The World That Remains (Evergreen Book 2)

by Matthew S. Cox

  She’s almost back to normal. Well… whatever counts for normal anymore.

  Jonathan walked in wearing long pajama pants, no shirt. He flopped on the couch beside Harper and resumed reading Huckleberry Finn. It surprised Harper that she sat there doing nothing but being with her family and didn’t feel bored. No television, no Fortnite, no hours-long conference phone call with her friends. No constant stream of text messages about who dated who or which teacher did what annoying thing that day.

  Between the jiu-jitsu that afternoon and a hot bath, her muscles had turned into Jell-O. Other than the lack of electric lights, the moment felt so mundane, she forgot she’d left the shotgun in the bedroom, leaning against the wall by the bed. Not until Cliff closed the book and suggested everyone go to sleep did she twitch with dread and look around in a rapid search, as if the Mossberg might randomly appear in arms’ reach.

  Jonathan stuck a bookmark between the pages and yawned.

  “Now that’s the look of an E-1 who lost their rifle,” said Cliff, grinning.

  “Oops.” Harper cringed at the glaring reminder that her life had not returned to normal.

  He patted her on the head while walking by on his way to the back bedroom. “Not that big a deal. We’re all home and I’m here. You should probably keep it nearby whenever you’re the adult in the room.”

  She couldn’t quite tell if she should feel relieved or scolded, and got up without a word, following her sisters to the bedroom they shared.

  4

  Family Time

  The next day, heavy rain saturated Evergreen.

  Mayor Ned hadn’t changed his rule about rain, so everyone stayed inside to enjoy a rainy Friday. Madison bounced out of bed, cheering the weather the way she used to cheer snow. It seemed bizarre to have rain close school, but then again, everyone remained worried about radiation.

  According to Doctor Khan and Doctor Hale—who Harper thought of as Tegan—the danger of radioactive fallout at this point should be minimal. At the last full town meeting, which had a hair over a thousand people in attendance, Doctor Khan announced that fallout radioactivity decayed much more quickly than what would linger at the site of a ground detonation. After five weeks, (and it had been more like five months), fallout would be negligible. Detonation sites, however, could remain dangerous for closer to five years.

  Still, Ned advised people to avoid rain for the time being just in case. No one would get in any real trouble for going outside, but planting the seeds of fear provided sufficient motivation.

  Board games, toys, books, and a brief ‘dance class’ kept everyone busy. Lorelei had become quite close with Madison and Jonathan, to the point that whenever one of them left the room to use the bathroom, she’d stare longingly at the hallway as though she worried they wouldn’t come back.

  Twenty minutes into playing the Busytown board game, Madison dashed off to the bathroom. Lorelei looked up with such a heartbroken expression, Harper pulled the girl into her lap and held her. In an instant, she switched from pouting to grinning.

  What happened to you before Tyler found you? Harper smiled back at her outwardly, though inside, she roiled with worry. No one had any idea where the girl had lived before the war, at least no one able to tell her. Tyler hadn’t returned to Evergreen, and wouldn’t if he wanted to remain out of jail. Lorelei didn’t seem to know the name of the city she came from, having only ever referred to it as ‘Mommy’s house.’

  Holding her still felt like Harper cradled a bundle of sticks wrapped in a blanket. At least the girl had no qualms about eating, scarfing down anything put in front of her without complaint. The only time her contagious happiness ever showed a dent was if she wound up more than ten feet away from another person.

  She lost her parents, then Tyler… who knows what happened to her out there after the bombs. Poor kid has to be terrified of being abandoned. Harper tickled her under the arm, making her giggle. Maybe she’s just super affectionate. Still too darn skinny.

  Madison ran back into the room and took her seat to resume the game. Lorelei bounced and cheered at her as if she’d been gone for weeks. The six-year-old struggled to play, needing a fair bit of coaching to take her turn and understand the rules. Harper couldn’t tell if the girl simply didn’t care if she ‘did well’ at the game, being happy to spend time with her family regardless of who won. Perhaps six was too young for that particular game, or maybe Lorelei had some type of developmental issue. Despite having platinum blonde hair, the child didn’t live up to the stereotype of blondes. She seemed more… perpetually distracted than unintelligent.

