The World That Remains (Evergreen Book 2)

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Oh, holy shit,” whispered Harper. “There’s power!”

  Tegan glanced over at her. “Yes, been online for about four days. It’s only the medical center at the moment as a test. Jeanette’s trying to work out some kinks with the relay or fuses… something like that. Prone to overloading and we’ve been browning out a couple times a day.”

  “Cool. Any idea if they’ll be able to get it to the rest of the town?”

  “No idea. Much of the wiring here is underground, which let it survive. But… some of the component boxes above ground had issues. I think she said all the transformers fried.”

  She stared up at a working light bulb and felt far too much like a primitive tribal girl worshipping a magic object for her liking. It had only been six months since she lived in the modern world. A working light shouldn’t be so earth-shattering.

  Tegan proceeded to talk to Lorelei for a while, having a conversation with her that included questions about how she felt about people she loved, people she didn’t like, strangers, and so on, all of whom she thought deserved hugs. The doctor tried to ask about her parents, but the girl didn’t say much beyond ‘Mommy was always mad at me’ or seeming confused when asked about things her parents would say or do with her. Lorelei’s smile went away whenever she talked of her mother. She also didn’t appear overly affected by losing her. The child didn’t appear to know what happened to Mommy other than ‘she went away,’ offering shrugs and ‘I dunnos’ when asked if her mother had been hurt. Regarding her time between the ‘sky burning’ and Tyler finding her, she said, “I was alone and didn’t have food.” From what little the doctor coaxed out of her, it sounded as though she roamed the empty neighborhood where she’d lived, unsure where all the people went. She’d foraged food from bags of chips or cookies she found in houses, but eventually couldn’t find any more when she got to a scarier part of town.

  Once out of questions, Tegan made a ‘wait here a sec’ gesture at Harper, and brought Lorelei out of the room. Her distant voice asked Ruby to watch the child for a moment, then she returned, easing the door shut.

  Harper looked up with dread radiating from her eyes. “How bad is it?”

  “First of all, relax. She’s probably come down with a mild cold. I didn’t hear anything alarming in there, though she’s got a bit of mucous buildup. Has her coughing been severe or has she complained of a sore throat?”

  “No… but I’m not sure she would even if she had one.”

  “All right. I think there’s some children’s cough syrup left. It’s a gentle expectorant, so it should help break that stuff up.”

  Harper nodded.

  “Physically, she’s doing well. Lorelei’s still a few pounds shy of where a girl her age should be, but she’s also under-sized, short for her age.”

  “Yeah, first I saw her, I thought she was like four.”

  “What concerns me more, though… I believe she’s suffering from attachment disorder. She’s excessively friendly with total strangers. My guess is that she experienced moderate to severe neglect early in life.”

  “Early?” Harper sat up straight, eyebrow raised. “She’s only six.”

  “Yes, early. Our attachment processes develop between the ages of one and three. You saw her mood flatten when talking of her mother, and she’s never said anything about a father. I bet she was underweight even before the war, probably had a distant single mother who provided only the bare minimum of care. Whether the woman died or simply abandoned her after the attack, I can’t say.”

  Harper choked up.

  “Of course, I’m a medical doctor, not a psychiatrist. This is my educated guess. It’s also possible her mood shift when discussing her mother came from watching her die and nearly starving to death after being orphaned or abandoned. Not wanting to talk about her mother could be repressed memory as easily as there not being any real memories to talk about if the woman had been neglectful.”

  “Is it bad? What should we do?”

  Tegan folded her arms. “Usually, from what I can remember, the best treatment option for it is simply changing caregivers to someone who is attentive to the child’s needs. That’s already happened for her. She needs stability, and you’re giving her that. So, what you need to do is basically continue as you are.”

  “Okay.”

  “The worst risk is her failing to recognize a threatening adult as a danger. She loves everyone and may lack the capacity to differentiate the level of threat most children are able to pick up on.”

