The Lucky Ones (Evergreen Book 3)

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Good morning,” said Sadie with a bit of wheeze in her voice. “Thanks for dragging my butt to cover.”

  Harper sighed at Logan, disappointed at finding him unconscious but relieved to see him alive and not visibly sick—beyond the tube sticking out of him. She patted his hand, then walked over to Sadie. “I hope you feel better than you sound.”

  “Don’t make me laugh, please.” Sadie clutched her side with a grimace. “Doctor Hale thinks I have two cracked ribs. Hurts a whole lot, but it’s not life threatening. I’m going to be off duty for about six weeks though.”

  “Ugh. Sorry.” She cringed. The thirty-year-old was one of the former sheriff’s deputies. Having one of the more experienced militia people ‘on the bench’ could be a problem. “Better a cracked rib than dead.”

  “No kidding.”

  Harper hooked her thumbs in her jean pockets. “Lucky thing you had a Kevlar vest on.”

  “I have a SAPI vest. If I had Kevlar on, I’d be dead or in real bad shape. That guy nailed me with an AK at fairly close range. That would’ve punched right through Kevlar.”

  “Oh. Well, whatever it was. I’m glad you have it.” Harper fidgeted at her side. “They have any more of those?”

  “I wish.” Sadie shot a dark look off to the side, seeming angry. “We only had so many, and a bunch of them went missing right after the strike. Probably taken by the deputies who disappeared. If we still had them, the bastards wouldn’t have killed Ryan.”

  Harper bowed her head. “That’s sorta my fault. I shot the guy as fast as I could, but he like fired his gun even after he died.” She pantomimed someone clenching up. “But if I didn’t shoot, he would’ve killed Ryan, anyway. Do you think I should have aimed for his leg or something?”

  “If you didn’t kill him right away, he could’ve still shot Ryan—or you. Don’t take any blame for what happened there. You put the bastard down before he could fire. No way to predict that would’ve happened.”

  “Do you mean that or are you just trying to make me feel better?”

  “I mean it.” Sadie wiped a tear and sorta-smiled. “If you did anything different, he could’ve killed you and Ryan.”

  Oh no… She liked him.

  The mood between them shifted from ‘sorry you got hurt’ to ‘I’m so sorry you lost him’. Sadie picked up on the different emotional energy, and they shared a moment of quiet pain.

  Harper pictured shooting the man in the knee, making him spin to miss Ryan, but also shooting her as soon as he hit the ground. Perhaps she should’ve tried the Hollywood thing and shot at his rifle. No, too easy to miss a shot like that while under the pressure of a life-and-death firefight. Much easier to make trick shots on a range—targets don’t shoot back. She couldn’t afford to take stupid chances when her life depended on not missing.

  “Your boy over there was up a bit this morning. Ate a little breakfast, but Dr. Khan gave him something for the pain that put him right back out.”

  “He didn’t give you a shot, too? You’re like sweating your ass off.”

  Sadie twirled a hand around in a form of shrug that didn’t require using her shoulders. “I’m only in pain if I move. As long as I sit still and stop breathing, I’m fine. Other people need it more. This isn’t so bad compared to labor.”

  “Whoa. You have a kid?” Harper blinked.

  “Not exactly. I was seventeen at the time. Gave my son up for adoption. They didn’t even tell me where he ended up. Noah would be thirteen now… if he survived the nukes.”

  “Oh, my god…” Harper covered her mouth with both hands. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Even if he didn’t make it, those thirteen years would have been way better than what I could’ve given him, except maybe for the last four.” Sadie gestured toward Logan. “Go on. Ya came here to see your boy. I’m okay.”

  Harper squeezed Sadie’s hand. “Let me know if I can do anything.”

  “Will do.”

  She returned to Logan’s bedside. An empty bowl on the little table nearby still smelled of scrambled eggs. Not wanting to disturb him, she quietly pulled up a chair, sat, and held his hand.

  “Hey,” she whispered. “I’m here.”

  The wall clock in the patient room hadn’t been set right, showing the time at twenty past seven. It had to be at least an hour early or eleven hours fast depending on how she looked at it. She rambled in a whisper, telling him about Jonathan finding a PlayStation and other things the children did since he’d been hurt.

