Evergreen

by Cox, Matthew S.

  The other two both nodded.

  “You handled that well.” Annapurna patted her shoulder.

  “I watched a lot of cop shows.” Harper smirked. “I thought that crazy battered wife attacking the police who are trying to help her thing was made up for TV. What’s wrong with people?”

  “We could debate the answer to that question for years.” Ken smiled. “Keep your eyes open, but again, nice job.”

  “Thanks.”

  Harper stood there for a little while after the other two walked off. No sound came from Tommy’s house, though she couldn’t help but feel eyes on her. More than the idea of speaking in front of people, having someone who might really want to hurt her personally brought a new level of discomfort she didn’t at all like.

  She resumed walking, no longer sure if she merely tried to memorize the area or had become a ‘real’ part of the militia and patrolled now. The suburbs south of the school hung in peaceful silence, the crunch of her sneakers on pavement as loud as a herd of horses. Every so often, someone near a window waved at her. A couple guys and a woman or three came out of their houses to chat, having seen her several times over the past few days. She explained she was new in town and had joined the militia. A few thought her too young, but liked to see they had finally sent someone to patrol this area. One twenty-something guy who still managed to find cologne tried to ask her out, and an older woman radiated a vibe like she would’ve given her an apple pie to take home if she’d had one to spare.

  For a while, it felt as though she wandered an ordinary neighborhood that hadn’t been ninety some odd miles away from a nuclear strike. Although, an as-the-crow-flies line up from Colorado Springs mostly went through mountains, so this place had to have been shielded from the worst of it. Airborne fallout notwithstanding.

  After an hour or so, the silence became oppressive. It occurred to her that she couldn’t hear anything at all other than whatever noise she made. No cars, no music playing anywhere, no horns, distant airplanes, no central air units whirring or daytime television leaking out a window. The bizarre silence unsettled her, a stark reminder that the world she’d known for seventeen years had been forever changed.

  And stopping to pee outside behind some trees also bothered her. Mostly because it didn’t feel like she did something socially inappropriate anymore.

  She couldn’t pry her thoughts away from the glare Tommy had given her. Having Ken and Annapurna tell her she did a great job didn’t assuage her fears. If that guy grabbed her from behind, she’d be in trouble. If he could beat the hell out of his wife—who he theoretically loved—what could he do to someone he didn’t even like?

  The shotgun became a leaden weight in her hands that made her feel like an impostor. Who was she to pretend to be a soldier? What the hell am I doing? I’m still a kid. She bit her lip, wondering where she would wind up if she quit the militia. Honestly, she had no business fighting. The only thing that stood between her and being a defenseless, ordinary girl started with Moss and ended with Berg. After the Walmart raid, she had eighty-six shells at home, twenty in her pocket, nine in the gun. Once those ran out, she’d be carrying a glorified club. Industry had collapsed. No one would be manufacturing bullets anymore.

  If I quit, I could help Violet out at the school. I’d rather wrangle kids than shoot people. That poor woman’s stuck trying to watch fifty-four of them. I could handle teaching the small ones.

  Giving up felt like, well, giving up. If only she’d had the same determination she showed when staring down Tommy when the thug kicked in her door back home. While it might give her the illusion of safety, quitting brought on a wave of guilt the same as when she’d caused Dad’s death.

  Harper roamed the streets, thinking about what to do with herself as well as trying to figure out how she felt about Tyler. Well, she knew how she felt about Tyler even if it made no sense for her to be into him. Not two days ago, she decided she had no interest in anything romantic, too worried about Madison, too messed up about her parents, too freaked out about everything she knew being taken away from her. But for reasons she couldn’t explain, all of a sudden she’d looked at him and there’d been this strong attraction. Perhaps he looked like the lost puppy she considered herself to be. They had that in common at least.

  His notion of going out and exploring places normal people couldn’t go before the breakdown of society did have a romantic sort of notion to it. Getting to see rich people’s houses, climbing on their boats, going in all the ‘employee only’ doors she could find just to see what lurked back there—breaking secrets. In a way, she understood the temptation.

