Evergreen

by Cox, Matthew S.

  Her guts felt like a wrung out dishtowel. Despite the crazy tangle of emotion and horrible sadness stabbing her in the heart, she’d cried herself out. Numb, she stared over the pillow at the wall, barely visible in the moonlight.

  After a few minutes, the need to use the bathroom urged her into motion. She slipped out from under the comforter into an annoyingly chilly room. The fire had warmed the house somewhat, though it had undoubtedly been allowed to burn down before everyone went to bed. Harper hurried into her sneakers and crept down the hall to the bathroom, feeling her way along in the dim light. Sitting on a block of ice would’ve been warmer than the toilet.

  She returned to the bedroom, stood there for a few seconds feeling like she didn’t belong there, then grabbed her coat and went outside via the kitchen door. A constant, frigid breeze made the interior of the house feel heated by comparison. Her breath puffed in small clouds of moonlit fog that drifted off to the left. She shut the door and stared up at the stars, awestruck that the sky glimmered with such clarity.

  Maybe that nuclear winter stuff won’t happen. Or maybe the crap just hasn’t spread out yet.

  Harper stared into the infinity above her, trying to memorize what a starry sky looked like in case she spent the rest of her life under a permanent cloud. The silent tranquil beauty of it allowed a new emotion to break free of the pack and take over her thoughts: jealousy. She swung between anger and worry, overwhelmed by everything she’d lost and been through. How dare Dad die and leave her alone. She shouldn’t be dealing with a mentally checked out ten-year-old who may or may not sincerely believe their dead parents would try to call her on a dead cell phone. How could she be expected to deal with that on top of everything else?

  She rubbed her arms through the jacket, trying to warm up. “I’m seventeen. I’m not done being a kid yet. It’s not fair I’ve become Maddie’s mother. I should be worrying about not failing exams and getting into a reasonably decent college. I should be hanging out with Andrea, Christina, and Renee doing goofy crap, not wondering if I’m going to need to shoot someone.”

  A long sigh leaked out.

  “Dammit. Why did this happen? Why?” Harper stood there, gaze on the stars, arms at her sides, crying silent tears for her parents, friends, college, the life she’ll never have… and a broken little sister she didn’t know how to help. She resented that the universe had dropped all this on her. Maybe she could fail Dad for the second time and surrender the shotgun to Mayor Ned, hide in the house like the terrified child she still was inside.

  Surrender…

  No. I can’t give up on Maddie, even if I have no idea what to do.

  Again, she thought about the way her sister leaned back into her in the bathtub when she mentioned pretending to be her mother as a little kid. No way had Madison remembered that. She wouldn’t have even been two years old at the time. Did her sister ask her to become ‘Mom,’ or had the moment of closeness simply been shared grief?

  “What am I supposed to do?” whispered Harper. “I’m not ready for any of this.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Madison, right behind her.

  Harper jumped, clutching her chest. “W-what? Why are you apologizing? You didn’t do anything.”

  “I’m sorry for existing.” Madison looked down.

  “No…” Harper melted into an emotional puddle and clamped onto her sister in a fierce hug, terrified the girl might be so shattered she’d hurt herself. “Don’t listen to any of what I just said. I’m scared. I don’t know what I’m doing and I’m freaking out that I’m gonna mess up and hurt you.”

  “You’re doing okay.”

  Harper squeezed her tighter. “I can’t lose you, okay? When I was eight, I used to pretend I was your mother. You were so damn little then. I’m not pretending anymore, Termite. Whatever I have to do to protect you, I’m gonna do. Sorry for that crap I said. I’m just scared and having trouble dealing with the whole world changing.”

  They held each other in silence for a while.

  “Mom and dad aren’t coming back, are they?” asked Madison.

  Harper relaxed the hug and leaned back to make eye contact. “No. They’re not. I’m sorry, Termite. They died. It’s my fault. If I didn’t hesitate…”

  “I saw,” said Madison in a brittle voice. She reached up and brushed a tear off Harper’s face. “It’s not your fault about Dad.”

