Evergreen (Book 4): Nuclear Summer

by Cox, Matthew S.

  Mila squatted, braced her hands on the opposite side of the breach, and lowered her feet down to the least sharp place she could find. As careful as she could be while trying to hurry, she descended into the narrow gap. Her dress only snagged once, but came free without too much trouble. Men outside discussed how to keep the kids from running off and debated tying them together, but had no rope.

  “Easy. If y’all run, I’m gonna shoot whoever’s closest,” said Melvin. “You don’t want to be responsible for your friend getting killed, right? Behave yourselves and stay together.”

  Mila glowered at a pointy bit of metal sticking up in front of her face. He’s gonna lose an eye.

  She grabbed the bottom of the hollow compartment under the passenger cabin floor, a void space about twelve inches tall full of wires and cables. Her feet couldn’t reach the bottom of the cargo deck, so she let herself hang by her fingertips. Most of the luggage must have all gone sliding toward the front of the plane, leaving the space below her sparsely packed. Dangling put her feet close to the floor, enough that she didn’t think it would make too much noise to drop.

  “You either climb or I’m gonna rip that damn plastic down,” barked a man.

  Madison wailed.

  Her fear sounded only somewhat fake. She didn’t really have that bad a problem with heights as far as Mila knew, though a guy did point a gun at her. Harper is going to completely freak out. Mila dropped to land on all fours like a ninja, then crawled to the opening in the side. The plane’s fuselage had come to a halt right at the edge of the hill, leaving no pavement for her to step onto. She suffered a slight scratch on her left forearm as she slipped out to the cliff along the side of the creek. Ignoring the ouch, she crept to the right, closer to the voices. The plane sat on its belly, the landing gear broken, so it blocked her view. However, that also kept the men from seeing her. Mila pulled herself up onto the road and ran to the tail end closer to the Kittredge side. There, she crouched low and crawled far enough to peer around.

  Four men stood around the cluster of her friends, herding them in like sheep. They looked somewhere between neo-tribal and biker gang that had spent months riding in a dust storm. Two of the guys had ‘war paint’ on their faces, probably motor oil or grease. One man held a pistol pointed up at Madison who koala-clung to the deflated chute only a little bit down from the airplane door. A shorter, potbellied guy held a katana. The third man, with curly red hair, slapped a wooden baseball bat into his left hand in a threatening manner while glaring up at Madison. The last man, thin and wiry, leaned on a fireman’s axe like a cane.

  Mila stared at Melvin, the only real threat due to the handgun. At least to her. She could outmaneuver the others enough to stay away from them. Since Madison screaming, crying, and carrying on absorbed the men’s attention, Mila crept out from her hiding place and moved to her right, as far across the street as the steep hillside walling in the road allowed. The farther out of their peripheral vision she could get, the better.

  The kids spotted her right away, but kept quiet. Jonathan swatted at Eva to get her to stop staring at Mila and possibly causing the men to wonder what had gotten her attention.

  “Dammit, kid. Get the hell down now. Gonna give you three more seconds,” shouted Melvin.

  “Just grab it and shake. She’ll fall.” The potbellied guy laughed.

  “Y’all need to calm down,” said the man with the bat. “You ain’t gonna be hurt or nothin’. Just workin’. Kids shouldn’t be roamin’ around out here on their own.”

  “We have a home,” said Christopher. “And we don’t want to go with you.”

  “Well, now, you’re gonna have a different home.” Melvin aimed at Madison. “Gonna clip you in the leg if you don’t slide down right this second.”

  “Scatter!” yelled Christopher. “He can’t shoot all of us.”

  The instant Melvin twitched to reorient his aim at the kids on the street, Mila whipped her leaf knife at his left eye.

  “You ain’t that fas—” Melvin screamed as the blade sank into his skull. He staggered back, fumbling the pistol and grabbing at his face, blood pouring between his fingers.

  Mila sprinted at him, yanking another leaf knife from her necklace as she leapt, planting her feet on his thighs, grabbing his shoulder in one hand, and slicing him across the throat. She jumped down before he started to fall backward, somersaulted over the abandoned pistol to grab it, and rolled up onto one knee—shooting him almost point-blank in the face.

