They veered left onto Route 65. Ahead, hilly fields covered in trees stretched off toward distant mountain peaks. Power line poles along the right side of the road had burned like giant charred matchsticks.
She eyed a ‘speed limit 35’ sign. Yeah, no danger of anyone going that fast anymore.
Daxton kicked at the occasional rock or fragment of damaged car. Deacon and Lennie walked behind Harper and Logan, the two men mostly watching their surroundings. Harper found herself staring at the oncoming road, momentarily annoyed that the world decided to blow up so soon after she finally got her license. Even the working truck she and Cliff had found only lasted a few weeks before the gas ran out.
A huge field surrounded by fencing went by on the left, empty of anything alive or visibly useful. She gazed around at pine trees, grass, rocks, dirt, and the twisted remains of power poles. A few minutes later, they passed another field on the left, surrounded by a strange zig-zagging fence made of stacked logs. She couldn’t imagine what it had been intended to contain as the fence looked pretty easy to climb.
Just ahead of a rightward curve, a spaghetti tangle of power lines crisscrossed the road. A small box truck had gone off the side and flipped, taking out a tree and one utility pole. No one hesitated at stepping among the wires, as any power generation had long since ceased.
They followed Route 65 for a while, eventually passing a large house that had a private tennis court on the right at the bottom of a short, steep hill studded in slender pine trees. It seemed an altogether random thing to find out in the middle of nowhere. If she’d been wandering with no specific destination or place to return to, she’d probably have checked out the house. Someone wealthy enough to have their own tennis court probably had a bunch of cool stuff. Then again, they might also have a bunch of guns and still be there.
She didn’t have the best view of the house from the street, but didn’t see anyone threatening—or even nonthreatening—watching them, so she kept going. They had to reach Kriley Pond as fast as possible to avoid getting caught out in open country after dark. That didn’t leave any time for exploration.
Before long, they walked past a tall ridge on the left that formed a veritable wall of green trees she would have found pretty and scenic if not for the constant fear of attack.
Not everyone’s going to try to kill us. What are we going to do if we meet someone nice? Ask them to follow us? Just say hi and go our separate ways? Walter might not be happy if she went out to collect fifteen people and came back leading a group of forty. Her need to help others fought with her need to keep the people of Evergreen safe. They couldn’t absorb too many residents too fast or the farm would be unable to keep up. Some people in town still avoided eating fish for fear of nuclear contamination.
Does it matter? We were all exposed to whatever radiation came from the blasts. Does having a house on top of us really help that much? For a little while, worry of random cancer overpowered her worry of someone trying to kill them in a more direct way. The terrain had plenty of trees and hiding places, but few spots looked appealing for long-term living. She eyed a row of mailboxes between two stonework pillars under a little roof on the left. It stood near the end of an offshoot street leading off to the left that ended at a metal gate, like some kind of private community. No one hid there to ambush them either.
“Where was it the people shot at you?” asked Harper.
“Umm, by the highway bridge.” Daxton pointed ahead. “We’re gonna be there soon.”
“Highway bridge?” Deacon scratched his bald head. “Don’t remember any bridges around here.”
“It’s a bridge over a highway. Duh. Overpass.” The boy punted a hunk of headlight off the road. “These people had a camp at the corner with a bunch of trailers.”
Harper scanned the area ahead. Keep an eye out for trailers. “What did they look like?”
“Umm. Three guys. One kinda fat, the other two skinny. Jeans and stuff. They didn’t look mean or nothin’ ’til I grabbed a hunk of meat and ran.”
Lennie chuckled. “That’d probably get me at least chasin’ ya.”
“Did you try asking them for food first?” Harper nudged him.
“Yeah. They told me to piss off.” Daxton veered to the right so he could kick a rock off the road. “So I pretended to go away, then snuck back and grabbed the bird.”
“Might be trouble when they see him.” Deacon checked his AK as if trying to remember where to find the safety lever. “Hope they think twice before pulling a gun on all of us.”
“Yeah.” Logan cracked his neck side to side. “If they tried to kill a kid over a pigeon, who knows what they might do.”
“Maybe a warning shot trying to scare him?” asked Lennie.
