“All right.” Walter closed his notebook. “Your choice. Feel free to head home and wind down or go on back out there as usual.”
She stood. “It’ll be worse just sitting around the house alone staring at the walls.”
“Kid’s got spirit,” said Darnell.
Marcie patted her back. “Damn straight she does. Good work today.”
“Ehh, more luck than anything. Right place, right time. If I hadn’t been going to her house, I never would’ve been there in time.” That thought made her feel worse than shooting the guy. One little decision made the difference between life or death.
Assuming, of course, the man intended to kill Mila once he finished. Why else would he have wanted her? Then again, organized law enforcement went up in smoke with most of the rest of the world. Would a creep really care if his victim told anyone someone touched them? Though, something didn’t sit right in her gut with that thought. Mila had been expecting to die, not be molested. Who wants to assassinate a nine-year-old? Something went on here that didn’t make any sense. Harper picked at the shotgun with her thumbnail. Maybe she wouldn’t have been that upset if she’d killed him.
“Umm.” Harper looked up. “Is anyone going to question this guy? Why was he trying to grab her?”
Walter emitted an uncomfortable sigh, suggesting he also assumed the same thing as she did about what the guy wanted to do. “Probably exactly what everyone’s thinking he wanted her for, but yeah, I’ll ask Janice to grill him.”
She stood there.
“You keep doing that. Are you waiting for me to say ‘dismissed’ or something?” Walter smiled. “This isn’t the Army.”
Harper laughed at herself. “Yeah, I guess I am.” She flashed a weak smile, sighed out the last of her racing adrenaline, and walked out.
19
Wholesome
Another break-in at a house near the south end of Harper’s patrol territory kept her a little more than an hour beyond when the kids would’ve gotten out of class.
Someone had cleared the pantry out of the place where Anna Dominguez lived with her eleven-year-old son, Christopher. In this case, she didn’t spot any muddy footprints. She couldn’t even rule out that the man she’d shot in the face hadn’t done it, since the theft had occurred last night. Anna didn’t notice anything had happened until afternoon when she’d popped home for lunch.
Of course, the man she shot did not have a small 9mm handgun on his person… so either he’d tossed it or they had two people sneaking around.
When Harper finished at the house, taking as many notes as she could and assuring Anna the militia did everything possible to find the thief, she headed up to the school to pick up the kids. The teachers wouldn’t have let them leave without an adult yet, as word the Shadow Man had been caught didn’t have a chance to spread. A few kids remained, but none of the ones supposed to go home with her.
Violet looked up from her desk. “Marcie stopped by. She took them home already.”
“Okay.”
Not quite calm, Harper rushed home. Children’s voices in the backyard relaxed her enough to slow to a walk. Her three siblings, plus Becca, ran around tossing a Frisbee back and forth. Relieved, she took a seat on the porch and watched them play.
The sky turned ominous not quite an hour later. As soon as a raindrop hit the concrete slab beside her, Harper called the kids inside, including Becca. Her parents would hopefully understand the rule about rain and expect she’d stay here until it stopped.
Everyone relocated to the living room, where the kids flopped on the floor around a board game. Harper reclined on the couch and resumed reading The Secret Garden.
Cliff arrived home about fifteen minutes after the rain began in earnest. He shut the door and stood there dripping for a moment, smiling at her. “Heard what happened. Ballsy shot, but it paid off.”
The kids looked up.
“What happened?” asked Madison.
I’m never going to finish this book. She closed it, set it on the cushion, and told the kids about the Shadow Man. All four listened with rapt attention. Madison, who’d been to the gun range with Dad once a week for at least the past three years, gawked at her.
“Wow,” said Jonathan.
“Glad you listened.” Cliff pointed at his eyes with two fingers. “Watch the hands, always.”
“Yeah.” She exhaled hard. “I remembered.”
He headed down the hall to change into dry clothes.
“Why did he grab Mila?” asked Madison.
“Not sure yet.”
“He wanted to hurt her?” Lorelei tilted her head.
