Evergreen (Book 4): Nuclear Summer

by Cox, Matthew S.

  “Love.” Harper smiled. “It’s like all this horrible crap happened to the world, but there’s still a little bit of hope left.”

  “Aww, that’s adorable.” Darci leaned against her, batting her eyes.

  Harper smirked, pushing her friend upright. “I’m serious.”

  “Yeah, I know. Doing it is much better when love’s involved.”

  “Sorry you had to deal with that.”

  “Forget it.” Darci shrugged. “If I didn’t want to do it, I wouldn’t have. No one forced me to.”

  “No one except the people responsible for the conditions at that camp.”

  Darci pulled her T-shirt up to expose her flat stomach. “I don’t have much room to lose weight. And despite what those bitches at school said, I’m not—nor have I ever been—anorexic. Trust me, not going hungry was worth it.”

  Maybe for you. Harper cringed internally. Granted, Darci lost her virginity over a year before the nukes, so she didn’t have that hesitation in her way. Purely for herself, Harper would have taken hunger. For Madison… She thought about Eva, who’d been almost as starved-thin as Lorelei was at first despite being at the Army camp. Mrs. Parsons hadn’t slept around for extra food either, even with a child to care for. Then again, that woman had given up on life.

  “Argh,” muttered Harper. “Why do I keep doing that?”

  “Randomly screaming?”

  “No.” Harper sorta chuckled. “I keep thinking depressing things.”

  “This is hard for you. I can’t imagine. You were always so happy, optimistic, and sweet.” Darci poked her in the side. “I feel sorrier that you’ve had to cope with this war than I kinda went prostitute to avoid starvation.”

  “Gee thanks.”

  “I mean it, sweetums.” Darci made an overly adoring face, then grinned.

  Harper stuck her tongue out.

  “So here we are. Is it okay for me to hang while you do the cop thing?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I guess it is. As long as I’m not like stopping and just sitting there with you.”

  Darci nodded. “Cool. Yeah, don’t mind walking.”

  “I liked it.”

  “Huh?”

  “What Logan and I did.” Harper smiled despite blushing again. “I liked it way more than I expected. Feels like I should be getting in trouble, but I wanna do it again.”

  “See.” Darci patted her on the shoulder. “Told you it’s fun.”

  “It’s not just a physical act. It’s fun because I’m in love with him.”

  “Cool.”

  Harper glanced over at her. “You don’t believe in love, do you?”

  “Isn’t that a song?”

  “Maybe.”

  Darci grinned. “Love is like unicorns or faeries. If I ever see one, I’ll believe in them. And stop blushing. There’s no reason for you to give a shit what society thinks about girls who’ve had sex before marriage.”

  “What’s marriage anymore?” Harper shrugged. “There’s no society.”

  “Exactly!” Darci thrust her arms up high, head back. “Society is dead. Live for you. Finally! You’ve seen the light and gone anarchist.”

  “Hardly.” She hefted the Mossberg. “I’m technically ‘the man’ now.”

  “No you’re not. What you’re doing is protecting people. You aren’t doing the bidding of corrupt politicians and even more corrupt corporations while claiming to be ‘protecting’ the people.”

  Harper chuckled. “You mean I’m not harassing people for drinking or smoking weed a little too young.”

  “That, too. Damn, those cops were such pricks. Like who cares if a girl wants to toke up? No one on weed ever broke the law. Way too mellow.”

  “Putting Skittles and gummi bears on pizza is breaking the law.” Harper gagged.

  “What? That was awesome.” Darci sighed. “Damn, I miss pizza. Can’t believe that place actually made that pie.”

  “Blech. Neither can I. There is no way in hell you would’ve even been able to eat that monstrosity if you weren’t higher than hell.”

  Darci wagged her eyebrows. “Good thing I’m always half baked. Sobriety is overrated. And how messed up is this?”

  “Is what?”

  “I’m a slacker and proud. Bad grades don’t mean a damn thing anymore. All those teachers bitching at me for getting Ds can go to hell. Oops, I didn’t get into a good college.” Darci clapped her hands to her cheeks and gasped in fake horror.