  Brain and blood spattered out onto the pavement.

  Mila whipped her arm up, aiming at the katana guy. “You have two seconds to go away or I will kill all three of you.”

  “You can quit acting creepy now,” whispered Becca in a brittle voice.

  Madison stopped crying and panicking—clearly an act—and slid down the yellow plastic to street level as fearlessly as a fireman going down a pole in a station.

  “That wasn’t creepy,” said Jonathan. “That was awesome.”

  “What now, Rhett?” whispered the man holding the bat while eyeing potbelly.

  Rhett lunged to the side, grabbing Eva, pulling her up against his chest like a human shield. He started to move the katana toward her throat, but before the edge came close, Mila shot him in the left kneecap. He screamed, lurching over sideways. As soon as his ear hit the street, Mila shot him in the forehead.

  Eva scrambled around to hide behind Christopher, refusing to look at the dead man.

  Mila stood, walking toward the wiry axe-wielding man, aiming at his face. “You are still standing there and not going away. That must mean you wish for me to kill you. Three… Two…”

  “Jesus freakin’ Christ. This kid is psycho.” He sprinted off down the road, the other guy running in the opposite direction, heading toward Kittredge.

  Mila held her head high. “I’m not psycho. I’m just not afraid of idiots.”

  “Damn,” whispered Jonathan. “You are amazing.”

  “How’d you get so good with a gun?” asked Christopher.

  “I had to practice.” Mila examined the weapon. The 9mm didn’t hurt her hand as much as the .45 the Shadow Man made her use. She flicked the safety on. For now, she would carry it in case those guys came back, but she didn’t want to keep it. Also, she doubted the militia would allow her to. At least, not until she got older. She crouched to pick up the knife she’d used to slice the guy’s throat, and put it back in her ‘necklace.’

  Jonathan walked over to her. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine.” She glared down the road, trying to stay angry at those men so she didn’t have to think about what she just did.

  “You kinda look like you’re upset.”

  Mila shifted to put her back to the other kids, but didn’t hide her face from Jonathan. “The Shadow Man wanted me to shoot a guy in the head for training. He didn’t do anything wrong. Just some poor man he kidnapped. I wouldn’t do it, even though the Shadow Man beat me for refusing.” She looked down, letting the gun hang at her side. “Being good at shooting doesn’t mean I like killing. I’ve never killed anyone before. Stabbed, yes. But not killed. These men were gonna shoot Maddie and kidnap us all. They deserved it. I’m sad but not sad. These guys were bad and deserved being shot.”

  Jonathan hugged her. “You are awesome. That was like straight out of a movie.”

  “Do you think I’m psycho?” whispered Mila.

  “No. Psychos like killing. You don’t.”

  Mila smiled, feeling a little less guilty. “Okay.”

  “Are you still gonna stay here to watch Lorelei?” Jonathan looked toward the road. “Might not be safe. Those guys could come back and bring friends.”

  “Umm.” Mila crouched and yanked her other leaf knife out of Melvin’s eye, then wiped it clean on his shirt.

  Jonathan picked up the katana. “Mine now.”

  “That’s a Japanese sword. You’re Chinese,” said Christopher.

  “What’s your point?” Jonathan sm
irked.

  Christopher laughed. “Just saying. You’re the Chinese ninja.”

  “Ninjas are Japanese,” said Becca, her back turned to the dead people. “And that’s a samurai sword. Ninja’s didn’t carry katanas. They had straight swords. Can we please go away from dead people now? I really wanna go home.”

  “How the heck do you know that?” Christopher stared at her.

  “We watched a ton of anime,” said Madison, striking an odd pose with Becca—probably something from a cartoon.

  “Mila’s a ninja.” Jonathan grinned.

  “Yeah, no kidding.” Christopher whistled.

  “Hey!” shouted Lorelei from the aircraft door.

  Everyone looked up at her.

  “You got out?” asked Jonathan.

  “The gunshot scared me and I kicked the cubby really, really hard. It opened.” Lorelei crouched as if about to jump down.