  ADD? Harper bit her lip. I really need to bring her back to Tegan, uhh, Doctor Hale.

  Lorelei cheered again at Jonathan making a simple move, but her cry of excitement broke into coughing.

  “Aww, she’s sick,” said Jonathan. “Now we’re all gonna get sick.”

  Harper froze in a panic. Tiny, malnourished child plus nuclear war equaled radiation poisoning. She’d be more vulnerable than most due to her health and lack of body mass. But the attack had happened in September, and they’d gone eight days into March. If Lorelei had received a dangerous dose of rads, she’d have already died or at least gone bald. As far as anyone knew, the worst she’d experienced had been nearly starving. Tyler had found her lying in an alley, ready to close her eyes and just give up.

  Despite what he tried to do to Madison, she couldn’t hate him. Without his meds, he’d become an entirely different person. She hated that guy, not the man he’d been before, a man who saved the life of a little girl he’d never met before.

  Lorelei hardly seemed like a kid who had lived through a horrible event. She smiled all the time, giggled at everything, had limitless energy, and hadn’t—at least that Harper had seen—ever cried. The closest she’d come was when Harper told her that Tyler had to go away. But as soon as Lorelei understood he didn’t want to leave her and had to go, she bounced back to her normal self.

  The cough didn’t sound particularly loud or worrisome, so maybe she’d merely caught a cold or sucked up some dust. They only had a fireplace for heat and the girl had a weird relationship with clothing… as in she sometimes simply appeared to forget it. Or wore only a shirt, or only pants, or only socks, like she grabbed whatever happened to be right in front of her then went on about her day. It didn’t appear to stem from any overt objection to clothing as a concept, more like she had the attention span of a goldfish and zero shame. Madison had taken on responsibility for ensuring her little sister got dressed properly.

  Much to Harper’s embarrassment, her parents had often reminded her she once had a similar mindset insofar as deciding clothing was for losers. Of course, she’d only been three at the time and grew out of it by five. That made Harper circle back to the worry that Lorelei might have some manner of developmental delay. Or, maybe they’d merely adopted a thrice-removed cousin of Luna from Harry Potter. The girl certainly appeared to exist on her own wavelength well apart from the rest of the world.

  A sudden, astoundingly loud, thunderclap shook the house.

  Jonathan’s face paled and he stared up at the roof.

  Madison screamed, crawled under the table, and started bawling.

  Lorelei glanced up with a ‘wow, that was loud’ expression, and brushed it off.

  It took Harper a second or two to convince her heart to get back to work. She’d gone from ‘the shotgun just fell over and went off right behind me’ to fearing another nuke had detonated. Judging from Madison’s scream-crying, her little sister also assumed the nukes fell again.

  Cliff peered under the table. “Easy, kiddo. Just thunder.”

  Shaking, Madison looked at him, twitching when another—much softer—thunderclap rolled overhead. Still trembling, she emerged from under the table and took her seat again, leaning against Harper, who put an arm around her.

  When they’d taken cover in the basement the morning of the attack, the distant nuclear explosions hadn’t been as loud, a
s abrupt, or as brief as the thunder of a minute ago. Harper closed her eyes, her brain putting her right back there. A silent nuclear flash had made the small basement windows glow too bright to look at. She’d huddled against her parents as a slow-building roar grew from a rumble like a distant truck passing to an earth-shaking growl. Hurricane-like wind blasted over the house soon after, along with a continuous pelting of debris that persisted for several minutes.

  She would never forget that sound as long as she lived.

  “Sorry for being a chicken,” whispered Madison. “It’s only thunder.”

  Harper squeezed her. “It’s okay. I flinched, too.”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” said Cliff in a soothing voice. “You all lived through bad times. Stuff like that leaves a mark. There’s a lot of vets who can’t handle loud noises. Fireworks, thunder, guns… grown men break down.”

  Madison nodded at him, wiping her face with her hands.

  A knock rattled the front door.

  “Ooh, someone’s in trouble,” singsonged Lorelei. “Outside inna rain.”

