I just need to be here for her. Make things feel as normal as I can.
She looked up at the wall behind the bed, gazing at droplets of rain running down the window. The sight made her want to stay right there in the cozy nest, spend the whole day comfortable. Not like she had to be at school. Harper closed her eyes and let her head loll to the left, against Madison’s.
Her eyes snapped open. Shit! Rain!
Leigh had told them their first day in Evergreen that people had to stay inside when it rained, something about the rain collecting radioactive fallout from high up and bringing it down. Being so close to a window didn’t seem like an awesome idea, but really… if ‘glowing’ rain fell on the house, moving a few feet inward wouldn’t make much difference.
Madison woke up, stretched, and rolled flat on her back. “It’s raining.”
“Yeah. We have to stay inside, remember. No school.”
“Okay.”
“Heh. I figured you’d be totally upset.”
“Totes.” Madison swished her feet back and forth.
Harper rolled on her side, facing her sister. “It’s not that bad, is it?”
“Too peopley.” She stuck her iPhone out from under the thick layer of blankets and pressed the button, but nothing happened. “But I’ll go back. I was just scared you’d get hurt.”
“I know. I’m worried about you the same way. I can’t let anything happen to you, and that includes running out of food or freezing to death.”
“I gotta pee.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
Neither one of them moved, not wanting to leave the cozy warmth of bed to brave the frigid air in thin nightgowns.
Madison poked at the phone, gazing into the black screen. “Since we gotta boil water on a fire to take baths now, it’s okay if you want to share a tub. But I don’t want to share the bathroom to pee.”
Harper laughed. “Go on. I can hold it a little more.”
“It’s cold. I don’t wanna get out of bed.”
“Umm. It’s not actually as cold as it should be.” Harper stuck her hand out from under the covers. “It’s chilly, but not freezing.”
“So, go check the bathroom. If you scream like a girl in a horror movie, I’ll wait.”
“Hah. The toilet’s going to be freezing no matter what. It’s winter in the mountains.”
Madison traced her finger around the screen, hopefully pretending the phone worked and not hallucinating it. Harper eventually surrendered to urgency and slid out of bed. Once the shock of cold air passed, she padded out into the hall and went to the bathroom. Someone had left the door shut, which unfortunately caused the bathroom to retain the frigidity of outside.
A few highly uncomfortable minutes later, she hurried back to the bedroom. While Madison ran off to the bathroom, Harper changed from her nightgown into a T-shirt, sweater, and a set of sweat pants, plus socks, then made her way to the living room.
Jonathan had a nice fire going, which had already warmed the place up to cozy. Seeing him there in only his briefs made Harper shiver. Cliff sat at the table, cleaning the parts of his disassembled AR-15. Inspired, Harper ran back to get her shotgun. She sat across from him, carefully unloaded the weapon, and proceeded to clean it as best she could with the tools available.
Madison wandered into the room, still in her nightgown. She took the seat next to Harper and resumed staring at her phone.
“So, raining. We’re all stuck inside today.” Cliff held up a gun part to examine it in the light.
“What if the town gets attacked?” Harper picked up a brush and attacked the shotgun’s chamber. “Or are they hoping bad guys are afraid of the rain, too?”
“Battles are miserable affairs to begin with. They suck three times as much in the rain. Trust me. The only reason soldiers fight in the rain is the goddamned generals.” Cliff chuckled. “Generals who give orders from nice warm bunkers.”
She laughed.
“A pack of idiots probably won’t be motivated enough to do anything in bad weather. But I think they’ve got at least one person in the buses on lookout. I doubt the radiation risk from rain is going to persist for five years, but it is a risk.”
“If the rain is radioactive, the house isn’t going to protect us much more than being out in it.” Harper puffed air at the chamber and moved on to the bolt.
“More than you think. Being inside is much better than having particles get on your skin, into your pores, in your eyes, and so on. Be better if we had a basement here. Still, some distance is better than literally bathing in rads.”