  “I couldn’t—”

  “You never yell or got in any fights at school. Even bugs, you carry ’em outside instead of squishing ’em. It’s not your fault you’re too nice to like killing people. Daddy wouldn’t be mad with you ’cause you didn’t shoot that man.”

  “But, I did… I have shot people.”

  Madison clamped on in a tight hug. “I’m sorry for making you.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Yeah, I did.” Madison sniffled. “If I didn’t exist, you wouldn’t need to shoot people to keep me safe.”

  “It’s a different world now.” Harper patted her sister’s back. “I’ll never like having to do that, but I promise I won’t hesitate ever again.”

  “Like chicken.”

  “Huh? Yeah, I guess I was a chicken.”

  “No.” Madison leaned back, wiping her nose. “I mean, me eating chicken. The world’s different.”

  “Yeah. Hey. There’s gonna be a farm here. If there’s a choice, I won’t make you eat meat, okay?”

  Madison nodded. “Okay. Umm. What about my friends? Did they go away forever, too?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “Am I bad?”

  “No. Why would you think that?”

  Madison bit her lip. “I shot that guy. Kids my age aren’t supposed to touch guns except at the range with Dad. But, he was gonna hurt Jonathan.”

  “No, you’re not in trouble for that. It’s okay to protect yourself when someone’s trying to hurt you bad.”

  Her little sister’s eyes widened. “I heard what you said before. Please don’t run away. I don’t wanna be alone.”

  “I…” Harper barely held back guilt tears. “I’m not going to go away.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yeah, Termite. I promise.” Harper touched foreheads with her.

  “Are you still gonna call me Termite when I’m older?”

  “Probably.” She sniffled. “Why, does it bother you?”

  Madison smirked. “It used to. But now, whenever you call me that, it makes me wanna cry, ’cause I think about being mad at you an’ how Mom and Dad are gone and our family’s just us now.”

  “Okay, I’ll stop using it.”

  “No.” Madison squeezed her. “It’s like saying we’re still family. We lost everything else. You can keep calling me Termite.” For a second, it seemed as though Madison might burst into tears, but she somehow remained calm.

  “C’mon, Termite.” Harper nudged her. “Let’s go back inside before we freeze.”

  “’Kay.”

  Harper held her hand on the way to their bedroom. They shed their winter coats, shoes, and jeans, then crawled in under the covers, huddled together for warmth. She had no idea who slept in this bed before, but it beat a mattress of trash bags behind a dumpster. It also beat a sleeping bag on a booth seat in some restaurant where she only got a few hours of sleep due to having to keep watch. It took a few minutes, but eventually, the bed became cozy.

  “Harp?” whispered Madison.

  “Mmm?”

  “I still miss home, but I don’t hate it here.”

  Harper squeezed her sister’s hand. “Yeah. That’s exactly how I feel.”

  20

  Starting Slow

  Over the next two days, Harper settled into her new home.

  Madison had gone back to being quiet and a little withdrawn, still clinging to her iPhone. She stopped asking Siri to call Mom or Dad, though still acted as though she expected one of her friends to call. Cliff spent a couple hours each day teaching them all ‘woodland survival’ stuff, like ho
w to use a ferrocerium rod, how to harvest fatwood from old logs, and even what plants or bugs could be eaten in an emergency.

  They discovered the pile Jonathan had taken firewood from belonged to Carrie, a huge mound of it that her likely deceased husband had collected before the war. The quartermaster did allocate firewood as needed, though the town didn’t prohibit anyone from going out to collect their own. Of course, with no working vehicles, people could go only so far. Carrie didn’t mind sharing as she had a crapload—on the condition Cliff help her find and split more when the need arose.

  A few cars did seem to be working somewhere in the area, since the sound of a running engine had become unusual enough to stand out. None came close enough to see, so she had no clue who drove what or why. Cliff said gasoline would last maybe six months before becoming useless, so perhaps people used the cars while they could to gather supplies from distances too great to walk.

  No longer driving bothered her more than it should. She hadn’t possessed a license for long at all, and felt cheated. This became guilt at the thought that millions had likely died across the globe, so being moody over such a ‘first world problem’ like not getting to drive anymore made her feel shallow.