  Cliff got up and went to the door. He pulled it open, revealing Carrie Rangel, their next door neighbor and occasional babysitter. Her husband had been in New York when the nukes hit, and most likely got vaporized. She stepped inside, pulling a dark green poncho hood down off her strawberry blonde hair. The woman had to be on the younger side of mid-thirties to Cliff’s forty, but Harper couldn’t help but picture them together. She smiled to herself at the idea, especially given the woman risked going out in the rain.

  “Hey,” said Cliff. “Must be important if you broke the law, going out in the rain.”

  “Pff. It’s not a law, it’s a guideline. And maybe I got tired of rattling around that house alone. Besides…” She lifted the poncho out of the way and handed Cliff a big plastic container. “I brought cake.”

  “Yay!” yelled Jonathan.

  “Yay!” shouted Lorelei after him; her exuberance melted to confusion. “What’s cake?”

  Madison kept quiet, still resting her head on Harper’s shoulder.

  “How do you not know what cake is?” Jonathan blinked. “It’s only the greatest thing in the world.”

  Cliff pointed at him. “That would be coffee. Cake is a close second.”

  “Nuh-uh.” Jonathan shook his head.

  “Cake, huh?” Cliff held the container up to examine. The haze of a translucent lid reduced the form of a plain white cake to a blur.

  Carrie removed her poncho and hung it on the coat rack by the door. “Had the mix sitting in the cabinet. Finally got some eggs. Little tricky working with an improvised oven and a wood fire, but I got it to work.”

  “Fair enough. Might as well have at it. Gonna brew a pot. Welcome to it if you want some.”

  “Sure.” Carrie smiled at him and set the cake carrier down on the table.

  Lorelei scrambled up from Harper’s lap, climbed up onto the table, and walked across it to hug Carrie. “Hi!”

  “Well, hello to you, too.” Carrie scooped her up, gave her a squeeze, and set her down—on the floor.

  “I’ll get plates and stuff.” Harper stood and headed into the kitchen.

  Cliff set a pot of water on the oven rack wedged into the fireplace, then proceeded to ‘grind’ some of the coffee they found at that place by putting the beans in a plastic baggie and walloping it over and over with another pot.

  When Harper returned with plates, a knife, and forks, Carrie opened the cake and cut pieces for everyone. The scent of vanilla icing made Harper misty-eyed. She sank into her chair and stared at the slice of cake in front of her. Her friend Darci had always been a bit of a goof, even before the girl discovered marijuana. At her fourteenth birthday party, she’d somehow wound up with a dab of white icing on her nose and hadn’t noticed. It took her almost half an hour to figure out why no one could look at her without giggling.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Madison.

  “Nothing. I’m just being an emo.” Harper forced a smile and picked up her fork. “A generation from now, kids won’t know what cake even is. The icing reminded me of one of my friends. Haven’t seen her since… yeah.”

  “That’s so sad,” said Jonathan, sounding serious. “Cruel even. I mean that they won’t know what cake is.”

  Harper glanced at him.

  “It’s sad about your friend, too.” Jonathan put a hand over his heart and shook his head. “But not knowing cake is tragic.”

  She smirked, but couldn’t resist smiling at the silly face he made. The kids tore into their cake, Lorelei making all sorts of thrilled sounds as though she really never had seen it before. Madison ate hers in slow, surgical pieces, stretching it out as long as possible. Jonathan appeared to be fighting the urge to pick it up and bite it without using the fork.

  Harper set her elbow on the table, chin on her hand, and stared at her cake, thinking about Darci’s party. She remembered some stupid old song playing constantly in the background, but couldn’t remember the title or even if it had been Rolling Stones or Grateful Dead. Her friend mostly listened to her dad’s favorite music. She’d gotten a guitar for her birthday and tortured them by ‘playing’ it most of the afternoon. The more she thought about her friends flopped all over the living room making cat wails in protest of the off-key assault, the more she wanted to run to her bedroom and cry herself to sleep.