Daxton shook his head rapidly. “I don’t think so. It hit the road right next to me and”—he indicated a bullet bouncing with his hand—“went like pzing! That’s when I jumped over the guardrail and fell down the hill.”
“Not going to let them hurt you. But, maybe keep your head down so we can get past without them recognizing you,” said Harper.
“’Kay.”
A little over an hour later, they reached the intersection where Route 65 met Route 70. Harper’s directions called for going left here, but I-70 ran along on a lower grade at the bottom of a relatively steep hill. Not wanting to risk a fall and sprain, she continued ahead onto the overpass that spanned it. They could just as easily walk along Route 40, which followed I-70. Actually, I think we want 40.
“There,” whispered Daxton, pointing at the far side.
Left of where Route 65 met Route 40 at a T-junction, a cluster of RVs and trailers sat in a former parking lot, positioned nose-to-end such that they formed a wall. Harper held her Mossberg in a ready position, watching the RV that formed the eastern wall of the compound. Signs of motion in the windows put her on edge, but no one moved close enough to see clearly. Better still, no one pointed a weapon at them.
“It freakin’ sucks out here,” said a man on the other side of the RV. “How the hell long are we gonna get stuck wandering this damn road?”
“As long as we need ta be,” replied another man with a slightly deeper voice and mild Russian accent. “We don’t gotta wander now we found this place.”
Harper crept to where Route 65 met Route 40. From there, it became apparent that the RVs and trailers had been arranged in a C-shape around an interior ‘courtyard.’ Four men surrounded a fire pit-slash-grill made from scorched car parts and rims. A pair of birds roasted on spits, possibly chickens, though they seemed a little small.
The two guys facing her on the far side of the fire pit made eye contact. One had long, stringy black hair, a denim vest, and a bolt-action rifle. The other, slightly pudgier guy, wore an absolutely filthy white polo shirt bearing an Amazon logo as well as khaki pants. An Mp5 submachine gun hung on his chest, suspended from a strap.
Both wore blue fabric sashes around their necks.
Lawless! What the hell are they doing so far west?
The instant her brain processed that, the men’s expressions changed from ‘someone’s here’ to ‘she’s old enough—and damn cute.’ Amazon Polo pointed at her, grinning. The two guys with their backs turned spun around to stare at them. Flannel shirts and jeans made them resemble a pair of ranch hands who’d spent the past three hours making snow angels in dirt. Both of them carried handguns in belt holsters.
“These aren’t the same guys who tried to shoot me,” said Daxton.
“That’d be them three.” Lennie pointed to the far side of I-40 where three corpses lay at the base of a rocky ridge behind a green sign marked ‘Beaver Brook Drive Floyd Hill’ above a leftward pointing arrow.
Daxton gasped.
“Well, hey there, Red,” said the stringy-haired guy, hefting a hunting rifle. “You folks just joined the Lawless.”
“Not happening.” Harper raised the Mossberg. “You bastards shot my parents. I will die to send all four of you straight to hell
before I let you touch me.”
“I suggest you four stand the fuck down,” said Deacon. “Less you wanna become hamburger.”
Their overwhelming confidence faltered at the sight of him.
This is going to turn into a gunfight. I should just blow them away.
Logan looked around and whispered, “Backtrack, jump the guardrail, we can take cover behind the hill.”
“Good plan.” Lennie nodded. “Didn’t take you for a soldier.”
“I’m not. Played a crapton of paintball though.” Logan smiled.
“This ain’t paintball.” Lennie spat to the side.
The stringy-haired guy chuckled. “That’s a big attack dog you brought along for protection, but you’ve got a little math problem, sweetie. There ain’t just four of us.”
Doors on the RVs and trailers opened. At least six more people started to emerge.
Harper, her face stony, snapped her aim point up and fired, shredding the stringy-haired man’s face. Like the rapid-target range exercise she’d been running since age fourteen, she pivoted and shot the Mp5 guy, before running to her left, shooting at the other two one after the next, four shots in about six seconds.
Three died on their feet, throwing their handguns into the air as they tried to draw them on her. The fourth man grabbed his bloodied neck and collapsed to the parking lot, howling in pain.
