The World That Remains (Evergreen Book 2) Read online

  The World That Remains

  Evergreen Book 2

  Matthew S. Cox

  The World That Remains

  Evergreen Book 2

  © 2019 Matthew S. Cox

  All Rights Reserved

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any similarities to actual people, places, or world-ending catastrophes is purely coincidental. No portion of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the author.

  Cover art by Alexandria Thompson (http://gothic-fate.com/)

  ISBN (ebook): 978-1-949174-96-0

  ISBN (paperback): 978-1-949174-97-7

  Contents

  1. Dust Settles

  2. Not the Worst Place

  3. Relative Normal

  4. Family Time

  5. Attached

  6. That Girl

  7. Crash and Burn

  8. One More Time

  9. Watching

  10. Squatters

  11. Winging It

  12. Roaches

  13. So Much for Safe

  14. Legal

  15. Power

  16. Evaporated

  17. Unwanted

  18. Intuition

  19. Wholesome

  20. A Little Creepy

  21. Silver Bullet

  22. Brighter

  23. Rational Thoughts

  24. Not so Safeway

  25. Dinner Guest

  26. Bad Dreams

  27. Quarterback

  28. Varsity

  29. Independence

  30. St. Joseph's

  31. Motives

  32. Countdown

  33. Wrath

  34. Closure

  35. Deserve

  36. Rats

  37. Sunset

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other books by Matthew S. Cox

  1

  Dust Settles

  Hope the day would stay quiet kept Harper in a reasonably good mood—after all, she hadn’t had to kill anyone in almost four months.

  The first week of March rolled in with unusually warm weather, making a plain white T-shirt and jeans comfortable, at least during the day. Up in the hills, the nights still turned quite cold. An unending chorus of tweets and trills filled the air from birds in the surrounding trees, a background accompaniment to the soft scuff of her sneakers on the road that meandered among the houses southeast of the former Evergreen Middle School, which had become the town’s primary school. The nice breeze almost even let her smile, but Harper doubted she would ever truly feel happy again, not after having watched her parents die.

  Dad’s Mossberg shotgun hung heavy on her left shoulder, providing a sense of security as well as a constant reminder of losing him.

  The area south of the school surrounding the Hiwan Golf Club had become more familiar to her than the neighborhood she’d lived in before the war. Townspeople had spent the past few weeks reclaiming the overgrown golf course for additional farmland since it already had a usable network of irrigation sprinklers. Planting corn, carrots, and potatoes there got off to a faster start than the huge swath of open land west of Route 74. Of course, having crops growing in a place surrounded by homes made the town council discuss the chances people might help themselves to vegetables unnoticed.

  However, everyone living in those houses—with the exception of a few holdouts who refused to evacuate when the Army came through—had children attending the school. Anne-Marie Kirby, the ‘town manager,’ had assigned people with children to homes nearer the school so the kids didn’t have to walk multiple miles each day. No one seemed terribly bothered by the idea that parents with kids might grab an extra bit of produce. And, if it became a problem, they could always post a guard at night.

  So far, Walter Holman, the head of the Evergreen Militia, hadn’t said anything to make her worry they’d reassign her elsewhere. Patrolling around the houses for half a day had become boring as hell, but whenever she started disliking it, she thought about fleeing her parents’ home, desperate to keep those men from grabbing her little sister.

  No, boredom could be good.

  She’d take boredom any day over running for her life—or having to shoot someone.

  “It’s so quiet…” Harper gazed up at the sky, enjoying the lack of trouble, though she could definitely do without all the walking around. “Not like anyone has phones to call for help. Guess we gotta be out here for people to find.”

  Walter still let her go home as soon as the children left school. Cliff Barton, the ex-Army Ranger-slash-mall-cop who she’d mostly adopted as a father, didn’t return until around six or as best she could guess by daylight. A few places in town had working mechanical clocks, though her house didn’t. She hadn’t even looked at a working clock since the morning Dad dragged her out of bed, mere minutes before nukes went off close enough to hear. Her old alarm clock had forever burned the glowing red numbers 5:49 into her psyche. One instant, she complained at him for pulling her out of bed when she still had ten minutes to sleep, the next, she’d been too terrified to say a word.

  So, yeah… boredom felt great.

  She swiped a few strands of her hair off her face, glancing to her right at houses going by. Harper knew which ones on South Hiwan Drive had people living in them, and which were empty. All the places there on Augusta had been assigned. Here and there, residents waved as they spotted her. She returned their greetings, managing a bright—if not fully sincere—smile whenever someone looked at her.

  Not that she had any issues with the people, but smiling came too close to happy and felt disrespectful to her parents, to her sister Madison, her friends, and the whole life she might have led if not for idiot politicians. No one really knew how many had died, but it had to be a heartbreakingly large number, and not just in the USA. In the weeks after the blast, her family had heard rumors that Colorado Springs had taken a direct hit from ‘a big one,’ which had likely been true. However, Roy Ellis, one of the militia who had been a police officer before the war, mentioned that smaller warheads came down much closer to Denver than she thought. The destruction around Lakewood, her old home, didn’t come from the nuke that hit Colorado Springs, but from smaller ones with a fraction of the power.