“Hey Dad?” asked Jonathan.
Cliff looked up.
“What did kids do before video games? Like when you were my age.”
“Hah. When I was your age, I had video games. Ever hear of Pong? Atari 2600?”
Jonathan shook his head. “What’s that?”
“Old ass video games.” He grinned.
“Is ‘ass’ a bad word?” asked Madison without looking away from her phone.
“Yeah. You’re not allowed to say it.” Cliff patted her on the head.
“Because I’m a girl?”
“Because you’re ten. You can say ass when you’re twelve. Everything else waits for sixteen, except the f-bomb. That’s twenty-one, like beer.”
Madison shrugged.
“So, what did kids do before they made video games?” Jonathan leaned back with his hands on the rug behind him, swishing his feet side to side.
“Aren’t you cold?” asked Harper.
“No. I’m right in front of the fire.”
Cliff rubbed his beard. “Went outside and ran around, went swimming, or did chores, or played with stuff like jacks, jumping rope, or stuff.”
“We can’t go outside,” said Madison. “It’s raining and cold.”
“Board games?” Harper sighed at the bolt. The last time she’d cleaned the Mossberg, she hadn’t used it on people. That thought had changed the way she looked at the gun. Revulsion and desperation dueled. She needed it to keep herself and her family safe, but it horrified her to think about what she’d done.
Self-defense. I had no choice. They were not people anymore.
“Board games are lame. That’s why they’re called bored games.” Madison clicked the side button on the phone. “But I guess if it’s all we have.”
Once she finished putting the Mossberg back together, she reloaded it but didn’t chamber a shell right away. It still felt like a bad idea having a loaded weapon out and about with two children in the room. Dad had been way cautious about that, but it had been a totally different world. Still, she stashed it in the bedroom against the wall by the headboard. The house had a deadbolt on the front door, so if someone bad did show up, she’d have time to go get it.
For breakfast, they munched on dry cereal and a few pieces of Halloween candy.
A search of the house didn’t turn up anything remotely entertaining until she investigated the hatch up to the attic. She climbed into the freezing space only long enough to grab the first item of promise: a cardboard box of books. A brief glance around didn’t reveal anything like board games or toys, so she hurried back down the folding steps into the warm house and shut the trap door.
Cliff settled in the recliner with a fat book that looked boring. Harper grabbed The Secret Garden. Madison and Jonathan flopped on the floor in front of the couch playing Uno. Amid the constant backdrop of rain, the soft flutter of pages or sounds of cards pervaded the silence.
It had been quite a while since Harper sat down and read a book. Honestly, if given the chance, she’d have preferred a video game, but some idiot in a government chair somewhere decided to ruin everything. She read a few pages before she found herself staring at the letters, a meaningless blur. Reading on a rainy day made her think of being fourteen, home sick from school and wrapped in blankets. Mom had checked in on her a couple times an hour, keeping her stocked with almond cookies and hot tea.
Harper pictured her mothe
r’s face peering at her over a mug of tea. They’d looked quite a bit alike with the same red hair and pale skin. In her imagination, Mom leaned over and kissed her on the head, checked her temperature, and left a cup of tea next to her. Rain pattered against the window just like it did that day. The smell of honeyed tea came out of nowhere.
A crippling spike of loss rammed itself into her heart. Harper went straight from blah to being too sad to cry. Tea led to other memories, Mom smiling for this or that, surprising her with little gifts or surprise trips out for coffee to unwind. She also remembered arguments: cell phone bills, laundry all over the floor, staying out too late, not wanting to drive Madison to dance class so Mom didn’t have to do it. All of it felt so inconsequential in hindsight. At least they’d had a final two months together after the war, ironically, the closest the family had ever been with each other.
She closed her eyes and wished hard to hear her mother’s voice even one more time, but only the patter of rain beating against the roof reached her ears.
Jonathan hopped up and ran down the hall.
