Evergreen

by Cox, Matthew S.

  Harper fidgeted. I’ve killed more people than a convict.

  Ken spat to the side. “You still haven’t killed a person.”

  The big guy chuckled.

  “You got anywhere to stay?” Marcie nudged Harper with an elbow. “What do you think?”

  Ryan looked at her. “You’re inviting him to join us?”

  “Damn right.”

  Harper looked up from the floor and studied him. Though he stood to an imposing height with broad shoulders, wore a prison jumpsuit, and had blood all over him, in the absence of the initial shock of his appearance, he didn’t frighten her too much. Something in his eyes struck her as reassuring. This guy didn’t fit within the normal structure of society, hence the bank robbery and prison thing, but she didn’t get any sense of threat from him. In fact, she felt inclined to hover close to him for protection. Harper smiled. “Yeah, he’s cool.”

  Ryan glanced at her, surprised.

  “Sure, why not.” Ken nodded. “Hell, someone with the skills to break into a bank could be kinda handy. And, he removed a malignant tumor from the gene pool.”

  “Right on.” The man walked closer, offering a hand to Ryan. “Name’s Deacon Owens.”

  He shook hands with everyone in turn introducing themselves. Deacon gave Harper a ‘you gotta be kidding’ face.

  “Might wanna swing by menswear and change.” Marcie winked at him.

  Deacon pulled at his jumpsuit. “Too avant garde for the apocalypse?”

  “Just a bit.” Ryan laughed.

  They headed toward the food section, with Deacon making a quick stop for normal clothes. Once sure the store held no danger, everyone jogged to the front to grab shopping carts. Harper slung the shotgun over her shoulder and ran around gathering ‘substantive’ canned goods, going for things like pasta or hearty soups rather than vegetable sides, sauces, and such. She laughed in her head at ‘combat shopping.’ Shoving a cart down the aisles of a store with a weapon on her back felt simultaneously normal and bizarre. Random memories of past trips to the grocery store with Mom got her misty eyed, but she didn’t feel safe enough here to surrender to grief.

  Again and again, she filled the wagon and jogged it back to the loading dock. Box pasta would come in handy as it lasted for a long damn time. Rafael and Fred stayed in the back, transferring everything the others dumped on the floor into the giant fifty-three foot trailer. After they got all the good cans, Ken headed for the pharmacy section while everyone else went to the clothing area. On the way, Harper stopped near sporting goods and pointed out a case of compound bows.

  “Those won’t run out of ammo… unless the arrows break.”

  “Not a bad idea.” Ryan nodded at her. “You know how to use one?”

  “Nah. Never touched one. My dad was a gun nut, not a bow hunter.” She caught sight of shotguns in another case. “Ooh.”

  While Ryan smashed cases and loaded his cart with bows and arrows, Harper raided the gun cabinets, grabbing pump shotguns and hunting rifles. Marcie swooped in beside her and collected all the ammunition in the case, overloading her cart.

  “I can’t believe all this stuff is still here. No one else took it already.” Harper grabbed the last two rifles and stuffed them in her wagon.

  “Ryan had to pick the lock on the door. People probably would have taken this stuff if they could’ve gotten in.” Marcie grunted, her sneakers sliding on the floor as she tried to push the ammo.

  Deacon ran over and helped. Harper followed them, shaking her head at the twenty or so rifles and shotguns in her cart. Christmas shopping for the apocalypse. I hope it doesn’t mean I’ve gone crazy that I wanna laugh at this.

  Fred and Rafael cheered at the haul of ammo and weapons. No one wanted to dump the ammo cart for fear of having to gather up scattered loose bullets, so they just pushed the entire cart into the trailer.

  Harper, Deacon, and Ryan headed to the clothing area. She grabbed mostly stuff in Madison’s size, taking whole rows off the display rack at a time. The guys took an assortment of adult clothes. Marcie rushed over after a few minutes with a new wagon and headed for the socks and underwear.

  A squeak came from an aisle where no one should be. Harper threw a bundle of tween-sized leggings in her wagon and yanked the shotgun off her shoulder. A filthy twentysomething guy with wild brown hair—and a scrap of blue cloth around his neck—leaned past an endcap display of bras, raising a handgun at Deacon from behind.

