“Maddie’s even stopped complaining about meat. She’s a vegetarian. She still cries a little whenever Cliff comes home with chicken or venison, but she eats it. Her ribs are showing. Mine, too.”
Logan glanced over at her. “Really? That bad? Let me see?”
Heat settled in her cheeks. “I haven’t had enough beer.”
“No worries.” He drained the last of his can.
Harper felt awkward as hell for the next minute or three while the other two tried to decide what movie they’d seen ranked as the ‘best of their lives.’ Feeling random, she pulled her shirt up to expose her ribs.
Grace and Logan paused, staring at her. She giggled, but he looked concerned.
He reached over and placed his hand on her side, his skin so warm it almost burned her. She shivered as he traced his fingers over her ribs and the grooves between them. It occurred to her that she’d never had a boy touch her like that before. Not that showing her stomach crossed any line. She had no problem with a two-piece bathing suit. Strange boys had seen her before, but never up close, never making contact with her beyond holding hands or kissing.
A glint of moonlight shone in his eyes, radiating concern. Time seemed to stop.
Harper couldn’t move, her left hand clutching a bundle of flannel, her right, the lukewarm beer. Cool night air brushed across her face and bare stomach, a few errant strands of red tickling her cheek.
“I can help a bit if you want, bring over some of my rations.” Logan lowered his hand, leaving a warm spot behind. “You maybe should eat a little more.”
She let her shirt drop, not bothering to tuck it in, and gazed at the Coors can, unable to even remember what to do with it.
“You guys are so cute,” said Grace.
Harper gasped. “We are not.”
Logan tried to drink from his empty can, then attempted a casual ‘I meant to do that’ smile.
When the awkwardness grew too strong to remain still, Harper took a big sip and nearly choked on the unpleasant flavor. “Gah. Is this stuff stale or is it supposed to taste like this?”
“No idea.” Grace shrugged and took a sip. “I wasn’t allowed to drink before.”
“Like that stopped you,” muttered Logan.
She stuck her tongue out at him. “I had wine or mixed drinks. Not beer.”
A distant canine howl broke the silence in the west.
“Eep.” Grace sat up tall, looking around. “What was that?”
“Wolves or coyotes probably,” said Logan.
Harper smacked her lips, cringing at the flavor, but took another sip only to avoid wasting it. Beer had calories, after all. “Do you think nuclear radiation might’ve made like mutant werewolves?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” said Grace. “Any genetic aberrations caused by exposure to gamma radiation would take multiple generations to appear… and they’d probably be detrimental, like birth defects.”
Harper gave her side eye. “Right…”
“If we’re about to be attacked by werewolves, at least we have the silver bullet.” Logan held up his can.
Grace shook her head. “Wow.”
“A werewolf would take one whiff of this stuff and run.” Harper held the can out, estimating she’d consumed about half of it. Her head did feel a little funny—probably why she’d pulled her shirt up. “Here…” She handed it to Logan. “I shouldn’t get tipsy while carrying a gun around.”
He took it. “Yeah, that’s probably not a good idea.”
“Oh, darn. There goes my nefarious plan of getting both of you drunk.” Grace whistled innocently.
They all laughed.
“Hey is it true you caught Beth and Jaden screwing?” asked Grace, giggling.
“No.” Harper shook her head. “That isn’t true.”
She leaned forward with a teasing grin. “Then why is your face as red as your hair?”
“I didn’t catch them doing it. They’d already finished when I found them.”
“Technicalities.” Grace tilted her head back, emptying the last of her beer. “Umm, yeah. I think this stuff might be stale.”
Harper rubbed her stomach, already disliking what the beer did down there. “I shouldn’t really say anything. It’s bad to gossip.”
“Not like you’re gonna get sued for talking about it. You weren’t like investigating them, just some kid who stumbled on other kids.” Grace smiled. “No different than if you’d walked into the wrong room at a house party.”
A flash off to the right caught Harper’s attention. She forgot what she’d been about to say in response to that, and stared at… headlights. Seconds later, the growl of an operational engine grew loud enough to hear.