  Sometimes Cliff cooked, sometimes Harper did. Most of what they ate still came out of cans, but at least they heated it up. Jonathan appointed himself ‘fire marshal,’ and made it his mission to keep the house warm. By the third day, no one needed coats or shoes inside the house. He and Madison amused themselves with practicing dance routines or playing with some toys they’d found while exploring unoccupied houses.

  Cliff had gone looking for the militia commander on the second day, and over dinner that night, said it seemed ‘reasonably well put together for a bunch of townies.’ The conversation that followed about people roaming the city with rifles and Coleman lanterns at night made Harper feel like she’d truly gone back in time to like the 1850s Old West.

  A dark-skinned woman with straight black hair knocked four days after their arrival in Evergreen.

  Harper pulled the door open and smiled. “Hi. Umm…” She eyed the AR-15 over the woman’s shoulder. “Guess you’re militia?”

  “Hello. Yes. I’m Annapurna. You must be Harper.” She offered a hand.

  After shaking, Harper nodded. “Yep.”

  “Oh, wow. You’re so young.” Annapurna shook her head. “Crazy world we’re in now, huh? Anyway, Walter wants you to head over to the north HQ and meet him.”

  “Okay. Uhh, ‘north HQ’?”

  The woman smiled. “Yeah. Since cars aren’t exactly reliable anymore, the militia is split over two command centers. One’s on the other side of the dog place from the quartermaster building. Used to be an office or something. Two-tone with stone on the bottom and wood on top. Little castle tower type thing at one end. Pretty hard to miss. Basically, head outta here onto Hilltop, go all the way back to Route 74, turn right and it’s the third building on the left. Just look for that little stone tower deal at the one end.”

  “All right. Let me get my coat and shoes. C’mon in a sec.”

  Harper jogged to her bedroom, put her shoes on, then grabbed her coat and shotgun. Madison ambushed her in the hall when she emerged, diving into a clinging hug.

  “What?”

  “Don’t go away,” whispered Madison.

  “I’m not ‘going away.’ This is like going to work or something. I think I’m meeting the boss today, so I shouldn’t be gone that long.”

  “I wanna go with you.”

  Harper cringed inside. Being on the militia probably didn’t amount to the safest choice of job in a post-nuclear-war society, but that whole ‘post nuclear war’ thing made any job dangerous. She didn’t think people like the ‘blue gang’ would care if someone called themselves militia, a teacher, a doctor, or whatever. They’d attack anyone. Much better for her if she still had her father’s shotgun. The girl who couldn’t even kill bugs had taken at least three human lives in the past two weeks. Reality wouldn’t care about her being seventeen, or a girl, or that her junior class had voted her ‘sweetest person.’ Gawd that had been so embarrassing. No, reality would throw everything it had at whoever it could crush, and she didn’t want Madison being run over.

  “I have no idea what I’m going to have to do. You don’t really want to wind up walking back and forth all over town if they make me do a patrol. I need you to stay warm and safe here, okay? I promise I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

  Madison again almost seemed about to cry, but held it in. “But, Cliff’s ‘at work,’ too. What if something happens here? A spark could fly outta the fire and burn the house.”

  “I’m not gonna torch the house,” said Jonathan from the end of the hall.

  “If you need someone, go to Carrie’s next door. You two are both ten, and I trust you to keep yourselves out of trouble for a couple hours, okay?” Again, she winced internally. Mom would never have left Madison alone at home this young. She might’ve trusted Harper home alone at thirteen, but not with a six-year-old sister. Home alone without parents hadn’t happened until two years ago.

  Madison bowed her head, trudged to the couch, and sat.

  “I don’t like having to leave you alone. You know that.” Harper walked over and patted her on the head. “I love you, Termite. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “’Kay.”

  Jonathan looked up at her.

  She thought back to him talking about having two sisters in his dream, and hugged him. “Love you too, kiddo.”

  He grinned. “Go kick some ass.”

  “Heh. Thanks.”

  Harper stepped outside with Annapurna, pulled the door shut behind her, and sighed. What the hell am I doing?