  Harper aimed and fired, thinking of the man’s head like a pie-plate target.

  Boom.

  The thug fell out of sight in a spray of gore.

  Deacon threw several pairs of jeans into the air while bellowing a surprised shout. Ryan screamed like the ditzy cheerleader from a horror movie. Marcie barked a few nasty words and swiveled to glare at Harper for startling her.

  Another guy popped up over the top of a shelf. Harper pivoted and fired at him, launching an explosion of fragments from the boxes along the top. She couldn’t tell if she hit the guy or he dropped down a split second before kissing buckshot.

  “Incoming,” shouted Marcie.

  “Cover,” barked Ryan.

  Harper darted away from her wagon and hunkered down behind a steel shelf full of shirts sized for six-year-olds. The twang of a compound bow launching an arrow came from somewhere in front of her on the other side. Deacon roared. Men grunted. Banging and clattering came from everywhere. A rifle went off somewhere outside with a sharp crack.

  At a crunch to her right, Harper swiveled and aimed. Another guy with a blue sash peered around the other end of her shelf, maybe thirty feet away. He locked stares with the end of her shotgun, offered a weak smile, and backed out of sight.

  She swallowed, unsure if she should regret not shooting him, or be happy she didn’t since all he’d done was look at her. Loud zombie-like moaning from behind startled an eep out of her. She spun the other way, gawking in horror at another gang punk, his skull split open almost at the middle of his forehead. Blood gushed down his face. His left eye pointed askew while the right one focused on her. Harper stared for two seconds at exposed brain before Deacon’s axe came down again into the back of the guy’s head. A revolver fell from the standing dead man’s grip, and he collapsed over sideways.

  The shelf in front of Harper’s face shook with a hard impact from the other side. Marcie grunted, gasped, and gurgled.

  Harper popped up to her feet, aiming over the shelf at a wild-eyed woman in the middle of strangling Marcie with a bright orange extension cord. The tip of the shotgun barrel hovered a mere two feet away from her head. “Get off her!”

  No sooner did the crazy woman lock stares with her, than someone grabbed Harper from behind. Startled, she pulled the trigger and screamed. The woman strangling Marcie vanished in a bloody flash. Harper struggled, kicking and squirming as much as she could, fighting the man dragging her backward down the aisle in a bear-hug.

  “Easy, girlie. You ain’t gonna be hurt. Course, first time usually hurts a little.” He licked her left ear.

  “Gah!” Harper tried to wriggle away in disgust. Her thoughts filled with the accusatory, pleading look Madison gave her when she left the school. The need to get back home to her sister set off an explosion of fury and determination inside her. She roared, “No!” and rammed her head back, mashing her skull into his teeth.

  He staggered, but didn’t loosen his grip on her.

  A short, fat guy with a blue sash rushed into the aisle in front of her, hurrying over to help contain her. Harper squirmed in an effort to aim with her arms pinned to her sides. The guy holding her swung her to the left the same instant she pulled the trigger. Buckshot tore up the pudgy man’s hip; he collapsed to the floor, screaming.

  The man squeezed the air out of her lungs and bashed her into the shelving repeatedly. “Drop the damn gun and maybe you won’t need to be punished.”

  Gunfire went off in sporadic blasts somewhere beyond the shelves. Deacon grunted in exertion and a man
’s scream went by as if he’d been thrown. A subsequent crash confirmed it.

  “Ngh,” groaned the pudgy guy, dragging himself closer. “Gonna beat that bitch. She shot me.”

  Nothing mattered but getting back to Madison. Harper tried the head-butt again, but only hit the guy in the upper chest. He swung her the other way at empty steel shelving. She got a leg up, bracing a foot against the shelf, and shoved back. The man stumbled, keeping his balance.

  Marcie yelled, “Son of a bitch!” and a few rapid pistol shots came from the same direction as her voice.

  Harper stomped her heel into the man’s foot. His grip faltered enough that her thrashing allowed her to slip loose. She whirled toward him and mashed the butt of the shotgun into the mouth that slobbered all over her ear. The guy grabbed his face, staggering into the shelving. She locked stares with the same guy who’d peeked at her before.

  “Son of a bitch,” muttered Harper—and shot him point blank. An explosion of red dots decorated his chest around a much larger central wound. He gurgled, and slumped to the floor.

