Evergreen

by Cox, Matthew S.

  Harper stopped pulling the strap. I’m not a kid anymore. Maddie can’t afford me to be.

  The men laughed.

  “No such thing as a drinking age anymore,” said the blond man.

  “Yeah, even you can drink now.” Ken swatted him on the arm.

  “Eat it, Zhang. You’re younger than I am.”

  “You’re both babies.” Marcie shook her head at them. “You hit twenty yet, Ryan?”

  “Thirty.” He smirked.

  “Your sister is going with a whole team.” Walter patted Madison on the shoulder, stood, and gestured at the assembled people. “And a working big rig. They’ll be as safe out there as we are here.”

  Madison buried her face in Harper’s shirt and wept.

  “Hey, Termite.” She rocked her side to side. “It’s just like going shopping. I’ll be back before it’s even dark out.”

  “What if you get shot?”

  “We’re not going to start a fight. You heard Walter. If it’s too dangerous, we back off.”

  “If it’s not dangerous, then bring me with you.”

  Harper brushed her sister’s hair off her face. “It’s not perfectly safe. I need you to stay here where it is. Part of looking out for you is making sure you’ve got food. I gotta do this, Termite. For you, for both of us.”

  Madison clung tighter and cried. “Don’t go away.”

  Ugh. “It’ll be fine. We walked all the way here from Lakewood. That place is full of bad people and we made it okay. If I know you’re here and safe, it’ll be easy for me to stay alert. I’ll be back before dark. Promise.”

  Madison whimpered something inaudible.

  “She should really stay with Violet,” said Marcie. “Can ask Leigh to walk her back up there.”

  “No.” Harper shook her head. “I’ll bring her back to school.”

  Walter gave her a quick nod. “All right. Hurry back so you can get underway then. Faster you get out there, faster you’re back.”

  “Right.”

  Harper took Madison by the hand and headed out. She spent the whole time walking to the middle school saying comforting things, promising to be super careful, and apologizing. Madison kept her head down and didn’t say a word.

  When they reached the field by the school, Harper stopped, grasped her sister’s face in both hands, and kissed her on the forehead. “I don’t really want to be on the militia, but I have to.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you remember what Mayor Ned told me? If I didn’t join the militia, I’d have to let someone else have Dad’s shotgun.”

  Madison kept quiet, wearing a pathetic stare.

  “Most of me wants to do exactly that, let someone else have it, go back to being a kid again, let other people protect us both… but, I don’t trust them.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Not like that. I mean… I believe they would want to protect us and do everything they could, but they can’t be everywhere at once. Dad gave me this gun so I could protect our family. I messed up bad back home. I chickened out and it got Dad killed. I’m terrified if I chicken out again, you could be hurt.”

  “But what if you get shot? Then I’ll have no one.”

  “I’m going to say something creepy, okay? You’re probably too little for this, but the world’s broken.”

  Madison wiped her nose.

  “I’m a young woman. Most people out there who would be dangerous… killing me isn’t the first thing they’d want to do. I’m more likely to be kidnapped than shot.”

  “That’s bad, too.”

  “Yeah. Maybe worse than being shot.” She shivered. “But… I can escape being kidnapped. And, we’re not going to start a war. If there are too many bad guys there, we’re just going to leave. This shotgun might be powerful, but it’s still a shotgun. It’s meant for close range. I’ll probably spend more time keeping my head down than anything.”

  Madison managed a weak smile.

  “Come on. You gotta learn stuff.”

  Staring at the ground, Madison followed her across the field to the school.

  23

  Deep Discount

  Harper trotted across the field to Route 74.

  Madison had lapsed into sobs the instant she let go, curling up in her desk like she had no intention of talking to anyone or paying attention to anything going on around her. Seeing that started a war inside Harper’s head. Would Madison hate her for making her stay here while she ran off? If she ran right back to the school, she could repair the rift between them. If she went to Littleton, her little sister might never speak to her again. The girl hadn’t cried at all over their parents, so watching her melt down over being apart from each other for only a few hours hurt.