  No, the blast that roared like the fury of an ancient primal god, so loud she expected her house to be ripped off its foundation, had more than likely been from a multi-warhead weapon that landed within four miles. Roy had possibly been trying to make her feel better when he said if one as big as the one that hit Springs landed on Lakewood, she wouldn’t have even known what happened… but he’d only freaked her out more.

  All things considered, she could feel lucky if she allowed herself to. She’d managed to get Madison out of there, away from the ‘blue gang’ and to the safety of Evergreen. She’d even found Cliff as well as Jonathan Chen, a boy Madison’s age who’d been staying with him already. More recently, Lorelei Frost had joined them. The brittle six-year-old had somehow survived on her own for some time after the nuclear strike, but nearly starved before being brought to Evergreen by a nineteen-year-old named Tyler, who Harper had started to like. The child had been in rough shape, so malnourished she lacked the strength to walk for a while… but she survived—and now, had too much energy. The girl had befriended Madison and Jonathan in the short time Harper had been friendly with her adoptive dad. Unfortunately, Harper’s nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right with him proved true. He’d fled town, no longer welcome here. That left Lorelei without a caretaker, so Cliff had brought her home.

  They’d formed something of a new family unit, though Harper still couldn’t think of Cliff as Dad
. He occupied a place somewhere between older brother and protective uncle she couldn’t quite name. Maybe he had, in fact, become a father figure. In truth, he hadn’t been required to give a crap about her, or Madison… or even Jonathan, but he had. Accepting him couldn’t insult her real parents. It wasn’t as though she ran away from them to be with this guy. No, they’d both died trying to protect their kids. If anything like ghosts or an afterlife existed and her parents still had any sort of awareness, they would undoubtedly be relieved she and Madison had him looking out for them.

  Do adopted kids ever truly accept their new parents as ‘mom and dad,’ or do they always feel half an arms’ length away?

  Lorelei hadn’t said much of her birth parents other than an occasional remark about her mommy not liking her or always being angry. She hadn’t at all spoken of a father, so it made sense why she attached herself to Cliff as ‘daddy’ so fast. She also considered Harper more like a mother than an older sister. Then again, the girl seemed to love everyone, possessed of an almost eerie contagious happiness that verged on pathological.

  Harper kicked a rock into the dirt, wondering how her mother would feel about her having shot people to death. During the gang’s attack on her old home, Mom had killed a couple men, too. As had her father. They’d probably accept what she had to do to protect herself and Madison. Not like she’d gone off on a killing spree, randomly shooting people for the lols—she’d only killed when necessary to defend herself or Madison. If her parents mourned anything, it would’ve been how the world had changed so much that a seventeen-year-old went from worrying about getting into college to worrying about surviving to see tomorrow.

  At the end of Hearth Drive, she cut north to walk across the former golf course loaded with hundreds of small cornstalk sprouts and made her way toward Island Drive, a little pocket of homes in the midst of the fairways. The roads here mostly formed loops around a once-pleasant little suburban community. It bothered her how well she’d come to know this place over the past few months, more so than home. Not since she’d been seven or eight years old and played with some friends did she really spend time outside there. After that, she and her friends would either be inside with electronics, at school, or driven to some organized activity far removed from her neighborhood. She hadn’t really ever gone exploring on foot much past a block or two in any one direction. Her house might have been a small island for as little contact as she’d had with neighbors.

  Wonder how many golf balls went through windows here before? Who’d want to live this close to a golf course?

  That thought made her chuckle, though it soon turned into a sad sigh. Dad got a set of clubs for Christmas a few years ago, even though the man hadn’t played often at all. Mostly, it made her think of the holiday itself, and of the overly somber Christmas her new family had shared here in Evergreen not long ago.

  Neither she nor Madison had expected anyone to care about holidays after the world lit itself on fire, but lo and behold, people made do with improvised holiday trees. Cliff had constructed a rather sad one out of branches he’d stripped from trees slated to become firewood, lashing them together with wire and decorating the pitiful ‘tree’ with red soda cans. The town council assembled a pile of toys scavenged from every unoccupied house within the city limits as well as sending the semi back to Walmart specifically to gather toys, stuffed animals, and such.

  Everyone age five or older got to select one gift for each family member they had. No one bothered with wrapping paper since it seemed a waste of resources—and they didn’t have any. She’d been pleasantly surprised at Madison not complaining at receiving only one gift each from her, Cliff, Jonathan, and Lorelei. She’d even started crying when Harper gave her a ballerina doll, since she’d been hoping for a different gift: her big sister not dying. The girl had even offered to give up any and all gifts for Christmases yet to come if only Harper would stay alive. Upon receiving the toy, Madison broke down, thinking a jinx had been cast.

