Harper turned in place, then approached the nearest guy in a uniform. “Excuse me?”
He took a step back, putting his hand on a pistol at his belt. “What are you doing with a weapon? You gotta turn that in.”
“Umm. I’m not moving in here. We just dropped off food. Going right back out. While I’m here, I wanted to find out if maybe any of my friends had been relocated here. Sergeant Clarke said something about a commandant?”
“Oh. Uhh, good luck with that. I don’t think they really keep track too well of who’s here. Your best bet at finding someone is going to look around. But…” He pointed at the Mossberg and her .45. “You can’t take weapons into the tent city.”
Harper squeezed her hands into fists, trying to keep a calm face. No way would she surrender her weapons—especially Dad’s shotgun—to the Army. They would probably make up some excuse not to give them back to her or claim they’d been ‘lost.’
“Easy, kid.” The guy, Morton, J according to the name stenciled on his shirt, pointed at the white van. “Just stash it in your vehicle. It’s a little rough among the tents. Tensions are high, so Colonel Fowler ordered that no lethal weapons go deeper than the courtyard.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
Deacon, Rafael, and Annapurna stood by the back of the van talking to an older, almost fiftyish, guy in camo. His field cap had a black bird insignia on the front, so she figured he’d be the colonel. While they discussed the shipment, Harper leaned in the side door of the van. Rafael’s AR-15 remained in the sling. Deacon had left his leaning on the dashboard. Evidently, they didn’t worry about anyone stealing the weapons. Somewhat more confident, she slid the Mossberg under the passenger seat, then stashed her .45 beside it and covered them both with a nearby oily towel.
Maybe it would be a good thing to leave them here. The tent city looked cramped. Someone could quite easily grab her from behind and take the guns. Without time to really think, since the others wanted to leave as fast as possible, Harper hoofed it across the courtyard to the rightmost ‘street.’ The outside row of tents had been put up with mere inches between the canvas and the fencing. No one could walk easily behind the tent row.
She steeled herself, then proceeded to walk into the camp.
The smell of humanity thickened, nearly watering her eyes. People looked up at her, most with guarded expressions, some pitying. One man jumped up and started running toward her with a desperate hopeful expression, but stopped a few paces away, looked disappointed, then trudged off.
Aww. Poor guy. Probably thought I was his daughter.
She stepped around people while peering as unobtrusively as possible into the tents on the way. They appeared identical from the outside, save for whatever random junk had been piled up in front of them. All were square and about the size of a large living room. Most contained three rows of bunk beds and footlockers, thirty people sleeping per tent. Each resident of the camp had little personal space and even less privacy. Clothing hung from lines strung across the tents or from the bed frames. Here and there, some of the people had made walls out of sheets, sectioning a tent into multiple rooms.
Everyone looked like they’d been wearing the same clothes for weeks, and the odor saturating everything proved it. Men, women, and children merely existed in suspended time, neither part of the civilized world nor part of what came after. A few, she suspected, might have been waiting for word they could return to their homes, word that might never come.
We didn’t have a flood. We had a damn nuclear war.
A two-ish year-old boy in a red shirt and no pants watched her go by, his expression blank. He reminded her of that ad on TV where the celebrity wanted two bucks a month to feed the poor in some other country, only paler.
There aren’t any diapers left.
At the end of the first row, she encountered another latrine by the fence that had vastly exceeded its capacity. The ammonia stench wafting from it ripped the breath out of her throat and burned her eyes. People had started pissing on the ground beside it to avoid having to open the door. Gagging, she hurried into the next ‘street.’
People dressed in the tattered remains of Gap, A&F, Nike, and so on fixed her with challenging stares, like a thief come to mooch off their already limited supplies. Some women shot her nasty, territorial glares while others gave her looks that warned her to run away from this place.
Men both sitting outside and in the tents occasionally stared at her the same way the Lawless had, no doubt their brains racing with what they wanted to do to a cute, young redhead. At least six men watched her with unblinking, hungry stares, buzzards waiting for a chance. She rested her hand on the empty holster at her hip, regretting her decision to disarm.