  “Okay, so… keep an eye on her.”

  “Yeah, basically. Health wise, she’s improved considerably from when I first saw her. So, you and Cliff are doing a great job so far.”

  Harper slouched in relief. “Cool.”

  “Oh, I’ve been trying to talk Ned into making a trip to Denver to raid hospital stores for meds. I’d like to gather as much as we can before it goes bad or other people get to it. He’s been hesitant about the idea since you mentioned that gang. I’m hoping those idiots won’t go ransacking a hospital’s pharmacy, as the average person doesn’t even really think about there being a large store of drugs at a hospital. You say drugs, they think ‘pharmacy.’”

  “Umm. Denver’s gone bad. I dunno if that’s a good idea. We’d definitely have to shoot our way in. I don’t know how many of those jackasses are there.” She fidgeted. “But it’s been a couple months.”

  “Ned keeps giving me the ‘I’ll think about it’ answer, which is more or less a ‘not now.’ It’s important to Evergreen that we maintain a stock of medical supplies. I realize the medicine won’t last forever since all the producers are gone, but the more we can stockpile, the better. Think you could put in a sympathetic word with him for me?”

  She shivered, figuring asking him about it would all but guarantee she’d wind up having to go on the scavenging trip. But, medicine could make the difference between any of her siblings—or herself—living or dying at some point. “Okay.”

  “Don’t sound so confident.” Tegan winked and patted her on the back. “It’s fine if you don’t want to.”

  Harper steeled herself. “No, you’re right. We need meds. It’s something we have to do. I’ll mention it next time I see him.”

  “Wonderful. Thank you.” Tegan hugged her.

  “Thanks for checking on Lori.”

  “My pleasure. Everything okay with you?”

  She shrugged. “Yeah, basically. How long am I going to randomly think about my parents or friends and get sad?”

  “Oh, probably for a while. That’s normal. Gets me too.”

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  “Anytime.”

  Harper left the exam room, collected Lorelei from Ruby, and followed the giggling child on the run back home.

  6

  That Girl

  The remainder of the day struck Harper as eerily normal—other than the lack of electricity.

  After lunch, the kids went out to explore the area with Becca, one of Madison’s friends from before everything went crazy. The little blonde girl no longer looked like she’d crawled out of a warzone and seemed pretty much the same as Harper remembered her. Although both of Becca’s parents remained alive, well, and here in Evergreen with her, it didn’t seem right that she would be so… unaffected. Hell, at seventeen, Harper still randomly cried over having to abandon her childhood home. She hoped Becca really had coped with everything and didn’t simply bury it all and it would crush her later.

  Maybe being reunited with Madison had helped her, too.

  Becca had turned ten on February 4th. Her parents threw a small birthday party for her with a box of Devil Dogs scavenged from Walmart standing in for the cake. Madison’s tenth birthday had come and gone October 9th while they’d been hiding with their parents in the basement, not quite a month after the nuclear strike. No one had even seemed to notice, not even Madison.

  Whenever Harper had nothing to think about, she sometimes debated giving her sister a late birthday
party… but always chickened out. It might remind her of losing Mom and Dad and send her off to cling to that damn phone again. When she turned eleven next October, then she’d see about doing something special.

  She’ll be eleven… she should be going to the mall and dance class and Starbucks, having people in line behind her ask each other why that little kid is drinking coffee. Harper let out a long sigh to keep herself from crying. On the positive side, she won’t have any student loans chasing her into her forties… and neither will I.

  Being home with nothing specific to do on a Saturday felt strange. Harper had been working after school since junior year, so the weekend hadn’t truly been a day off in a while. Even without a crummy minimum-wage summer job, she often struggled with so much homework that the whole weekend passed in a blur, leaving little time to do anything fun. Even her mother had started complaining about how much the teachers piled on her, and that had been without any AP classes.

  Another part of the odd sense came from still having a job after society collapsed. At least for the time being, she had no official responsibilities with the militia on weekends—besides responding to emergency calls via air horn. So, even after the end of everything, somehow, her weekend still felt like a weekend.

