Evergreen (Book 4): Nuclear Summer

by Cox, Matthew S.

  “What’s wrong with her?” asked Curtis.

  “Check his left hand for teeth marks. I think the dead guy bit him.” Mila gestured at Curtis. “That guy helped carry the body to the farm where you found it. They didn’t even see me following them, like they didn’t see me follow them when they carried the big green box to this house last night.”

  “What?” blurted Haley. “You guys killed Wellie?”

  “I thought he killed himself because you kept calling him ‘Wellie’,” muttered Steve.

  Haley gasped. “That’s not funny!”

  Cliff lowered his left hand toward the air horn on his belt.

  “Son of a bitch!” shouted Curtis at Howie. “You said no one saw us.”

  Howie screamed unintelligible gibberish and leapt from the couch, throwing his half-finished beer at Cliff’s face before running left toward the dining room.

  “Now that’s a waste of fine beer.” Cliff shook his head, dripping.

  Curtis vaulted the arm of the sofa, heading for the hallway to the kitchen. Harper grabbed at him, but he palmed her face and shoved her off her feet. She landed on her shoulders, butt in the air, staring between her legs at the guy running to the kitchen.

  Cliff rushed after Howie, yelling, “Mila, stay put.”

  After scrambling back to her feet, Harper chased Curtis out the back door, over a deck, and down to the yard, shouting, “Don’t run. All they’re gonna do is exile you.”

  He glanced back at her, but kept going, curving around the house to the left toward the street. Maybe a hundred feet ahead of them on the road, Howie lunged at Cliff with a knife—and ended up eating pavement, his arm twisted up behind his back into the shape of an octopus tentacle. Howie screamed like he burned alive.

  Growling, Harper poured on speed and threw herself into a leap, shoving Curtis forward hard enough that he tripped. He rolled around and kicked her feet out from under her. Harper landed on her left side, barely managing to avoid coming down on her elbow and breaking it. He scrambled upright and tried to run, but she jumped into his legs, clamping her arms around his knees and dragging him to the ground.

  Curtis let out a bark like a kicked goose as he landed flat on his back.

  Harper crawled up on top of him, pulled her .45, and pointed it at his face. “Stop.”

  “Don’t shoot!” He raised his hands, gasping for breath.

  Not far behind them, Howie continued screaming, intermittently cursing at Cliff for ‘breaking his arm.’

  “What the heck did you guys kill Weldon for?” asked Harper.

  Curtis stared up at her.

  “Seriously. We don’t put people in jail, and yeah, they might execute psycho killers, but if you guys just murdered him for a specific grudge and aren’t a threat to other people, they’re most likely only going to kick you out of town. Walter hates executions.”

  “Dammit,” rasped Curtis. “I’d rather sit in jail.”

  “Jail is stupid. You take up food and don’t add anything back to the town.”

  “Whatever. Look, I didn’t kill anyone. All I did was help him carry a body around, okay? They don’t have to kick me out for that.”

  “What’s in the box worth killing over?”

  “Just bullshit. Drugs. Booze. Some assault rifles and ammo we kept for ourselves. Nothing super important.”

  Harper pushed herself up to stand, still keeping the gun on him. “If it’s not a big deal, why did Weldon die for it?”

  “Because he was gonna steal it and take off.”

  “Didn’t you just say you’d rather sit in jail than leave?” She tilted her head. “If you guys are so scared of being out there, where the heck did he expect to go?”

  Curtis pointed. “Denver. Said he knew some people with a big army or something. Lawless.”

  Harper snarled. “Are you sure he said that exact word?”

  “Pretty sure. Ask Hayley or Steve. They heard him say that… but they didn’t know Howie’s the one who killed him.”

  “If he really was going to run off and join the Lawless, you guys might not even get in trouble for the killing.”

  Curtis blinked. “Seriously?”

  “It’s a good chance. Lawless are total shitbags.” She gestured the .45 toward the road. “C’mon. get up.”

  Roy Ellis had apparently heard the commotion and come running. He and Cliff hauled Howie to his feet.

  Harper walked Curtis over to them at gunpoint. “Hey, new twist.”

  They looked at her.