“Oh, whoa,” said Logan. “Someone’s coming.”
Harper grabbed her shotgun and sprang to her feet. “Stay down. Gonna check it out.”
When she started running toward Route 74, they both followed.
“Guys,” whisper-yelled Harper. “Get down.”
“You aren’t older than us,” said Grace.
“Just… be careful.” Harper swung the Mossberg up into a ready grip and jogged for the road.
A large SUV type vehicle with wide-spaced headlights approached Evergreen along the same route she’d walked in on, heading straight for the bus barricade. Two militia on night duty hunkered down, aiming at the approaching driver.
“Aww, hell,” said Cameron. “That’s a machine gun. I got the gunner, you watch the rest.”
“Okay,” replied Sadie. “But don’t shoot unless they’re going to fire on us first.”
Harper ran to the left end of the buses, taking cover at the corner and peering around. The vehicle rolled to a stop about twenty feet away, but she couldn’t make out anything past the glare of the lights. For a moment, the world seemed to pause, the oscillating rumble of a diesel engine sounding almost foreign.
That’s not the greatest way for a first date to end… with machine guns. She bit her lip. That wasn’t a date.
22
Brighter
“Easy,” said a man from the direction of the vehicle. “Just here to talk.”
“How about you let go of that .50 cal and then we can talk?” asked Cameron.
“Fair enough. Hooper, at ease.”
Harper squinted at a trace of motion above the headlights.
“Relax, kid,” said the same man from the shadows. “We’re the good guys. Damn, what are you, fourteen?”
“Who are you?” called Harper.
A man wearing green Army pixel-camo walked into the glare of the headlights. An M-16 hung over his shoulder on a strap, and he also wore a pistol on his hip. Numerous pouches and pockets lined his belt as well as a harness over his chest. He looked thirtyish, pale, and not particularly threatening.
Her eyes adjusted somewhat to the glare, enough to make out the front shape of a Humvee in olive drab.
“Oh, crap. The Army? Are you guys legit? Or did you just find a Hummer and uniforms somewhere?” Harper stood, but kept half hidden behind the bus.
“We’re the real deal, kid. I’m Sergeant Clarke. Private Hooper and PFC Sanchez with me.”
“What are you guys doing out here?” asked Sadie from above.
“Standard recon, assessing damage, that sort of thing. Wasn’t expecting an armed barricade in the middle of the road.” Clarke chuckled. “We had a couple of people at Eldorado Camp saying people had holed up in Evergreen.”
“That’s true. Hang on a sec.” Cameron climbed down the ladder to the road. “Hey kid, go get Ned.”
Harper whispered, “If this is a trick, I should stay.”
“I got it.” Logan pointed back over his shoulder. “Same place we met him on the way in?”
“Yeah, he sleeps in there,” said Harper.
“Whatever. Just someone should go get him.” Cameron walked around the bus and approached Sergeant Clarke, offering a handshake. “You heard right. We’re re-establishing a town here. Hope you boys aren�
��t looking to uproot us again.”
Logan ran off down the road.
“Nah.” Clarke shook his head. “Any fallout that’s gonna come down has come down by now, and it’s not likely we’ll see a straggler warhead six months later.”
Harper crept out onto the road in front of the bus wall, eyeing the Humvee. A twentyish woman with dark brown skin sat behind the wheel. Another pale guy, younger than Clarke, stuck half out a hole in the roof behind a big machine gun. He shifted toward her but didn’t lift the barrel up.
“Relax, kid,” said Clarke.
“I am relaxed.”
“Private Hooper would feel much better if you slung that cannon.” Sergeant Clarke smiled.
“That’s not really fair, is it?” She eyed Hooper. “We put our rifles down, but he keeps pointing a machine gun at us?”
“Sarge?” asked Hooper.
“It’s okay. They’re civvies.”
“Copy.” Hooper rested the .50 cal’s barrel in a holder, then sank back into the Humvee.