  Cliff, thus far, went out to do militia stuff every day of the week without any days off. Sometimes he patrolled, sometimes he’d coach other militia people on hand-to-hand combat techniques. But then again, he couldn’t exactly sit around the house and relax watching television. Not to mention, most of what they did with the militia involved wandering around or standing ready, not actual work.

  It bugged her that the kids had gone off out of sight, though their not-too-distant voices echoed among the trees, the kids yelling back and forth to each other, pretending to be superheroes or something to that effect. Harper flopped on the couch and stared at the dead light on the living room ceiling, daydreaming of the working one she’d seen at the medical center. At the realization she wanted electricity back more desperately than she’d wanted a car of her own when the world had been fine, she curled up and wept over her parents.

  She hadn’t gotten to spend nearly enough time with Mom during the past two years. It seemed like the woman had been in a perpetual state of driving Madison somewhere: dance class, school events, a brief stint doing gymnastics, soccer games, Starbucks, and so on. Whenever Mom had time, Harper had been buried under homework, stuck at actual work, or sleeping. Her memories of life at home all took on a sense of powerful sadness no matter how happy they had been. Everything reminded her of what she’d lost. She’d always joked that she’d be forty, married with three kids, and still calling Mom four times a week to ask her what to do.

  I’d give anything to be able to hear her voice again.

  She couldn’t even remember what the last thing her mother had said was, vaguely recalling a not-quite-argument with Madison about laundry two hours before the blue gang came to loot the house.

  Up until the war, Harper hadn’t enjoyed a Saturday with nothing to do since she’d been fourteen. She rolled flat on the couch, staring up at the ceiling while her mind replayed old memories of hanging out with her friends when they’d all been too young for summer jobs. Life had snuck up on them. None of her crew realized the ‘summer of fourteen’ would be the last time in their lives that fun would be their only responsibility. The summer after sophomore year, they’d all gotten part time jobs. Of course, they still hung out, but not as often.

  Now, she’d probably never see them again.

  Harper closed her eyes and sighed. Same thing would’ve happened next year anyway when college started… Dad hasn’t seen his high school friends in forever. She tried to reframe her memories of having so much free time with her friends in a ‘that part of my life was over anyway’ happy/nostalgic way, but only wound up crying more—as though her whole crew had died.

  She drifted into a nap, waking to the kids’ voices close by the front of the house. From the sound of it, they’d found a rope or cable and used it as a jump rope. Jonathan, ever the sport, joined in. Harper somewhat pitied him for being stuck around three girls, but the kid had chosen dance class, so maybe he didn’t mind. He adored spending time with Cliff doing survivalist stuff, too.

  Becca’s voice filtered into her awareness from the general din of loud children outside. “… she said someone was following her home from school…”

  Harper stood and hurried over to the front window, peering out at the kids.

  “Emmy still thinks the sky fire’s gonna come back.” Jonathan’s pants slipped down when he landed, causing him to grab them and stumble over the jump rope. “She’s scared of everything.” He tightened his belt and took the end of the rope from Becca.

  They’re all getting thinner. Harper scratched at her stomach, which grumbled in response. She really wanted a burger… or something. Pizza. Chinese take-out, Indian, hell, even the sorry excuse for chicken parmesan her school cafeteria served would’ve been like filet mignon.

  “If you saw people evaporate, you would be scared of everything, too,” said Madison barely over a whisper.

  Jonathan and Madison spun the clothesline for Becca to jump while Lorelei cheered them on.

  “How did”—Becca jumped—“she see people”—she jumped again—“evap’rate?”

  “Out a window, I think,” said Madison. “Like, the bomb light came from behind or to the side of her building so she didn’t look straight at it, but someone outside stood right in it.”

  “Eww,” said Lorelei.

  “That would’a still blinded her. I think she’s making it up.” Jonathan scratched his head with his free hand.