  “So, you know how I was worrying about soap? The library does have some books on it. Renee said one of the women who used to live in Evergreen before the war used to make her own soap as a hobby. But, she can’t order lye and olive oil online anymore. Jim, the farm coordinator? He said we can make our own lye by leeching it out of wood ash with water. So, Mayor Ned’s considering a rule that everyone has to save any of the white ash from fires for soap making. Any fat from hunting, too. Guess it’ll be a little longer before we all start to stink.”

  She kept talking about random stuff, trying to distract herself. Merely sitting there in silence holding his hand would drive her nuts with worry. At ten of eight, the squeak of approaching sneakers made her look up at Kirk walking in, his plain T-shirt and jeans liberally smeared with farm dirt.

  The eighteen-year-old stopped by the foot of the bed. “Hey. How is he?”

  “What are you doing here? Come to gloat over the Mexican?” Harper cringed. Heat rushed to her cheeks. “Sorry. I… that just came out. You stopped that guy from killing Logan. I—”

  “It’s okay. I’m the one who should be apologizing. That stuff… just crap everyone said back in school. I dunno, maybe some of the guys really did have a problem with Mexicans, but I didn’t. You know how you sometimes just laugh at stuff that isn’t funny or say stuff you don’t really wanna say to fit in with your friends?”

  She looked away from him, back at Logan. “Not really. I didn’t hang out with friends who wanted me to say things like that.”

  “Okay, not friends then. The hockey crew. You know how dudes can get.”

  “Yeah.” She frowned. “I do.”

  “Logan saved my ass even after all that shit I said. He could’ve kept running, but he took a damn bullet for me. Before, I never really thought much about cracking jokes about Mexicans since all the guys did it.”

  Harper glanced at him again. “That stuff wasn’t a joke to Logan.”

  “Yeah. You’re right.” Kirk clasped his hands in front of himself. “I’m sorry, and I know it’s cheap to say that, but I am.”

  “I believe you.” She eased back on the hostility in her voice. “After Logan tackled that bastard, you could’ve run off, but you didn’t. You stopped the guy from shooting him again. I didn’t have a clean shot. Double-aught buck at thirty yards would’ve hit you guys, too. If you didn’t jump on the bastard, he would’ve killed Logan before I got close enough.”

  “I didn’t really think about it. In like a second, I realized he saved my ass, and he was about to die for doing it.” Kirk ran a hand up over his hair. “Is he gonna make it?”

  “Unless he gets a bad infection, yeah.”

  Kirk relaxed a bit, and finally found the nerve to look her in the eye. “My granddad got sent to Vietnam when he was seventeen. Every Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, he’d have a little too much beer and start talking about the war. One thing he said was something like ‘in the shit, everyone’s the same color—green.’”

  Harper blinked.

  “I never thought I’d ever really understand what he meant, but yeah. The old man was a bit racist. Used to tell all sorts of race jokes. I don’t think he’d ever like hurt anyone or even say anything bad to their faces, but he was always condescending whenever he talked about them. Like he thought he was better than anyone who wasn’t white. But, now I get it. When people are trying to kill you, it doesn’t matter what your friends look like on the outside.”

  She squeezed Logan’s ha
nd. “I’m sure he’d forgive you for saying that crap since you sound sincere. So… you should know that in case he doesn’t wake up.” Harper’s voice hitched in her throat. Sudden emotion came out of nowhere, punching her in the gut hard enough to bring instant tears.

  “Hey…” Kirk hurried around the end of the bed and grasped her shoulder. “Lo’s gonna wake up. You never saw him on the ice, but he’s tenacious. When we had a bad game, the lower the score, the harder he played. And yeah, he kinda made some of us varsity guys look bad.”

  “Thanks.” She held her breath a moment to gather her composure. “I’m trying hard to stay optimistic and it’s not easy. Hearing that helps.”

  Kirk leaned against the bed and told her a few stories about hockey games where Logan had refused to accept the team was going to lose no matter what they did. Once, his enthusiasm turned a losing game into a tie, but it usually only changed a total drubbing into a one or two point loss.