  “Yeah well… some people wanted to go and can’t.”

  “Did you really, though? Or did you only expect to go to college because it’s what your parents wanted you to do?” Darci swung an arm around her back in a buddy hug. “It’s a whole processing machine they had. Children were like wads of ground beef put in one end of the machine and spat out the other. The education system didn’t want to actually teach anything as much as it existed to produce an army of identical worker bees who knew just enough to operate the machinery of the world but not enough to question anything the people in charge did.”

  Harper patted Darci on the head, ruffling at her hair.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for the tinfoil hat.”

  Darci raspberried her. “It’s true. Or was. That whole thing is gone now. If so many people didn’t die, I’d be happy about it. This is a painful but necessary rebirth for humanity. Kinda like radiation therapy for the Earth.”

  “Dark.”

  “Hello? This is me you’re talking to.” Darci laughed. “Though I do feel weird dressed like a straight.”

  Harper grinned. “It is so bizarre seeing you not wearing black.”

  “Liz didn’t have any clothes that fit my personality. Renee’s going to try to make me some stuff when she can.”

  “Neat. She’s really getting into the making clothes stuff.”

  “Suits her. She used to make clothes for all her dolls. That girl had even more dolls than you did.”

  “I was never doll crazy. You’re thinking of Madison. My thing was collecting faerie stuff, and stuffed animals.”

  “Aww, you’re so adorable. You know, it’s usually women past thirty who keep having twenty-first birthdays, not girls our age repeating their twelfth over and over.”

  Harper picked her eye with her middle finger, making Darci laugh.

  “You’re like that meme of the kitten carrying a gun.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I don’t feel harmless anymore.” Harper kicked a rock off the road.

  “Nah, you’re a total badass now.” Darci winked. “That’s why it sucks the world did what it did to you. You were too innocent to have to face that. I know I’m gloomy all the time, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the cuteness of a pink faerie.”

  “Ugh.” Harper rolled her eyes. “I’m not cute.”

  “Which one of us used to rescue bugs from the house? Little nature pixie.”

  “Says the hippie.”

  Darci smiled. “Think I’ll get in trouble if I went full hippie?”

  “No idea. Lorelei ‘forgets’ her clothes all the time, and no one seems to care.”

  “Except you.”

  “Well, duh. People aren’t supposed to do that.” Harper looked at her. “And she’s a traumatized little kid. You’re a… traumatized adult.”

  Darci raspberried her.

  “Okay, traumatized big kid.”

  They walked for a few blocks in silence, both at the edge of laughing.

  “Any idea yet what you’re going to do?” asked Harper.

  “Smoke pot and try not to die.”

  Harper raised both eyebrows. “So… pretty much the same as before.”

  “Yeah.” Darci chuckled. “More or less… without worrying about getting a job. I mean, it really sucks that so many people died. Except for all the death it took to get here, I’m not sure we’re worse off.”

  “The end of the day job is hardly worth everything we’ve lost as a society.”

  “Is it? Constant rema
kes of the same movies, derivative video games, fancy food, cars, airplanes we can’t afford to go on for vacations we can’t afford to take. Endless consumerism, profit at all costs.”

  “Medicine. People are going to die of cancer and other crap now that could’ve been cured.”

  “Maybe in other countries. Here, they’d have died anyway because curing people isn’t as profitable as letting them die.” Darci frowned off to the side. “Not much different really. We’ve gone from people dying because insurance companies won’t pay or the drugs cost too much to people dying because there are no drugs or hospitals. All that’s truly changed is that we no longer have people making tons of money off the death. Hate to break it to you, but we were technically a Third World country already for ninety percent of the population.”

  Harper whistled. “You almost sound happy the nukes fell.”

  “Nah. I’m just trying to find ways to keep away from the edge, ’cause I don’t wanna fall into that endless black pit. I almost did, back in that camp.”

  “Darce…” Harper stopped walking and faced her friend. “Are you okay?”

