“Dude!” Darci gestured at her. “Someone stole Harper and replaced her with a legit badass. Did you like blow the faces off three damn people?”
Harper cringed away from the corpses on the road beside her. “Don’t remind me… and those bastards with the blue sashes aren’t people anymore.”
“Umm.” Eva poked her finger into a new bullet hole beneath the side window. “Can we please stop being inside a video game? I don’t want to be shot.”
Darci looked at Harper the same sort of way her classmates had in the dream, freaked out that someone she knew killed people. But, rather than accusation, the girl’s expression gave off awe. “You okay, Harp?”
“I don’t know.” The shotgun seemed to grow heavier in her grip. “What even is okay anymore? Lawless. Just lawless. Not people. Yeah. I’m good.”
Mom? Dad? If you’re out there somewhere watching me, I paid a couple more of them back for you.
26
Master Key
Rafael, AR-15 in hand, walked around to the back of the van. He didn’t look too worried, but his expression remained far from pleased.
“How bad is it?” asked Deacon.
“Biggest problem is replacing the tire. Doesn’t look like the engine took any hits. Ain’t no fluid rainin’ down to the street at least. We swap the tire, we should be good to go. But, I ain’t gonna fight with this engine too long. If that gas quit, we’ll be better off walking home.”
“Rafael.” Harper gestured at Darci and Eva. “They don’t have shoes. And Mrs. Parsons is pregnant.”
He set his hands on his hips. “So? Lotta people walk without shoes. Just gotta be careful where ya step. An’ the woman is pregnant, not crippled. Not saying we gotta run back to Evergreen. But standing around here fighting with an engine that’s choking on dead gasoline is just gonna get us shot when more of them bastards come back.”
“Yeah. Ain’t no thing.” Deacon smiled. “I can carry the kids if need be.”
“I can walk,” said Darci. “Unless there’s like a shitload of broken glass on the road.”
Annapurna glanced at the Woody’s Pizza building. “Just in case more of them show up, let’s take cover inside, away from the van.”
“Sounds good.” Darci hopped down to the street and padded over to the restaurant, stepping around bloodstains and debris.
Mrs. Parsons carried Eva out the side door and around the front end to prevent her from seeing the bodies. Deacon grabbed the men each by one ankle and dragged them to the opposite side of the street, concealing them in a dirt lot to the right of a big building made to look like adobe. Scorched letters over the doors read ‘Table Mountain Inn.’
Harper faced the pizza joint and noticed it connected to another building on the left at the corner, a Starbucks. Despite her temptation to check for coffee, she followed the others into the pizza restaurant.
The interior looked like a smaller nuke went off inside it. Sparkling flecks of broken glass glimmered everywhere on the floor, a beautiful—but painful—sight that kept Darci from going farther than about two steps. Mrs. Parsons, who still had her sneakers, crunched in among the tables until Eva abruptly screamed. She pivoted to look toward what made the girl shriek, and recoiled.
Harper hurried over, shotgun ready, but lowered it at the sight of long-dead bodies, little more than charred bones and puddles of dark purple-black rot. Eva cried softly, whispering about not wanting to see dead people anymore. The sight of the child clinging to her mother sent Harper’s emotional rollercoaster on another free-fall dive. In the absence of a hormonal storm, she managed to keep the sudden, painful grief for her mother off her face. She looked away, not truly jealous of Eva for still having her mother, but that didn’t mean she wanted to watch such a glaring reminder of comfort she’d never have again.
Deacon walked in, picked Darci up, and carried her in to a safe glass-free spot.
“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.” She looked around at the floor, curling her toes. “If I gotta run out of here in a hurry, I’m gonna shred my feet.”
“We ain’t fixin’ ta be here that long.” He smiled at her, then approached Mrs. Parsons, holding out a handgun, grip first. “You ever fire a weapon before?”
“Once, a couple years ago.” She set Eva down seated on a table and accepted the gun. “Like riding a bike, right?”
“That’s a gun,” whispered Eva, eyes-wide.