  They walked to the end of Hilltop Drive and kept going across a grassy swath to the highway, hung a right, and followed the road for a couple hundred feet. Annapurna went off the left side, climbed a short metal fence, and led her over another road to a curvy driveway next to a small, fancy office building. The end facing the road had a rectangular tower of stacked stone with a pyramid roof above a strip of windows.

  “This is the HQ. That”—Annapurna pointed at the next building to the right, all wood with kind of a barn-ish look. “That’s the dog place. Used to be a boarding kennel, but now it’s more like a shelter. Anyway, this is the northern HQ. The other building’s down in the old sheriff’s office, south of Evergreen Lake. Bit of a hike.”

  “Right…” Harper looked around, then followed the woman up a paved path to the back. A telephone pole on the right had blackened near the top. Only a few metal scraps remained of a transformer can that had exploded. Loose wires lay in a bundle near the base, where someone had gathered them off the road. Annapurna headed around to the end of the building and up a stone path to a blue-framed glass door.

  The interior still looked like an office, though portable camping lanterns hung from recently-added hooks. Nothing electronic appeared to be functional. She wondered if the devices had fried, or merely the power grid. An improvised gun rack holding a handful of bolt-action hunting rifles stood next to a shelf laden with giant coffee cans labeled in various bullet sizes. That, too, she figured hadn’t been here before the war.

  “Ahh, Harper,” called a fiftyish man with white hair from a doorway. He had the look of a recently-retired cop about him, giving off a friendly air that verged on paternal. “I’m Walter Holman. Please, come on in.”

  “Hi.” She accepted his handshake and went into a former conference room. Huge maps covered a twelve-person table as well as the walls. An ordinary desk sat in the corner, probably Walter’s. Except for the lack of a computer, it looked like something she’d have seen at her Dad’s former workplace.

  Ugh. It’s take your daughter to work day—with guns.

  “Okay, so, first thing. Welcome to the militia.” Walter smiled.

  “Thanks.”

  “Guess you’ve heard I’m in charge of it for the time being. Used to be with t
he Jefferson County Sheriff’s office. Couple of us are left, but since I had the highest rank, Ned asked me to manage this lot.”

  She nodded.

  “All right.” He gestured at the maps. “This is Evergreen. Before everything went to hell, the town covered a fair bit of land. We’re down to about two thousand people at this point, so to keep things in the realm of doable, we’ve mostly collected at the north end, where we are now.” He tapped at Hilltop Drive. “Farthest north we really have settled at the moment is Evergreen Middle School. Violet’s up there, teaching the kids. She lives in the building as well.” He traced his finger around the map to the south of the school. “Bunch of families in this area here.”

  “Oh, wow. On the way in, we spent the night at a school. I think it was that one.” She pointed at a building along Route 74 farther northeast.

  “Bergen Valley Elementary.” Walter nodded. “We’re not using that for anything. Kinda remote. Though we did grab all the useful stuff we could out of it, and the grocery stores west of it.”

  “Yeah. Thanks for leaving us a can of pudding.” She laughed.

  Grinning, Walter jabbed his finger at the map by the Mayor’s office. “The area south from here to Stagecoach Boulevard is pretty much filled in. Also, east and north of Hilltop. We’re putting single people with no kids in the apartment building on Wallace Road for now. When that’s full—if it fills—we’re likely to start placing them in the old assisted living complex. Ain’t a lot of difference between an apartment and a hospital when all the cookin’ happens outside over a fire.”

  Harper nodded. “Okay.”

  “There’s a couple of families still living in their original homes here.” Walter tapped the map to the east of a big building marked ‘Safeway,’ then dragged his finger down along one of the roads, tapping again about six inches past a lake. “This is our southern HQ. Janice Holt’s in charge down there. She’s my second in command. The area north of Evergreen High School is still fairly populated. Bunch of people there decided to hole up and not evacuate. Still spread a bit too thin for my liking, but if people want to stay in their homes, I ain’t goin’ to force them out. Hopefully, we don’t have any ‘situations,’ but it’s on them if we can’t get out there in time.”