The World That Remains (Evergreen Book 2)

by Matthew S. Cox

  “The whole world slowed down. I think I’ve got the shakes from internet withdrawal.”

  Madison almost smiled, but didn’t quite manage it. I wanna pretend everything is still okay. Like we’re on vacation. Maybe I can make myself believe it and not be sad.”

  Harper brushed her sister’s hair off her face and kissed her forehead. “It’s not good to lie to yourself. I wish none of it happened, too. I want Mom and Dad back more than anything, but… the best thing we can do for them now is survive. They’d want us to survive. It’s not really that bad here. Sure it’s primitive and boring, but we’re safe.”

  “Yeah, but you were gonna wind up with some stupid office job.” Madison flicked her hair off her shoulders. “I was gonna be a rich and famous dancer.” For a few seconds, she appeared serious, but a flimsy smile broke the act.

  Harper stuck out her tongue. Madison’s smile advanced from weak to somber but genuine.

  “C’mon. It’s almost bedtime. Finish up in here and get your nightgown on. My turn to use the bathroom.”

  “Okay.” Madison started for the door, but stopped to peer back at her. “I’m giving you fair warning. There might be more crying tonight.”

  Harper sat back on her heels and exhaled hard. “That’s fine. I think we both need to let it out. This crap isn’t easy to deal with.”

  “Do you think I was nuts?”

  “Huh?”

  Madison shifted her weight. “The phone.”

  “Did you really expect them to call?”

  “I dunno. I don’t really remember it. Every time I think about it, I see Mom and Dad when those men attacked us, and then we’re in that place with the huge chocolate muffins. Maybe I was legit nuts for a while there, but I’m trying not to be crazy anymore. Not like Mila. She’s a little scary.”

  “Shock,” said Harper. “We were both in shock. And… something happened to that girl. She probably watched someone hurt her parents.”

  “Oh.” Madison looked down. “Just like us. I’ll try to be nice to her, but she doesn’t really like anyone.” She spun and whisked off to the bedroom.

  Harper got up, leaned on the sink, and stared at herself in the mirror. The reflection gazing back at her looked dusty, exhausted, and had this strange faraway look in her eyes. Whether it had come from killing thugs, the trauma of witnessing her parents’ murder, or being on high alert for so long, she couldn’t tell. But, the young woman gazing back at her didn’t seem much like Harper Cody anymore.

  I’m worrying Maddie. That’s what’s freaking her out. She knows I’m fried. Harper closed her eyes, let all the air out of her nose, and took a deep breath. I’m still me. I’m still who I used to be… mostly.

  The voice of Ryan Prentice, king of the junior prom, echoed in her mind over the auditorium’s PA system. And for sweetest person… Harper Cody! That spotlight moment embarrassed her so much she had still been blushing when senior year started… all two weeks of it before the nukes ruined everything.

  When the cheering of students died down, she imagined him pulling another card, reading it, and announcing, Most likely to kill someone… Harper Cody!

  “Ugh. I should be staying up ’til midnight studying, complaining about the stupid people who shop at the mall. A lot of stuff should be, but isn’t.” She threw a few handfuls of water on her face, then toweled it off before grabbing toothpaste. “This is the new normal. If I can’t get a grip, Maddie never will.”

  After brushing her teeth, she used the toilet, then crossed the hall to change into her nightgown. Since Cliff was home, she decided to give Madison a little sense of normal by leaving the shotgun on the floor by the bed and going out to the living room as just Harper instead of ‘militia girl.’ The four of them played Uno while Cliff sat in his recliner, reading. Right around the time it became too dark to do anything other than go to sleep, a knock came from the door.

  “Hey, it’s me,” said Fred Mitchell.

  Cliff got up, set his book down, and got ready to go out on night patrol.

  “Be careful.” Harper grabbed a blanket from the sofa, wrapping it around herself before Fred could see her in the gossamer nightie.

  “That goes for you, too.” He pointed at her, winked, and headed out.

  She followed him to the door.

  Fred waved at her with a warm smile, then walked off with Cliff down the road.