  Fortunately, Harper soothed her by whispering that she broke the rules and gave her two presents.

  She still worried about her sister’s mental state. For the past few months, Madison had acted ambivalent to her dead iPhone; however, she reclaimed it to stash in the bedroom the girls shared. While she no longer carried it around believing their parents or her friends would call, she wouldn’t allow Harper to toss it.

  Hope she just wants it as a keepsake. Mom gave it to her for her ninth birthday. Harper smirked. One year after getting it, it’s dead. I wonder if the extended protection plan covers thermonuclear EMP.

  She’d gone into the holidays dreading Madison would mention their parents on Christmas Eve, knowing it would bring a storm of tears… but her little sister hadn’t said anything about them. Tears did happen when Lorelei asked about Tyler, hoping he was okay, warm, and had food, wherever he’d gone. The child had no idea how close she’d come to being killed. For reasons that only Tyler would ever know, he hadn’t attacked her the night he turned violent. Since he’d been the one to find Lorelei half-starved and bring her to Evergreen, the town had made him her official guardian. The child lived with him, and no one would have been able to do anything in time to stop him if he decided to ‘save’ her.

  Yet, despite what could have happened to her—and what he tried to do to Madison, Lorelei worried about Tyler. Harper did feel a bit of pity for him as he would most likely have been alone on Christmas—if he even remained alive two weeks after fleeing Evergreen. Still, having empathy for his situation didn’t mean she wanted him around.

  Harper let out a guilty sigh. Tyler hadn’t asked to have his particular problems. He couldn’t help what his brain did when deprived of medicine the world could no longer produce. To distract herself from misplaced feelings that she’d done something wrong by essentially kicking him out of town, she contemplated if any Third World countries survived the war and might still have real hospitals and doctors and pharmacies. Would the murderous shitheads who launched the nukes have tossed them around the whole globe, determined to incinerate as many people as they could, or had there been some manner of strategy involved? If the US, Russia, China, Korea, the UK, and/or whoever else got into a pissing contest, would any of their leaders randomly throw nuclear weapons at random small nations?

  Then again, who knows what kind of chaos went on since no ‘superpowers’ remained intact. For all she knew, war still might be raging in Central America or Africa or parts of Europe as previously weak countries that escaped the worst of the nuclear bombardment asserted themselves without fear of what the superpowers would do in response.

  Assuming, of course, the nukes hadn’t burned it all.

  Harper reached the end of the baby cornstalks and slipped between trees among the houses on Island Drive. While walking the loop, she thought about the friends she hadn’t seen in what felt like forever: Christina, Renee, Darci, Andrea, and Veronica. She’d known Christina since kindergarten, the girl living only a few houses away from her. Darci had to be miserable if she remained alive, since finding marijuana these days would be hard.

  Dar is so laid back… Harper pictured her friend sitting on the old couch in her basement bedroom, smoking a bong. A blast wave tore the house off its foundation, exposing the basement to the sky… and Darci merely saying, ‘oh, bummer.’ The mental image made her want to laugh as much as cry.

  Not one of her friends had showed up in Evergreen, though roughly thirty people had filtered in over the past several months, all former residents. They had been evacuated by the Army soon after the bombardment amid fears of fallout drift, and moved to a ‘settlement camp’ somewhere to the north. Harper asked some of them about her friends, but none of the new arrivals had seen them. She hated not knowing what happened to her crew, girls she’d spent so much time with, even if they had treated her as a charity case. Except for Christina and Renee, the others took pity on poor socially challenged Harper and dragged her around to places, forcing Introvert Prime to go out
and have fun. Renee, timid as she was, had little problem with people. She merely jumped at every shadow and couldn’t handle even tame horror movies. Every time they’d gathered for a sleepover from age ten until recently, Renee always had a nightmare and woke everyone up screaming if they watched any movie or TV show even remotely scary.

  Speaking of nightmares, Madison had been having them lately as well. Her sister acted almost normal during the day, especially when her friend Becca came over to hang out… but she’d developed a habit of waking up in the middle of the night, yelling for Mom. More and more, Harper suspected she’d definitely seen the thug climbing in the kitchen window stab their mother to death. Perhaps she’d been cowering away from that sight when the other one shot Dad, but… maybe she sat there stunned and watched everything.

  Doctor Hale, or Tegan as she’d asked Harper to call her, said Madison had mentally regressed in response to trauma, acting like a younger child. Fortunately, she appeared to be on the mend, and for the most part during the day, had almost gone back to her old self. She hadn’t quite gotten her ‘bubbly’ personality back yet, perhaps never would. A bubbly girl who giggled at everything belonged in a world with hot running water, food that came from a grocery store, movies, video games, and Starbucks… not the nuclear Wild West. According to Tegan, who’d done a few therapy sessions with Madison, her kid sister remained morbidly terrified something bad would happen to Harper.