  Christopher, Jonathan, and Madison scrambled to grab the bottom of the chute and pull it away from the plane so it became something of a slide again. Lorelei dropped, slid down the yellow plastic, and crashed into them like a living bowling ball. The kids fell in a heap, but no one got hurt beyond a momentarily painful bump.

  “Can we go home now?” asked Eva. “I’m gonna throw up.”

  “Don’t look at the brains on the road,” said Christopher.

  Eva retched, doubled over, and gagged.

  “Stop that!” shouted Becca. “There aren’t any brains on the road.”

  “Yeah. I wanna go home, too.” Madison picked Lorelei up.

  Mila waved at everyone to get going. “Yeah. We should get outta here fast. The gunshot might make more bad guys come looking.”

  9

  Bad Dreams

  Harper decided to try a taste of extreme normality once her patrol ended.

  Upon returning home, she changed from her jeans and T-shirt outfit to a plain white sun dress and went barefoot. The much lighter, airier outfit made the July day almost tolerable without air conditioning and gave her the illusion of being an ordinary young woman in a world where nothing catastrophic had happened.

  She daydreamed about her first time with Logan, clinging to the much-needed happiness. Both Renee and Grace had been getting on her case about her constantly navel-gazing over the direction life had gone. They had a point. Of course, having her parents murdered right in front of her left a mark, a shock not easily set aside. She couldn’t tell what had been more of a jolt to her system—witnessing that, or a girl like her being put in a situation where she had to kill someone.

  Either way, it happened. She wasn’t the same kid who started her senior year of high school a week before everything died. Renee said she’d been ‘hardened.’ Harper didn’t fully agree since she couldn’t kill anyone or anything and not feel remorse. She could, however, defend herself or others and not feel—much—remorse. Considering the overly sweet, timid place she started off, maybe that still counted as hardened.

  Regardless, today she decided to be happy and normal. Her parents would not want her wasting her life in a constant state of sorrow. And, after ten months, she had finally reached a point where not being miserable didn’t feel like she failed to show sufficient respect to their memory. Mom probably wouldn’t have been happy she had sex before graduating college, but after that initial shock wore off, she’d most likely have wanted gossip. Also, her parents would likely have approved of Logan. Father and older sibs in the military, respectful, polite, caring.

  She sighed wistfully, wanting to be with him.

  Keeping a shotgun in arms’ reach did break the sense of normality a little bit, but such was the world she lived in. Like some kind of happy housewife from the 1960s, Harper hummed to herself while collecting vegetables for dinner. Cliff planned to bring home a chicken tonight, which they’d work on for a day or two. Despite the town’s food situation—one calamity away from starving—she still didn’t want anything to do with killing a chicken or even watching it die. While she wouldn’t cry over it like Madison, she couldn’t bring herself to kill an innocent animal. Thankfully, Cliff would take care of that part.

  She arranged the vegetables and got to slicing them.

  A few minutes later, the front door flew open hard.

  Expecting the militia to have come looking for her about a problem, Harper dropped the knife and spun, reaching for the Mossberg so she could run out to see what happened—but stopped short at the sight of the kids rushing inside. Jonathan had a katana and Mila carried a handgun. The weapons didn’t alarm Harper as much as the sight of blood spritz on Mila’s face.

  “Crap,” rasped Harper. “What happened?”

  The kids ran over to her. Madison clamped on, almost but not quite trembling. Eva looked ready to melt into a puddle of anxiety. She eyed the door like she wanted to run home to her mother but didn’t want to be alone that long. Also, her mother would likely be working. Becca shivered, but her expression didn’t appear too freaked out. Both Jonathan and Christopher had the wide-eyed look of boys who had seen the coolest thing in the world.

  Mila had an ‘ugh it’s Monday’ expression.

  “What’s going on?” asked Harper. “Mila?”

  She held up the gun. “You’re going to take this away from me anyway, so here.”

  Harper glanced down at a Beretta 92. “Smells like powder. You shot someone?”

  “Yes. Two men.”

  “We’re sorry,” whimpered Madison. “We broke the rule.”