  Darci stared down at her toes. “I am now. Losing Dad got to me for a while there. And being alone. Like not knowing what happened to you and ’Nee, and the others. I got a real bad case of the screwits and almost jumped into that hole. No, it had nothing to do with sleeping around for food. Just… why the hell did I survive when everyone I knew didn’t?”

  Harper hugged her.

  Darci didn’t move. “You’re getting squishy and cute again.”

  “Yeah. That’s me, remember? The pink faerie empath.”

  “Heh.” Darci sighed, but returned the hug. “Thanks for existing.”

  Harper blinked. “No one’s ever said that to me before.”

  “Well, they should have.”

  “So you’re good? Not thinking of hurting yourself anymore?” asked Harper.

  “No. I’ve found a nice little pocket of Zen. Got two of my friends back, things don’t seem bad here, and Lucas is into me.”

  Harper blinked. “You’re dating that guy from the pirate show?”

  “Yeah. My ‘job’ is probably going to be helping him grow weed for the town. Everyone needs to loosen up a little, right? People have always wanted to escape reality… and this reality is kinda escape worthy.”

  “No kidding.” More or less convinced her friend didn’t seem likely to harm herself, Harper resumed walking. “If you start feeling depressed again, please talk to me. Or Tegan, okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m not legit mental. Just got really sad and lonely there for a while. Like I said, I’m good now. Back to not caring what happens.”

  Harper waved at Eleanor Price, a fairly recent arrival who’d moved into a house here four months ago with her two kids, Max and Julie. She’d stopped to chat with the woman often enough to know her husband, a recruiter for the Army, was in central Denver when the blast hit and hadn’t been seen since. She and the kids made a go of hunkering down in their basement much the same way as Harper’s dad wanted to, but eventually ran out of food and followed a rumor of safety to Evergreen.

  “Not caring isn’t exactly healthy either,” said Harper.

  “No, not like that. I mean more like not getting upset over whatever happens.”

  Harper grinned to herself. “I imagined you sitting there on your bed in the basement, staring up at the sky after the nuke ripped the house away saying ‘well, that sucked.’”

  Darci laughed. “I’m not that laid back. If my house went flying, I’d probably have freaked the hell out.”

  “So you and Lucas are going to be Evergreen’s weed merchants?”

  “Basically. Only, there’s no money anymore and food is free, so we just give it away if anyone wants it. Most times, people hang out with us and smoke it there. This is such a better way to live than everyone trying to hoard as much cash as possible.”

  Harper waved at Mr. Santiago, who sat on a patio chair in front of his little house. He’d lived there for years, which explained how a single elderly man occupied a residence in the area usually given to parents of school-age kids. She considered him the friendliest old man she’d ever met. Alas, the poor guy still hadn’t quite been able to comprehend there’d been a nuclear war. He thought the people who brought him his allotment of food worked for social services under some ‘wonderful new government program.’

  “Which world do you think is better?” asked Darci.

  “The one we used to have, no doubt. It had its problems, but you didn’t have twelve-year-olds like the boy who lives three houses back, Max Price, needing to shoot people just to stay alive.”

  “Yeah, it did.” Darci hooked her thumbs in the pockets of her shorts. “Just not in the US. Africa and the Middle East had child soldiers. Maybe they still do. Dunno why anyone would nuke those places for any reason other than pure spite. Plenty of horrible stuff happened on this planet before, even if we lived in a nice little bubble and didn’t see it.”

  Harper looked down. “You make it sound like we deserved it.”

  “Nah. Not at all. Except for the one percent, everyone who died to the bombs had nothing to do with making the world suck. Not saying I’m glad it happened, only that the reason things suck changed from greed to desperation.” Darci pulled a joint out of her back pocket. “So, why give up?”

  “You’re just gonna stay high all the time?”

  Darci grinned at her. “Nah. Not all the time. A girl’s gotta sleep.”