  She shut the door, pondering the deadbolt, but didn’t lock it since ‘dad’ would be back in a few hours. Soon, it became too dark for the kids to play the game, so she shooed them all to bed. Everyone took a turn in the bathroom, then crawled in under the blankets. Harper lay flat on her back with Madison clinging on one side and Lorelei curled up on the other.

  Until sleep took her, she stared at the ceiling, faintly visible in the moonlight, trying to figure out how she could possibly cope with what happened and be more like her old self. For all her positive talking, she still looked like she’d given up and merely coasted along on an empty tank. She convinced herself to be brave, to fight, to do whatever it took to protect her little sister, but had those experiences changed her too much? Had she become another person entirely? Madison must have sensed something in her that set off her meltdown tonight.

  Or had she? Maybe a person carrying too much pain inside could fake normal for a while, until they ran out of energy and crashed. Either way, that girl she saw in the mirror didn’t help. She had to find a way to accept their parents’ deaths, accept what happened to the world, and move on from it. Harper had to stop feeling like someone who’d gotten a fatal dose of radiation and merely stumbled along waiting for the end.

  That’s the problem…

  As much as she’d been telling everyone to cheer up, to keep fighting, that life remained worth living, she hadn’t really convinced herself of it yet.

  If I keep thinking about everything we’ve lost, it’s gonna devour me. Who would I have been in the 1800s? No video games, no Starbucks, living in the Frontier… People all carried guns back then, not a big deal. Okay, that’s a bad comparison… I wouldn’t have been allowed to be anything but a nice little lady back then. I need to think positive stuff. Maddie’s still alive. Everyone here in Evergreen is still alive.

  I am, too.

  9

  Watching

  The next morning, everyone sat around the table to enjoy a magnificent breakfast—of Cocoa Puffs with almond milk from a box.

  “This is kinda weird,” said Jonathan. “There are actual cows here, and we’re eating nut milk.”

  Cliff almost choked on his cereal laughing.

  Lorelei and Madison looked up from their bowls, confused.

  Harper’s face burned with blush. She hadn’t taken what the boy said in that way until Cliff laughed at it.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Madison.

  Cliff waved about in a ‘need a moment’ gesture until he stopped coughing. After clearing his throat, he chuckled. “Oh, just what he said about there being cows and we’re using fake milk. It’s funny.”

  “People aren’t supposed to drink milk. It’s for baby cows,” said Madison. “Besides, if it’s not, umm… those two big words I don’t know, we’re gonna get sick from it. I’m okay having nut milk.”

  Cliff covered his mouth, his cheeks reddening.

  “Can we please call it almond milk?” asked Harper. “And you didn’t mind normal milk before.”

  “They don’t have to kill the cows for it, but the dairy farms are really cruel to them sometimes. The cows here aren’t being mistreated. But they aren’t doing the thing to it. Untreated raw milk is like really dangerous. It makes a lot of people go to the hospital.”

  “Pasteurization,” said Cliff. “And it’s not out of reach. Just gotta bring milk to near-boiling for like twenty seconds and let it cool. I’m sure the doctors are aware of the risks of raw milk and have warned Ned about it.”

  “That’s probably why we’re having almond milk,” said Jonathan.

  Lor
elei looked up from her cereal. “How they milk ommonds? Do ommonds have udders?”

  Harper snickered, which set Cliff off laughing again.

  The six-year-old looked at them, confused. “What?”

  Jonathan snickered. “No, Lore. Almonds don’t have udders. They like grind them up or something to make this.”

  “Aww. Poor ommonds,” said Lorelei in an adorably sad tone.

  Madison stirred her cereal, making a ‘bleh’ face at it. “Can we have something hot for breakfast? Like pancakes or oatmeal or—”

  “Eggies!” cheered Lorelei.

  Madison flinched, but didn’t protest beyond an ‘eggs are cruel’ expression.

  “If it’s a day where we need to heat the house, sure.” Cliff pointed over his shoulder with a thumb. “We don’t want to use firewood too fast.”

  “At least it’s not super cold anymore,” said Jonathan.

  Lorelei stretched one leg up and rested her pink-sock-covered foot on the table. “I love my socks! They are warm and fuzzy.”

