The World That Remains (Evergreen Book 2)

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Everything’s gone already,” droned Madison. “There’s lots of people out there looking for food. It’s been months.”

  “Maddie, a lot of people died. Like, a serious lot. And the Army rounded up more people. There’s big stretches of land with no one in them.”

  “You’re guessing.”

  “I’m done with the soap!” shouted Lorelei, before dropping it in front of Madison.

  Harper looked up. The six-year-old had turned herself into a foam statue. She almost yelled at her for overdoing it and wasting soap, but couldn’t be angry at that giant smile.

  “Okay.” Madison picked up the soap and started washing herself. “I trust you. Can you get some tofu if it’s on sale?”

  Harper laughed. “If they have any, sure.” She reached past her sister to scoop excess soap off Lorelei.

  “I’m kidding. It’s all gone bad now. They don’t put tofu in cans.” Madison stood to wash her legs.

  “What’s tofu?” asked Lorelei.

  “The essence of absolute nothingness coalesced into solid form,” said Harper.

  Madison raspberried her. “It tastes like whatever you cook it with.”

  “Right. It has no flavor of its own, hence it’s nothingness.”

  “It’s good!” shouted Madison.

  Harper tickled Madison’s sides. “If you say so.”

  Squealing, Madison flung soap at Harper and dropped to sit, guarding her ribs with her arms. “Stop!”

  Lorelei cheered and splashed them both.

  “Come on. Keep the water in the tub. Don’t waste it.” Harper leaned forward and hugged Madison. “And you… Tomorrow night, you’re going to have a real dinner.”

  “’Kay. Just don’t die. If you do, I’m never gonna forgive you.”

  Harper used a big plastic bowl to pour water over her hair. “Every place isn’t full of people like those guys in Lakewood. We could go somewhere and come back and not even see anyone else.”

  “Yeah, right,” muttered Madison. “What if the truck breaks?”

  “Then we walk home. But… Rafael is driving and he’s the mechanic. So it won’t break.”

  “We’re gonna starve, aren’t we?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  Madison squirmed around to face her. “I’m just scared something’s going to happen. I know you have to go, and it’s okay. Just come back.”

  “I will.” Harper draped a washcloth over her sister’s head. “I can’t let you get any skinnier.”

  Madison poked her in the side. “Look who’s talking.”

  24

  Not so Safeway

  The knock came during breakfast the next morning.

  “It’s open,” called Cliff.

  Marcie Chapman stuck her head in. “Morning. Harper? I know you’re off on Sundays, but—”

  “Caravan. Yeah, I’m ready. One sec.” She hurried the last few spoonfuls of cereal.

  When she stood, Madison ran over and clamped on in a hug.

  “Please be careful.”

  “I will, Termite.”

  Madison stepped back, nodded, and walked stiffly down the hall to the bedroom, fighting the urge to run.

  She’s going to cry the whole time I’m gone. I have to do this. She needs food. We all do.

  Harper hugged Cliff.

  “You want to tag team?” he whispered.

  “Nah. They’ll just put me on the next one anyway. And I actually convinced myself that I want to do this.”

  He patted her shoulder. “Good mindset. Going into an op expecting it to be a shit show is a great way to make sure it turns into a shit show.”

  “Shit show!” shouted Lorelei.

  Cliff sighed at the ceiling.

  “Nuclear fire devoured the world. Is it really a big deal if a kid swears?” asked Harper.

  “Hey, we gotta have some standards.” He winked. “Hold off on that word until you’re at least twelve, kid.”

  “Shit! shit!” shouted Lorelei.

  “No, not that word. You can say show.” He tapped her on the head with one finger. “The other one.”

  Lorelei giggled.

  Harper hugged Jonathan and Lorelei at the same time. “Be back later. Stay out of trouble.”

  “Ready?”

  “As ready as I can get.” Harper followed Marcie outside. “Did you remember the coupons?”

  “Hah.”

  “Any idea where we’re going?”

  “Idaho Springs. It’s not too far off to the west. Small, but there’s a downtown with a supermarket.”

  “People there?”

  Marcie shrugged. “I don’t know, but we’re going to find out.”

