Harper waved to Rafael, presently tinkering with a naked engine hooked up by clear hoses to a tank of strange brown liquid. He smiled back at her, gave a thumbs-up, and resumed working.
Not sure what we’re going to do with it if he gets a working truck, but I guess it’s better to have one if we can than not have one and discover a reason to want one.
The dirt lot to the rear of the post office and a little north contained horses. Farther behind the post office, where a tree service place used to be, they’d constructed a rudimentary stable to give the horses shelter from weather. The ‘new’ building made from pieces of other buildings, fences, and scrap metal looked bizarre.
Good grief, we’re really turning into Mad Max, aren’t we?
She paused at the side of the post office building, staring at the stables and horses for a few minutes. The animals looked much larger in person than she’d imagined, setting off a tingle of nervousness in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t fear them out of worry they’d deliberately attack her. Critters so big and heavy could crush her without even realizing it. Harper knew only one thing about horses: don’t sneak up on them from behind. She’d seen enough YouTube videos of people being kicked into next week.
Shaking her head, she went inside.
For the most part, the place looked pretty much like she expected a post office to look, including all the old signs advertising stamps, PO box rentals, Priority Mail, and so on. Only one change to the room looked out of place: a thick spiral notebook on the counter, as though some random college student forgot it there. Five or six people from the Express milled around the back of the office, rearranging furniture and shelving.
Adriana Rodriguez, up front at the counter, took her attention off a much smaller book she’d been jotting notes in to smile at Harper. The woman appeared roughly Carrie’s age—mid thirties. She exuded an air of friendliness, but also looked like the sort of person who tended to solve her own problems with the help of a .357 magnum. Perhaps the feeling came from her fringed cowboy-style shirt.
“Hi,” said Adriana in an unexpectedly cheery tone, while offering a hand. “Don’t think we’ve met before. Adriana Rodriguez.”
“Harper Cody.” She shook hands.
“Need to send something or just stopping by to check the place out?”
“Mostly checking the place out.” Harper pulled her hair off her face, hooking it behind her right ear. “Don’t really have anyone to send stuff to. Everyone I know is here, except for some friends who I haven’t seen since… you know.”
Adriana offered a sympathetic sigh. “Hear that story all the time, hon. Lot of people who gave up hope before Debbie got the idea to do this Express thing.”
“Oh, right. The guys who showed up a couple weeks back said something about a list of names.”
“Yep.” Adriana pointed at the fat notebook. “There it is. Welcome to look through it or add your name if there are people you think might be trying to find you out there. If you do decide to add your name, let me know so I can add it to the update sheet. That way, it goes out to all the other offices. Just sneaking it into our book here won’t do anyone any good.”
Harper looked at the ordinary five-subject notebook. “Hope it lasts a while. At least until someone remembers how to make paper and books.”
“For sure.” Adriana laughed. “For some reason, no one thought notebooks worth taking. We got a nice stash of them in Granby.”
“Right? Can’t eat them. Can’t wear them.” Harper sighed. “Amazing what nuclear destruction does to priorities of what’s valuable.”
“So, how’s this work?”
“What’s that, hon?” asked Adriana.
“Sending mail. I mean, do you charge postage or anything?”
“Ahh, no.” Adriana leaned on the counter. “Some settlements have taken to using money again, some—like here—don’t. We don’t charge any fees for transporting messages or items small enough for a person to carry on horseback. Basically, we just ask for some space and maybe enough food to get by. All of us have to work together to help the country get back on its feet.”
Harper meandered along the counter to the right, stopping by the notebook. “Cool. Sounds nice. Are there many people sending mail?”
“Not so much yet. It’s only been a year since things went to hell, and three months since Debbie started the Express. Lot of folks are still sort of in a fog over the whole thing. Like you, they don’t know who might even be out there they’d want to send a letter to. At the moment, we’re more focused on helping people find each other and establishing lines of communication. Year or two from now, we’re expecting the need to run letters and such back and forth will pick up. Maybe we’ll even wind up carrying cargo. One town produces a bunch of wool or something like it, but the people best at making clothes live somewhere else. Already have a couple in Granby working on a newspaper type thing. They got an old printing press running and are sending friends out to various settlements looking for interesting stories.”
Harper opened the big notebook. “Cool.”
“Want to add your name?” asked Adriana.
“Yeah, sure… maybe some of my friends ended up somewhere else and are alive.” Worth a shot, right? “Can you add Logan Ruiz, too?”
Adrianna grabbed a small piece of paper and a pen. “How old are you, hon?”
“Eighteen. So’s Logan. Why? Do I have to be eighteen to add myself to the book?”
“Nope. Just another piece of information to avoid confusion if multiple people have the same name. Say someone’s looking for their father named Bill Smith, and they see ten Bill Smiths, but only one of them is over twenty…”
“Oh, right. Yeah, that makes sense.”