“Yes, I’m pretty sure he did. But, he’s not going to be hurting anyone now.”
The kids resumed the game. Lorelei still struggled to understand the fairly complicated rules, but tried her best to participate. Jonathan and Madison patiently helped her. Watching them brought a smile to Harper’s lips, and she found their game more entertaining than reading. Or perhaps it merely required less mental focus from a brain that felt like a wrung out sponge. Four happy children felt like a soothing balm for her soul.
Cliff exited the hallway and lit some candles, set them on the dining room table, and entered the kitchen. He started humming while sifting among the canned food. “Feels like a good day for soup.”
It’s a good day for any food we can find. “Yeah.”
Michelle had a mild freak-out when Harper had brought Mila to her at the farm. Evidently, hearing that the Shadow Man the girl had been going on and on about for months actually existed hit her hard with guilt for not having believed. The woman never even entertained the idea that it might’ve been a normal guy in black, dismissing it entirely as a ghost story. She and Mila hadn’t even known each other up until last November, Mila having arrived in Evergreen only a week before Harper. Yet, the woman reacted like any true mother at being told she’d almost lost her daughter.
Overcome with grief for her parents, Harper slipped off the couch and padded into the kitchen, hugging Cliff from behind.
They stood in silence for a moment, the rattle of dice and murmurs of children in the background.
“You okay?” asked Cliff in a quiet voice.
“Mostly.” She let go and leaned on the counter, explaining how Mila’s adoptive mother had taken the news and admitting it made her feel like being ‘with her dad.’
He smiled past a frizz of facial hair. “Yeah, well, you buggers have kinda grown on me, too.”
“Speaking of growing on, you might want to trim that beard or Fred might mistake you for a bear.”
“Ehh, my breath ain’t that bad.” He lined up several cans of various soups: two beef noodle, a minestrone, and two vegetable. “Those should mix decently enough.”
“Yeah. Maybe add some pasta to stretch it or should we save?”
“Love to, but we should probably save it.”
“Is it weird that living like we’re in the 1800s is starting not to feel weird?”
He snickered. “Do a thing long enough you can get used to almost anything. Except tofu.”
“Lies!” called Madison from the living room. “Tofu is awesome. And we should totally get some oil lamps like in that movie.”
“If we can find them.” Harper folded her arms and let her head loll back. “I’m either going to sleep like a rock tonight or have nightmares.”
“That sounds about right,” muttered Cliff. “Used to know a lot of guys in that situation.”
She cringed. “Sorry.”
“Nah, it is what it is. You’re just a kid but you’ve been through shit. Some of those guys weren’t much older than you are when they hit the shitstorm in Fallujah.” He popped the lid on the minestrone can, sniffed it, and smiled. “Ahh, that brings back memories.”
“Getting nostalgic over soup?”
“Used to have this stuff at the mall. Late shift, only two of us in the entire building. Microwave up a giant bowl of this, sit back, and watch movies.”
“Two of you?”
“Yeah, one other guard worked with me on night shift. Most of ’em only lasted two weeks, maybe two months before they transferred to days, went to a different site, or figured out that working as a security guard is incredibly effing boring.”
“What happened to the guy with you the night, umm… yeah.”
“Roberts… he always left early. Our shift didn’t end until six, but he had a habit of skating ten minutes to and leavin’ me to do all the end of shift logs. Probably on the road going home when the strike hit. I’d say serves him right for stiffing me with extra work for a year, but death via nuclear evaporation is a bit extreme for being a douchebag.”
“Ouch.”
“Nah. He didn’t feel a damn thing.”
“Do you think we’re gonna be stuck in the 1800s or are there enough people left to recover?”
“No idea. Haven’t been watching the news lately.” Cliff poured the last soup can in the pot.
She smirked. “What was it really like back then?”
He gave her side eye. “You calling me old?”
Harper twirled some hair around her finger. “No, just asking. Every show or movie I’ve ever seen set in that time period was like wholesome and stuff. They never had stories where like men grabbed kids, or anything dark like that. Were people actually like that?”