Harper bit her lip, worried that arming a woman who’d stopped caring if she lived or died might not be a wise idea. With any luck, the woman still had enough drive to protect her daughter, and possibly hope in Evergreen, to hang on.
Out of habit, she walked past an aisle of partially melted tables and checked the kitchen for canned goods. The Lawless, or someone, had already cleaned the place out, so she returned to the front room and stood by the front window, gazing out at the obliterated city. Rather than give in to sadness, she felt only anger at the people who caused such destruction.
A ‘ka ching’ made her turn.
Darci hovered by the cash register, its drawer open, gathering the paper bills in a wad.
“The hell you bothering with money for?” asked Deacon, chuckling.
Darci shrugged. “Seems like a waste to just leave it here.”
“TP is worth more than that cash.” Harper sighed. “Mostly because it’s wider and softer.”
“Yeah, I know. But, still. Have you ever held like a thousand bucks in cash before?” Darci grinned, flapping bills at her. “I feel like Randy now.”
Harper started for the back room again, inspired by thoughts of finding TP. “I never did trust that guy.”
“No one trusts dealers. Not even the people who buy from them.” Darci glanced down at her miniskirt. “Crap. I don’t have pockets. Oh well.”
After a few minutes of rummaging, Harper scored two large cardboard boxes of cheap toilet paper as well as a couple bottles of bleach and some other cleaning supplies the Lawless had no interest in. She lugged her haul to the van, then searched the bathrooms, taking all the TP and paper towels from there as well.
Outside, Deacon and Anna collected the dead Lawless, stripped them of anything useful including weapons, ammunition, and clothing not too bloody to be saved. Harper stashed the last of the TP in the van and gave in to the temptation to check the Starbucks.
The huge window along the front of the coffee place had melted into a bizarre puddle that looked more like spilled epoxy resin than glass. A streetlamp nearby bent over backward like a limp hose, flat on the road.
She rummaged the machines, shelves, and cabinets out front, having no interest in gift mugs or cups. Alas, it appeared that someone already cleaned the place out of coffee and food, so she ignored the main area and headed for the back. There, she discovered a storage room secured with a gouged padlock. The previous looters had evidently attacked it with a hatchet or hammer but failed to do enough damage to break it open.
For a minute or two, she weighed the gamble of wasting a shell on a padlock that could turn out to be guarding nothing. The idea of seeing Cliff’s face if she brought back coffee—plus wanting some herself in a bad way—convinced her to burn a shell. She backed up a few paces, leveled the Mossberg off at the padlock, and fired.
The padlock and its bracket exploded in a shower of metal parts.
Eight.
Harper nudged the door aside and stepped into a small room with shelves containing about a dozen cases of coffee beans prepackaged in one-pound bags. “Yes!”
Deacon ran into the front. “Harper? You okay?”
“Fine!” she shouted. “Back here.”
He rushed to the storage room door, aiming around with his AR-15. “What are you firing at?”
“Sorry. Just needed to use my master key to open a lock.” She pointed at the coffee. “Help me grab these?”
“Aww damn.” He laughed. “Sure.”
27
Priorities
Harper and Deacon loaded the coff
ee into the van with the TP and cleaning supplies, then went back inside Woody’s Pizza. Eva whispered to her mother, asking when they could eat something. Darci paced around her relatively small area of safe floor.
“Where’s Rafael?” asked Harper.
“No idea.” Annapurna shrugged.
Harper bit her lip and hurried to the window, looking out at the road. Anxiety built minute by minute. Dammit. Why did I go on this stupid trip? Madison is gonna kill me if I get stranded out here. She peered back at Darci and Eva, hung her head, and sighed out her nose. Okay. That’s why. Restless, she paced around by the front of the room, glass and wood fragments crunching under her sneakers.
Minutes of awkward silence later, Rafael hurried in the door.
Everyone jumped.
“Okay. Found a donor van for a tire.” Rafael smiled.