  A soft click from behind made her spin.

  The fat guy pulled a handgun from his thigh pocket. Harper dove to the floor, sliding on the polished tiles as the man fired several shots over her. A bullet struck the shelf inches from her head with a loud clank. She scrambled up to all fours and speed crawled onto the carpet, hiding among round rack stands full of little girl dresses. Ten feet in front of her, a late-thirties guy with a blue sash lay dead, a metal arrow jutting up from his chest.

  Harper spun side to side, shaking from adrenaline, a hair’s breadth from shooting anything that moved.

  A loud wet crunch came from the aisle where she’d been, along with the pudgy man’s gurgled scream. Seconds later, a man stepped into view past the end cap. Harper swiveled to aim at—Deacon. She flicked her finger off the trigger and stopped pointing the gun at him.

  “You okay?”

  She shook her head. “Yeah.”

  He laughed and walked over to her. “I know that feeling. You hurt?”

  “Just bruises.” She stared at the pudgy guy’s gun in the waist of Deacon’s pants.

  “Thanks for savin’ my ass.” He offered her a hand.

  “Thanks for saving my ass.” She accepted, allowing him to pull her upright. “I hate these guys.”

  “Seen ’em before?”

  Harper nodded. “Yeah. They’re like a gang or something. They killed my parents and tried to grab me and my little sister.”

  “The world’s gone crazy.” He patted her on the back. “Not bad with that thing.”

  “For a girl, right?” She smiled. “Been hearing that since I was thirteen.” Her smile died. “Never thought I’d ever be shooting it at people.”

  Deacon sighed. “Yeah. Like I said, the world, she gone crazy.”

  “Clear!” yelled Ryan.

  Ken ran into view, aiming around like a character in a bad action movie. “Don’t see any more.”

  Harper hovered close to Deacon, walking with him back to where she’d left her cart of children’s clothes. She tried not to look at any of the dead guys as she took shells from her jacket pocket and stuffed them into the Mossberg.

  Marcie, her face spattered with blood, ran over and hugged her. “Holy crap! Thanks for saving my ass. That crazy bitch… I was this close to blacking out.”

  “I didn’t mean to shoot so close to your face… that guy grabbed me and I… the gun went off.” Harper cringed. “I’m really sorry.”

  “No. No sorry.” Marcie squeezed her again. “I’m good. Just got covered in gore. This isn’t my blood.”

  Harper looked away. “I didn’t wanna kill that woman.”

  “Not your fault.” Marcie tore the shirt off a dead guy and wiped her face. “I really owe you one, Harper.”

  Mute, she managed a weak nod. Too rattled to put the shotgun over her shoulder, Harper one-armed it, gathering more clothes with her left hand until she couldn’t add anything else to the mound in the shopping cart without it falling.

  Marcie gathered any useful items from the dead thugs—including a few of her arrows—while everyone else pushed the wagon train of clothes back to the trailer. Ken and Ryan had been wounded, from knives as well as bullets, though their injuries appeared relatively mild. Other than a red line around her neck from the extension cord, Marcie didn’t appear hurt. Harper shivered at the understanding of why she and Marcie hadn’t been shot or stabbed. Despite being utterly disgusted at the idea of men regarding her as a thing to be taken, she couldn’t help but feel somewhat relieved their first thought hadn’t been killing her.

  She learned from Fred that Darnell had shot three or four men outside, protecting the dock. Since no one knew if any of the thugs who attacked them had survived to bring help, they packed the trailer as densely as possible, crawling in on top of cans to jam softer items like clothes, blankets, and such straight to the ceiling.

  Fred and Ken discussed hurrying back to Evergreen, unloading, and coming back as fast as possible before more bad guys showed up to loot the place. Harper dreaded the idea of having to return, especially considering there’d probably be thugs waiting for them. She hadn’t really looked at any of them, and wondered if the man who’d killed her father might’ve died to his shotgun after all. There couldn’t be that many of them, and Littleton wasn’t too far away from Lakewood. Unfortunately, she hadn’t really seen the face of the guy who killed her father. He’d been outside on the deck, firing in through the patio door. She’d never know if that guy ever paid for what he did. Vowing to kill everyone in that gang she saw came off as a touch melodramatic, and totally unlike her.