  “Like last time, right? Not planning to attack people to steal, just looking for unclaimed stuff.”

  “Exactly.”

  She nodded.

  The tractor-trailer waited for them on Route 74 near the quartermaster’s. Harper jogged over to the passenger side and climbed up.

  Deacon, the muscular former convict, grasped her hand and pulled her in. “Hey, how you doin’ girl?”

  “Okay.” She smiled and climbed over him to the sleeper cab.

  Roy Ellis sat on the mattress next to a militia soldier she hadn’t spent much time around before, Josh Webb. Despite being in his early thirties, his short buzz cut and boyish face made him look like someone who’d just joined the Army straight out of high school. His being here made Harper not the palest person on the team—they tied for that spot.

  She squeezed in to sit between Roy and the wall. Marcie climbed in and flopped between the guys, pushing Josh left against the other side. Roy checked his weapon, which Harper recognized—thanks to Call of Duty—as an H&K Mp5. Josh had a bolt-action hunting rifle with a scope, and would likely provide any needed sniper support.

  Deacon pulled the door shut and Rafael started the engine.

  “How long are we going to have gas for this thing?” asked Harper.

  “Diesel,” said Rafael.

  “You know what I meant.”

  He grinned. “What we got in the tank now is what we got. Big tanks on this rig, though. Might be able to produce a biodiesel eventually. But, I don’t think we’ll really need the rig for much longer. Can only go so far out looking for crap, right? Eventually, we’ll need to become self-sufficient… or move.”

  The others got into a conversation about the farm. Optimism at their chances allowed Harper to smile and settled her nerves about the trip. She liked that Deacon was there. One look at him would probably make most people run the other way. Unless they had a gun. And true, he’d been in prison, but for bank robbery, breaking into a vault at night when no one else had been in the building. Though she still figured most prisoners who survived the bombardment had likely formed the start of gangs like the one who killed her parents, not everyone in prison had violent tendencies.

  Rafael drove north up Route 74.

  Riding in an operational vehicle felt simultaneously weird and sad. It almost let her pretend the world hadn’t changed… until she looked out the window ahead at a road with no other cars on it. She kept her head down for most of the trip, except for when the others pulled her into the conversation about crazy things they’d seen since joining the militia. Harper shared the story of catching Beth and Jaden naked in an abandoned house. Her description of hammering him in the balls with the Mossberg made Rafael cringe hard enough to swerve the semi.

  “Oh, man. That ain’t right,” said Deacon.

  “Shouldn’t have grabbed her.” Marcie patted her on the shoulder, then shared a story of an old man she’d run into who’d gotten blind drunk on moonshine and ran around into other people’s houses with a broom, thinking it a rifle, intending to ‘drive the communists’ back to Russia.

  Laughter ebbed when Deacon asked about the kidnapper.

  Harper went over that story.

  Roy paled at her description of taking the shot over Mila’s head. “We need to get you some slugs.”
<
br />   “If we can find them, sure.”

  Deacon whistled. “Slug would’ve gone right through that mask.”

  “Save the town some damn food,” said Rafael before continuing to mutter in Spanish, something about guys who grab little kids.

  They drove down highway lined on both sides with tall hills, arriving a little over a half hour later, according to the clock on the dashboard, in the little mountain town of Idaho Springs. Rafael pulled off Interstate 70, rounded a traffic circle, and rolled to a stop in the middle of the street. A McDonalds and a gas station sat on the left, to the right, a Starbucks/Subway and a Wildfire restaurant.

  Josh climbed up on top of the trailer near the cab and lay flat on his chest.

  They hit the restaurant first, entering via a broken panel in the glass door. No one dared open any of the refrigerators, but they discovered a decent haul of canned vegetables, flour, and bagged sugar. Harper insisted they raid the Starbucks for coffee. No one objected. After cleaning the place out of coffee beans, and still-edible bagged snacks, they hit the McDonalds, not expecting to find much. All the buns were long stale. Deacon threw one at the wall and it bounced off like a stone. The coolers held a horror show of decaying beef, rotting potatoes, and dead pseudo-chicken. Canned goods there mostly consisted of ketchup or salad dressing, though they did grab more coffee. The Subway proved equally disappointing, except for a fair supply of canned tuna as well as some olives and fruit salad.