  “This guy says the box is full of stuff like drugs, booze, and guns. Weldon was going to steal it from them and, get this—run off to join the Lawless.”

  “Son of a,” muttered Cliff.

  “Dude!” shouted Howie at Curtis. “Shut your face.”

  “Will you calm down?” She stared at him. “If Weldon was going to join the Lawless, killing him might not even matter. You basically protected Evergreen.”

  Howie gawked at her. “What? You’re saying… this goddamned caveman broke my freakin’ arm and it doesn’t matter? Why the hell were you up our ass for weeks over it then?”

  “Because no one said Weldon intended to join the Lawless.” She put her .45 away and folded her arms. “Is that true?”

  “Yeah,” said Howie.

  “Of course, he’s going to say that now that he knows he might not get in trouble.” Roy frowned.

  “Go ask Steve or Haley.” Howie nodded toward the house. “They won’t know it means you won’t be pissed at him being dead.”

  Roy looked at Harper. “How do you figure they protected Evergreen killing that guy?”

  “Because. Weldon worked on the farm for a couple months. He knew the layout of the town. He knew enough about us to talk the Lawless into attacking and help them hit us where it hurts.” She locked stares with Howie. “You could have just reported his plan to us and we’d probably have shot him. Why didn’t you do that?”

  Howie offered a sheepish shrug. “Footlocker full of contraband.”

  “Not sure anyone even cares about that stuff anymore.” Cliff shrugged. “Probably be more upset over the rifles and ammo than the drugs, really.”

  “Shit, my arm.” Howie whined.

  “It ain’t broken. Stop crying.” Cliff clapped him on the shoulder, making him moan. “Let’s go sort this out with Walter. Where’s the box? We should at least have a look.”

  “Back room,” said Curtis.

  They returned to the house.

  Hayley and Steve stared at Howie in shock.

  “Quick question for you two.” Cliff walked up to them. “Did either of you ever hear Weldon talking about going somewhere else or meeting up with some other group?”

  They both nodded.

  “Did he talk about it at all? Maybe refer to them by a particular name?” asked Harper.

  “Umm, yeah I think he said Lawless or something like that.” Haley scrunched up her nose. “Said they had a lot of power and he wouldn’t have to slave away on a farm there.”

  “Sounds right.” Steve scratched his butt. “I heard some bad shit about those dudes. Tried to talk him out of going. He said he’d think about it, might not go. But… got the feeling he just blew me off.”

  “Well crap.” Roy exhaled. “So it looks like you killed Weldon because he planned to steal your crap and run off, but you ended up doing Evergreen a favor by it.”

  Howie cringed, rolling his right shoulder around. “Technically, I did kill him because he was stealing from us. Caught him digging the box up in the middle of the night.”

  “Wait, Wellie was gonna bail on us and join those Lawless creeps?” Hayley fumed. “Ooh!”

  Harper cringed. Whoops. Guess she ended up liking the wrong guy.

  “Mila?” asked Harper.

  “Hmm?” The girl looked up at her.

  “Why didn’t you say anything about witnessing the killing weeks ago?”

  “Oh.” Mila smiled. “Because I didn’t actually see it. I made tha
t up.”

  Howie and Curtis stared at her.

  Cliff burst out laughing.

  “Crap, kid.” Roy shook his head. “You really, really can’t say stuff like that unless it’s true.”

  Mila pivoted to look up at Roy. “It’s true that he killed that man, but not that I saw it. When Mr. Barton and Harper were talking about it, those two guys got really nervous. Howie started sweating and he kept twitching his right eye. A repetitive tic like that is usually a sign of lying or being scared. I said that to see how he’d react. Curtis gave him away. Otherwise, I would’ve admitted making it up.”

  “Damn.” Roy whistled. “That kid is scary.”

  Mila smiled a little smile to herself.

  “You have no idea.” Harper sighed, then patted Mila on the shoulder. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” Mila shrugged. “Only had a little nightmare.”

  Harper patted her on the head. “Cool. I’m here if you ever need to talk.”

  “You patted me on the head. I am too old for such cuteness.”

  Roy snickered.