  “Feet don’t belong on tables.” Madison gently pushed the girl’s leg down.

  Harper smiled. The world is truly broken when a six-year-old is thrilled about getting socks for Christmas. For the rest of breakfast, conversation focused on the theoretical mountain lion after Madison begged Cliff to make sure no one kills ‘the poor kitty.’

  Lorelei jumped on the ‘no kill’ side because ‘kitties are cute and fuzzy.’ Jonathan seemed to prefer the cat be left alive, but didn’t have a problem with shooting it if it attacked a person. Harper agreed with him while Madison claimed it a lie that mountain lions attack people, stating they would rather run away than fight a person.

  They’re probably as hungry as we are. Harper decided not to say that, and tried to act as normal as she could. We’re just having breakfast at home. Not like a nuclear war happened or anything.

  Eventually, the empty cereal bowls wound up in the sink. Jonathan and Lorelei headed back to their bedrooms to change out of their sleeping clothes. Madison dawdled by the sofa.

  “Go get dressed. It’s almost time for school.”

  “The apocalypse ate my homework,” deadpanned Madison.

  Cliff snickered.

  “Do I have to go?”

  “Is something happening at school that’s making you feel unsafe?” Harper walked over to her.

  “No, just… it sucks that the world blew up and I still have to go to school.” She flapped her arms at her side. “We used to get three days off when it snowed, but they don’t call school on account of nuclear fishing.”

  “I think you meant fission.” Cliff paused in washing the bowls to smile back at them.

  “See? You need school, Termite.” Harper patted her on the head.

  “I’m—was—in fifth grade. We didn’t learn about nuclears yet.” Madison looked down, raised and lowered her toes, then sighed. “Going to school feels too normal. I hate that everyone’s just trying to pretend like all those people didn’t die, and everything’s the same.”

  “Going to school makes you angry that everyone’s not as sad outside as you feel inside?” asked Harper in a gentle tone.

  “I guess, yeah.”

  “Everyone’s sad, but they’re dealing with it in their own way. It’s important not to give up. You want the world to go back the way it was right?”

  Madison nodded.

  “Then we can’t let people grow up uneducated.” Harper booped her on the nose. “If we give up, we can never fix things.”

  “I guess.” Madison ground her toes into the rug. “Mila’s really sad. She just shows it weird. I’ll try to stop being mad at school.”

  Harper patted her shoulder. “If you’re ever feeling too sad to deal with school, and just need some time to be alone and decompress, you can skip a day or two. But don’t abuse it, okay?”

  “’Kay.” Madison nodded. “You sound like Mom now… ‘decompress.’” She sorta-smiled and hurried off to get dressed.

  “You okay?” asked Cliff.

  “No not really, but I’m okay enough.” Harper raked her fingers through her hair. “Do I look like I haven’t slept in a month?”

  “Nah. Your hair is far too neat.”

  She rolled her eyes, chuckling. “It looks the same no matter what I do… unless it’s humid, then poof! Hey, did you see anything last night?”

  Jonathan and Lorelei walked in and stood by the front door, waiting to walk to school.

  “No sign of a mountain lion if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “I was thinking more of someone possibly stalking kids.”

  He walked over, still drying his hands on a towel. “Could have been a resident keeping tabs on them. Might also have been a kid’s imagination.” He wagged his eyebrows. “Or a shadow man.”

  “Stop.” She poked him. “There’s no Shadow Man. But I don’t think Emmy would’ve said what she did unless she really had seen something that put her on edge.”

  “Almost everyone in this town has been through some serious shit. Except for those who lived here before… all they lost was power. ”

  “Yeah, but—”

  Madison screamed.

  “Crap!” Harper sprinted down the hall to the bathroom, catching herself on the doorjamb to avoid falling over from stopping so fast. She stared in at her little sister standing on the sink.

  “Harp! It’s huge!” Madison bounced, whined, and pointed at the floor.

  “What’s huge? There’s nothing.”

  “A massive bug!”

  Oh… Harper relaxed. “Can you please do me a little favor?”

  “What?” asked Madison, squirming.

  “Save screaming like that for serious emergencies?”

  “But it is an emergency! It’s bigger than my hand! It might be radioactive or something an’ bite my face off.”