  But, no way would she actually do any of that. The exploring part didn’t bother her—the men with blue sashes (or worse) did. The week and change she and Madison had been on their own had been a nightmare of fear, worry, and hypervigilance. She hadn’t realized how tightly wound she’d become until arriving in Evergreen.

  Harper adored that sense of security, enough to where she’d carry a gun to protect it.

  Of course, she’d much prefer not having to keep looking over her shoulder for Tommy.

  A few hours later, an explosion of children’s gleeful shouts rang out. She whirled about and fast walked toward the school. Madison and Jonathan emerged from a curve at the end of the street ahead after a few minutes, so she stopped to wait.

  Upon seeing her, Madison broke into a sprint, shouting “Harp! Harp! Harp!”

  Her sister’s happy tone kept her from panicking.

  Madison crashed into her with a pounce hug. “Harp!”

  “What?” she asked, chuckling.

  “Becca’s here! She’s alive!” Madison bounced, tears of joy streaming down her cheeks.

  Harper pictured a blonde a year younger than Madison, but couldn’t remember much more than what she looked like. “Is she the princess or the smart one?”

  “Becca’s the smart one. Eva’s the princess.”

  “That’s awesome!” Harper picked Madison up and spun her around a few times before setting her down.

  “Yeah!” She beamed. “I’m not even jealous that her parents aren’t dead.”

  The breath caught in Harper’s throat. She stood there, teetering at the verge of tears while her sister bounced in glee. Jonathan, though much more reserved, also appeared quite happy. Memories of Mom and Dad started a slideshow in her head that threatened to throw her into sobs. Somehow, Harper held it in, but she couldn’t move or speak under the weight of grief.

  “Can we go home?” asked Madison. “Harp? You okay?”

  She took a deep breath and rasped, “Yeah. Fine.”

  Madison waited a few paces away, grinning.

  “We need to stop by and see Liz. Going to get some food and see if they’ve got any boots for us.”

  “Ooh, shopping!” cheered Madison.

  Harper blinked at her sister, struggling to process the giddiness radiating from this girl who had been so broken for months. She decided not to question it and forced a smile. “Yeah. Shopping. I heard the truck go out again. They might even have toys.”

  “Yay!” Madison clapped. “Uno’s getting kinda boring. I’d like at least one other thing to play.”

  Jonathan thrust his fists in the air. “Cool!”

  “Don’t get too excited. I’m just guessing. C’mon.”

  Harper headed off down the street, with Jonathan… and someone doing an awfully good impersonation of pre-war Madison behind her.

  30

  Family

  Children’s shouts and cheers came from the backyard, along with the occasional thump of a foot hitting a ball or a louder thud of the ball striking the house.

  Harper sat on the couch working on her book, The Secret Garden, a page or two at a time before worries about Tommy broke her focus. The essence of cheap beef gurgled in the back of her throat despite having eaten dinner over an hour ago. Carrie from next door had joined them for dinner since she had a huge five-gallon commercial can of beef stew she c
ouldn’t possibly eat all herself before it went bad. Conversation over their meal had mostly been about how people in ancient times living in villages would often share meals. Cliff suggested things might start becoming more and more primitive as consumables left over from society got used up. Conservation of firewood made a strong case for town meals.

  He summed their future up as “Medieval times, but with plastic.”

  The soccer ball thudded off the wall again. In the back of Harper’s mind, her mother shouted at the kids, worried they’d break a window. She couldn’t bring herself to yell at them, even though if they broke a window, there’d be no way to replace it. Her scrambled brain burned far too much time trying to figure out what people did ‘way back when’ to make windows. Obviously, houses in antiquity had glass windows… certainly not double pane folding ones, but they somehow made glass. There had to be some people left who knew how, or would humanity wind up becoming fully tribal until people re-invented all the stuff she used to take for granted.

  “Heard about the situation,” said Cliff.

