Evergreen (Book 5): The Nuclear Frontier

by Cox, Matthew S.

  The Nuclear Frontier

  Evergreen Book 5

  Matthew S. Cox

  The Nuclear Frontier

  Evergreen Book 5

  © 2020 Matthew S. Cox

  All Rights Reserved

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons living, dead, or reduced to irradiated ash particles is coincidental. No portion of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the author except for quotes posted in reviews or blogs.

  Cover art by: Alexandria Thompson

  ISBN (ebook): 978-1-950738-30-4

  ISBN (paperback): 978-1-950738-31-1

  Contents

  1. Some Regrets Last Forever

  2. The Natural Way

  3. Waiting to Die

  4. No Normal but What We Make

  5. The Thing About Stuff

  6. The Seventh

  7. A Bit Too Wild

  8. Quiet Time

  9. A Place of Safety

  10. A Curse Broken

  11. Down From the Clouds

  12. Perimeter Watch

  13. The Express

  14. Just Camping

  15. Search Party

  16. Helping Dad

  17. Marksman

  18. No Signal

  19. Dinosaur Pasta

  20. All the Way

  21. The Notebook

  22. The Smarter Option

  23. Sixty-Two Miles

  24. Foraging

  25. Fairplay

  26. The Mushroom Cloud

  27. Civilization Take Two

  28. Haunted

  29. Every Moment

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other books by Matthew S. Cox

  1

  Some Regrets Last Forever

  Survival in a broken world made demands of Harper she’d never be proud of.

  Things she’d done as well as things she’d been afraid to do ever lurked in the quiet places between other thoughts. It still didn’t seem wholly real to be walking the streets of Evergreen, Colorado carrying Dad’s Mossberg 930. It felt less real to think about having killed people. Self-defense or not, she’d ended human life more than once. None of the millions of random thoughts, fears, dreams, or hopes she had swirling around her head a year ago included how to process civilization grinding to a halt or how it felt to shoot a man in the head.

  Late July already… almost a year since the world lit on fire.

  Harper stopped a few paces past where Canyon Circle met South Hiwan Drive, looking around at the houses and trees. North Evergreen, just southwest of the golf course, appeared pretty much the same as she imagined it did before the war—except for no functioning cars driving by, no radio or television sound, and not a single aircraft anywhere overhead. She could almost pretend the world hadn’t gone insane.

  Only, it had.

  She’d shot a man in the face not far from here when he tried to kidnap Mila Cline, who’d had her tenth birthday only last month in July. The poor kid still had an edge of creepiness to her, a bit like a real-life version of Wednesday Addams, but she no longer deliberately tried to freak people out. Mila behaved fairly normal considering the craziness she’d suffered before arriving in Evergreen.

  Harper sighed to herself. Everyone is a little messed up.

  The trees scattered around the homes didn’t hold any sense of natural peace or serenity. She saw only hiding places and cover, or memories of gunfire. Prior to the man grabbing Mila, she’d been shot at by a bunch of nut-jobs, one of whom she’d recognized as Scott, a barista from the Starbucks she used to visit with her mother and sister all the time. He and some other guys invaded a home here, shot at the militia, and died for it.

  What bothered her more than anything is it didn’t bother her much anymore.

  A dingy grey sky and a bit of drizzling rain fit her mood to a T. Everyone’s panic over radioactivity in raindrops had lessened considerably. Perhaps a downpour would get people to stay inside, but a day like this where the mist seemed to simply hang in the air didn’t faze anyone. She resumed walking, trying to conjure up less morbid thoughts.

  The farm defied the odds, turning into a viable source of food. They didn’t have much variety, but ‘not starving’ mattered more than not eating the same thing three times a week. It would still be a few years before the farming reached a point where the town wouldn’t be quite so susceptible to any minor bad event turning catastrophic, but she’d gotten over her constant worry about it. Even the best-managed farms could be wiped out by a severe enough weather event like an unseasonal cold snap, plant disease, locusts, or whatever. Fortunately, the town had like twenty people who’d come from ranches or farms in the surrounding areas and legit knew how to run a farm or take care of livestock. Evergreen had the advantage of not relying on a bunch of suburbanite couch potatoes trying to figure out how to stick seeds in the ground.

  Rather than spend the last weeks of summer hanging out with friends, going to the mall, going to dance class, or whatever… her little sister Madison and the other kids spent five or six hours every morning at the farm, learning and working. Harper couldn’t believe none of them complained once about it.

  Could be worse… they could be asked to work from sunrise to sunset. At least they let the kids play in the afternoon… and it’s not like they’re being made to do hard labor.

  Cliff, who had for all intents and purposes become their father, sometimes told them about his childhood. He’d grown up in the Eighties—as he put it, back when kids played outside. To him, the sight of kids running around the yard felt like a time machine. No video games or television keeping them inside, no long periods of inactivity making kids gain weight. Of course, for anyone to gain weight at the moment would be a task, and also likely earn them scorn for taking more than their fair share of food.