  “But you are cute.” Harper patted her on the head again.

  Mila folded her arms. “I’m scary.”

  “That kid can put a leaf knife in a one-inch target spot at twenty feet.” Cliff gave a thumbs-up. “That counts as scary.”

  “See?” Mila pointed at him.

  “Right…” Harper booped her on the nose. “Your mix of cute and scary is adorable.”

  “She’s not wrong,” said Cliff.

  “Nope.” Roy smiled.

  Mila narrowed her eyes and fake fumed, but ended up laughing.

  “C’mon. Let’s go talk to Walter.” Cliff ushered Howie and Curtis down the street.

  Harper walked behind the men, beside Mila. “You’re a little young to go looking for dangerous situations.”

  “So are you, technically.” Mila swatted at her top, trying to knock dirt away. “Besides, I have knives. And they didn’t see me.”

  “You can’t always have a knife on you.”

  Mila gave her the best ‘bitch please’ look a ten-year-old could muster.

  “Bathtub?” Harper raised both eyebrows.

  “Yeah. Well, it’s not on me, but close enough to grab.” Mila tilted her head. “Does that make me weird?”

  Harper exhaled. “If that makes you weird, I’m weird too. Have a gun in arm’s reach even when I’m in the tub.”

  “Okay. Good. I’m not a freak.”

  “That’s just the world we’ve been thrown into.” Harper looked down.

  “It’s not that bad. An’ you guys are trying to make it better.” Mila poked her in the side. “You know stuff’s messed up when the gloom faerie is telling you to have hope.”

  “Hah.” Harper ruffled her hair. “Good point.”

  “You touched my hair again.”

  “Yep.”

  “If you call me cute again, I will cut you”—Mila narrowed her eyes—“with biting sarcasm.”

  Harper laughed the rest of the way to the militia HQ.

  34

  Schrodinger’s Normal

  Per Madison’s request, the next afternoon, Harper cheated off her patrol shift a little early and went with the kids to the pool. In a strictly technical sense, she still had the Mossberg and remained inside the area of her patrol responsibility. A lime green bikini didn’t make for the best militia uniform, but it worked perfectly at the pool.

  She cooled off at a point where the water only came up to her chest, near the edge so she could jump out and grab the shotgun if needed. Naturally, Renee and Grace made the obligatory jokes about Harper being so pale she blinded them from sun glare, and hung out with her in the water. None of them minded standing immersed near the edge since the middle of the pool contained a ton of frenetic children and a handful of adults who didn’t presently need to be elsewhere.

  Darci and Elijah showed up maybe an hour after they got into the water. After guiding the boy over to the former hot tub connected to the main pool, now serving as a kiddie swim area, she stopped by the lounge chairs to remove her T-shirt and miniskirt, approaching the water in only bikini bottoms.

  Renee blushed, despite there being two other women swimming topless. “Darce, you’re seriously taking the hedonism a bit far. Society hasn’t broken down that much yet. Put on a top.”

  “Girls only need tops when they’re old enough to have something to put in them,” said Mila as she swam by.

  Harper clamped a hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing.

  “Ooh, need some aloe for that burn.” Grace made a hissing noise.

  Darci waved a middle finger at Mila, not that the girl saw it. She lowered herself to sit on the edge of the pool and slid in. “You guys just don’t get it. Boys can go topless and no one cares. It’s just the patriarchy controlling us.”

  Renee and Harper exchanged ‘here we go again’ looks.

  Ordinary conversation bounced back and forth among them for a while, initially about Darci ‘adopting’ Elijah. Other than Anne-Marie sending Summer Vasquez to check on them every couple days to make sure she wasn’t screwing up the big-sister-slash-mom thing too badly, it seemed to be going well. Harper thought it worked out for both of them, since looking after the boy had the effect of Darci toning down how much weed she smoked. Impressively, Darci even kept an eye on the boy in case he climbed over the wall into the deeper pool.

  Renee rambled about making clothes while Grace caught them off guard by saying their new reality didn’t bother her as much as she expected it to since learning to sorta be a doctor ended up as way more rewarding than attending a super expensive school picked by her parents to study a major picked by her parents and get a job picked by her parents.