  Tegan walked in a little after 8:30 a.m. according to the clock, probably closer to 9:30 a.m. in reality. She stopped by Sadie to chat for a few minutes while Kirk and Harper waited in silence. Eventually, the doctor made her way around to the other injured people, Logan being her last stop.

  “Is it bad that he’s not awake?” asked Harper in a brittle voice. “He’s gonna be okay, right?”

  “I think so, yes. Bear in mind that neither myself nor Dr. Khan are surgeons primarily, though I have seen an unfortunate share of teenagers with bullet wounds.” Tegan frowned and set about changing the dressing around the drain.

  “Sorry.”

  “Nothing you need to apologize for. We traded one crazy world for another. Instead of maladjusted entitled young men lashing out because a girl said no, now people shoot each other over food.”

  Harper scowled at the floor, thinking of her parents. “Or just because they can.”

  “Anyway, things look pretty good here.” Tegan examined the area where the plastic tube went into Logan’s skin. “We don’t have a lot of antibiotics left, but he should be okay.”

  “How bad is it?” Harper looked up, but averted her gaze from Logan’s wound. “The antibiotic situation, I mean.”

  Tegan cleaned the area with an alcohol wipe. “It depends on what happens and how many people wind up needing them. My guess is we’ll have maybe another year or so before we’re basically dealing with Civil War era medicine. But don’t freak out too bad. It’s not like everyone will drop dead all at once.” She opened a packet of clean gauze and re-dressed the drain site.

  A year… if they get that biodiesel working, we should scavenge from farther away, like Boulder. She bit her lip, wondering if other people would beat them to any medicines, or if any of it would still be good after so long without electricity. The last time they raided a hospital pharmacy, Tegan tossed quite a bit of stuff due to lack of refrigeration. If they ask me to go, I will. Is it selfish of me to hope they don’t ask me? Maddie would flip out.

  “Is he going to be asleep all day?” asked Harper.

  “A few more hours at least. He’s going to be in quite a bit of pain for the next few days, so Dr. Khan and I are trying to keep him as comfortable as possible. Once we’re able to remove the drain, he should be able to go home in about a week. However, he’ll need to avoid all strenuous activity for at least two months.”

  She took a few deep breaths, searching for calm. “How long until you can take the drain out?”

  Tegan crouched to check the bottle on the floor at the other end of the drain tube. “It won’t be today.” She pointed at pen markings on the side of the plastic approximating a ruled scale. “Once the drainage is less than 200cc over a day, we’ll be safe to remove the tube. Hopefully, sooner, as the longer it stays in, the greater the risk of infection.” She stood and patted Kirk on the arm. “Keeping pressure on that wound helped lessen the amount his lung deflated. Quite possibly saved his life, too. Did you have first aid training?”

  Kirk fidgeted. “No. Just saw a bunch of war movies. Felt like the right thing to do.”

  “Well, it worked.” Tegan smiled. “All right. I’ll be in the other room if you need anything. Feel free to stay as long as you like.”

  “Okay, thanks. I will. At least until the kids get out of school.” Harper returned to her seat and again grasped Logan’s hand. “They’re not going to the farm again today. Wonder why.”

  “Yeah…” Kirk grimaced. “Speaking of the farm. I should get back. Sorry again about all that crap I said.”

  Harper pulled her hair off her face so she could see him clearly. “It’s okay. And thank you.”

  He gave her a guilty look, hooked his thumbs in his pockets, and trudged out down the hall.

  Best she figured, the kids would leave school in about three hours. Unless someone sounded a 911 tone, she’d sit right there holding Logan’s hand for two-and-a-half of them.

  17

  That Time of the Apocalypse

  Dreamland decided to be particularly strange for Harper that night.

  She’d found herself back in the normal world sitting in class at her old high school, only everyone stared at her like she’d walked into school naked. She hadn’t. But they kept staring at her. Eventually, she’d caught whispers. They knew she’d killed people, and they all seemed horrified. One girl got up and moved away from her, then another. She soon sat in a chair at the center of the classroom with a ring of three empty desks around her. No one wanted to be near a killer.