  Harper jumped at the sudden end to silence. “Oh. You mean that asshole? There’s been nuclear war and he’s still hitting his wife?”

  “Probably worse for it. Guys like that hate feeling powerless.”

  “Think he’s going to come after me?”

  Cliff turned a page in his book. “Not if he knows what’s good for him, he won’t. Word is you handled the situation well. Kinda surprised you ran in there and did that.”

  “What else would I have done? Run to get help like a kid?”

  He smiled. “Or a trainee.”

  “Trainee implies training. This is like the first day I worked retail. Manager just had me walk around learning where everything was.”

  “Yeah, well… it’s much harder to defend land you aren’t familiar with. Back when people got into fights with Native Americans, or hell, even in Vietnam. Foreign soldiers had a hell of a time dealing with locals who knew the land well despite vast differences in weapons and technology.”

  “Wow. Feels like I’m in school.” She raked her hair off her face and smiled at him.

  Cliff made a silly face at her and resumed reading.

  A kid outside emitted a happy squeal. Harper leaned back and stared up at the ceiling, wondering how the heck she managed to survive. So many what-ifs circled her head that she had to push them aside or go nuts.

  “Hey… Thanks for being there. In the mall. I don’t know where I’d be if we didn’t run into you.”

  “Ehh, you’re tough. You’d have found your way here. I should be giving you the back pat for mentioning Evergreen, or I’d still be in that damn mall with Jonathan trading bullets with those idiots.”

  “Cliff?”

  He looked up from the book.

  “Do you think it’s a bad idea for me to be on the militia? I’m not totally cool with killing people. I shot those guys to protect myself, to protect Maddie and Jon, but… maybe I shouldn’t be running around looking for violent situations.”

  “Heh. Same here.”

  “What?”

  “I spent eleven damn years as a soldier, the last eight as an Army Ranger. We didn’t look for violence, but we were prepared for it if it happened. None of us enjoyed killing—okay, maybe Wilbert was a special case there—but most of us didn’t. Yeah, it’s not quite the same thing comparing a group of soldiers going in to take on enemy troops to a kid with a shotgun drilling a guy trying to kidnap her, but, you know what I mean.”

  “Do I?”

  He waved dismissively. “Soldiers, cops… most of us, violence is something that can happen, but we aren’t trying to create it. Only the damaged bastards try to get into combat situations when they don’t need to. Way I look at it is, something changes when you kill a person. You don’t have to like it. Hell, it might horrify you. But, you’ve already crossed that threshold. And you’re more trained than you give yourself credit for. How many other people in this place won trophies for shooting at thirteen? Hell, I never touched a gun until after I joined the Army. And, you’ve got something that’s really damn hard to train into people—you don’t want to use lethal force.”

  “But that’s all I have, a gun. If Tommy got past it and grabbed me, I’d have been dead. He’s huge.”

  He nodded. “If going civvie is what you wanna do, you do it. If stepping up to protect people is what you wanna do, do it. The world’s changed, Harper. Question you should be asking yourself is do you really want to be helpless? Do you really trust other people to protect you, or Maddie? No one’s saying you need to enjoy having to shoot someone.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Good.” He chuckled. “I’d be seriously creeped out if you did.”

  “And I trust you, but that’s about it. If something happened, no one will get here in time.” Harper debated staying on the militia vs. quitting. Even resigning wouldn’t give her back the life she really wanted—being a normal high school student on her way to college in a year. The more she thought about it, the more she questioned if she really feared being on the militia as much as she refused to accept the world that had been thrust upon her. “I guess I’m just being whiny. I want to go back to just being a kid, going to school, hanging out with my friends, not having to worry if I’m gonna die at any minute or get kidnapped and… well, you know.” She blushed.

  Cliff set his book on a small table next to the recliner, got up, and moved to sit beside her on the couch, an arm around her shoulders. “It’s your choice. Whatever you decide, I’ll support it.”

  She leaned against him. “Can you show me how to fight without a gun?”

  “Yeah, I think we can work on that sometime.”

