The Lucky Ones (Evergreen Book 3)

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Cool!” Jonathan leapt to his feet, hugged her, then headed for the door.

  Madison squeezed Harper’s other hand. “He’s gonna get better, right?”

  “The doctor thinks so, yeah.” Harper started for the door.

  “That’s good,” whispered Madison. “I think he’s kinda cool.”

  Yeah, Termite. So do I.

  15

  Fish Dinner

  A whole grilled trout sat on a plate in front of Harper, staring up at her with an expression of open-mouthed shock.

  She hadn’t yet touched it. So far, the only conversation to drift across the table had been Renee asking Harper if she was okay about six times and Cliff cautioning the kids to be wary of bones. He’d cooked the fish out back on the cinder block grill because he said it would taste better, and also because the power grid had crapped out again.

  Madison didn’t appear to have an issue with eating fish. It remained unclear if her vegetarian nature allowed an exemption for lake trout or if general hunger and desire to survive suppressed it. Jonathan looked like a little surgeon, taking his fish apart with precision, searching for bones before eating each bite. Lorelei, as usual, represented an extreme. She picked her fish up with her bare hands and savaged it brown bear style.

  “The fish came out wonderful,” said Carrie in a low tone. “You did a great job.”

  Cliff glanced at her. “Just hit it with black pepper and salt, and whatever that red stuff is.”

  “Cayenne,” muttered Harper. “Least… it smells like it.”

  “Are you gonna eat that trout or just try to communicate with it telepathically all night?” asked Cliff.

  Harper almost smiled. “I’m worried about Logan.”

  Lorelei looked up, her fish draped sideways from her teeth. She play snarled and shook her head like a dog mangling a rabbit it caught.

  That made her smile. “Okay, okay.” She stabbed her fork into the trout. “Sorry, pal. You’re already dead. Don’t look at me like that.”

  Lorelei giggled.

  “Why weren’t we fishing before when food was running out?” Harper stuffed a forkful of fish in her mouth, and coughed. “Yep, cayenne.”

  Cliff flipped his trout over and started on the other side. “Ned thought the lake was full of radioactivity. He got it in his head that water picked up a crapton of fallout. He’s still paranoid about the rain.”

  “So there’s no radiation in the lake?” asked Carrie.

  “Well… I’m no nuclear expert, but we did have some training on the aftereffects of an attack. Fallout distributes byproducts of a fission blast, primarily strontium-90, which is a pretty nasty radio-carcinogen. Wide open areas like the lake can soak up a bunch of fallout, and fish tend to absorb all the toxins in their environment. Remember that whole mercury thing? Considering the number of weapons that went off around here, it’s almost guaranteed we’ve soaked up some strontium among other things. No way to avoid it. Question really is how bad? The training had studies from surveys they did back in the Fifties and Sixties from above-ground nuke tests, measuring levels of strontium-90 in baby teeth of children born both before and after.”

  Everyone got quiet.

  Harper peered down at the fish. “Is this fish glowing?”

  “The Army didn’t pick up alarming levels in the lake.” Cliff tossed another piece of fish in his mouth. “So it should be reasonably safe. A somewhat elevated risk of cancer is already our reality. I don’t think eating this fish is going to substantially change that. Beats starving.”

  The floor lamp by the front window came on.

  “Power’s back,” said Carrie in a pleasant voice.

  Lorelei resumed gnawing on her trout. Jonathan and Madison also continued eating.

  “True.” Harper took another bite, which finally allowed hunger to slip past her worry. She attacked her fish with sincere interest.

  “Some things never change.” Cliff chuckled. “Place I lived before it hit the fan, I lost power a couple times a week. Every damn time it rained, out it went. Or some idiot hit a utility pole. Or something fell apart somewhere.”

  “That sounds annoying.” Carrie cringed. “Did you complain?”

  “Sure. A few times. Never helped.”

  A little past the halfway point of her fish, Harper needed water to put out the cayenne powder fire in her mouth. It made her think of Dad calling her a ‘spice wimp.’ Surprisingly, she didn’t cry at the memory, merely sighed. Yeah. I am.