  “Okay.” Harper held her hands up. “Slow down. What rule? What happened?”

  Jonathan took a deep breath. “We went house exploring, and walked out on Hidden Village Drive to that place all the way at the end. Only, we didn’t go inside. Down the hill, we saw a crashed plane. So we wanted to check it out.”

  “We went outside town.” Madison sniffled, exhaled, and appeared to collect her emotions. “Not by that much. Maybe Kittredge is still part of Evergreen? I dunno.”

  “We went inside the plane to look around. There’s some beer and alcohol, and a couple bits of luggage left but we didn’t get a chance to look inside them.” Mila grasped Lorelei by the collar of her dress and pulled her over.

  The little blonde girl grinned, then waved at Harper. “Hi!”

  “Lore crawled into a storage cabinet and got stuck.” Mila grabbed her in a headlock from behind. “She scared us to death. We couldn’t get her out, so they were going to run back here to get help while I stayed with her.”

  “But, when we got out of the plane, bad guys found us.” Jonathan held up the katana. “One of them had this. Another guy had the gun. They threatened to shoot us if we ran and wanted to kidnap us and make us work.”

  Harper gasped. She grabbed her three siblings—plus Mila since she’d been standing close—into a hug. “Dammit. I don’t want you guys going that far outside town again, okay?”

  “No way.” Eva shook her head rapidly. “I don’t even wanna go house exploring anymore. I’m gonna stay right in the yard.”

  “Yeah.” Becca ground her toes into the floor. “Me too.”

  Mila explained how she snuck out of the plane and ambushed the bad guys while Madison stalled them by pretending to be too scared to climb down. When she described shooting the guy in the head, a little twitch in her lip poked Harper straight in the feels. She’d probably made that same facial twitch the first time she’d pulled the trigger on a Lawless. But at least she’d been seventeen… not ten. Much less ten years old for only a few days. That still counted as being nine.

  “That was incredibly brave of you.” Harper put a hand on Mila’s shoulder. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Mostly.”

  Harper ran around checking all the kids over for injuries while asking them repeatedly what the men did to them. Fortunately, it sounded as though they’d only been forced to stand in a group waiting for Madison to climb down. Christopher and Eva had been grabbed and shoved around, though neither suffered even a bruise. Harper hated tha
t Mila had to kill two men, but couldn’t say she didn’t approve of their deaths. Had she been there and seen a guy point a gun at Madison, she’d totally have fed him buckshot.

  “Okay. You guys stay in the yard for the rest of the day. Or inside if you want.” Harper set her hands on her hips. I’m going to have to report this. Dammit. There goes normal. Let me tell Cliff first. I don’t need to run right out the door. He’ll be back soon.

  With slightly shaky hands, Harper resumed preparing dinner while the kids went out to the backyard. Eva and Becca sat on the porch together, not seeming interested in playing Frisbee or soccer. Lorelei zoomed around, unfazed. Then again, she hadn’t seen the violence or even the men. Madison kept her attention and carried her away from the scene so she didn’t see or touch the dead guys. Mila, as well, didn’t look too enthusiastic about the Frisbee throwing, but still participated. Probably to take her mind off what she’d done.

  I should ask Tegan to talk to her. She’s not a psychiatrist, but she’s as close as we have. Harper chuckled. This entire town is full of people who need shrinks.

  Cliff arrived home later that afternoon carrying an already-dead chicken by the legs.

  He whistled like some sort of hayseed farmer, swinging the bird idly side to side on the way in the door. Harper laughed at the sight, which got a playful narrow-eyed glower from him. Not long after he returned, Mrs. Parsons came to collect Eva, who leapt into a hug and exploded in tears.

  Cliff looked up from plucking the bird with a ‘something happened, didn’t it’ expression.

  Harper nodded to him, then pulled the woman aside to give her a quick explanation. Mrs. Parsons also declared that Eva wasn’t allowed to go anywhere near the edge of town. The girl tearfully replied she didn’t want to and promised not to do it again. Becca, Christopher, and Mila left to go home, walking with Mrs. Parsons as well since they all lived a bit north in the area Harper usually patrolled.