  Am I being selfish or realistic? She can’t cling to me like a tumor for the rest of her life. But, she’s still hurting from losing Mom and Dad. Maybe I shouldn’t run off so soon. When we get back, I’ll ask Walter if I can like have an exception for a year or so because my sister’s got mental problems. Can’t be alone. Private Ryan type stuff. She lost her whole family but me. Maybe I should ask him right now.

  A low rumble coming up the road stalled her thought train.

  She hopped the fence and walked out onto the highway, looking up in awe at a white long-nose Peterbilt pulling a huge box trailer. Had they intended to go without her, or did they come out here to pick her up?

  The truck rolled to a stop nearby. Rafael waved from behind the wheel. Fred, in the passenger seat, gestured for her to get in on that side.

  Damn. In an ironic twist, she chickened out of chickening out, unable to bear the shame of saying no and walking away from the militia in the truck to go whine at Walter. Like an obedient kid, she trotted past the front end and climbed up into the cab. Ken, Darnell, Marcie, and Ryan sat in the sleeper cabin. Harper plopped down in the middle of the mattress, the only open spot. She felt like the only girl at a college frat party, though her nerves didn’t come from the guys around her.

  Being in an operational motor vehicle, even a big rig, reassured her that modern society might not completely be lost. Of course, one functional semi didn’t a technological reawakening make. Rafael might’ve gotten lucky getting it to work. She didn’t understand exactly how EMP destroyed cars, only that it ruined the electronics inside them and her father had once complained that modern vehicles were more computer than car. Maybe trucks like this had simpler systems or this truck in particular got lucky.

  Though, the world didn’t have an unlimited supply of gas—or diesel. It seemed pretty likely that nuclear war would’ve destroyed the majority of refineries. If not outright targets for warheads, they’d have complicated computer systems and automation, all of which would be fried by EMP. People would be too busy trying to survive in a world largely without electricity or modern conveniences to worry about keeping up the supply of gasoline, or medicines, or anything really. Maybe it would come back in a few decades, but for now, people wanted to simply continue living.

  She jostled back and forth as the truck rumbled on, daydreaming about where the world would be headed and feeling like a complete bitch for abandoning Madison. Hopefully, being extra clingy with her tonight would be a suitable apology. That and promising that she’d ask not to be sent out of town again. Walter seemed like a nice guy, and they’d all witnessed her sister’s freak out. They wouldn’t think she lied out of cowardice.

  Going to a Walmart to grab supplies didn’t sound that scary. Evading the ‘blue gang’ on the streets of Lakewood had been much scarier. If not for what it did to her sister, Harper wouldn’t have had any problem going on this trip. Though, if Madison had been killed along with her parents, she probably would’ve wound up like that lawyer guy… not really caring if she lived or died.

  Marcie and the guys started discussing their plan for the Walmart mission, but wound up going off on random tangents. Harper didn’t pay too much attention to them until they started asking her questions, the sort of crap people asked
when they tried to get to know someone else.

  Introvert Prime screamed, but Harper sat there with a stoic expression, voicing answers without much enthusiasm.

  “You don’t need to be that scared,” said Marcie. “This isn’t going to be bad.”

  “I’m not really that scared. It’s my sister. Our parents died right in front of us like two weeks ago. She’s terrified I’m going to die, too, and I think she’s going to hate me for going on this trip. I’m really not sure it’s good for her mental health for me to be away from her.”

  “Poor kid.” Darnell sighed. “Yeah, you got a point there. When we get back, if you wanna talk to Walt, I’ll go with ya.”

  “If it gets shitty in there, keep your head down, okay?” Marcie clapped a hand on her shoulder. “You’re new, and you’re still a kid. No one here’s going to give you a hard time if you lay low.”

  “Okay. I’ll be careful. But I won’t choke. And I don’t wanna hide in the truck the whole time. I’m not that much of a chicken… anymore.”

  They all laughed.

  A little over a half hour later, Rafael said, “We’re almost there.”

  Fred whistled. “Ugh, what happened here?”