“You shouldn’t have run off alone,” yelled Annapurna.
He waved dismissively. “Just scouting around. Easy to run from any problems. Gonna need someone to watch my back while take the tire, though.”
“I’ll go.” Harper started for the door. “Let’s just get it done quick.”
“Whoa, Harp.” Darci whistled. “When did you turn into Miss Rambo?”
She swept her hair off her face. “It’s a long damn story. I’ll tell you about it once we’re home.”
“You’re going back to Lakewood?” Darci cringed. “That’s not a good idea.”
“No. That place is dead.” There’s nothing left of the past. It’s all gone. “I mean my new home. Evergreen.” Harper walked outside.
Rafael hurried over to the van, grabbed some tools from under the driver’s seat, and rushed off past the Starbucks, around the corner to the right. Harper jogged after him. They went one block down before turning left past a brick red parking garage that had mostly collapsed in on itself. Soon, they passed a post office on the right. Rafael kept going straight at the next intersection, hurrying along the side of a big building with a rounded corner and lots of missing windows, half shattered, half melted. He ignored another parking garage entrance on the left and went straight to the end of the huge building and into the parking lot behind it, bee-lining to a Chevy conversion van that had been partially shielded from the thermal blast by the building.
Maybe twenty feet ahead, the street ended at a T in front of a big apartment complex, the left side curving around the five-story parking garage. Harper gave a quick look around, saw no Lawless—or anything else moving—and hurried to catch up to Rafael.
The spare on the back and the two tires on the passenger side had melted, but the rear driver’s side tire remained intact. He crawled in one of the missing windows and came back out carrying a small jack.
“Okay. This is gonna take a few minutes. Cover me.”
“Right.” Harper stood behind him, looking around at the apartments and the streets.
A few dead people lay on the sidewalk behind the big office building, beneath the yawning metal frames that once held two-story-tall windows. The corpses appeared rotted to the point where she couldn’t tell how they died, other than they hadn’t been vaporized by the nuclear flash. Sorry. Shaking her head, she gazed up at the building. Someone’s sports car had ended up inside the third floor, upside down, smashed like a stepped-on soda can.
Rafael set up the jack and started cranking. “Yanno, I’d been pretty damn close to opening my own garage. Lot of years busting my ass, saving up, earning certifications. Had like ninety grand in the bank, and a decent shot at getting approved for a business loan. Was finally gonna pull the trigger in January.”
“Sorry,” whispered Harper. “That sucks.”
“Well, at least my training isn’t totally going to waste. Never thought I’d be stealin’ tires off parked cars, though. I don’t miss having my own garage as much as I miss Marissa. We were gonna get married once the dust settled from opening the garage.” Creaks and groans came from the van, its weight shifting onto the jack.
Harper kept looking around, alert for danger. “Is she, umm…?”
“Don’t know. I haven’t seen her since the blast.” He stopped cranking the jack and gestured at the corpses on the sidewalk. “I think the people who got vaporized are the lucky ones. All their problems went away in an instant. They don’t gotta mourn no one or figure out how the hell to survive.” A tool clattered to the pavement with an almost melodic metal ringing.
“Aww, don’t talk like that. People lived without technology for a long time. We’re the lucky ones because we survived the worst war ever in history and have a reasonably safe place to call home. Yeah, it’s not easy, but… we’re still here.”
Rafael grunted, leaning all his weight on the tire iron to break a lug nut’s hold. “You really believe that? You don’t sound so confident.”
“Mostly.” She turned toward him, head bowed. “Sometimes… okay, a lot of times, I feel guilty because I’m still alive. Dr. Hale said it’s ‘survivor’s guilt,’ and it happens all the time. People who go through something like a plane crash, sinking boat, natural disasters, whatever… and survive, feel like they aren’t worthy to live when other people died. It’s not easy to deal with. I can’t even imagine how many people died to that war. Smart people, important people… my parents. Who am I to still be here? But… I’m still here. I might not be a genius doctor or PhD or anything, but Maddie, Jonathan, and Lorelei seem to be happy I’m still around.”