If those guys try to grab me, I’m in deep shit. The others won’t hear me screaming from all the way back here.
She walked faster, thankful that they made the run early in the day. Had the sun been down, or even dim, Harper had little doubt those men would have tried to grab her. Damn. Damn. Damn. Now I hope the guys aren’t here. This place is horrible. Desperate, she started yelling her friends’ names.
Harper navigated another two ‘streets,’ calling out for Christina, Darci, Andrea, and Veronica. Once or twice, grown women looked up in response to a name, but not recognizing her, made no move to approach.
The next lane she went down between tents set the hairs at the back of her neck on edge. More junk than usual narrowed the walkable area, and unlike everywhere else, no one loitered in view. Harper kept walking fast, peering into one tent after the next. Here, she kept her mouth shut, no longer shouting for her friends.
When Harper peered into the second from the last tent on the left, close to the back end of the camp, a man grabbed her from behind and pressed something metal to her throat.
“Easy, girl,” whispered the man. “Soldiers ain’t watchin’ right now. Be a shame to cut such a pretty throat.”
Shit! Despite the utter panic exploding in her mind, she forced herself to keep an outward calm—mostly. The man pulled her backward across the alley into another tent where two other men appeared to be waiting for her. Despite the fifteen bunk beds being loaded with clothing and possessions, she found herself alone with three men. No one to help. No witnesses.
“Dibs,” said a twentyish man on the left with shaggy hair.
“The hell you say,” rasped the man holding her. “I’m takin’ the biggest risk. I go first.”
“Yo,” said man number three, a pudgy biracial guy in his forties with droopy cheeks. “We all gonna get shot in the head for this, we should like flip a coin or something for firsts.”
Damn right you’re gonna get shot in the head. She tried to get her throat away from the knife edge.
The man holding her moved the knife away and gave her a little shove toward the other two, who surrounded her. Trapped in a circle of three guys, she whirled to face her abductor.
He pointed the knife at her face. “Strip. And do it fast.”
Harper pretended to look down, still watching him through a curtain of her hair as she reached for her belt. The instant the knife guy looked toward her groin with hungry anticipation, she sprang forward and grabbed his wrist. Spinning under the limb, she torqued his arm around, bending the hand backward until pain involuntarily made him lose his hold of the weapon. Before the other two men could take a step, she finished the wrist-lock takedown, drilling the first guy into the ground on his chin.
A little bit of pressure in the right place broke his wrist and dislocated his elbow.
Knife Man screeched in agony.
As the other two ran in, Harper scooped the knife off the floor. The younger man grabbed her left arm, but a quick slash at the air made the pudgy guy back off.
“Bitch!” growled the man holding her arm. He swung her to the left, ramming her back against a bunk bed frame.
Adrenaline, fear, or simple refusal to be a victim blocked out any pain. Harper jammed the knife into his gut. He let go of
her arm to grab his wound, stumbling backward. She rushed at him, shoving his shoulders while simultaneously hooking his leg with her heel. He fell, curling on his side, moaning and bleeding.
A blur came at her from the right.
Harper jumped away from it, slashing without aiming. Her attack left a shallow slice down the front of the pudgy man’s neck. Blood streamed onto the front of his shirt, but the slash didn’t look deep enough to be inherently life-threatening. However, the man didn’t appear to realize this and started shouting in panic at all the blood before running out of the tent.
“Bitch stabbed me!” rasp-whined the shaggy man.
The guy who’d initially grabbed her dragged himself to his feet, his right arm hanging limp at his side. He glared at her, murder glinting in his eyes.
With the pudgy guy out of her way, Harper had a clear path to the exit—and took it. The guy might have only one usable arm, but he looked psychotic. That, and she had no desire to stay involved in a fight she could avoid.
She sprinted out of the tent, hooked a right, and ran to the rear end of the camp by the chain link fence, spinning to face the ‘street’ she’d come from with the knife up. Neither of the other two men chased after her. Harper stood there for a moment catching her breath, her arms shaking from excess adrenaline.