  6

  The Old World

  Hanging out with her friends in a bedroom, caught in the cloud of Darci’s pot smoke, had been the closest Harper ever came to getting high on purpose. She still didn’t have any desire to smoke weed. Even if that feeling did mostly come from her parents constantly talking about how drugs were bad more than any opinion of her own. Whether or not it made her uncool, she decided to avoid any sort of ‘illegal drug’ since it’s what her parents would have wanted her to do.

  Darci pulled a joint out of her back pocket and stuck it in her lips. Expecting her to ignite a match or lighter at any second, Harper took a deep breath and held it, looking out among the homes in the area. Everything appeared quiet and peaceful as it should have—except for one house with an open front door. That normally wouldn’t have bothered her, except she knew the place had been assigned and shouldn’t be empty.

  “Crap,” muttered Harper.

  “Hmm?” Darci peered over, joint sticking out of her mouth, lighter poised but not lit.

  “One sec.”

  Harper adjusted her grip on the shotgun and headed toward Mr. Beasley’s house, nerves on edge. The guy didn’t exactly count as ‘friendly.’ He’d wandered into Evergreen soon after the evacuation, before the militia had truly established itself, and claimed that house. While he had never given her too difficult a time, he constantly argued with the militia. He also had an annoying habit of referring to her as ‘little missy’ and loudly announcing his opinion that he didn’t have to listen to the militia since he had a personal garden and didn’t touch the town’s food supply. Approaching his house had as much chance of setting off a gunfight as a two-hour-long political diatribe.

  The guy’s first name was Duke, but she often mentally replaced the u with an ic and dropped the e.

  She had no idea why he even bothered complaining about politics anymore, but he loved screaming about it as well as freaking out that the militia would show up to confiscate his weapons. For the first few weeks of her walking a patrol, he’d been watching her go by through the scope of a hunting rifle, not that she’d known. That factoid, she didn’t discover until he emerged from the house three weeks ago to accuse her of ‘scouting him out’ for a militia attack. He’d accepted her explanation of ‘just being on patrol’ a bit too easily to be legitimately insane, but she didn’t completely trust him.

  Each step closer to the house made the hairs on the back of her neck stand higher. He could have the crosshairs on her
face already, though she didn’t see anything in the windows. Worried about provoking him, she kept the shotgun aimed to the side in a nonthreatening posture.

  “Mr. Beasley?” called Harper. “Are you okay?”

  She paused in the street, listening. When no reply came, she moved to the end of the long driveway. From there, she had a view around the overgrown front lawn at the front stoop. Mr. Beasley lay face down on the porch, his legs still inside the house.

  “Mr. Beasley!”

  Harper slung the shotgun over her shoulder on its strap and ran over to him.

  He emitted a faint wheezing gurgle. He’d landed on his chest, right hand clutching at his heart. Sweat poured down his face, which had become red as a tomato. All the veins in his forehead swelled up prominently.

  Crap! I think he’s having a heart attack.

  Darci padded up the driveway, the unlit joint still hanging from her mouth. Upon spotting the gurgling man, she plucked it out and blurted, “Holy shit.”

  Harper stared at him. No way could she and twig-thin Darci lug a six-foot-two almost 300-pound man anywhere. He had the physique of a long-retired Marine, complete with the brush cut, muscles, and beer belly. She pulled the air horn from its belt clip and sounded one long blast, a 911 tone.

  “Gah!” Darci grabbed her ears. “What the hell?”

  Harper dropped to crouch beside Mr. Beasley and took his hand. “Help’s on the way. I can’t carry you.”

  He shifted his gaze to her, his expression somewhere between pleading and accusatory as if to question why the militia would allow a ‘weak little girl’ to join.

  Most men would struggle to lug this guy around alone. He’s still awake, so I don’t think I need to do CPR. “Is it your heart?”

  He wheeze-grunted in a way that mostly sounded like agreement.

  Answering air horn pips came from nearby.

  “Where is it?” shouted Darnell.

  “Harper?” yelled Marcie. “Was that you?”

  She turned her face toward the driveway and shouted, “Over here!”

  Darci ran back to the street, also shouting, “Over here! Some dude had a heart attack.”