Land Rover’s open sunroof lets in the sounds of the city, sounds I can’t exactly hear over the music, unless you’re talking about a honked horn, or the beep-beep-beeping of a delivery truck backing up to unload its contents street-side.
The sound system instantly compensates for the change in environment, making the sounds of Beethoven deeper, fuller, richer. The lost peaks and valleys of the symphony are found once more. Smiling for the first time in well over a day, I find myself looking forward to my time off.
For a second, as delightful as the orchestra is (the brilliance of the strings, the magic of the flutes and clarinets, the crash of the symbols and the big bass moments, all perfectly spaced in soft interludes and swift, near frantic runs) I imagine if I close my eyes, I might be able to feel myself there. In the Theater am Kärntnertor. Experiencing this symphony for the first time in Vienna one hundred and ninety-five years ago.
May 7, 1824 to be precise.
As good luck would have it, the parking gods seek to grace me with a place to park right in front of the market (it only took fifteen minutes). A brand new Mercedes Benz S63 is leaving. Hitting my turn signal, I wait the appropriate distance behind the big car, then (mistakenly) check the rear view mirror once or twice to see how much traffic is backing up behind me (a lot…don’t stress, Sin…it’s okay).
Parallel parking in San Francisco always makes me nervous. It feels infinitely worse after I’m done with my shift because I feel a bit jittery and out of sorts.
A horn behind me honks. I just sit here.
Until it honks again.
Still waiting for the Benz to go, I feel my heart jump start a bit. “Can’t you see my turn signal?” I finally mutter. Glancing back at the offending vehicle three cars down, a frown settles over my face and I say, “There are two more lanes to choose from!”
The second the Mercedes-Benz is clear of the spot and driving off, a shrieking projectile flashes overhead, piercing the sedan’s back window in a fiery explosion. The blast furnace wave of heat, glass and metal is a concussion wave that cracks my windshield and rocks the SUV backwards into the car behind me.
The symphony suddenly stops, and that’s when the chaotic sounds of the city flood in through the open sunroof.
Stunned, not believing what my eyes are seeing, all I hear for one long moment is the thundering sound of my own blood rushing in my ears. Other sounds emerge as I catch my breath. Car alarms, more explosions up ahead, then the screaming.
Lots and lots of screaming.
Pushing open the door, staggering out of my Land Rover, I haphazardly check for traffic before moving around the front of the SUV and onto the sidewalk. Bodies are strewn everywhere. Some are writhing in pain; others are completely still on the ground and thrown against things. There’s a lot of blood. There’s wailing, crying, sobbing. A woman is wandering around in a daze with half her face melted off, looking as though she misplaced her purse, or her child.
Out of the Benz’s windshield, the driver—an older matron—is half
flopped onto the hood, dead, her body engulfed in flames.
That’s when I hear them: two huge drones zipping overhead. Several blocks ahead, two more cars explode and a white, thirteen story apartment building is strafed by something that looks like gunfire. Another drone is closing in from a distance, its long wings outfitted with four black dots that I fear are missiles.
“No,” I hear myself say.
Anyone looking at this thing can see the future and how bad it’s going to be for everyone inside that apartment. The missiles fire from the wings, heading right into the tower creating a devastating explosion that feels like a punch to the chest.