Dammit. Screw this. I gotta get out of here. The guys would have heard me calling for them by now. They’re not here.
Knife concealed against her forearm, Harper fast-walked over one row. That street appeared noticeably wider than the last, and not only because it had less junk in it. Whoever put the tents up hadn’t been terribly precise with the spacing. The extra room reassured her a little, but she still kept her head on a swivel looking out for anyone else trying to grab her.
She paused six tents away from the rear of the camp, right where the stink of the toilets started to lessen, at the sight of a child sitting on the ground by a fluttering flap of olive-drab canvas. The girl wore a long-sleeved pink shirt with a mermaid silkscreen and a denim skirt. Her white leggings ended in tatters at her ankles, feet bare. She clutched a Barbie doll in both hands, not really playing with it, not really doing much of anything but sitting there staring into nowhere. Her long, mouse-brown hair had become a rat’s nest hiding her face. But that shirt looked really damn familiar. One of Madison’s friends loved mermaids, and Harper felt certain she’d seen that very same shirt before.
After slipping the knife into the empty holster that usually carried her .45, she approached the girl, who appeared about nine or ten, and crouched. The kid lifted her head peering up with vacant brown eyes that seemed too large compared to her gaunt face. She had a distant, shell-shocked, expression, as if her soul had gone elsewhere on holiday for a while.
That’s gotta be Eva. Maddie’s friend. Oh, no. She looks so broken. “Eva?”
A glint of recognition lent a touch of life to her otherwise wooden features. “Harper?”
“Yeah.”
Eva looked around, then back up at her. “Where’s Maddie? Did she die?”
“No. She’s fine.” Harper bit her knuckle, barely able to believe the half-starved waif sitting there could be the same girl who used to be a screaming loud giggle machine that rampaged around their house. “Are you here alone?”
“Mommy’s inside. Daddy is gone. Mommy’s sick. She’s got a baby and it’s not Daddy’s.”
Harper patted Eva’s shoulder. “Wait here a sec, okay? I’m going to go talk to your mom.”
“Okay. I’m glad Maddie’s alive. I miss her.”
Barely able to hold back tears, Harper stood and crept into the tent. Eight women of various ages and ethnicities lay on bunks, some reading, one stitching patches on the knees of a pair of tiny jeans, another woman appeared to be sleeping. Two smaller children sat together on a bunk at the back left corner, playing with matchbox cars.
Harper had met Mrs. Parsons only once or twice, so didn’t really remember what she looked like too well. However, only one woman in the tent—with the same shade of mouse-brown hair as Eva—seemed about the right age and had a small but noticeable baby bump protruding from under her pale brown Army style T-shirt. Her desert camo fatigue pants looked a little big for her, but also much cleaner than anything else the displaced survivors had been wearing.
Why does she have Army clothes? Harper approached that bed. “Mrs. Parsons?”
The woman snapped her head up, looking at her in shock. “How do you know my name? Oh, wait. I think I know you. There’s something familiar.”
Eva crept in and walked up behind Harper, clutching her Barbie tight to her chest.
“Your daughter’s friends with my little sister.”
“Oh. Yes. Nice to see another person we know survived… such as it is.” Mrs. Parsons grunted, sat up, and swung her legs off the bunk. “If you have anywhere else to be, you might not want to stick around.” She rubbed her belly. “Or you might end up like me.”
Harper gasped. “Oh, no…”
“Doesn’t matter now. We’re just circling the drain.”
“Mommy’s sad ’cause Daddy died.” Eva brushed her hand over the Barbie’s hair. “He got stabbed.”
She’s thinner than Madison was at the worst of the shortage. Harper wanted to pick Eva up and hug her, but worried she’d break. “I’m so, so sorry. My parents died, too.”
Eva looked up at her. “Oh, no. They were really nice. That’s horrible.”
“Thanks.” Harper squeezed her fists, heartbroken at the sight of her little sister’s friend so wan, but she also couldn’t pull her gaze away. “Mrs. Parsons, you should come back with us. I got the okay to bring my friends back, but I… don’t think they’re here.”