  Everyone scrambled forward to peer out the windshield. Harper squeezed between Ryan and Darnell, her cheek mushed into the side of Fred’s seat. A few bodies littered the road up ahead in the haze. Mounds of ash in the shapes of abandoned cars forced Rafael to slalom the rig among them. Once or twice, proceeding required that he choose between ramming a vehicle out of the way or running over a dead person. He opted for the softer corpse.

  Harper cursed herself for not mentioning the breathing masks, though if everything went well, they’d be inside the Walmart for most of the time and wouldn’t be out in the crap. She cringed when the truck bounced over another body. Silhouettes of damaged buildings drifted by on both sides, a few with gaping holes from flying debris. The remains of the city reminded her of everything that would no longer be: her intact family, school, college, a job, holidays, meaningless random trips to Starbucks or pizza places.

  A sudden, intense craving for pizza almost made her cry upon realizing she’d likely never taste it again. At least, until Rafael ran over another dead guy and the squish filled the cabin. That totally destroyed any thoughts about food.

  How twisted is this? We’re running people over on purpose. They’re already dead. It’s more twisted that I’ve killed people. She shrank away from the windshield, retreating into the sleeper cab to get away from the gruesome sight outside.

  Harper sat on the mattress with the shotgun draped across her lap. A shotgun she’d probably fired thousands of shells out of at the range, trying to nail clay pigeons or paper targets. She would never claim to be as into guns as her father had been, but sport shooting was fun. She used to win trophies for her times and accuracy on a competition course, running from station to station. Dad thought she could become a ‘professional shooter’ someday, but she didn’t have that much interest in it.

  Putting buckshot into a clay disk had been one thing, but she’d used the shotgun on people. She’d done something she could never take back no matter how much she wanted to. Even thinking of those men as nameless enemies in a video game only helped so much. Ten weeks ago, they’d been relatively normal people going about whatever lives they’d had, until the breakdown of society allowed them to release their inner creeps. They could’ve gone nuts. Maybe someone they loved died, and they said screw it I don’t care. Of course, they could’ve been criminals, too. Prisons had to have emptied by now. She smirked. Men started noticing her at like twelve, and thinking back on it, she probably had a brush with a real creep when she’d been nine. Some random dude had walked up and started talking to her in Kohl’s when her mother had been distracted reading tags. At that age, she hadn’t thought much of how fast he ran off when Mom came back over. In hindsight, she shivered. Maybe that explained why Dad started teaching her how to shoot. No way he looked at his daughter and thought ‘I’m going to make a professional shooter out of you.’ That she took so well to tagging clay pigeons with buckshot had been a surprise.

  But, she’d killed.

  Harper brushed her hand over the Mossberg. It no longer felt like ‘sports,’ and not at all fun. The emotion she read from it wound up part way between guilt and ‘this keeps me alive.’ She could quit the militia and become a teacher like Violet. Sure she didn’t have a degree in education or even a high school diploma, but who cared about that anymore? She got along with the kids and, while she’d been no valedictorian, she’d gotten good grades. The militia could protect Maddie.

  Dad appeared in her mind, handing her the Mossberg with a grim-faced expression. Every other time he’d loaded it and passed it over, he’d been grinning ear to ear since someone had been about to gawk at a ‘little girl’ getting phenomenal scores at the range. That last time in the house, he knew he handed her a killing machine. Maybe he knew she’d freeze up and not be able to kill a man.

  I can’t give up. I won’t. She clutched the shotgun. I’ll protect Maddie. I’m sorry, Dad. I won’t mess up again. She rummaged her pockets, counting eighteen shells plus the nine in the weapon. Crap. I should’ve brought more. She let a long breath out her nostrils. Please don’t let me need more.

  The truck slowed and took a long sweeping left turn that made her slide to the right. They stopped. Spanish cursing came from Rafael along with some grinding noises. The truck reversed, a slow, steady beeping coming from somewhere outside. After a moment of barely moving, a startlingly loud thump emanated from behind her.

  “Whoa,” muttered Fred.