“Hate to say it, but of course. People don’t change that much. The same crap went on back then that happened nowadays, but they didn’t have the internet or cable news to tell everyone about it. People still did sick shit to kids, murdered their wives, sliced up prostitutes, did unseemly things to their neighbor’s donkey…”
She almost laughed.
“The real difference is back when they made those movies about the Old West, people didn’t put that sorta awful stuff in film. But, it happened in the real Old West. In those days, people simply didn’t talk about things like that in polite company. Small towns dealt with stuff like that in their own way. Guy does something he shouldn’t with a girl a little too young, guy disappears, no one knows what happened to him.”
“Is that what’s going to happen here?”
“Doubt it. Far as I know, Walter, Anne-Marie, and Ned were discussing what to do with him. They don’t want to execute him outright, but they’re afraid he would be a threat, especially to kids, if they let him out of jail. He’s not talking. We still don’t know for sure what he wanted to do to Mila, we’re all just assuming the worst. Guy won’t say who he is, where he came from, or why he attacked her.” Cliff shook his head, chuckling. “That mask was pretty freaky though. Homemade Kevlar.”
“Shouldn’t that have stopped buckshot?” asked Harper.
Cliff picked up the soup pot and carried it into the living room to the fireplace. “Professionally made armor would have stopped it, yeah. But at the range you fired, plus it being a hand-made piece of crap, not so much. He must’ve gotten Kevlar weave off eBay or something and epoxied it to a hockey mask. And it wouldn’t have done a damn thing against a high-powered rifle. Standard Kevlar brain buckets, an AK will punch a hole right through them. Maybe deflect a glancing shot, but a direct hit… only thing the helmet’s good for is keeping all the pieces in the same place.”
She cringed. “Eww.”
Jonathan scrambled over to help Cliff get a fire going.
“The man with the mask was watching me,” said Lorelei, sprawled on her chest by the game board, scissoring her feet back and forth. “He looked like he needed a hug.”
Harper stared at her, a shiver of dread rattling her bones. The man she shot could’ve carried the tiny girl off with one arm. “You remember what I asked you, right?”
“Uh huh!” Lorelei nodded. “Gotta ask you or Daddy if it’s okay to hug someone first.”
“That’s right. Please don’t forget.” She sat on the floor near the kids, too tired to do anything more than stare at the soup pot over the fire.
Lorelei scooted over and leaned against her, showing her the cards in her hand for the game. “Which one do I use next?”
“No fair,” said Becca in a joking tone.
“She’s better off picking herself right now.” Harper yawned. “My brain’s done.”
20
A Little Creepy
Dreams of hanging out in the mall with Christina, Renee, and Darci took a turn for the weird.
Faceless men dressed all in black appeared in the crowd and began chasing them around. Harper ran down a back hallway, tripped over a pile of trash bags, and slid on her chest… but didn’t stop. The floor became a slide, plunging down into a tube. Water came out of nowhere. Dark became bright light, and her clothes morphed into a neon green swimsuit.
She flew face-first out the end of an epic waterslide tube into a small kiddie pool set up on the front yard of her old home.
Mom and Dad stood on either side of the new Ford Explorer, both of them holding AR15s. Behind them, a perfect glowing mushroom cloud bloomed in the sky.
“Come on, Harper, it’s time to go,” said Dad.
“You’re going to be late.” Mom waved at her to hurry up, opening the Explorer’s back door. “Get in, sweetie. It’s time to go.”
Two-year-old Madison, secure in a car seat, waved a pair of 9mm handguns around.
Harper pushed herself up out of the pool, shocked to find that she’d gone back to being a rail-thin nine-year-old version of her former self. The sight of toddler Madison with weapons should have been the most glaringly wrong thing here, but for some reason, her brain seized upon the notion that she hadn’t been allowed to wear a two-piece swimsuit until fourteen. She didn’t own that particular green one until last year.
Toddler-Madison appeared in front of her, pulling at her hair as if to drag her out of the pool by it. “’Mon, Harp. Get up.”