Daxton’s scream of “ohhhh craaaaaap!” went by like a passing train whistle. Harper sprinted for cover behind the RV at the left end of the compound, vaguely aware of the others jumping the guardrail at the spot where the overpass met the hill. Gunfire erupted from the Lawless, a few bullets whistling behind her or zinging off the pavement. Daxton let out another yell as Deacon tossed him out of sight behind the hill. Harper dashed around the front end of the RV and huddled low by the tire, her shotgun ready for anyone who tried to follow her.
Lennie hit the dirt on his chest beside a streetlamp at the inner corner, firing twice under the guardrail at someone coming toward Harper’s position. One shot ricocheted off the pavement, the other made a wet thump as it hit a body. Another man shrieked in pain.
“Go!” shouted Logan. “We’re covering.”
“Don’t shoot into the trailers!” yelled Harper. “They might have kidnapped someone.”
Logan aimed to the right and fired, but didn’t hit anything.
Crap! Okay, that was stupid. But less stupid than just standing there and being abducted. She squeezed the pistol grip of her shotgun, prepared to blow the face—or balls—off the next person to walk around the RV.
Someone started shooting at the guys from a window in the RV. Both Logan and Deacon returned fire, despite a spark flashing by Logan’s face where a bullet struck the guardrail.
Harper screamed at him to get down.
Screw this. I can’t sit here. Get behind them. They won’t expect it. She shifted to face the other way and scurried to the back end of the RV, swinging around the corner—the tip of her Mossberg’s barrel less than two inches from the nose of a woman who’d been trying to sneak up on her.
They froze, staring at each other while intermittent gunfire zinged back and forth between the guys and the Lawless inside, on top of, and in front of the RV.
If the woman’s huge brown eyes meant anything, she needed clean pants from having a shotgun close enough to her face that she could probably see the red front of the shell ready to fire. She carried an Uzi, but held it sideways in front of a Star Trek shirt showing Spock’s unamused face above the words ‘Negative, Captain. There is no intelligent life on this planet.’ Her pale dirt-smudged face and dirty-blonde hair looked so damn familiar.
“Harper Cody?” squeaked the woman.
“I know you…?” Harper glanced down past the side of her shotgun at the Uzi. She didn’t need to use iron sights to hit a target an inch away.
“You were in my physics class junior year.”
Harper blinked. “Holy crap! Mrs. Tiller?”
They both flinched at a deep boom from inside the compound. Lennie’s M4 fired so rapidly it sounded like full auto. A man on the other side of the trailers yowled.
“Yeah,” said Mrs. Tiller. “Guess it’s ‘miz’ now, since Robert’s gone.”
“Crap. I’ve got my physics teacher at gunpoint.”
“You do. But I haven’t been teaching physics lately.”
Harper scowled. “You joined the fu—freakin’ Lawless? I know teachers get paid so little they sometimes work different jobs, but ‘murderous thug’ is a bit extreme.”
“They made me a ‘killer’ offer. I literally couldn’t say no.” She reached her left hand up, grabbed the blue sash around her neck, and pulled it off. “You gotta believe me I’ve just been playing along, waiting for a chance to disappear.”
“Lawless killed my parents,” said Harper, her voice toneless.
Ms. Tiller’s jaw tightened like she expected to die any second.
Harper sighed. “But they also kidnapped Renee and forced her to join them.”
“I only stayed with them because I didn’t want to die.”
Even after everything that happened, pointing a gun at one of her teachers felt like a seriously wrong thing to do. Ms. Tiller had been one of the teachers she liked quite a bit, having a geeky sense of humor and being obsessed with Star Trek. The students made a joke about calling that period the ‘Tiller Wormhole’ because of time compression. It always felt like her class passed in mere seconds. Harper stared into the woman’s eyes, trying to gauge if she could trust her. She pictured her former teacher laughing after dropping a painful Star Trek pun or making a reference to Big Bang Theory.
Deacon fired his AK twice rapidly. A body thudded to the roof of the RV.
Still having a Mossberg in her face, Ms. Tiller about fainted at the unexpectedly loud gunshots.