“Where did you live before here?”
“Lakewood.” Harper looked back at the book.
Small strips of paper stuck out the sides, marked with letters—an alphabetical index. She opened it at the beginning. Each letter-marked section contained a vertical handwritten list of names, ages, location, and a column marked ‘orig,’ which also contained a city name.
“What’s o-r-i-g?” asked Harper.
“Short for origin. Where someone lived before the bombs.”
“Ahh.”
Harper flipped to J, searching for Veronica Jackson. She found the name, but her friend was not forty-three years old. She skipped ahead to M. No Christina Menendez at all. The list of O names failed to include any Andrea Ortons or even a single person named ‘Orton’ at all. Even though she hadn’t expected to find her friends in the book, not seeing them still broke her heart. She mechanically kept turning pages, staring at them more than reading, until her gaze fell on a line that shocked her out of her sorrow:
Luisa Ruiz – Age: 15 – Settlement: Fairplay – Orig. CO Springs.
She stared at the page for a moment, then covered her mouth.
“Hon?” Adriana walked up on the other side of the counter. “Are you okay?”
“H-how is this possible?” She pointed at the line. “Colorado Springs evaporated.”
Adrianna turned the book half toward her so she could read the line. “It’s only as accurate as the information people give at the office. I haven’t been to Colorado Springs since the war, so I can’t really say one way or the other what kind of shape it’s in. Even if it did end up entirely leveled, a person being from there doesn’t mean they were there during the strike.”
“But she’s only fifteen. Where else would she be?” Harper blinked. “Logan was up in Denver for a school hockey game…”
She scanned the R page for more people named Ruiz. A handful looked about the right age to potentially be Logan’s parents, but he’d never told her their names. However, none had ‘Fairplay’ listed as their settlement or Colorado Springs as their origin.
“Uhh…” Harper bounced on her toes. “Be right back. He really needs to see this.”
“I’ll be here.” Adriana smiled. “Anything else I can help you with?�
��
Harper stopped short three steps from the door. “Umm. My little sister wanted to know how old she has to be before she can like get a job here helping to tend horses.”
“Any experience?” asked Adriana.
“No… she’s never been within forty feet of a horse before. But she’s only ten.”
Adriana grinned. “Plenty of time to learn then. She’s welcome to stop by to get a feel for things whenever it’s okay with your parents. Far as joining the Express as whatever passes for an ‘employee’ these days goes, not until she’s at least fifteen.”
“Yeah, figured. Thanks. Again, be right back.” Harper rushed out the door.
22
The Smarter Option
Clicking from the gears of Harper’s mountain bike as she coasted made Logan and several other men look over at her.
Logan carried a large basket of potatoes toward a large pull cart they’d use to lug them down the road to the quartermaster. She came to a stop next to him as he set the basket on the end of the wagon and gave it a shove.
He wiped his hands on his shirt. “Hey.”
“You gotta see—!”
He kissed her. “Couple more hours to go here. Gotta get this stuff in off the field before it rots.”
Harper stared at him. Logan didn’t seem too worried about losing food to rot. Not like he rushed frozen perishables from the trunk of a car to the freezer in the house. “Umm. Can I borrow you for like fifteen minutes? You really need to see this.”
“Wow. Umm.” He brushed a hand over her cheek. “Must be important. Yeah, sure. I can slip away for fifteen or so.”
“Hop on.” Harper swung her bike around, then stood on the pedals.
Logan somewhat awkwardly got on behind her, grasping her hips to steady himself. “I will never get tired of having your butt in my face.”
She blushed. If not for the storm of emotions in her head over the possible discovery of his little sister still being alive, she’d have made a joke.
“Okay, this must be serious if you’re not saying anything.”
“Umm. It could be. I don’t know yet.” She pedaled off the farm to Route 74.
After a quick stop at the militia HQ to grab a second bike for Logan, she led him roughly a mile down the road to the post office.
“The Express?” called Logan from a little behind her. “Seriously? This couldn’t wait.”
Harper rode her bike almost into the wall, jumping off it to jog alongside for a few steps before coming to a full stop. “Nope. Couldn’t wait.”
“Ooo-kay.” He got off his bike, then leaned it against the wall. “I trust you.”
She grabbed his hand, and basically dragged him inside, straight over to the notebook. “Before I freak out… read this.”
“So, umm, mail? That’s like the last thing humanity should be worrying about yet.” He looked where she pointed… and most of the color drained out of his face.
“Yeah… that’s about how I felt.”
Logan wrapped his arms around her from behind, staring at the notebook in silence. The only sign of his emotion came from how tightly he squeezed her.
She reached up, grasping his hands in front of her chest.
“What is this?” asked Logan, his voice a touch louder than a whisper.
“They have a list of people in other settlements who are trying to find family or friends. I added us to the book in case anyone we know might end up in a settlement somewhere with an Express office.”