  We’re not standing at the edge of starvation anymore but we can still see it from here.

  She resumed walking. Gone were her thoughts of it being boring to hike in circles for hours along the streets in this neighborhood. Boredom had become lovely because it meant no one had any problems. At first, when she’d joined the militia, she’d done so purely out of a need to keep Dad’s shotgun, both for sentimental value and to protect Madison. It didn’t even occur to her until weeks later people here might view her in a different light because of it. Some of the kids she’d gone to high school with feared or hated cops. Harper never had a bad encounter with the police, but her personal experiences didn’t define reality. The internet and news told a different story.

  However, the Evergreen Militia existed primarily as a means to defend the town from outside threats. Citizens didn’t look at them like ‘cops’ per se, rather as the only thing standing between them and gangs like the Lawless. For the most part, the citizens ‘policed’ themselves since almost everyone carried a handgun or knife. But… the militia often stepped in if a situation escalated to violence.

  Mayor Ned hadn’t made anything official about law enforcement. Any citizen of Evergreen could ‘detain’ a troublemaker and bring them before the town management. The militia didn’t ‘legally’ have any special powers or protections, even though most everyone here treated them as if they did. She figured it came from at least half the militia, like Roy Ellis, having been cops before the war. Some of the guys had the ‘cop attitude.’ Hearing them talk with authority tended to make people see them as having authority even though the entire legal power structure of the United States had evaporated. She still couldn’t quite pull off the ‘do what I say or else’ tone. Whenever she tried to bark commands, she felt like a bratty kid having a tantrum, embarrassed
at herself for raising her voice. Despite knowing it came from her fear of public speaking and she didn’t really sound like a petulant child, she still tried to rely on logic and speaking calmly whenever possible… which didn’t always work.

  Be it due to the shell shock of nuclear war or knowing the militia’s role primarily involved town defense rather than worrying about what the people living there did, the citizens—at least the ones in her patrol area—smiled and waved at her, a few curmudgeons aside.

  At some point over the last several months, Harper stopped dwelling on the ‘how did I end up here’ aspect of her present life. As Cliff told her, the only way to handle an event as major as the complete destruction of civilization is to keep moving forward. Deal with the here and now. Society collapsed. All her hopes and dreams burned. She and Madison lost both parents to the Lawless. Any one of those things could break a person, but somehow, Harper still hadn’t crumbled.

  Her need to protect Madison overpowered her fear and aversion to violence.

  She fussed at the Mossberg. Despite not having fired it in a while, Dad’s ghost pestered her about taking proper care of it. Her shotgun, a simple Remington pump, may or may not still be in the gun safe in their house in Lakewood. Dad handed her the 930 when the world fell apart, due to it being semi-automatic. He’d called it a ‘combat shotgun.’ The day he’d bought her the Remington, neither one of them imagined she’d fire buckshot at a person… only targets. Up until the skies burned, she’d never thought of her shotgun as a ‘weapon,’ only a piece of sporting equipment.

  I should probably clean it. At least once a month, even if it hasn’t been fired. Can’t let it stop working before I run out of ammo.

  Some people called Dad a ‘gun nut,’ but he didn’t own a huge collection of weapons, only four: AR-15, the Mossberg, a 7mm magnum rifle (for hunting), Beretta 92, and a Springfield 1911. Technically, the Remington pump shotgun belonged to Harper. He also didn’t feel like he needed to carry a gun to Starbucks or to go grocery shopping. To her, a ‘gun nut’ loved waving their weapons around in everyone’s faces, showing them off, worshipping them. Dad—and even Mom—appreciated firearms and enjoyed using them at the range. Neither felt the need to have one in hand at all times, so she didn’t consider her parents ‘gun nuts.’ He had, however, been almost obsessively meticulous in regard to maintaining them. Every Saturday, he’d spend at least an hour cleaning one weapon.

  The AR-15 and Beretta ended up in the hands of the Lawless after they invaded the house. Harper neither wanted them back nor had any inclination to go hunt down gang members for revenge, but it hurt to think about all the care he’d put into those weapons only to have them end up being used by criminals.

  I need to let go of the past. Easier said than done, but I’m working on it.

  While being bored on patrol reassured her, it also made time drag. She recognized the need to patrol—no one had phones anymore. The people responsible for reacting to danger or crisis had to be nearby to arrive in time to matter. Citizens of Evergreen couldn’t simply call 911 if something happened. Her mother had once said smart people become bored more easily. Harper never considered herself exceptionally smart, certainly not one of those kids who finished college at fourteen. Still, she managed to get mostly As and Bs while barely putting in effort. Both parents wanted her to go to college, often telling her she had the smarts to do anything. Despite their encouragement, she hadn’t been able to decide what to study. She’d hated feeling so confused about her future, but all those problems seemed so petty now by comparison.

  No point wondering what I would’ve majored in.

  Harper sighed at the Mossberg.

  I’ve got 222 shells left, then this thing becomes a club.