“Okay.” Harper lowered her weapon. “You were one of my favorite teachers. This war has changed people. I hope I’m not being a gullible idiot.”
“You’re not.” Ms. Tiller put a hand to her chest, evidently trying to remember how to breathe again. “C’mon. They won’t think I’m a threat at first.” She spun around in a 180 and hurried along the trailer to a gap where it nearly touched another RV.
Harper swiveled to look at Logan and Deacon, making a hand sign she hoped they’d interpret as ‘don’t shoot into the camp.’ Their rifles would penetrate anything the campers had been made from like paper. Logan fired at someone near the front of the RV, his bullet emitting a loud clank as it glanced off hard metal, then gave her a thumbs-up.
Ms. Tiller squeezed through the space between the trailer and the second RV, entering the compound from behind at the middle. Harper gingerly stepped over the hitch and peered past the corner. Ms. Tiller hurried over to two guys taking cover at the front of the RV, still trading bullets with Lennie, Deacon, and Logan. Another two figures inside the RV huddled down out of sight, no doubt waiting for the right moment to pop up and fire at the guys.
Ms. Tiller approached the two at the front of the RV, who didn’t appear alarmed by her presence. When she got within about fifteen feet, she raised her Uzi and fired a few short bursts of automatic fire. One man fell to the left, wounded. However, the instant he hit the ground, his head jutted out past the bumper. A shot from—probably Lennie—exploded his skull all over the parking lot.
Harper rushed to the RV that served as a wall between the camp interior and where her friends hid behind the guardrail. She stopped shy of the door for fear that the guys would shoot her if they saw motion inside. At a lull in the firing, she spun into the doorway, leveling the shotgun off at the people she’d seen hunkered down—but both women she thought had been waiting in ambush were, in fact, already dead. They’d taken multiple hits from bullets the RV wall couldn’t stop. Blue sashes identified them as Lawless, both still gripped handguns, and neither appeared to be captives, so she didn’t feel too upset that they’d died. Of course, they could have been forced to join like Ms.
Tiller. No way to know, now. Then again, her former teacher hadn’t been shooting at them like these two.
“Check your fire. I’m in the camp!” shouted Harper at the window.
She swung around, aiming at the other two trailers and one RV. Nothing moved other than the flames lapping at the two roasting chickens. “Ms. Tiller, is there anyone else here?”
“Harper, just call me Sherri. It’s all gone. Who cares? I’m not your teacher anymore.” The woman sighed. “And no, that’s all of them.”
27
A Rough World
Harper stared at her once physics teacher for a while. For some reason, seeing that woman mow down lawless with an Uzi shocked her more than Mila killing two guys. That made no sense. A child having to kill should be jaw dropping.
“It’s not all gone. Just, changed. Feels weird using your first name, but if you want me to…” Harper approached the front of the RV, but didn’t lean out into view. “Clear. C’mon over. Little, umm… bloody over here. Someone make sure Daxton doesn’t see this.”
“Aww, man,” yelled the boy.
“One friendly. Please don’t shoot Ms. Til—I mean Sherri.”
Lennie came around the RV first, M4 raised. Upon seeing Harper and Ms. Tiller standing there, he relaxed, frowning at the guy with a blown-open head. “Hoo-eey, what a mess.”
Logan arrived next at a jog. He hurried up to Harper, looked her over, and exhaled in relief. “You really do have weird ideas of what to do on a date.”
She started to frown but noticed blood on his arm. “Ack! You’re hit!”
He twisted to look. A small hole a few inches above his left elbow oozed blood. “Oh, wow. I didn’t even feel that.”
Deacon entered the camp, carrying Daxton who had his eyes closed. The boy folded his arms, his lips curled in a grumpy smirk. The big guy bled from his right ear and left shoulder. Harper ran over, on the verge of freaking out.
“You’re hit, too!” She looked around for a first aid kit, as if one would appear out of thin air.
“Nah, it’s little. Ain’t nothin’ to worry about.” Deacon made a ‘pff’ sound. “Just a nine mil.”
Evergreen (Book 4): Nuclear Summer Page 23