Neither Cliff nor Madison noticed Harper’s mood. It felt like she’d been doing nothing but crying for two weeks. How long did it take to ‘deal with’ watching her parents murdered right in front of her? How long did it take a person to cope with the destruction of society? Would anything ever feel normal again?
Madison pushed herself up to kneel and peered at Harper for a moment. Like a cat sensing its human in distress, she crawled up onto the couch and cuddled up beside her. Harper put an arm around her and closed her eyes. Madison squeezed her hand.
“The toilet’s broken,” called Jonathan from the hallway.
Cliff got up with a grunt and headed to the bathroom.
Madison raised her head, staring worriedly up at her.
“I miss Mom,” whispered Harper. “Dad, too.”
“Yeah. It’s okay if you gotta go shoot more bad guys. Maybe you’ll get the ones who killed them.”
She brushed her hand over her sister’s hair. “Mom got the guy who stabbed her.”
“Oh. What about Dad?” Madison rested her head again on Harper’s shoulder.
“Didn’t really see the guy who shot him. He was outside.”
Madison scowled. “I hope he gets a bullet right in the face.”
“People like that usually wind up getting shot in the face eventually.”
Cliff trudged by, went to the kitchen, and returned after a moment, falling into the recliner. “Welp. If anyone’s gotta go, use a bucket for now.”
“That bad?” Harper looked over at him. “Please tell me the water isn’t gone.”
“Not yet. I think the pipe feeding the toilet froze. Kitchen sink still works.”
“If the pipe is frozen, why is it raining and not snowing?” asked Harper.
“Colder underground? Maybe it froze overnight?” Cliff shrugged. “Maybe a piece of ice somewhere else in the pipe moved and blocked it.”
Madison clicked the button on the iPhone. “When are my friends gonna call?”
“Umm…” Harper cringed at the ‘is she okay?’ glance from Cliff. “As soon as it’s possible for them to.”
“Okay.” Madison held the phone to her chest, smiled, and leaned against her once more.
27
The Wild West
Harper walked west along Hilltop Drive, Jonathan on her left, Madison on her right.
By some miracle, the weather had stayed warm enough that the rain yesterday hadn’t turned to snow. She figured it a good sign, since unseasonal warmth even if only by a few degrees hinted that nuclear winter might not happen. However, snow would eventually fall—sooner rather than later. All three of them only had sneakers. She remembered seeing winter boots in their Walmart haul, so she decided to head over to the quartermaster’s after dropping the kids off at the school.
She hooked a right where Hilltop met the frontage road paralleling Route 74 and followed it for a little while before meandering across the dirt to the main highway. As they reached the area by the Militia HQ, three younger men appeared in the distance, sprinting past the dog boarding place. One spun and fired a handgun back toward the quartermaster’s a few times. Return fire thundered from someone too far away to see.
A bullet zinged off the road with a spark, only a few feet from Jonathan.
He screamed.
Madison lifted her stare off her phone and looked around.
“Down!” Harper grabbed the kids and dragged them forward and left to the nearest abandoned vehicle, a white pickup.
More gunshots rang out along with shouting and cursing.
Harper huddled low to the ground clutching her siblings tight, painfully aware she’d left the shotgun back home in her bedroom. It hadn’t even occurred to her to grab it merely to walk the kids to school. Madison squatted beside her, calm as anything. Jonathan, trembling, got stuck on repeat muttering, “Oh no” over and over again.
A sharp click and zing like a movie laser came from the road nearby. The ricochet startled another scream out of Jonathan. Madison sat on the road, calmly staring at her iPhone, even as another bullet hit the truck they all hid behind. Glass fragments fell on them from the shattered window overhead. Harper pulled her as close as possible and held on.
Someone ran by the other side of the truck. A dull thump accompanied a male voice barking oof, then a second after, a distant gunshot. She shivered at the thud of a dead guy landing on the road, her arms aching from how tight she clung to Madison and Jonathan. A distant woman shouted, “Clear on the right.”