  “It’s okay. Trailer’s empty, so it’s loud.” Rafael patted the wheel.

  “Let’s do this,” said Darnell.

  “No one in sight… of course visibility is shitty.” Marcie sighed.

  “Good thing we brought two snipers then.” Darnell wagged his eyebrows. “Rock paper scissors for sentry?”

  Fred raised a fist. “You want sentry detail or you prefer lugging crap around?”

  “I’d rather relax on top of the truck.” Darnell grinned.

  “Go for it then.” Fred slung his hunting rifle over his shoulder. “Just don’t fall asleep. And oh, the sniper’s the first one they shoot at.”

  Darnell brushed some dust off his sleeve. “Being dead don’t make me tired. Lugging crap back and forth makes me tired.”

  Marcie, Ryan, and Ken chuckled.

  Harper couldn’t tell if he really intended to be lazy or if he had a giant pair of balls, volunteering for the most dangerous role. She followed everyone outside, sliding down from the passenger side door. The truck had backed up to a loading dock, which made things much easier. It took Ryan and Ken a few minutes to get past a steel door all the way on the left and head inside. Marcie counted her way down the garage doors until she reached the one by their truck, and proceeded to work the manual pull chain to raise it.

  Everyone else spread out to search the dock area. They scored early, finding three pallets of canned ravioli that had been dropped off the day of the nuclear strike. No one had made it in to work that day to unpack it. Fred and Rafael grabbed pallet jacks and got started transferring them to the trailer. Ryan went out to the store, a 9mm pistol in a two-handed cop grip. Marcie followed with her compound bow at the ready. Ken, a larger handgun out, went next with Harper at the back.

  She looked out at the Walmart the way she did at the competition ranges, walking in a cautious left-leading stance as if expecting pop up targets to spring at her from anywhere. Hopefully, no innocent person would decide to jump out and startle anyone.

  On the off chance some orphan like Lorelei, Brian, or Kim got in here and decided to hide out, she kept the safety on. A two-second delay could kill her, but she’d rather risk that than blow the head off a child out of reflex.

  “Hey,” said a deep male voice on the left. “Welcome to Walmart.”

  Harper jumped and swiveled, trainin
g the shotgun on a tall, muscular black man in a bright orange jumpsuit. He didn’t have a firearm, though he did have an axe… and a frightening amount of blood spattered on his chest. Her heart nearly stopped at the sight of him as her brain tried to work out if his smile came off as friendly or psychotic.

  Ryan jumped back with a yelp, pointing his handgun at the guy. Perhaps due to the man being twenty or so feet away, Ken reacted more calmly. He pivoted toward the guy, his weapon held ready but not aimed directly at him. Marcie kept her eyes on their surroundings, on guard in case the man showed himself as a distraction for an ambush.

  “We’re not here to cause trouble,” said Ken. “Just looking for food.”

  Harper continued to stare platter-eyed at the bloody convict.

  “Same here,” said the big guy. “Figured I’d check out the deals in the gun section, too.”

  Ryan used his gun to point at the man’s chest. “What’s with the blood? Don’t mind us if we’re a bit on edge, but your outfit’s a bit… distinctive.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” The man nodded. “I was in the joint. Bank robbery. Night job, hit it when no one was there. I ain’t no threat to ordinary people. Only one I ever had a problem with was ‘the man,’ and he dead. Them sons of bitches left us locked in after the blast.”

  “Aww, damn.” Marcie sighed. “That ain’t right.”

  Harper exhaled, and lowered the shotgun.

  The big guy laughed. “Some of them mother—” He glanced at Harper. “Some of them dudes deserved it.”

  “So, what’s the blood from?” Ken relaxed.

  “Kid-toucher.”

  Ryan blinked. “What?”

  “Ran into this skeevy son of a bitch from the joint. I ain’t gonna horrify you all tellin’ what I heard ’bout what he did beyond sayin’ they knew about sixty victims. That kid you got with you would’a been way too old for him. Everyone knew what the guy did, so they kept him in isolation. I ain’t never killed no one before that.”