  Hammond Rutledge, one of a handful of people who’d lived in Evergreen before the war, had been talking about the possibility of manufacturing gunpowder like they used to back in the mid-1800s. Most people considered him a ‘maker,’ the sort of person who could fabricate just about anything given enough time and the correct materials. Rumor had it he’d worked for a movie studio before the war as a day job, and also ran a YouTube channel to show off side projects he did for fun.

  Everyone had a YouTube channel… even me.

  Admittedly, her father did most of the work. She hadn’t been at all interested in becoming a celebrity, insofar as a few thousand total strangers knowing her name made someone a celebrity. Some people thought it really cool a thirteen-year-old set records on a shooting competition course. Others accused her parents of ‘child abuse’ for allowing her to touch a weapon. Dad needed to screen all the comments posted on the videos before he let her look, weeding out the nasty ones.

  People can be real assholes. What kind of moron makes death threats at a child or her father for participating in sport shooting because guns are dangerous? Oh, you shouldn’t let that little girl play with guns because she could hurt herself, so we’re going to kill her and you to teach you a lesson. Ridiculous.

  If Hammond could manufacture gunpowder, shotgun shells would be the most likely result since they didn’t require precision machining and it would be a whole lot easier to melt plastic into new shells than make brass casings for rifle or pistol bullets. Sure, they could refill old ones, but it wouldn’t do any good without unfired bullets to put in them. Shotgun shells could be packed with any sort of metal shrapnel and still be somewhat effective.

  He detailed a means to make saltpeter using urine, cow poop, and rotting vegetation at the last public town meeting. The process took months and didn’t produce much, but he felt for sure it would work. However, they ran into a problem—gunpowder required sulfur, which no one seemed to know how to obtain in a world without Amazon or eBay. A few people thought it had to be mined out of the earth near volcanic regions. Walter, the head of the militia, mentioned oil refineries produced it as well, but… global nuclear war resulted in a ‘mild’ downturn in oil processing. As in, no one believed a single refinery remained operating… at least not within the USA, Russia, or most of Europe. Alas, they couldn’t come up with a good place to get any sulfur from, which killed the idea of making new gunpowder.

  No one really knew the extent of worldwide damage, though Cliff had serious doubts any of the major countries fired nukes at Latin America, Central America, or the Third World. Other than the potential damage from migrating fallout or climate effects due to all the dust in the air, those countries might have escaped the worst of it. Whether or not they’d rush to help any former superpower rebuild any semblance of civilization remained unclear. Most in the militia believed the US, Russia, North Korea, and China had been pummeled into debris-strewn wastelands wherever major metropolitan areas used to exist. The UK as well as most of Europe had also likely been reduced to rubble. As with the mountains of Colorado, it stood to reason remote areas far from big cities probably avoided direct strikes and may hold pockets of survivors clinging to a pre-industrialization level of society.

  Cliff figured India and Pakistan wiped each other out in some ‘well, everyone else is firing nukes, now’s our chance to get the bastards’ mentality. He also felt pretty certain North Korea turned South Korea into a parking lot and then ended up glowing due to a retaliatory strike from the US… which prompted Russia to cut loose. For all anyone truly knew, computer glitches killed everyone without any human being making the decision to attack. The whole ‘war’ came out of nowhere. Harper couldn’t remember hearing anything on the news or from her parents about rising global tensions… at least nothing significantly worse than the general worry and unrest all over the globe for most of 2018.

  “Either a computer messed up or someone snapped and went insane overnight. Doesn’t really matter what caused it…” She sighed. “It won’t change anything to know who did it.”

  A lack of sulfur meant no new gunpowder—at least not in Evergreen. No one knew if nuclear strikes in Europe had thrown up much more dust than what happened here. A giant cloud of sunlight-killing di
rt could be making its way across the planet even now, though she figured it would have already blotted out the sky if it existed by now. The noticeable haze in the sky remained, thick enough to blot out the stars at night… but it let through enough sunlight for crops to grow. Any countries not politically significant enough to nuke may well have been crippled by the aftereffects—either direct damage from fallout, starvation to crop failure, economic collapse from global trade halting, riots, civil unrest.

  It’s possible the entire world collapsed.

  Some people, including a few on the militia, feared Mexico or some Central American country might attempt a military invasion to take land from the US while the nation had no ability to defend itself. Considering it had been almost a full year since the nuclear strike and no sign of any organized federal government showed up, everyone naturally assumed it gone. Washington DC most certainly had been hammered by nukes. Whether or not the president escaped death didn’t sound terribly important when the infrastructure no longer existed. One man plus a handful of staffers couldn’t do much. Maybe they’d set up shop in another city like Evergreen, trying to restore society.

  But, ten years from now, would anyone give a damn who’d been president or have any respect for the ‘authority’ of the old government?

  Will we even still be here in ten years? The Lawless could find us. Other gangs might attack. Harper frowned, not thinking the Mexican military presented a threat. If they did anything, they’d invade and take control… not massacre civilians.