  After dinner, Harper cleaned the dishes since Cliff had cooked. Madison helped without being asked to, something she used to do back home only when Harper or Mom had been either sick or highly upset. They exchanged a knowing glance; Her sister wanted to help her feel better and Madison understood she got the message.

  Jonathan ran over once he noticed Madison helping out with dishes. He grabbed a cloth and wiped down the table. Lorelei decided to help by ‘neatening’ the chairs. Renee stood beside Harper, also helping with the dishes and talking about what happened on the farm that morning.

  Cliff and Carrie sat together on the couch, talking too low to hear from the kitchen.

  Once cleanup finished, Harper hopped in the recliner Cliff usually occupied. Wow. He must really like Carrie if he relocated to the couch.

  He noticed the surprise on her face and pointed at her. “Don’t get used to it. That’s still my throne. Just needed a bit more room tonight.”

  Carrie smiled and leaned against him.

  Harper once again picked up The Secret Garden. So far, every time she touched that book, something pulled her away within fifteen minutes… or she’d been so worried, she couldn’t focus on it. While she did worry quite a lot about Logan, the idea of reading to lose herself in another reality proved tempting enough that she found the ability to concentrate.

  Renee came down the hall from the bathroom. She paused at the arch where the line between dining room and living room blurred, evaluated the seating positions, then sat on the arm of the recliner by Harper, trying to read the book as well.

  “Sorry. Rude of me to read while you’re over.”

  “I’d suggest we play Magic, but all my cards kinda melted.” Renee made a goofy face.

  Cliff didn’t grab my cards. Harper didn’t really care that much. She had a couple decks, hadn’t been anywhere near into the game as much as Renee and Andrea. “What the heck did girls our age do before phones, movies, and video games?”

  “Got married at eighteen and had kids continuously until fifty,” muttered Cliff.

  Carrie swatted at him. “You’re so bad.”

  Renee rolled her eyes. “I meant like for fun or to pass time.”

  “Probably read, went for walks, talked. Maybe knitted? That sort of thing.” He grimaced. “Wasn’t alive back then and I never read Jane Austen.”

  The kids arranged themselves on the living room floor, Lorelei and Madison playing with dolls. Jonathan crawled half into the TV cabinet. Harper peered over her book at his rear end sticking out from the space beneath the flat panel, wondering if he’d regressed to toddlerdom and wanted to crawl into a tiny hiding place.

  “Jon? What are you doing?”

  “We found a PlayStation in a house today. Wanna see if it works.”

  “Oh.” She smirked, not that anyone saw it past the book. It’s probably dead… but hang on, the TV here works. Maybe Evergreen didn’t get as much of a blast as Lakewood did from EMP. She resumed reading.

  A few minutes later, the once-familiar musical chime of a PlayStation starting up came from the TV.

  “Holy crap it’s alive!” chirped Madison.

  Jonathan scrambled out of the cabinet, sat on the rug, and scrolled the menu.

  “Guess video games are an addiction.” Cliff nudged Jonathan in the back with his foot. “Not even nuclear war cures it.”

  The boy laughed.

  “Wow…” Harper blinked. Don’t wanna get his hopes up. The next time the power goes out, it could be gone forev
er.

  Various pings and beeps came from the screen.

  “Aww,” said Jonathan. “Stupid.”

  “What’s wrong?” asked Carrie. “Is the machine not working?”

  “Just these games. They won’t start because there’s no internet connection.”

  “Uhh, there’s no internet,” said Cliff.

  Jonathan twisted to stare at him. “I know that. But these games won’t start playing without an internet connection.”

  “Are they multiplayer?” asked Renee.

  “No. They just want an internet connection because.” He frowned.

  “I guess the game companies never imagined the internet would be gone.” Renee rolled her eyes. “Seriously. Who’d have ever thought it would just stop existing. Still feels weird not having a cell phone. Do you think the net is permanently lost?”