Logan shifted his stare from the book to Adriana. “Is she still there?”
“That, I can’t say. The only way we would know to change or remove an entry is if someone told us.” Adriana drifted over behind the counter, peering at the notebook. “Fairplay is a reasonably organized settlement. Not as big as here. No militia to speak of, but seemed fairly safe.”
“Can’t be her.” Logan fought back tears. “Springs is dust. There’s no way she could’ve gotten out.”
“I’m sorry.” Harper twisted around in his arms to face him.
“What are you apologizing for?” Logan bowed his head against hers.
“I didn’t even think it might be someone else and not your sister. I know you’ve had a really hard time dealing with losing your family. But what are the odds of another girl from Springs with the same name and age?”
“Springs is dust,” whispered Logan.
“So they say.” Adriana raised both eyebrows.
“Let’s go look.” Harper squeezed him back.
“How far is it to Fairplay?” asked Logan.
“Sixty…” Adriana walked sideways to where she’d been standing before, picked up a little notepad, and flipped some pages while muttering ‘Evergreen to Fairplay’ repeatedly under her breath. “Sixty-two miles fastest route.”
Harper nodded. “Not too far.”
“Not too far when we have cars.” Logan chuckled. “It’s a hell of a walk.”
“About thirty hours on foot, give or take.” Adrianna tossed the notepad back to the counter. “You’re talking about a roughly four-day trip each way, camping out in the sticks at night. That’s assuming you don’t run into any problems or bad weather.”
Logan looked down. “She might not even still be there. Or maybe it isn’t even her.”
“Why not send a letter?” Adrianna smiled. “That’s kinda why we’re here. Rider can make that trip in two days without punishing the horse. One day is possible, too, but it’s a little mean to the animal without good reason.”
“So, we’d know in four days if it’s my sister or not?” asked Logan.
“Not exactly four. Takes a while for a rider here to be scheduled to go down that way. Plus, however long it takes her to write a reply then have a rider bring it back here. Probably safer to expect a full week to two weeks to get an answer.” Adrianna pulled a sheet of paper out and set it on the counter in front of him.
Harper nudged him. “Umm, yeah, that’s a really good idea. Much better than running off like an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot.” Logan squeezed her hand. “Just have a tendency to think with your heart before your brain can engage.”
She laughed. “Yeah… guilty.”
“I dunno.” He flicked at the blank piece of copier paper. “I’m not sure how to handle this. I’d accepted she was gone. What if it’s someone else with the same name? I think that would hurt even more than thinking she evaporated in a nuclear fireball before she ever woke up.”
“Lo…” She threaded her arms around his neck. “You’ve already seen the book. You’ll never stop thinking about it if you don’t try. I can’t imagine not wanting to know for sure.”
“You’re going to write to her if I don’t, aren’t you?”
“Thinkin’ about it,” she said in an overacted innocent tone.
He glanced at Arianna offering a pen.
“Send a letter and we’ll see what happens. If it isn’t her, better we find out this way than spend a week going down there.” Harper rubbed a hand up and down his back. “What if it is her?”
“Yeah.” He reached for the pen, a lone tear creeping down his face. “You’re right. I have to know.”
23
Sixty-Two Miles
Life continued in Evergreen, normal in every way except for a constant nagging thought teetering between hope and dread.
Not an hour went by Harper didn’t contemplate what a potential response from Fairplay would do to Logan. He hadn’t wanted to talk much about it, nor had he been too interested in romance, or even making out since writing the letter. She knew he wasn’t angry with her. He’d been at the house every chance he got, being with her, cuddling, holding her… everything short of kissing or getting sexy.
His pain and worry practically scrolled across his forehead on a marquee.
Harper did her best to be there for him to lean on without pushing him to talk about the obvious topic hanging over them. She didn’t even pester him to stop thinking about it.
Sometimes, she read too much into sideways glances, wondering if he blamed her for ripping open an emotional scab. It would be like someone saying her dad didn’t die after all, merely appeared to… but when she got there, she realized they made a mistake and some dude simply looked like him.
Then again, Harper watched her father get shot. No one in Evergreen had seen Colorado Springs since the attack. Countless people told stories about it being vaporized, but always second-hand. People heard from someone who heard from someone. The problem with stories was they often turned out not to be true. A lie—or an exaggerated tale—didn’t become any truer because many people believed it.
Monday, September 23rd started off pretty much the same as every other day for the past two weeks—except for a light dusting of snow appearing overnight. Lorelei made Madison squeal by running barefoot out into the yard. Harper shivered at the sight of the girl frolicking in a half-inch of snow with no shoes on. Fortunately, the cold did eventually reach Lorelei’s brain after about a minute, and she listened to Harper and Madison yelling at her to come inside.
Evergreen (Book 5): The Nuclear Frontier Page 20