  Rafael nudged the semi down the road a little more as the team raided a Carl’s Jr. on the left. More flour, coffee, and some canned vegetables went into the trailer. They continued down the street past a Shell station, again stopping at a ‘Marion’s Restaurant.’ The building had no windows left intact, though whether that happened as a result of a nearby nuclear explosion or rioting after the fact was anyone’s guess. Considering they still found usable food in the back, Harper figured a shockwave had done the damage.

  Harper grinned at the lack of blue-sash-wearing thugs here, though a totally empty, abandoned town struck a chord of eerie that would haunt her dreams for a while. The restaurant offered a fair assortment of usable food, though much of it came in giant commercial cans that would probably be held for a community dinner rather than given to a resident. If nothing else, Marion’s Restaurant provided Evergreen with a two-year supply of canned peas.

  Upon spotting an auto parts shop, Rafael stopped the truck again and ran in the door himself. The militia stood around by a big brown dumpster waiting and ‘guarding’ while he gathered several boxes from the place and stashed them in the cab.

  From there, they raided a small barbecue place on the right, a pizza shack on the left—mostly collecting flour. Harper walked on the left of the semi, about halfway down its length, when they resumed creeping down the main drag of Idaho Springs. It felt so surreal, like she’d stepped into CNN footage of troops in Iraq.

  I can’t believe I’m doing this. I should be playing video games and goofing off with my friends. She closed her eyes and saw Madison’s too-skinny figure. We’re almost done, kiddo. See, just like I told you, not everywhere has thugs.

  After a brief check of an Asian café, they kept going, reaching a large Safeway supermarket on the left. Right as Rafael started to turn into the lot, something moved on the roof. Glint flashed.

  “Sniper!” yelled Harper and Marcie at the same time.

  Josh swiveled to aim. He fired a split second after a gunshot came from the Safeway roof. Harper ducked and ran for cover across a gravel road left of the Safeway lot. She hunkered down against the building next door, pressed against beige siding with a diagonal board pattern next to a red door with a camera icon on it. Back pressed to the wall, she breathed in short, rapid puffs.

  Rafael jammed on the brakes hard enough that Josh slid off the trailer, tumbled over the cab, and landed on the pavement. The truck’s gears groaned as it backed away, Rafael ducking down to avoid sniper fire, blindly steering the semi onto the road. He tried to reverse behind the cover of the same building Harper leaned against, but the trailer hit a stray car on the road, forcing him to stop with the cab exposed to sniper fire.

  Marcie and Deacon ran with the semi, scrambling around to the far side away from the shooter. Roy started to aim around the nose end, but ducked as a bullet ricocheted off the street beside him.

  A howl of pain came from Josh.

  Harper peered past the corner. Josh lay sprawled on the parking lot, the left thigh of his khaki pants soaked dark with blood. His rifle hung off the truck’s side mirror, caught on the strap, lost when he went flying, probably the only reason the sniper on the Safeway roof hadn’t finished him off.

  “Josh is hit,” shouted Roy.

  “Mon’ and git’ him,” yelled a distant man.

  Harper held the Mossberg up, but didn’t at all trust her odds of hitting a man roughly a hundred feet away on a roof with a shotgun from her position. Of all the weapons the team had brought with them, only the dangling rifle had a real chance of being accurate on a target that far away, but anyone going for it would eat a bullet. Roy’s Mp5 had the next best chance. Marcie only had a 9mm Beretta handgun, putting the sniper way out of range. No one tried to grab the dangling bolt action rifle. Rafael stayed down low in the cab to avoid taking a bullet through the windshield.

  “C’mon. Yer boy’s bleedin’ out,” yelled the guy atop the Safeway.

  Roy stuck his Mp5 over the truck’s hood, but a loud crack from the roof made him duck back. “Fuck this guy.”

  “No thanks,” said Marcie. “He’s not my type.”