  Cliff scratched at his beard. “Not like the internet sat on a single big machine somewhere that fried. You had thousands of computers all over the world. Some probably got vaporized. Some shorted by EMP. Bigger problem is that millions of wires and cables disintegrated or melted, and there’s no electricity going to the server farms. It’s unlikely that every single data center was destroyed. Maybe someone could bring the internet back once something like a national power grid existed again, but I think society has more pressing problems than fixing online gaming.”

  “People are worried about not dying.” Madison made her doll pour ‘tea’ for Lorelei’s doll. “No one has time for cat pictures and political arguments.”

  “Hah.” Cliff laughed. “Yeah, just a bit late for politics.”

  Jonathan clicked on another game, which appeared to work: Mortal Kombat. “The internet did a lot more than just games. Communication, information, research for school.”

  “Ooh.” Renee hopped off the chair and sat by Jonathan, taking the second controller.

  “Schools are kinda gone, too,” said Madison. “They’re teaching us how to grow potatoes and about weather and making stuff, not like poems or multiplication or stuff.”

  “History?” Cliff raised an eyebrow.

  “A little, not much.”

  “Odd to think about how much history we’re going to lose because of this war.” He glanced at Harper. “Your grandchildren might not even know there ever was such a thing as the United States. Or that the Civil War happened. Or the Holocaust. Or the Titanic, any of that stuff. They really did hit the reset button.”

  “That’s pretty scary. I can’t even imagine people not knowing any of that stuff.” Harper scrunched her toes into the rug. “If society even survives, 200 years from now, they’re just going to wind up nuking each other again.”

  Cliff put on a fake-evil smile. “How do we know it hasn’t happened already? Maybe you’re right. What if our civilization was the rebuild after the first nuclear war? Or the fifth?”

  “That’s messed up.” Harper whistled.

  “Can’t be.” Jonathan paused the game and looked up at Cliff. “They would’ve detected radiation from prior attacks, right?”

  “Depends on how long ago it happened. If a theoretical ancient civilization obliterated itself to the point we ended up in the Dark Ages, traces of radioactivity would be long gone by the modern world. And, whatever radioactivity happened to be there would’ve been considered normal background radiation because no one would ever consider it possible that an advanced civilization predated ours. Didn’t they find a modern watch in some old tomb somewhere?”

  “What?” asked Carrie. “Now you’re freaking me out.”

  “Umm.” Cliff scrunched his face in thought. “I read something about a Swiss ring watch found in an old Chinese tomb that had supposedly been sealed for 400 years.”

  “What the heck is a ring watch?” asked Madison.

  Cliff tapped his finger. “Tiny little watch embedded in a ring.”

  “That sounds like a hoax.” Carrie laughed.

  “Could be. Probably is. But who knows?” He winked. “We could be stuck in some kind of endless cycle of civilization growing out of nothing then nuking itself and starting all over.”

  “Or you’re just playing with our heads.” Harper turned her attention back to the book.

  Madison soon joined in on the video game action, playing versus mode with Jonathan. Renee being around still felt more like having her best friend over. She hadn’t completely shifted into another member of the family. Though, if Carrie and Cliff ever got married—or whatever passed for married anymore—that might legally make Renee another sister. Still, reading while she had a friend over seemed rude. So Harper also moved to sit on the floor and got in on the video gaming.

  This could be the last time in my life I’ll ever get to touch a working video game. Might as well play. Books will be around longer than I am. Having a functioning PlayStation felt surreal, like the very concept of video games no longer belonged in her world. If I ever have a kid, they’re not even going to know what video games even were.

  Everyone took turns mashing each other’s digital faces in for a few hours. Eventually, it became late enough that Cliff shooed the kids to bed. Renee hung out for a few minutes talking, then gave her a goodnight hug before leaving to go next door to her bedroom in Carrie’s house.

  Harper stuffed the controllers into the cabinet and shut the PlayStation and TV off.

  “You don’t need to go to sleep now, ya know,” said Cliff.