“Meh. I still think it’s easier on the poor bastards who never even knew what hit ’em.” He grunted louder, straining. The lug popped with a clank. “Ahí tienes, hijo de puta.”
“What if there’s nothing after death? Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. But I’m not in any hurry to find out for sure. What good would it do to give up? I’ve got Maddie to think about. And Jonathan, and Lorelei. Those people who rode wagons out to the Old West couldn’t possibly miss the Internet or Starbucks or video games because they never knew anything like that existed. The war absolutely sucks, but I gotta deal with it for the kids I’m playing mom to now.” She huffed. “And I don’t even like calling what happened a war. We didn’t suffer a war, we suffered a bunch of arrogant, idiotic assholes having a temper tantrum.”
Rafael laughed. “Yeah, I guess. I spent my whole life working to become a mechanic. Pretty soon, the world won’t need me anymore. I’ll be useless.”
“No way, man. There’s more than cars that need fixing. Pumps, generators… you’re trying to get that biodiesel going right? There could still be cars if you make them exist. What if you’re the guy that makes a working engine with sustainable fuel, you could be the Henry Ford of the apocalypse.”
He laughed.
“I mean it. The world needs people like you to get back what we were stupid enough to throw away. I gotta believe that things will eventually get better. It might not happen in our lifetime, but it’s not like all modern knowledge was wiped out. We didn’t literally jump back to the 1800s. People back then could never have imagined computers or SUVs. We remember what used to exist, so we’ll have an easier time getting back there. There’s books.”
“If we don’t all die.”
“When did you become such an optimist?” She puffed hair off her face.
A dull thud came from the road that curved to the left past the parking garage.
“Crap. Someone’s there. Be right back.” Harper raised the shotgun and hurried out of the parking lot and across the street.
When she reached the parking deck, she crept up over mulch and bushes, past the incinerated remains of tiny trees. Huge rectangles of steel gridding, a safety barrier spanning the second-to-fifth stories, hung between columns on the otherwise wide-open parking deck, the metal drooped from the heat blast.
Someone or something grunted and scuffed about on the street past the corner, sounding close.
Harper peered around, but an extension of the parking deck blocked her view of the street, so she scurried up to the next wall and peeked around it.
A shirtless man in dark grey pants shambled in a zombie-like gait up the sidewalk on the opposite side of a narrow street running between the parking deck and five-story apartment buildings. Bloody fluid leaked from numerous sores on his back and arms. He’d swollen to almost inhuman proportions, his left hand dark red and blown up like an inflated rubber glove. No hair remained anywhere on him.
There is no way in hell he’s a literal zombie. Oh, crap! That’s radiation poisoning. He’s gotta be radioactive as hell. This whole place could be freakin’ glowing. She aimed at his head, but hesitated, unable to murder someone who presented no threat to her or anyone else. He’s gonna be dead soon anyway. That’s pretty bad radiation sickness. As swollen and delirious as the man looked, he couldn’t have much time left to live. Days, maybe hours of misery left.
Please forgive me. She pulled the trigger.
Blam.
His head exploded like a watermelon.
Rafael cursed. The distant clatter of a tire iron hitting pavement echoed back.
She ran to him, shaking from fear of radiation. “Hurry up. We have to get out of here now.”
“What the hell?”
“This dude looked like a damn zombie. All swollen up and purple. No hair. Didn’t seem like he had any intelligence left either. He couldn’t have been exposed to that much radiation during the initial blast, or he would’ve been dead months ago. He got a fatal dose recently. There’s serious radiation around here somewhere.”
“Shit.” Rafael spun the tire iron rapidly with one hand. “Keep an eye out in case someone heard that shot.”
Harper stood watch, shivering with dread. “C’mon. C’mon.”
“I’m going as fast as I can.” Rafael removed the last two lugs, then handed her the tire iron. “Here. Hang onto that.”
The Lucky Ones (Evergreen Book 3) Page 24