  Then the zombies showed up.

  Harper awoke more confused than frightened. Early morning sun teased at the curtains on the window, perhaps ten minutes away from full light. Madison and Lorelei remained asleep beside her. She stared at the ceiling, certain the first part of the dream came from her guilt at having to shoot people. Her having to fight her way past throngs of undead—and Dad’s Mossberg somehow fitting in her old backpack—didn’t make any sense. She couldn’t tell if her brain had tried to scare her with a nightmare and failed… or took a turn for the weird.

  A few seconds after she awoke, a burning cramp flared up in her abdomen. She grabbed her stomach and clenched her teeth, fighting the urge to cry out so as not to wake her little sisters. When the worst of it passed, she gingerly scooted to the foot end of the bed and stood. Another cramp nearly took her to the floor, along with a warm trickle creeping down her leg.

  She speed-stumbled to the bathroom, doing her best to contain the blood with her hand. After shoving the door closed with her foot, she sat on the toilet and bent forward over her knees, shuddering and gasping in waves of pain.

  What’s wrong with me? It’s never hurt like this before. Did I get cancer already?

  One minute blurred into the next. Crippling pain and dull aching traded places back and forth. Harper went from thoughts of going on a murder spree to feeling as though it would be kinder to just shoot everyone she loved now rather than make them suffer a withering but inescapable death over the next year or so before everyone starved or thugs killed them.

  At that thought, she burst into tears, runaway emotions careening down a rollercoaster of hormones she could no more understand than control. Harper almost sobbed into her hands, but stopped herself before mushing her bloody palm into her face. More blood stained the front of her nightie and streaked down her left leg.

  It had come out of nowhere this time. She’d been so stressed out over Logan, the attack on the farm, worrying about the kids, frustrated at how to discipline Lorelei while being too much of a softie to be strict with a kid who’d had such a rotten life that her ‘friend’ snuck up on her without warning. She had some supplies that she’d nicked from the Walmart scavenge, but hadn’t thought to wear a pad yet due to losing track of time in the recent chaos.

  She clenched her fists in sudden anger at the people who’d attacked the farm, blood oozing between her fingers, dripping onto her foot. Harper fumed for a few minutes, furious at those men. Frustration at not being able to do anything more to punish them
made her rage. Another droplet of blood fell on top of her right foot. Harper stared at it, bright red on her snowy skin. Rage disintegrated in an instant. She uncurled her fingers, staring at her bloody hand as if she’d murdered someone with a knife for the first time.

  Another wave of hard cramps sent a lightning bolt of pain across her lower back and brought on a rush of nausea that almost pushed her to vomit. She groaned at building pressure in her stomach, gripped with a sudden fear that her inside bits prepared to burst like a water balloon. A second later, it felt more like she had a small alien inside her trying to claw its way out. Sipping air in small gasps, she closed her eyes and tried her hardest to mentally command the pain away.

  Minutes later, dread that she might’ve leaked all over their shared bed set off another wave of guilty tears as though she’d suffocated the girls in their sleep.

  The door creaked open. Too lost to abnormal crying, Harper didn’t even look up until a tiny scream shattered the silence.

  Lorelei, one hand still on the doorknob, gawked at her, looking terrified and heartbroken. Before Harper could even open her mouth, the six-year-old bolted down the hall screaming, “Dad! Dad! Harp’s been shot!”

  She burst into laughter, tears still running from her eyes. Another wave of abdominal pain dragged her back to grimacing silence.

  Cliff appeared in the doorway, catching himself on the doorjamb to stop before bursting all the way into the room. He looked at her, her hand, her leg, the expression probably on her face. Understanding dawned in his eyes.

  “Girl issues,” muttered Harper.

  “Ahh.” He turned sideways, averting his eyes. “Anything you need me to do?”

  “Maybe grab me some clean clothes so I don’t have to streak across the hall when I’m done in the shower.”

  “No problem. Anything else?”

  She growled in pain. “Nah.”

  “Hey, you know… why don’t you just chill today? Take a you day. I’ll mind the rugrats.”