  “Yeah. But. It’s dark and I’ve gotten used to going to bed when it’s dark. Besides. If I can sleep, that’s time I won’t be awake to worry about Logan.”

  He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Need to talk about it?”

  Carrie did the same, giving her a concerned look. “Are you all right, hon?”

  “All right is a wide term. I’m okay in some ways, not okay in others.” She shrugged. “Not much I can do about it. Did you find the bastards? Any idea why they attacked us?”

  “Lost the trail on the highway. Real bitch to track people on paved roads. But that dentist you detained told us his group had been roaming around for a while, caught wind of the old rumors about Evergreen being a safe place. They hadn’t realized how organized we’d gotten, thought it would be easy to slip in and steal some food. That dentist said they hadn’t planned on attacking us, merely grabbing whatever produce they could get their hands on and taking off. But that Parker kid spotted them chucking corn ears in a big garbage can and shouted.”

  “And they shot him.” Harper bowed her head.

  “Something like that. Alan, that’s the dentist, said the guy in charge of that little group initially tried to order them to take off, but they went blood crazed. According to him, he wouldn’t ordinarily have associated with men so violent, but he stayed with them for protection. As soon as he saw them kill Parker, he decided to part ways with that group. He worried they would shoot him for trying to leave. So, he kept his head down and attempted to sneak off, but ran into you.”

  “Who were they?” Harper folded her arms, teetering on the edge of regretting not blowing that guy’s head off and feeling guilty as hell for wanting to kill a guy who might have been innocent. “Why didn’t they just ask for food? Why did they have to steal it?”

  “Who knows?” Cliff shook his head. “Maybe they got too used to taking whatever they needed from whoever they had to take it from. Long enough time living rough, especially in combat conditions, tends to do weird things to a man’s sense of what’s right.”

  “He didn’t want to shoot me because he thought I was a kid.”

  Cliff laughed. “You are a kid.”

  “I’m eighteen.”

  “Still a kid.” He tossed a sofa pillow at her. “At least to me.”

  Harper got up and moved to sit on the couch between Cliff and Carrie. “You guys are starting to kinda feel like parents. I’m scared that Logan’s not gonna make it. I think I’m in love with him and I can’t handle the idea of losing him already.” She buried her face in both hands, st
aring between her fingers at the dark window beside the floor lamp.

  They both put arms around her.

  “Did I mess up not shooting that guy when he jumped on Kirk?”

  “Range?” asked Cliff.

  “Between thirty and forty yards.”

  “Damn iffy shot with buck. If you had a battle rifle or slug rounds, yeah you should’ve taken the shot. Buckshot? You did the right thing.” He squeezed her shoulder.

  “He’ll be fine, hon.” Carrie pulled her close. “Stay positive.”

  “Easy to say. Harder to do.” She swept her hair back off her face and took a deep breath. “But I’ll try.”

  Lorelei walked around the couch in her nightgown. She approached Harper and opened her mouth wide to show off her brushed teeth.

  “Good job!” Harper tickled her, setting of squeals of laughter. “I guess I’m gonna try and sleep. No real reason to stay awake after dark since I don’t have studying to do, there’s no phones, cable TV, or internet.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Cliff grinned.

  “Heh. Is it?”

  He rubbed his chin. “Nah, not really. I kinda miss my late night movies.”

  “I have a bunch of DVDs,” said Carrie, eyebrows up.

  “And that’s my cue.” Harper headed for the hallway. “Good night.”

  16

  We’re All Green

  Once she’d escorted her siblings to school the next morning, Harper went straight to the med center. Her need to check on Logan pushed her up to a jog for most of the way there. Old habits made her stop at the counter in the waiting room.

  Ruby looked up from her book. “Oh, morning, Harper. What can I help you with?”

  “Can I see Logan?”

  “Sure, go on back.”

  “Thanks.” Harper smiled and hurried past her into the hall, wondering if the woman would’ve cared if she had simply gone in without asking.

  Sadie, plus three of the injured farmers remained in beds, one of them out cold. Harper ran to Logan’s side. He had either fallen asleep again or not yet regained consciousness.