  Harper opened the door. “Guys? What did Emmy say about being followed?”

  “Just that she thought someone was behind her, but when she looked, she didn’t see anyone.” Madison shrugged. “Mila said it was the Shadow Man.”

  “Everything’s the Shadow Man.” Jonathan shook his head.

  Madison made a ‘yeah, no kidding’ face at him.

  “Shadow Man’s just lonely. He needs a hug.” Lorelei wrapped her arms around herself.

  Harper bit her lip.

  “It’s not real. Mila’s loopy,” said Becca.

  “Like I was.” Madison looked down.

  Jonathan grimaced. “You weren’t loopy. You were so sad you didn’t know how to deal with it.”

  “Maybe Mila’s the same way. I had a phone; she has the Shadow Man.” Silent tears ran down Madison’s face, but her expression remained neutral.

  Lorelei zipped over and hugged her.

  Madison giggled, already seeming over her sad moment.

  Harper sat on a flimsy white plastic chair at the edge of the small concrete slab serving as their house’s front porch. A wooden split rail fence surrounded a front yard two feet lower than Hilltop Drive, making it feel a bit like a bunker. It unsettled her that she thought of the fence as getting in the way of using the dirt wall beneath the road as a covered position to shoot from. Still, if trouble came home, the kids could dive flat to the ground and have a decent amount of protection from stray bullets… at least until the world ran out of ammunition.

  She spent the rest of the afternoon watching over the kids while worrying if Emmy had actually seen someone or jumped at ghosts. The war may have destroyed many things, but it wouldn’t have eliminated creeps. A possibility existed that one or more of the new people to arrive in Evergreen over the past few months presented a threat to kids. Even the blue gang, bastards they were, would have let Madison get old enough before doing anything like that to her. One of them even said it outright. Granted, she didn’t exactly trust idiots who ran around abducting people and looting. She certainly didn’t trust anyone affiliated with the group responsible for her parents’ death.

  “From now on, I see a blue sash, I kill the bastard wearing it,” muttered Harper.

  “Tombstone?” asked Jonathan.

  “She’s not quoting a movie. She�
�s serious,” deadpanned Madison.

  A little color faded from Jonathan’s face.

  “I was thinking about that movie, though. Pretty sure the sashes were red in the film.” Harper stood. “Gonna get started on dinner.”

  The kids made happy noises in response to that announcement.

  Harper went inside to the kitchen and looked over the cabinets, taking stock of what she had to work with. “Looks like soup surprise… again.”

  She opened a few cans of soup, mixing chicken rice with chicken noodle, adding one can of plain chicken broth, another can of sliced mushrooms, one box of dried macaroni, and a can of green beans. They still had some of the healthy bread left. Cliff’s explanation that people ‘way back when’ routinely cut mold off bread and ate the clean parts didn’t make it any less gruesome to think about. However, she would much rather eat the untainted parts of a moldy bread loaf than bugs or grubs. And, as hungry as she’d been for the past few weeks, slicing the green bits off didn’t bother her anymore. Fresh, unspoiled bread felt like a long lost luxury item.

  After adding some firewood to the cinder block grill, she built a little stack of kindling, then scraped some shavings off a hunk of fatwood, making a neat pile of basically sawdust. That done, she took the ferrocerium rod and scratched the knife down its length. Each pass spat sparks onto the kindling, which eventually developed a flame that she nursed into a fire. Despite understanding the chemistry of the rod, it still felt like magic to scratch metal with metal and make a shower of white-hot sparks.

  Soon after setting the pot on the grill, a distant woman’s voice called Becca home. The kids pretended not to hear her for a few minutes until the girls’ mother started to sound worried.

  “Coming!” shouted Becca.

  The kids’ earlier talk of someone watching them made Harper want to escort the girl home. Better paranoid than wrong. She grabbed the shotgun and dashed out front. “Jon, would you keep an eye on the grill for a bit?”