  Something black moved behind the toilet.

  The sudden, unexpected motion made Harper jump.

  Whoa, okay that is big.

  Once the initial shock wore off, she crouched for a closer look and spotted a black beetle about three inches long with serrated antennae. “Oh, it’s just a beetle.” She herded it out from behind the toilet, then scooped it up in the little plastic wastebasket so she could carry it outside. “You can come down now. Hurry up and get dressed, you’re going to be late.”

  “Eww! It’s huge!”

  “It’s not that big.”

  Madison cringed away. “It is!”

  “No it isn’t.” Harper winked, then carried the house invader outside.

  She tossed it in the grass by the back fence, returned the little trash can where it belonged, and once again picked up her shotgun. Ever since she’d been caught in the middle of a gunfight without it, she’d been overly diligent about keeping it close. At times, she envied the militia guys who only had handguns, since wearing a smaller weapon on her belt wouldn’t be nearly as cumbersome as lugging the huge Mossberg everywhere. If she had a pistol, she could get away with leaving the shotgun home for short trips—basically whenever she didn’t officially go on patrol.

  Madison emerged from the bedroom in a long-sleeved pink-and-white-striped dress over red leggings. “Feels weird not carrying a backpack.”

  “This school has no homework!” said Jonathan with a note of triumph.

  “Only because there aren’t enough books.” Madison folded her arms.

  Lorelei looked back and forth between them for a moment, then blurted, “My socks are toasty.”

  “What?” asked Madison. “Are you feeling okay?”

  The tiny one’s smile became cheesy. “I dunno what homework is.”

  “It’s a particular form of cruelty invented by teachers to make sure kids don’t have too much fun after school,” muttered Madison.

  “Oh.” Lorelei nodded as if that made total sense. “Mommy used to do that.”

  Everyone fidgeted, staring at her.

  Ugh. That woman. Harper picked Lorelei up
and swung her around, grinning. “Well, don’t worry about her anymore. I say you should have as much fun as you want after school… just be safe.”

  Lorelei giggled.

  Harper led the kids outside and down Hilltop Drive, alert for danger while Madison and Jonathan explained homework. According to Jonathan, they used to have to do more school stuff in a day than they had time for, so some of the learning had to go home with them. According to Madison, teachers lived in the constant, desperate fear that children might think about having fun, so they had this horrible weapon called ‘homework’ they used to ensure that didn’t happen.

  This, of course, left poor Lorelei utterly confused.

  While she couldn’t claim to have liked school as much as Jonathan seemed to, Harper hadn’t minded it. In her opinion, it just ‘had to be done’ to avoid winding up poor later in life. At least, that’s what Dad said. She enjoyed her science classes, even math, but she didn’t know if she could make a career out of it. Mom thought she should consider being a veterinarian. Had the war not happened, she might actually have tried.

  Neither one of her parents would have ever imagined she’d pursue a career in law enforcement.

  She scoffed to herself, having the ten-thousandth moment of ‘what the hell am I doing’. As she’d done 9,999 times before, she brushed her doubt aside and kept going. Though, after looking at herself in the mirror last night, she wondered if Mayor Ned had seen the same thing in her eyes when she objected to surrendering the Mossberg. He hadn’t offered much protest at all to a skinny seventeen-year-old wanting to join the militia, clearly doing so only to keep her father’s shotgun and not out of any true desire to defend the town. Could he have noticed the ‘I’ve killed people’ distant stare and figured he’d let her on the militia since she’d already been broken?

  Cliff had once confided in her that a normal person could never get used to killing. He described it as this thing that always followed him around, watching him all the time ever since he returned from the Middle East. Wherever he went, he’d never quite felt like he belonged there anymore. He’d left civilized society behind in Iraq the instant he’d taken a life. Working as a mall cop, he would observe people every day going about their ordinary, civilian lives, feeling apart from it. Every day, he’d see someone and think, ‘they’ve never had to kill anyone’ ‘they don’t know what it’s like’ and so on. Fortunately, he’d dealt with it, but he’d known a lot of guys who couldn’t. Four of the men he’d served with had taken their own lives.