The World That Remains (Evergreen Book 2)

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Dude, calm down!” yelled the younger man. “Please don’t shoot. There’s a child in here. We’ll ask for a different place.”

  The wailing of a toddler started up inside.

  Harper crept to end of the fence and took cover, aiming around the corner at a fiftyish man in a button-down shirt and jeans on the porch with a huge handgun pointed at the doorway. Disheveled wavy black hair and a beard with hints of silver in it gave him a wild look, but then again, most guys sported that style now.

  She moved her finger onto the trigger and yelled, “Drop the gun!”

  The man jumped, then turned his head toward her and went wide-eyed… but continued holding his weapon up.

  Answering pips from air horns came from the distance at varying degrees of loudness.

  “Stop pointing a goddamned gun into a house with a two-year-old,” yelled Harper. “Now!”

  “Who the hell are you? Damn looters should be shot.” The man glared at her.

  “Drop the goddamned gun now or I’m going to drop you. There’s a little kid in there.” Harper focused all her attention on his gun hand. Please put it down. Please don’t make me shoot you.

  He stared at her for a long moment. Eventually, he seemed to get the feeling she really would fire, and tossed the handgun into the bushes to the right of a path connecting the porch to a driveway—which held a silver BMW sedan she didn’t remember seeing before.

  “All right.” The man kept staring at her. “The hell is going on here, kid?”

  Marcie Chapman shouted, “You see anything?” a short ways off to the left.

  “Here!” yelled Harper, stepping out from behind the corner, keeping her weapon trained on the guy. “Evergreen militia. Kevin and Diane aren’t looters. They’re survivors. We all are.”

  “They’re in my damn house,” said the guy.

  “We can get a different one.” Kevin stepped out onto the porch. The scrawny twenty-ish guy only had boxers on, his hair wild, one eye not quite open… like he’d gone from deep sleep to panic in a matter of seconds.

  “Militia? What the hell is that nonsense?” The guy took a step toward Harper. “What the devil are those people doing in my house?”

  Marcie ran out into view from the opposite corner, holding her Sig 9mm in a two-handed grip, but not quite sure who to point it at. “Harp, what’s going on?”

  “This guy was threatening the Parkers. Gun’s in the bushes.”

  The man held his arms out, gesturing at the building. “I’m Al Gonzalez, and this is my damn house. I came home and found the lock broken and looters inside.”

  Harper lowered the shotgun a little. “Most of the houses here were abandoned. Homes are assigned by the town manager. The Parkers can go live in a different empty house. There’s no reason for anyone to get pissed off enough to start shooting. In case you missed it, we had a nuclear war.”

  “There’s no looters around here,” added Marcie while retrieving the dropped gun. She eyed the car. “Damn… that thing still run?”

  “Yeah.” Al sighed. “I just about had enough gas to make it back here, but it doesn’t have much left.”

  “How?” Harper relaxed a bit more since the guy didn’t appear likely to become violent. “I mean, how is it still working? All the cars are dead… and that’s a nice one with a lot of electronics.”

  Al shrugged. “Lucky I guess. Underground parking garage must’ve shielded it. One hell of a ride getting back here from L.A.”

  “Los Angeles? Are you serious?” Marcie gawked. “It’s still standing?”

  “Not really. LA is one giant pile of debris. I was out there on a business trip, attending a conference. West Coast had a little more warning than New York, but not much. Bunch of us made it to the hotel basement before the shit hit the fan.”

  Ken Zhang jogged into view, hurrying over to stand beside Harper. “What’s the emergency?”

  She re-explained the situation to him.

  Diane Parker walked out, carrying her son, Kendall. The two-year-old had stopped scream-crying and gazed around at everyone. “We don’t have much stuff, but we’ll get our things out.”

  “What happened to the woman who was here?” asked Al. “My wife.”

  “Probably went with the evacuation when the Army came through.” Ken took the handgun Marcie offered, examining it. “Hmm, a .45 extended barrel. You don’t look like a long-slide sort of guy.”

  “Ehh.” Al shrugged. “Some, uhh, things happened between here and L.A. Took it from a gentleman who attempted to steal my car. Like that little sweetie said, there’s been a nuclear war.”