“Back?” asked Mrs. Parsons.
Harper sat on the edge of the bed and explained in a relatively quiet voice about Evergreen. Eva grabbed her mother’s arm, more alive than she’d been yet, begging for permission to go see Madison.
“What difference would it make?” Mrs. Parsons jostled side to side like a mannequin under Eva’s tugging. “Die here. Die there. Craig’s gone. Eva’s sick. It’s just a matter of time.”
“I’m not sick. I’m hungry,” said Eva in a near whisper. “And bored. And sad.”
“Come on.” Harper took Mrs. Parsons’ hand and pulled her upright. “Grab your stuff.”
“What stuff?” She kept staring at the ground. “This is it. I only had the one outfit I ran out the door in and that man destroyed it when he attacked me. The soldiers gave me this. They’ve been damn stingy with everything else, but I guess they couldn’t have me running around naked. That would be a distraction, wouldn’t it?”
“Okay then. Come on.” Harper grasped Eva’s hand as well and led the two of them out of the tent. “If you don’t care either way, then I’m making an executive decision.”
A trace of the former Mrs. Parsons emerged from her mental fog. “I don’t remember you being so, umm… commanding.”
“I wasn’t. Before, I just tried to be nice to everyone. Guess I’ve learned that some people don’t deserve to see my nice side. Seriously, come on. Don’t give up. Eva needs you.”
“C’mon, Mommy,” whispered Eva. “Please?”
Mrs. Parsons shrugged in an ‘okay, whatever’ sort of way.
Harper led them outside down the lane between tent rows, trying not to make eye contact with anyone while watching every possible shadow in case those men tried to finish what they started before. While those men—indeed half the men in the camp—scared her, she felt guilty at not having the ability to take the entire refugee population with her. As much as she wanted to, this many people would overwhelm the farm and risk the safety and security of everyone she cared about. If she locked eyes with the wrong desperate person, the dam would break.
It had to be this way. She couldn’t harm Evergreen, even for noble reasons.
Her new home couldn’t handle an influx of thousands.
23
Waste of Food
Eva clung to her mother until they made it to the end of the tent row and entered the courtyard among the Quonset huts. Once out in view of multiple soldiers, Harper allowed herself to relax a little. It didn’t seem likely a man with a broken arm or a guy with a stab wound to the abdomen would come charging out into a crowd of armed military personnel and try to take revenge on her in broad daylight.
They probably think I live here and are waiting for dark. She sighed out her nose. I should tell someone so a random redhead doesn’t get murdered tonight. As much as she had little interest in delaying the trip home, if those men attacked her, they’d attack other girls or women. No. I can’t keep quiet.
Harper guided Mrs. Parsons and Eva over to the van, already empty of boxes. None of the soldiers made any move to stop her, or even looked at them longer than a passing glance.
“Wow, this place is worse than I imagined.” Harper helped Mrs. Parsons into the van.
She eased herself down to sit on the floor behind the driver’s seat. “A couple days after the strike, the Army rolled through, collecting survivors. They said we had to evacuate due to radiation. Loaded us in this big open-backed truck. We drove past crowds of people rioting and looting. The soldiers shot anyone who tried to run at the convoy if they looked aggressive.”
Eva curled up in a ball beside her mother, a far-off look in her eyes.
She’s seen people die. Harper clenched her hands into fists, once again lost to anger at whoever set off the war. This kid who used to hang out at her house all the time, any normal ten-year-old, now looked like a smaller version of a broken combat veteran. Mrs. Parsons is in bad shape. She’s so depressed I’m scared for that baby.
“Never did figure out who stabbed Craig. He left the tent at night to go to the bathroom and didn’t come back. They found him in the morning by the latrine. A few weeks after that… The man who…” Mrs. Parsons brushed a hand over her belly. “Damn soldiers didn’t get there fast enough. I told them a man in a Rockies sweatshirt had… you know. They tracked him down, dragged him back to me and asked if he was the one. When I said yes, they took him outside the tent and shot him right there. No jail here.”
The Lucky Ones (Evergreen Book 3) Page 21