Harper hung the Mossberg over her shoulder on its strap. “So you guys are real Army? Did you collect people from Lakewood? I haven’t seen any of my friends since the bombs fell.”
“The Army has been relocating survivors to Eldorado Camp, but I don’t know names. It’s possible people you know are there.”
“Eldorado Camp?” asked Sadie, still atop the barrier. “What is that?”
“We’ve established a tent city near Eldorado Springs. It’s gotten pretty damn big at this point, absorbing citizens from Boulder, Denver, smaller places. Initially, Command wanted to use it as a temporary settlement until we could assess levels of radiation and damage in the surrounding communities, but logistics have gotten interesting. Seems like it’s easier to just keep everyone in one place so there’s enough water and food to go around.”
Harper pictured a cramped, overcrowded mess surrounded in chain link fence… a cross between refugee camps she’d seen on the news and a poor district in some Third World country. “Christina Menendez, Renee Nichols, Andrea Orton, Veronica Jackson, Darci Sutherland? Do you know if any of them are in the camp?”
Sergeant Clarke shook his head. “Sorry, kid. They might be. I don’t know names. You’d have to check with the commandant’s office, but people can come and go as they please. So, no guarantee anyone on the list is actually there.”
“Oh.” She looked down.
Mayor Ned and Logan jogged up the road. Harper faded into the background of the ensuing conversation between the men. Ned appeared to accept the soldiers as genuine and gave them a general overview of Evergreen’s status while the soldiers filled him in on the situation in the area. The soldiers confirmed that the damage in Lakewood everyone blamed on one big nuke landing on Colorado Springs had, in fact, been the result of numerous smaller warheads peppering the area, much closer to Denver. A big one did land on Colorado Springs, reducing it to a wide expanse of essentially blank ground. Due to the radiation, the Army hadn’t gone near the place, and no survivors he knew of made it out from anywhere within twelve miles of the city center.
Logan stared at the ground while Sergeant Clarke described the destruction of Colorado Springs. Harper reached over and held his hand. He managed a weak, grateful smile, but didn’t—or couldn’t—say anything.
“Unfortunately, we’re pretty much on our own at the moment,” said Sergeant Clarke. “We haven’t had communication with any sort of centralized command structure since the bombardment, so I figured the US got kicked pretty damn hard in the nuts. But… we hit them harder. General Ayala is running things like the Pentagon is okay, just having a communication breakdown, but most of the guys think we’re isolated. Some form of contact would’ve happened by now if anything still operated back east.”
We hit them harder? Seriously? Is he actually happy we killed millions of civilians? Harper gawked at them. Like, burning down some entire other country worse than they hit us somehow constitutes ‘winning’? All they did was mess up the planet even more.
“Do you know who ‘they’ are?” asked Ned. “Who actually hit us?”
“Uhh.” Sergeant Clarke scratched the back of his head. “No one out here knows for sure. CENTCOM might have had that information, but no one bothered wasting time trying to pass it on. I don’t think we fired first. Fair bet we took inbound fire from Russia and China. Maybe even North Korea, who knows? Heard some guys talking about a North Korean submarine possibly firing the first shot. They’d have had to get close since they don’t have anything land-based that could reach the US.”
“Kinda useless worrying about who did it at this point, isn’t it?” asked Harper.
“I suppose.” Sergeant Clarke sighed. “Sounds like things here are reasonably safe. You mind if we run around with the testing equipment, checking for radiation?”
Mayor Ned perked up. “That would be wonderful. I do hope you intend to share if you find any problems.”
“Of course.”
“Umm,” said Harper. “I have a question.”
Everyone looked at her.
“When I was on my way here, back in Lakewood, I saw a couple guys in camo like arrest three people, cuff them, and drag them off against their will. Were they real Army? You said you’re not keeping people prisoner at the Eldorado place, right?”
“No. We intended it as a temporary shelter until radiation levels fell off, but people are staying there because it’s large, organized, and well-protected. Without seeing them, I can’t say for sure if you observed Army personnel detaining looters or just random people who wore camo. If they were troops, the people being detained had probably raided supplies from a forward camp. As far as I know, any prisoners taken would’ve been moved to Eldorado. General Ayala doesn’t come down hard on people who are just trying to survive.”