  Harper’s eyebrows drifted closer. Little sweetie? Seriously?

  “The Army? Christ…” Al shook his head. “Where the heck would they have taken her?”

  “Somewhere up north as far as we’ve heard from a couple people who’ve returned.” Marcie holstered her 9mm. “Mayor Ned’s policy is to let anyone who lived here before keep their houses. We’re using the school up the road still, so anyone with children gets assigned to this area first.”

  “Ehh. Place has room. I don’t mind. What’s an old man like me gonna do with all this house alone?” Al scratched his head.

  “I’m not sure I feel comfortable sharing a house with a man who almost shot me,” said Diane.

  “It’s a new world.” Kevin chuckled, then yawned. “You don’t really know a guy ’til they’ve pointed a gun in your face.”

  Diane glared at her husband with ‘are you serious’ practically written across her forehead.

  Al hooked his thumbs in his pants pockets and gazed off at the north. “Besides, I might go try to find the old woman. No need shooing them out if I’m just gonna go off and chase my own tail.”

  The Parkers got into a murmured conversation. Kevin figured he would have reacted pretty much the same as this guy had the war not happened and they came home to find strange people in their house. After a brief back-and-forth, Diane relented, mostly out of not wanting to go through the labor of relocation.

  “Call it a misunderstanding then.” Kevin offered a hand.

  Al shook it. “Yeah. Sorry about that. Been a rough couple of months.” He glanced at Ken. “You folks gonna keep that, or mind if I take it back?”

  “I don’t think it’ll be a problem,” said Harper, “But you should come with us first. All new arrivals need to go through a medical check and talk to the mayor.”

  “To get back to my own house?” asked Al.

  “I don’t make the rules; I’m just a cop.” Harper gestured to the left. “It doesn’t take long. Only a routine check.”

  He chuckled, shaking his head. “You’re a little young to be a cop.”

  “I got a nuclear exemption to the four-year degree requirement.”

  “All right, fine.” Al rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Whatever. Where is it?”

  “By 74 in an office building that used to have a doctor’s place,” said Harper. “They’ve expanded the clinic into the entire building.”

  “We moved some stuff over from the Evergreen Medical Center behind the big R.” Ken tucked Al’s .45 in his belt and started walking. “C’mon.”

  Al grumbled, following them. “Why not just use the medical center?”

  “None of the machines do anything without power. The building they set up in had some kinda medical stuff in it before, but the rest of it was offices. They’ve kinda taken over the whole building now for the town’s clinic. It’s close to the tennis courts they’re using for solar panels, which makes it easier to run power there.” Harper considered shouldering the shotgun, but kept holding it since she didn’t quite trust letting her guard all the way down yet.

  “If they ever get the power grid back online, they might relocate to the old place since it’s bigger,” said Ken.

  While they walked across town, Al answered Ken’s questions, telling them that LA had been hit hard. He’d seen dozens of people sick with radiation burns, futilely trying to cling to life despit
e there being no real medical care left. He’d been a corpsman in the Navy back in the early Nineties, and spent the past twenty some years working as a sales consultant for a company that made medical implants. It had been a long time since he actively tried to provide any sort of direct care, but he did what he could in the hotel basement until the rads decayed as low as they’d be likely to get any time soon, at least enough for him to risk going home. Surprisingly, he hadn’t seen any trace of military personnel trying to organize any sort of evacuation and figured LA ‘glowed’ too much for them to bother even trying.

  “Eh, I probably soaked up enough radiation to chop fifteen years off my life. At least it’s the adult diaper nursing home years I’m gonna lose.” Al chuckled.

  This guy should adopt Mila. They’re both way morbid.

  Harper spent the rest of the walk to the doctor’s office sick to her stomach with worry that she or Madison might develop cancer. No nuke had gone off close enough to Lakewood to flatten any of the houses there, though most had scorching on their south faces. Some had structural damage from a blast wave as well as falling debris. She didn’t know much about nuclear bombs, but that did seem a little too intense for a detonation as far away as Colorado Springs. She accepted the rumors had been wrong, and other smaller warheads really did come down much closer than she’d previously believed.