  Ryan re-locked the Walmart door once the trailer could hold no more stuff. Everyone piled back into the truck cab, all carrying plastic shopping bags of what Fred called ‘looter’s privilege,’ a few items each person got to keep without turning in to the quartermaster. Harper claimed two pairs of sweat pants for herself and two pairs each for her sister and brother. She also snagged a couple nightgowns and a plush rabbit that looked like one Madison had on her bed back in their old house.

  The growl of the engine starting right up set off a series of relieved sighs and cheers. Harper curled up in the back corner of the sleeper cab, face against her knees, trying to stop seeing the blurry figures of the men she’d killed. She wiped her ear on her sleeve, inches from throwing up.

  Marcie checked over the guys’ injuries, tending to them with a couple first aid kits they’d grabbed on the way out. Everyone had way too much energy from the lingering adrenaline. Harper’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She wanted to cling to someone and react like a normal teenage girl who’d just been forced to shoot people, but she couldn’t. At least she couldn’t cling to anyone here. Maybe she’d trust Cliff to see her that vulnerable in the privacy of home, maybe not. She had to think of those men as monsters, bad guys from a virtual reality video game with amazing graphics. They hadn’t been people. People didn’t grab young women and girls. Those same blue-bandana wearing sons of bitches had tried to take Madison, too. Maybe that’s why she trusted Deacon so fast. He’d killed a kid-toucher. So had she. What else could she call a grown man trying to grab her little sister? Harper clenched her fists, shaking as much from anger as excess adrenaline. Those guys didn’t even have names, merely ‘creatures’ in a sandbox environment she couldn’t stop playing no matter how much she wanted to log out.

  More than any sense of guilt over taking life—after all, those people had attacked them—or fear that something would go wrong on the way back to Evergreen, Harper dreaded one thing:

  Madison would hate her for leaving her alone.

  24

  Alone

  A few minutes short of an hour later, Rafael backed the rig up to a small receiving area on the side of the quartermaster’s building.

  Liz Trujillo and the people working with her would allocate all the stuff they’d taken from the Walmart as needed. Harper climbed down from
the rig and started to jog toward the school, but stopped herself, torn between wanting to find Madison and fear of getting in trouble for leaving too early. Of course, the militia couldn’t ‘fire’ her. Worst they’d do is kick her off and confiscate the shotgun… and it represented most of her ability to protect her family. Even if Madison hated her, she wouldn’t let anything hurt her. As much as the Mossberg called her a failure every time she looked at it, she refused to let anyone take it.

  Liz and her staff came out of the building and helped unload the truck. Harper halfheartedly joined in, preoccupied with worry. After a few minutes, Walter arrived. It didn’t take him long to chase Ken and Ryan off to the medical center. Marcie spent a moment muttering with him. As soon as he nodded, they both approached Harper.

  She paused on her way to the door with an armload of clothing.

  “Hey. Heard it got a little rough out there,” said Walter.

  “Uhh. Yeah.”

  “You okay?” Walter tilted his head, a look of concern on his face.

  “I’m not hurt. Just worried about Madison. She kinda freaked out when I left her at the school.”

  Walter patted her on the shoulder. “Go on, check on your sister if you want.”

  Harper blinked at him.

  “Yes, really.” Marcie reached for the bundle. “You’re practically shaking.”

  “Okay. If she’s not too messed up, I’ll bring her back here and help.”

  Marcie smiled and shooed her away from the truck. “Go. Check on her.”

  Harper jogged down the road from the quartermaster’s building to Route 74 and hurried north. She practically leapt the fence by the track and dashed across the soccer field to the front of the school. At the sound of kids still inside, she relaxed. The trip hadn’t taken as much time as it felt like. Hopefully, Madison would see her back in one piece and forget all about how upset she’d been earlier that morning.

  She barged into the classroom with a big, hopeful smile on her face… and froze at not seeing Madison anywhere. Harper scanned the desks of kids, who’d all paused in whatever they’d been doing to stare at her. Mila, aka Creepy Girl, stood out due to her black hair, the same color as Madison’s, but her little sister wasn’t in the room. Violet sat at the littlest kids’ group going over vocabulary words.