“Oh. Okay. If I gave you a list of my friends’ names, could you maybe let them know I’m okay and here in Evergreen? Or if you’re going to come back here, let me know if they’re okay?”
Sergeant Clarke offered a ‘why not?’ shrug. “Can’t say when or if we’ll come back, but I can drop off a note with the commandant’s office. No guarantee of anything, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Awesome. Thanks.”
Harper pulled out her little notepad and pencil, scribbling down the names and ages of her friends, as well as Madison’s two as-yet-unaccounted-for friends, Eva and Melissa. While she wrote, Mayor Ned asked about any possibility of food assistance as the farm hadn’t started producing. The soldiers apologized, saying they could only feed people who relocated to Eldorado Camp, since they also struggled to budget supplies, but between military rations and still-working refrigeration units, had enough to keep everyone going until their farm project matured.
The quartermaster building in Evergreen did have quite a few huge refrigerators in the kitchen, but no power. She briefly wondered if Eldorado Camp might be better than staying here, but three things kept that thought from becoming more than an idle musing: overcrowding, figuring their power came from generators which would eventually run out of fuel, and she’d already come to feel at home here. Even if Evergreen lacked modern comforts, she’d rather live in a town where people knew each other than be another faceless, desperate body crammed into a tent with ten other shell-shocked people, merely sitting around waiting for something to change.
Harper handed Sergeant Clarke her list. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
She stared at the little scrap of paper he tucked into his shirt pocket, hopeful that he wouldn’t just toss it aside after leaving town. Maybe, just maybe, word might reach her friends that she’d survived. Assuming, of course, any of them had. Lakewood had turned into a dangerous area, but it had taken two months to decay to that point. With any luck, her friends had gotten out by that point. If Eldorado Camp was real, if these soldiers actually did belong to the legit Army, a chance existed her friends would have been brought there.
“Umm, can I ask
one more question?”
Mayor Ned and Sergeant Clarke both chuckled, pausing their discussion about the radiation testing. Evidently, the soldiers would be driving around in the Humvee looking at instruments while Clarke walked alongside with a detector.
“Shoot,” said Clarke. “Not with that Mossberg, though.”
She forced a fake laugh. “How is that Hummer working? All the cars are dead.”
“Most military vehicles are shielded from EMP surge. Our problem is that we’re running out of diesel. Another year or so and we’ll all be hoofing it.”
“Gonna wind up putting the cavalry back in cavalry,” said Ned.
Clarke laughed. “Something like that.”
Though fascinated by the working truck, Harper hadn’t stayed up this late in months. She’d told everyone she would be home around bedtime, and had gone pretty well past that. Guilty at making her family worry, she turned to face her new friends.
“I really should get home. It’s late.”
“Yeah, same here,” said Grace.
“Right. Sun comes up early.” Logan yawned. “Still pretty cool to see not everything’s gone.”
“Did you hear him?” asked Grace as they walked down the road into town. “They lost contact with their commanders in six months. That’s not a good sign.”
Logan kicked a small rock off the road. “Yeah. They hit the big red reset button.”
Harper couldn’t find the urge to speak, the need to get home to her family too heavy in her chest.
“Night. Thanks for hanging out.” Logan waved and kept going south down 74 when the girls turned left onto Hilltop.
Grace swung the three remaining beers back and forth. “Sorry for getting in the way.”
“You didn’t. I really thought there’d be a big group hanging out. You didn’t mess up our date because we didn’t have a date. Just hanging out like friends.”
“Okay,” said Grace, too innocently.
Harper glanced sideways at her.
“Awful lot of blushing for friends.”
“Your house is here.” Harper pointed.
Grace flashed a cheesy smile. “Just playing. Trying to not think about all the bad stuff. Sorry if it bothers you.”
The World That Remains (Evergreen Book 2) Page 22