  When they reached Route 74, escorting a newcomer to the med center made her think back to Darnell walking with them their first day here. She’d been so full of hope at finally reaching the ‘safe haven’ of Evergreen she’d been dreaming about, it hadn’t even occurred to her to feel like a suspect in custody. Perhaps she hadn’t been, but at that moment, she sure felt like a cop escorting someone who’d done something bad.

  She waited in the med center lobby making small talk with Ruby while Doctor Khan took Al into an exam room for the standard checkup. Her anxiety spiked when the woman mentioned Jax Davis had come in three days ago for treatment of a nasty scrape on his shin. The seven-year-old told Dr. Hale that he’d fallen while running away from ‘a monster in the woods’ that tried to sneak up on him.

  “What?” blurted Harper. “Someone tried to grab him and no one thought to tell anyone?”

  Ruby blinked in surprise. “We thought the boy was playing. Monsters aren’t real, you know. Are you doing all right, dear? You seem stressed.”

  “Harper?” Ken got up and walked over. “What’s up?”

  She told him about what Emmy and Mila said, and that she’d heard someone sneaking around but didn’t see anything. Both Ruby and Ken appeared concerned.

  “What did he say the monster looked like?” asked Harper.

  “Oh, I’m not sure exactly. Some kind of shadow with eyes. He explained it to Dr. Hale and she mentioned it to me in passing. Thought he had a vivid imagination.”

  “Is Tegan here?” Harper peered down the hall to the back.

  “Yes. Where else would she be? We live in this building, you know.” Ruby pointed up at the working lights. “Never thought I’d love sleeping at the office, but it’s wonderful to have such a short commute.”

  Ken laughed.

  “Someone calling me?” asked Tegan, poking her head out from a doorway a short distance deeper into the building.

  “Yeah. Quick question.” Harper waved at her to come closer, and repeated her worries about what the boy saw once the doctor joined them at the front desk.

  “Hmm.” Tegan tapped her fingers on her arm for a moment in thought. “Well, Jax said he saw a ninja monster. A big, black figure with a metal claw.”

  “A claw? Singular?” asked Harper.

  “That’s what he said. I thought they were playing a game with imaginary monsters and he hurt himself tripping over a root. Suppose it could have been a black bear. They sometimes stand up on their hind legs. A boy could’ve mistaken a bear for a giant person.”

  Ken rubbed his chin with a playful smile. “Hmm. All black person? Could be a shadow man.”

  “Stop.” Harper poked him. “I don’t for a minute think that’s real. And we shouldn’t pick on Mila. She’s… not well.” Harper looked at Tegan. “Any chance that poor kid might be schizophrenic?”

  “Again, I’m no psychiatrist, but if I had to offer as professional an opinion as I could, I’d say that’s unlikely. She doesn’t have any of the associated behaviors. Many children have imaginary friends, hers just happens to be more of a frenemy.”

  “Why would a kid imagine that there’s someone out there trying to hunt them down and kill them?” Ken whistled. “That’s really kinda weird.”

  “That poor girl.” Ruby clucked her tongue. “I was talking with Michelle Butler the other day, the woman who’s looking after her. Says Mila wakes up most nights with bad dreams, but won’t make a sound. Apparently, the child is afraid the Shadow Man will punish her if she’s loud.”

  “If I had to offer a guess,” said Tegan, “I’d say someone may have attempted to kidnap her before and it left a mark.”

  Harper fidgeted at the Mossberg’s strap. “Those idiots tried to kidnap me a couple times and I’m not jumping at shadows.” She managed a weak smile. “Much.”

  “You’re also basically an adult. Though, I suppose it’s possible she had been abducted and managed to escape. That could explain the fear of making any noise at night. She… well, I didn’t find any evidence of assault. When she first arrived, the poor girl had numerous cuts, bruises, and abrasions, but I attributed them to climbing around ruins. I suppose it’s possible some of those bruises might have come from physical abuse.”

  “Maybe she just watched someone get taken and never saw them again?” asked Ken.