The too-weird scene faded to black, though the sensation of tugging at her head remained.
“’Mon, Harp. It’s morning,” said Madison.
Her head felt like stone, and she had no interest in moving even if she got detention for cutting school. Didn’t she have a test today? Why couldn’t she remember studying last night? Ugh, I did it again. Up until two in the morning. “Tell Mom I’m staying home today.”
“Harper,” whispered Madison. “Mom’s dead. Why would you say that?”
Dread seeped in beneath the heavy malaise making her want to go back to sleep. She forced her eyes open to the sight of a wan caricature of her younger sister hovering over her in a thin nightie. The girl had always been skinny, but her ribs looked too prominent, her eyes too full of grief.
It took a moment for the strange, foreign quality of the bedroom to wear off and the memory of the past six months to flood back, crushing the momentary reprieve of her dream. She hadn’t quite overslept yet, thanks to Madison shaking her.
“I’m awake.” She yawned, then reached up and brushed her fingers at Madison’s side.
The girl squirmed, grabbing her hand, grinning. “Stop tickling me.”
She’s losing weight. Harper slid her left hand up under the covers, feeling around her stomach and side. So am I.
“Hey, I’m peeing!” yelled Jonathan from the hall.
“Okay,” said Lorelei.
The boy emitted a frustrated sigh. “That means you’re supposed to wait.”
I need to talk to her about personal space.
“Why’d you say that about Mom?” asked Madison.
“I wasn’t all the way awake. Still dreaming about being home. Thought you were Mom trying to wake me up for school.”
“Oh.”
Harper sat up and swung her legs off the side of the bed. Surprisingly chilly air blasted away the remainder of her sleepiness. A house with only a fireplace for heat got darn cold at night. She sighed at the electric baseboard heaters. Please let Jeanette fix things.
Madison traded her nightgown for a pink-and-white striped shirt and a denim skirt. “Why did they give us so much pink stuff?”
&nb
sp; “You didn’t hate pink before.”
“I don’t hate pink.” Madison frowned. “I hate them thinking I have to wear pink because I’m a girl.”
“I’m sure they didn’t mean it that way. We can’t exactly go shopping whenever we want.”
“Yeah, I know.” Madison sighed.
Lorelei walked in wearing her pink socks—but carrying her nightgown.
Harper laughed, taking some comfort in that the formerly-starved child looked much less skeletal. Ironic that she gained some weight while everyone else lost it. Lorelei had a ways to go yet to reach ‘normal,’ but she didn’t look frighteningly thin anymore.
Maddie and Jon are still giving her extra food.
Humming happily to herself, Lorelei rooted around in the dresser until she found a basic child’s dress, more spoils from the Walmart run. She carried it over and held her arms up. Harper took the garment and pulled it over the girl’s head. She’s six. She should be able to get dressed on her own by now. Does she not know how or is this just her wanting me to take care of her? How do I give her a reward for getting herself dressed when we’re thrilled to find an extra box of crackers?
“Thank you!” Lorelei hugged her.
Maybe she just wants the affectionate contact. Harper patted her on the back, let go, and stood. “Okay, come on. Time to eat. I’ll be right there.”
She headed to the kitchen by way of the bathroom, the icy seat destroying any lingering temptation of going back to sleep. The kids took their spots at the table while Cliff portioned out cereal. Harper sat, gasping at another jolt of cold to her backside.
“Forget something?” asked Cliff.
Harper looked down at her nightie. “I’ll change after I eat. I’m already here.”
He set a bowl of cereal in front of her, some bland-as-hell flakes the store they’d scavenged from had tons of because only people who lost their ability to taste ever bought them.
None of the kids whined at the lack of sugar, which felt beyond wrong. They shouldn’t eat old folks’ cereal without complaining. Jonathan’s cheeks had lost some of the roundness they used to have. She couldn’t see his ribs under his shirt, but figured they probably looked as prominent as Madison’s. They all needed more food than they’d been eating, but she couldn’t exactly do much about it yet.
The World That Remains (Evergreen Book 2) Page 19