  Harper couldn’t see any of her friends through the truck. If she tried to run to Josh, she’d take a bullet before she got anywhere near him. The lot had no cover, not even a single car. She flattened her back against the wall and glanced to her right past the camera door. Josh howling in pain kicked her in the ass. She bolted down the street away from the supermarket. At the end of the beige building, she hooked right into an enclosed parking area, but a narrow gap between two buildings on the back side let her slip through to the next street. She dashed out onto the road, which lined up with the Safeway building, and ran past houses and a row of skinny birch trees lining the sidewalk.

  The bright, sunny day made the gunfight all the more surreal.

  She slipped across the street to the left sidewalk, dodging a utility pole where the road came to an abrupt stop against the Safeway property. Straight ahead stood the white-painted cinder block wall of the supermarket. This spot brought her close enough to the building to be concealed from the sniper overhead. It also offered a painful view of Josh writhing on the ground in the lot to her right. A little blue house stood to her left next to the supermarket, its yard raised several feet up from the ground behind a retaining wall.

  A bed of decorative stones abutting the road slowed her to a creep so she didn’t make any crunching sounds. If the man up there heard her coming, she’d be as good as dead. She advanced into an alley between the house and the supermarket, hurrying left to the back end of the building. A vent unit sticking out of the wall plus a dumpster offered a risky way to the top. She slung the Mossberg over her shoulder and climbed as quietly as she could to stand on the dumpster before shimmying to the end and stretching up on tiptoe to reach the vent.

  The sniper fired again, making her jump. He cackled. “Come on, what ya waitin’ for? Don’t want a bullet in yer theivin’ heads?”

  She pulled herself up by arm power alone until she braced a foot in the bricks and got a knee on top of the vent housing. From there, she stretched to hook her fingers on the roof edge and eased herself up to stand on the fan cabinet, crouching to keep her head from poking above the wall.

  The next time the man cackled, she felt confident that he still sat near the front side of the building. Hoping he wouldn’t see her, or at least that she’d have time to duck, she decided to look. She rose to her full height, peering over the wall—at a giant HVAC unit. To the left, the vast roof remai
ned empty. To the right of the equipment, a narrower space also appeared empty.

  Awesome. I’ve got two tons of steel between me and a crazy man.

  Slow and quiet, she pulled herself up, slithering over the wall onto the roof, flat on her stomach. She eased her way to her feet, pulled the shotgun off her shoulder, and stood there for a few seconds to catch her breath.

  “Guys,” shouted Josh. “Either get me the hell out of here or finish me off. Damn, this hurts.”

  “We’re—” shouted Roy before the sniper in front of her fired again.

  Harper crept to her left, moving to the end of the long HVAC machine. She went down on one knee and leaned around it, aiming toward the front of the building. Twenty-ish feet ahead, a man in an olive-drab poncho lay flat on his stomach behind a pile of cat litter bags set up like sandbags from a war movie.

  This is just like the stupid snipers in Call of Duty. They really don’t ever see people sneaking up behind them.

  It bothered her to just shoot a guy in the back, even if he had shot Josh.

  Harper rose to her feet and stepped out from behind the HVAC unit, keeping her shotgun trained on the guy as she snuck up on him. When she came within ten feet of him, she had a clear view of the truck—and Roy staring at her. A few 5.56 brass lay on the roof near the guy.

  “Don’t move,” said Harper.

  The man jumped. “Gah!” He lay still, but turned his head to glance back at her. Wispy white-grey hair hung down from his hood like the work of a crazed spider. He appeared to be in his sixties, his cheeks covered in silvery-black beard. Sunken eyes above thin, wrinkled cheeks regarded her. Up close, he didn’t feel threatening at all.

  “Damn. Must be slippin’ in my old age not ta hear ya comin’.”

  “Let go of the rifle,” said Harper. “Please don’t make me shoot you.”

  “Aww, shit. You’re just a little kid. What are you doin’ with a gun, sweetie?”

  “No one’s just a kid anymore.” She kept aiming at his face.

  The man shifted his weight to the right in a slow roll away from the rifle that left him on his back with his hands raised. His cheap poncho concealed most of his body, as well as any other weapons he might have on him.