  “Possible.” Tegan furrowed her brow. “But, Harper, you’re saying you think there really is someone out there who might be a threat to kids?”

  “I don’t know.” She paced, breathing into her hands. “Sounds creepy, but sneaking around spying on people doesn’t necessarily prove they’re going to hurt anyone.”

  “No, but it damn sure implies it.” Ken eyed the door. “It’s worth at least some extra eyes on the area for a while.”

  “Yeah,” said Harper. She stood a little taller, relieved that they didn’t think her ‘crying wolf.’ The sense of vindication bolstered her confidence.

  An exam room door opened, admitting Al Gonzalez into the hallway along with Dr. Khan. The men shook hands, seeming in good spirits. The doctor went left into the back of the building.

  Al walked up to the group, waving a scrap of paper around. “Okay, I got my permission slip. Now what?”

  Harper felt too awkward to give orders to a man older than her father. “I’ll show you where the mayor’s office is. You can talk to Anne-Marie about the house situation.”

  “Bit of a runaround, but I suppose it’s a small price to pay for not having to deal with property taxes anymore.”

  “Heh, yeah.” Ken laughed. “People don’t seem to care much about money these days at all.”

  “Can’t eat it. Can’t drink it. Won’t keep you warm,” said Ruby. “Saw some kids tossing credit cards like them ninja star things. Least they still got some use.”

  Everyone chuckled.

  Harper led Mr. Gonzalez out to the highway and down to the next cluster of buildings, a former office plaza that had become the town seat. She introduced him to Anne-Marie, and he re-explained his entire story about being in LA. Harper cringed at the end when he had a minor meltdown about ‘little girls running around with cannons’ and people just taking houses willy nilly. He didn’t come off as barking at Anne-Marie personally, more at the situation, but the former airline executive didn’t bat an eyelash at his histrionics.

  “I’d say welcome to Evergreen, but you’re already a resident.” Anne-Marie gave him an iron smile. “However, I must ask that you respect our militia the way you would formerly have treated the sheriff’s department deputies. Most of the militia we have now used to work for them. I understand you lived here before the war, but t
imes have changed. If you can’t handle that, you’re free to settle elsewhere.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Al waved her off. “Not used to having kids wave shotguns in my face.”

  “You were pointing a gun at the Parkers and shouting,” said Harper. “Would ‘umm, excuse me sir’ really have worked?”

  He chuckled at her. “Maybe coming from you, it would have. Look. I’d just driven through hell to get back here and I found people in my house. Not like you’ve got signs up explaining everything. How would you have reacted?”

  “Perhaps considering that civilization is somewhere between gone and knocked back a few centuries, with a little more restraint.” Anne-Marie cocked an eyebrow. “Or did the Parkers threaten you with a loaded toddler?”

  “Hey, can’t be too careful with them little buggers. They’re prone to randomly exploding,” said Al. “Okay. Fair point. Used to get all sorts of worked up at slow drivers, but idiots in Civics don’t have anything on frickin’ airplanes crashed into the damn highway. Damn interstate was one giant mess. If I never see another FedEx plane again, it’ll be too soon.”

  “You won’t,” said Harper. “They’re all gone.”

  Al’s irritated expression gave way to a mixture of shock and regret.’ “Yeah, well… umm…”

  At a nod from Anne-Marie, Ken handed him his .45. “Careful with this thing, huh?”

  “Thanks. Sorry.” He tucked it into an improvised holster on his belt.

  Mayor Ned walked out of his office. “Oh, Al… hey. How goes it?”

  “Who died and made you mayor of this place?” asked Al, grinning.

  “Uhh, the last mayor.” Ned chuckled. “Actually, I think she left town when the Army evacuated.”

  Harper stood there like a fifth wheel while the men got into a familiar conversation, suggesting they’d known each other for a while. She finally relaxed enough to sling the shotgun over her shoulder since Ned appeared to trust him. Al agreed to return to his Navy corpsman days and help out at the clinic. Anne-Marie told him to let the Parkers know she’ll reassign them to another house if they wanted to move, but had no issues with them sharing the five-bedroom place.