Cautious footsteps came around the end of the truck to the left. Harper lifted her head, peering past a curtain of red curls at Ryan Herman, the blond militia guy she might’ve thought cute if he hadn’t been in his early thirties. It surprised her to see her hands didn’t shake—all the trembling came from Jonathan.
“You okay?” asked Ryan.
“Yeah… I think.” She checked the kids over and started breathing again once she didn’t find any blood.
“Where’s the cannon?”
She looked up at him. “Uhh. At home. Didn’t think I’d need it taking these two to school.”
Ryan stuffed his handgun in a belt holster and squatted next to her. “Except for that one dude who ran by, a shotgun wouldn’t have helped much at long range… but you should always have it with you in town.”
“Sorry.” She looked down. “Guess I just woke up feeling too normal today.”
He stood and offered her a hand. “It’s cool.”
“What are we gonna do when the bullets run out?” She grabbed his hand and let him pull her to her feet. “No one’s making more.”
Jonathan kept clinging to her side while Madison remained seated on the road, fixated on the phone as though it revealed the deepest secrets of the universe.
Ryan shrugged. “I dunno. Probably use swords or something. We got a bunch of compound bows from the Walmart run. Shouldn’t be too hard to jury-rig some arrows when all the ones we took are broken. Second run got the rest of the clothes and some tools. Marcie’s trying to talk them into another trip to grab bicycles and toys. Maybe crap like paper towels, razors, that sorta thing.”
“Well, the bikes could be useful for us… militia, too.”
“Hey, good idea. I’ll suggest that.” He grinned. “Ehh, go on, get ’em to school. Don’t look back on the road there. Darnell got him in the head.”
She cringed. “What happened anyway? Who are those guys?”
“Just a couple of morons wandering into town. They gave Liz a hard time, tried to raid our food stores. Bandits basically.” Ryan shook his head. “Dunno why anyone would bother. We’d have given them food if they decided to live here.”
“If people always did what made sense, there wouldn’t have been a nuclear bombardment.” Harper sighed.
“Yeah.” Ryan patted her shoulder. “Okay, I gotta help clean this up.”
Harper nodded at him, grabbed Madison’s hand, an
d tugged until she stood. They walked onward along Route 74 for a minute or two before she couldn’t keep quiet anymore.
“Maddie?”
“Yeah?” She didn’t look up.
“If anything like that ever happens again, you need to make yourself as small as possible. Try to stay behind something solid, okay?”
“Okay.”
“You’re too calm. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Harper stopped, crouched, and forced eye contact. “Please, Maddie. Talk.”
“Nothing’s wrong.” Madison shrugged. “I’m just not scared. I don’t care if I get shot. Then I can be with Mom and Dad.”
“No, Maddie… no…” Harper clamped on and hugged her. Only the adrenaline from a few-minutes-ago shootout kept her from breaking down in sobs. “What if that stuff isn’t true and dead is dead? I need you to stay with me, okay? We’re still family.”
Madison fidgeted.
Harper put an arm around Jonathan and pulled him in, squeezing him and Madison together. “You, too, Jon. You’re my brother now, okay. Both of you. I need you to stay.”
Madison’s calm fractured. Her lip quivered and a bit of red appeared at her eyes. “Okay. I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t do anything to be sorry for, Termite.” Harper rested her forehead against her sister’s shoulder and let out a long, relieved sigh. “Just don’t be like that. I need you to want to stay safe.”
“In case ghosts aren’t real?” asked Madison in a shaky voice.
“Even if they are. You know how sad you are about Mom and Dad? That’s how sad I’m gonna be if anything happened to you.”
Madison nodded, finally hugged her back, and sniffled quietly. “Are those guys gonna get arrested for shooting guns in town?”
“Umm,” said Harper. “I think those guys are a little past being arrested.”
“There’s no more cops.” Jonathan covered his mouth in both hands, breathing hard, still obviously terrified.
Evergreen Page 25