  A soft but rapid knock came from the front door. Fred’s face appeared in the window. He nodded and waved.

  Cliff patted her shoulder. “Gotta do a night patrol. I’ll probably be back a little before sunrise. Upside is, I’m off tomorrow. Maybe we can work on some techniques after you’re home.”

  “Okay.”

  He threw on his coat, grabbed the AR-15, and headed out with Fred. Harper went over to the door and secured the deadbolt, thinking of Tommy. She eyed the fireplace, well on its way to going out, and decided to leave it be since everyone would be in bed within twenty minutes. Tomorrow, she’d also pester Cliff about a bath since it had been over a week… and over two months since she’d had a warm one. Even if she had to share a tub with Madison to conserve water and wood, a bath would definitely happen soon.

  Harper crossed to the back door, pulled it open, and beckoned. Jonathan and Madison had a rapid goodbye with a blonde girl a little shorter than her sister. The poor kid looked like she’d crawled through a warzone or a refugee from one of those ‘feed the orphans’ commercials. Under the grime and wild hair, Harper almost recognized Madison’s friend Becca. After their farewell, Becca ran over to Cliff and Fred, who’d cut through the yard heading north, asking them for help finding her house.

  Madison and Jonathan rushed inside, scrambling down the hall to their rooms.

  Too worried to sleep, Harper lit a candle at the dining room table, planning to read for a little while longer. Tommy may or may not know where she lived, but she figured if he did, and planned to do anything, he’d probably show up soon after dark rather than waiting for the wee hours.

  The kids used the bathroom, sorta-brushed their teeth, and hurried to bed.

  Couple months from now, there won’t be any more toothpaste left in the world. We don’t have a dentist either. She lowered her head, bonking it on her crossed forearms. Nuclear war sucks.

  “Harp?” Madison’s voice floated down the hall.

  She got up and walked down the hall to their room. Madison lay in bed, covered to the nose under the four-inch-thick layer of blankets.

  “You gonna sleep?”

  Harper smiled. “Yeah. In a bit. Thinking about a lot of stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  “Everything I’m afrai
d of. Like running out of toothpaste.”

  Madison scrunched up her nose. “That’s not scary.”

  “It is when there’s no more dentists.”

  “Dentists are scary.”

  She laughed. “They’re not scary if you get cavities.”

  Small arms encircled Harper from behind. She almost fainted in shock, but managed not to react outwardly.

  “Night, Harp,” said Jonathan, hugging her.

  She twisted around and squeezed him back. “Night, kiddo.”

  Madison giggled. “He scared you. Your eyes almost popped out.”

  “Yeah.” Harper sat on the edge of the bed.

  “I don’t wanna sleep alone.”

  “Okay. Bear with me a few minutes to let my head stop spinning?”

  Madison sat up. “Can you stop your head spinning in here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t have to worry about Christmas.”

  Harper blinked. “Where’d that come from?”

  “When you gave us candy for dessert. It had a pumpkin face on it. Halloween didn’t happen this year.”

  “No… it didn’t.”

  “It would’ve been bad anyway. Nobody was home to give any candy out.”

  Harper pictured kids in costume wandering the ash-covered streets of Lakewood, knocking on empty houses. What’s wrong with me? I gotta stop thinking such sad thoughts or I’m going to make myself into a basket case. “Yeah. We can do Halloween here next year. There’s people.”

  “Yeah.” Madison nodded, smiling. “You don’t gotta worry about Christmas either. I know it was really Mom and Dad, not Santa.”

  Harper scooted closer and hugged her. “We can still do something. Just to remember them, okay?”

  “Okay.” Madison took in a big breath and let it out. “I know the war made the world stop. There’s not really gonna be Christmases anymore, ’cause all the stores and stuff are gone. You don’t gotta ever get me anything again if you give me one thing for the last Christmas we’ll have.” She looked into Harper’s eyes, tears streaking her face. “The only thing I want for all the Christmases ever is not to lose you, too.” Her voice fell to a raspy whisper. “Please don’t die.”