  So, she forced herself to stop remembering for now, faked a reasonably believable smile at Carrie to thank her for bringing the cake, and dug in. Cliff muttered something about not being able to eat cake without coffee, and didn’t touch his piece until he had a mug in hand. Carrie, too, sipped coffee with her cake.

  Cliff finished his round at the game, but sat out the next one. He and Carrie talked while the kids switched to Uno. Harper caught a few snippets, mostly rumors that people had seen someone or something sneaking around town at night. Some saw a giant furry monster, some a person in dark clothes. So far, nothing had been stolen or damaged as far as anyone had noticed. All the sightings had been to the north around the former golf course, exactly the area Harper had been assigned for patrol. It didn’t worry her too much since they hadn’t made her patrol in the dark.

  Though, it did make her think about creepy little Mila Cline and her talk of the Shadow Man.

  That kid’s got so many issues, her nightmares have nightmares. There’s no such thing as ghosts or shadow monsters. Harper scraped up the last bits of cake crumbs and icing on her plate. Possible she had someone in dark clothes try to grab her. She’s nine. Everything scary is a monster.

  Harper shuddered at a brief memory of her father’s death, and the horrible, howling cheers coming from the ‘blue gang.’

  People are the worst monsters of all.

  5

  Attached

  The morning brought clear skies and a stiff breeze.

  Harper wanted to take Lorelei to the med center first thing after breakfast, but lost about forty minutes chasing a little squirrel around the house. She gave up any hope of catching it under a pot, instead focusing on attempting to herd the critter toward the front or back door so it could escape outside. The whole time she ran after it, climbing over the sofa, circling the living room, going back and forth down the hallway, Cliff teasingly suggested shooting it. Madison wailed “No!” every time he brought that up.

  “Harp! Don’t let it die!” would echo in her head all day.

  Finally, she lunged just right, and the squirrel zipped out the front door that Jonathan held open while hiding behind it. After a breakfast of Lucky Charms and boxed almond milk, Harper walked with Lorelei down Hilltop Drive to the frontage road that paralleled Route 74, and up to the improvised medical center.

  When they entered the waiting room, Lorelei darted away from her, running over and hugging four men, two women, two kids, and Ruby, the woman who served as an assistant to the doctors, mostly for record keeping.

  Once everyone had been duly greeted, Lorelei re
turned to Harper’s side.

  “Well, good morning to you,” said Ruby. “I don’t have you on the sheet for anything today.”

  “Just a checkup. She’s got a bit of a cough going.” Harper patted the girl on the head. “Mostly want to make sure it’s nothing to be concerned about.”

  “All right, go on and sit down.”

  Harper took a seat, but Lorelei didn’t stay idle long. She and the other two kids there proceeded to play tag around the waiting room. Eventually, Doctor Khan summoned one of the boys and his mother into the back. Lorelei and the other girl flopped on the floor and chattered away about random things.

  Time dragged by. One by one, people went into the back and returned anywhere from ten to forty minutes later. Fortunately, none appeared in bad spirits on the way out. A little less than two hours after walking in, Tegan emerged from the hall and called Harper.

  She stood, collected Lorelei, and followed the doctor to an exam room.

  “Good morning,” said Tegan. “Are you here for anything specific?”

  “Yeah. She’s picked up a bit of a cough, still seems kinda skinny, and, umm…” Harper pulled Tegan a step or two away and whispered, explaining about the girl’s statement that she never took baths before, didn’t know what cake was, and how she became visibly distressed if Madison or Jonathan left the room even for a few minutes.

  “All right. Let’s have a look.” Tegan approached the girl, who’d been sitting patiently on the exam table.

  “Hi!” chirped Lorelei, before hugging her.

  “Hey there, cutie.” Tegan grinned. “You’re such a little ball of happiness.”

  The girl beamed.

  Harper sat in a chair, quietly observing a physical exam while trying not to fidget with the shotgun. It still felt odd to bring it into a doctor’s office, but she’d gotten used to taking it with her everywhere when she left the house. Tegan didn’t appear overly concerned while using a stethoscope, listening to the girl breathe and also appeared pleased when weighing her. Not until the twenty-minute exam ended did Harper notice the lights in the ceiling were on.