The Complete Last War Series Read online

  The Complete Last War Series

  Ryan Schow

  River City Publishing

  Copyright

  The eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy so that you may read it with a clear conscience and not one day end up in hell over a shitty technicality. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

  THE COMPLETE LAST WAR SERIES

  Copyright © 2017, 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

  Contents

  Also by Ryan Schow

  Foreword

  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

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  Chapter 122

  Chapter 123

  Chapter 124

  Chapter 125

  Chapter 126

  Chapter 127

  Chapter 128

  Chapter 129

  Chapter 130

  Chapter 131

  Chapter 132

  Chapter 133

  Chapter 134

  Chapter 135

  Chapter 136

  Chapter 137

  Chapter 138

  Chapter 139

  Chapter 140

  Chapter 141

  Chapter 142

  Chapter 143

  Chapter 144

  Chapter 145

  Chapter 146

  Chapter 147

  Chapter 148

  Chapter 149

  Chapter 150

  Chapter 151

  Chapter 152

  Chapter 153

  Chapter 154

  Chapter 155

  Chapter 156

  Chapter 157

  Chapter 158

  Chapter 159

  Chapter 160

  Chapter 161

  Chapter 162

  Chapter 163

  Chapter 164

  Chapter 165

  Chapter 166

  Chapter 167

  Chapter 168

  Epilogue

  A Word of Thanks…

  Sneak Peek

  Your Voice Matters…

  Also by Ryan Schow

  THE AGE OF EMBERS SERIES:

  THE AGE OF EMBERS

  THE AGE OF HYSTERIA

  THE COMPLETE LAST WAR SERIES:

  THE LAST WAR

  THE ZERO HOUR

  THE OPHIDIAN HORDE

  THE INFERNAL REGIONS

  THE KILLING FIELDS

  THE BARBAROUS ROAD

  THE TERMINAL RUN

  THE COMPLETE SWANN SERIES:

  VANNIE (PREQUEL)

  SWANN

  MONARCH

  CLONE

  MASOCHIST

  WEAPON

  RAVEN

  ABOMINATION

  ENIGMA

  CRUCIFIED

  Foreword

  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 Pinterest page, I found a crazy amount of inspiration for both the stories and the characters within them. Now I have a Pinterest board for every book in
this series. Each board contains character photos, the cars from the series and even 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 by clicking or tapping HERE (The Last War), HERE (The Zero Hour), HERE (The Ophidian Horde), HERE (The Infernal Regions), HERE (The Killing Fields), HERE (The Barbarous Road) and HERE (The Terminal Run). Also, if you haven’t joined The Last War’s Private Facebook Fan Group, please click over there now as I love to chat with readers regularly as well as post cool inspirational pictures, some of the real life stories that inspired this series, cover reveals for the new books and sample chapters of books before they come out. 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 Number 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.