  Harper chatted, observed the kids playing a bizarre version of water polo that had no rules or net, and kept an eye on their surroundings. Except for the background worry that someone might show up and start trouble, the scene around her could have been any other summer in her life at the community pool.

  “Wow, this feels so bizarre,” said Harper.

  “What, trying not to look at Darce’s boobs?” asked Renee.

  Darci thrust one fist into the air. “Overthrow the patriarchy!”

  “Heh. No, I mean, how abnormal and normal it feels right now to be in a pool.” Harper sighed. “I could close my eyes and pretend the war didn’t even happen.”

  Grace put an arm around her. “You say that every time we come here.”

  “I know. It just feels that way every time we’re here. Gotta find normal when I can.”

  “Heard you got the killer. So we’re all safe now.” Renee patted her on the shoulder. “Nice work.”

  “Wasn’t me really. Mila found him… and get this—Weldon, the victim, was going to leave Evergreen and join the Lawless.”

  Renee shivered. “Holy crap…”

  “Wow.” Darci blinked. “So, like what did they do there? Murderer, but the vic was a piece of crap.”

  Grace opened her mouth to say something, but a volleyball bounced off her face emitting a hollow, rubbery thud and knocking her underwater.

  “Sorry!” shouted Noah Bowden. The boy turned fourteen a couple months ago. “Didn’t mean to send it over there.”

  “Not a problem.” Darci grabbed the floating ball and chucked it to him.

  Grace resurfaced. “Ouch.”

  “Yeah, you should have seen the look on Walter’s face when we told him. So, they don’t really like putting people in jail because then they just take up food and don’t do anything for the community. Howie killed a guy who could have helped the Lawless plan a raid on Evergreen. They ended up giving him an ‘official warning,’ whatever that means. Said he should have reported the intent to join the Lawless to the militia.”

  “So…” Darci blinked. “Dude kills a dude and gets off with a warning?”

  Harper shrugged. “Yeah. Basically.”

  “The dead guy was stealing from him, too. W
alter sorta hand-waved it off as ‘self-defense.’” Harper shook her head. “That’s kinda bogus because Howie ambushed Weldon from behind. No defense involved.”

  “Except for the roundabout defense of the whole town.” Grace held up one finger.

  “Guess this Walter guy doesn’t think the killer’s a threat to anyone else,” asked Darci.

  Harper held her hands up in a ‘what can ya do’ gesture. “Basically. They confiscated some kind of drug, heroin I think, let him keep the weed and other minor stuff, and took the military style rifles. The killing happened over that stuff, so it’s unlikely Howie would randomly kill anyone else.”

  “Cool. I hated thinking there might be a psycho murderer around.” Renee overacted a sigh of relief.

  “So…” Renee smiled. “Summer at the pool again. So weird not thinking about school or college at all.”

  “Yeah,” said Harper. “No doubt.”

  Grace pointed. “It’s even weirder that Lorelei still has her swimsuit on.”

  Harper laughed. “Give her an hour.”

  “She’s a true nature child.” Darci smiled. “Wish I could get away with that.”

  “You don’t have the nerve.” Renee gasped.

  “Don’t I?”

  Harper grabbed Darci’s arms before she could take her bottoms off. “We believe you. And it’s not so much that she’s a ‘nature child.’ She’s still underweight. Those bottoms are going to fall off her and she just doesn’t care. Keeps on going like it’s no big deal to run around bare ass naked.”

  “Depending on where you are, it isn’t.” Grace shrugged. “Certain tribes in the Amazon region do that all the time… assuming the war didn’t kill them off.”

  “That’s the only way we’re going to survive this new world.” Darci smiled like an old wise woman.

  “What, going naked?” Harper blinked.

  Darci laughed. “No, dumbass. I mean not caring. What happens, happens. Jump in the pool and your pants come off, just keep on keepin’ on. World blows up to nuclear fire, just keep on going. Stress is pointless. It does nothing but damage you on a cellular level.”

  “I swear, if she starts singing Let it Go,” mumbled Renee.

  Harper sighed. “Sure. ‘Don’t stress.’ Easier said than done.”