The McClane Apocalypse Book Five (15 page)

Doc told them to check out the antique
tractor museum on the far edge of town for the thresher parts.
Simon knows they definitely need a new belt and possibly a new
cylinder. Last year they used the Johnson’s combine
thresher,
but it has hit the skids and
seems to be completely unrepairable unless John Deere is going back
into business soon. They also can’t afford the fuel to run it
anymore. He’s glad they have the antique version, but it is about a
million times more work. And now it is broken down, too. The last
resort option is to bring in and harvest the wheat by hand, which
can be done but would take so much more time and back-breaking
work.

They continue their search of the repair
shop, and Cory finds a few more parts they can use on the farm
vehicles.

“Look,” Simon calls over to his friend, who
joins him a moment later. “Gas cans.”

He points to the red plastic jugs
against the wall in a dark corner. They pick them up and give them
a jiggle. Two are full, the third one is about half to
three-quarters full. This is a good find. This will provide them
with at least four or five trips to the clinic from the farm. Simon
hopes the gas is still
useable
.
It could be four years old or it could’ve been found and stored
here more recently by someone. Cory shows him that he also found a
container of bar oil for the chainsaws and some axle grease, which
they use all the time on the equipment. Simon finds two unopened
jugs of car oil, another lucky find.

“Good job,” Cory says as they leave the
building.

“Thanks, Dad,” Simon harasses his friend,
earning a punch to his shoulder. He just chuckles at Cory.

They fast walk back to the vehicle to stow
away their booty before heading out again. This time they take the
Hummer because they are moving to the other side of town where the
antique museum and other businesses are located.

Out of the blue, Cory asks, “So what’s going
on with you and Sam? Are you two fightin’ or something?”

Simon tries at nonchalance and shrugs. “I
don’t know what you mean.”

“You suck even more at lying than you
do at pickin’ up
chics
,” Cory
jeers as he drives around a torched school bus. Neither of them
comment on it.

Simon frowns and says, “You pick up enough
women for the both of us.”

Cory laughs with good humor and replies,
“Yeah, you’re probably right about that. Maybe someday yours will
drop, and you’ll give me a run for my money in the hottie picking
up department.”

Simon smirks at the ball-dropping comment and
adds, “Or maybe you’re just picking up girls with no sense of
smell, and I’m waiting for someone a little more discerning. Or
just one whose olfactory senses still work.”

Cory laughs loudly this time, not
worried too much about the noise he creates. Simon knows that his
friend has killed many people while he was gone; he can see the
change in him, the ruthless, confident, predatory manner he carries
now as if he is the greatest threat
to
the territory and not distressed about being the prey
anymore.

“Don’t go using big words on me, Professor,”
Cory warns with a grin. “I’d hate to return you to your crazy
sister with a black eye.”

Simon chuckles. “Calling my sister
crazy is a little bit pot calling the kettle black
don’t
ya’ think?”

Cory purses his lips, pauses a moment
and then says, “Yeah, I guess you’re right. But at least I’m nice.
She’s crazy
and
mean.”

“Define nice,” Simon air quotes before
returning his grip to his 30-06 rifle.
“Because I think there might be some people in Ohio,
Pennsylvania and wherever the hell else you went that might not
agree with your self-assessment of being nice,” Simon informs him
as they turn down the next street, drive to the end and hide the
vehicle behind the farm implement museum.

“Hey, you know, I didn’t kill everyone I ran
into. Give me some credit,” Cory says as if he’s slightly
affronted.

“Right. I’m sure that you let a lot of them
go and then banged all their women,” Simon jokes about his friend’s
man-whore status. “Are we gonna’ have a bunch of women showing up
claiming you’re their baby daddy?”

Cory laughs loudly again, followed by Simon’s
quieter chuckle.

“Not only did I not kill everyone I ran
into, I didn’t bang every
chic
,
either.”

“Yeah, sure,” Simon mocks.

“Well, not
every
one
,” Cory teases
with a wink.

“Keep in mind our shortage of antibiotics,
Clap Master,” Simon jokes further.

“The clap?” Cory says on an obnoxious shout
of laughter. “I didn’t tell the world to go to shit right when I
got old enough to sew my oats,” Cory says as they both pull down
their night-vision gear.

“Sewing your oats would be an improvement.
You’re pulverizing them.”

“Wow, that was almost crude,
Professor,” Cory jokes. “I’m impressed. I thought you
mighta
’ turned half girl while I was
gone. You’ve been hangin’ out with a lot of women.”

They silently shut the SUV’s doors and move
toward the rear entrance to the building.

“I’ve been hangin’ out with Derek and your
brother, too, so…”

Cory nods and says, “Yeah, like I said,
you’ve been hanging out with women.”

Simon chuckles. As they approach the building
full of antique farm equipment on display, the joking and talking
ceases. They use hand signals to communicate. Simon tries the door,
which doesn’t seem to be made of steel or anything heavy-duty. It’s
locked. Cory nods and steps toward the center of it while Simon
covers him. Cory gives it two solid kicks with his booted foot, and
the door bangs inward smacking against the wall. There is a small
storage area with metal wall units of shelves, likely where they
will find the parts they need. They sweep inside, doing checks and
clearing one section at a time.

It’s mostly
a
wide
pole-barn style building with a cemented floor
and tall display windows at the front. Old tractors and farm
machinery
are
spread out around
the building. A small office, probably not much larger than a
ten-by-ten space is off to their right. All areas are cleared
before they spread out. Simon finds an antique thresher almost
identical to Doc’s, other than the fact that it looks like it’s
brand new and never used; the restoration
of
it is that precise. And it’s just sitting
undisturbed like the rest of the farm implements in the building.
Cory comes over to him with hydraulic hoses and a cardboard box
full of other parts he’s salvaged somewhere.

“You know what I’m thinking?” Simon asks his
friend as he considers the parts they need for the thresher. He
notes that a belt for it is sticking out of Cory’s box.

“Why you can’t just tell Sam how you feel
about her?” Cory asks and raises his night-vision gear. He’s
holding a small flashlight.

Simon sighs, frowns hard at his best friend
and answers, “No. And don’t be an asshole.”

“It’s kind of my specialty, according to you.
Definitely according to your sister…”

“We should just take this,” Simon interrupts
and points to the thresher.

“Take the whole thresher?”

“Yes, why not?” Simon asks rhetorically. “We
should hitch the Hum-V to that trailer out back and take this.
It’ll last for years. It’s like brand new. I’ve been looking it
over, and it seems like it’s in good working condition. Then we’d
have two of them. If one breaks, we can use the other until we find
parts. Matter of fact, I think we should tell the guys and come
back for a lot of this equipment. If we can’t use it, then there
will be others who could.”

Cory considers this for a moment before
answering, “Yeah, maybe. How the hell do we get it out of
here?”

“I think there’s a sliding garage door over
there on the south wall,” Simon tells him. “We could hook the
trailer up to the hitch on the Hum-Vee.”

“Let me find a winch. We’re gonna’ need one
to pull it onto the trailer.”

“And some straps or chains to hold it
down.”

“Right,” Cory says before they split up to
find the items they need.

It takes them a lot longer to find
everything they
require
for the
thresher theft project, but a few hours later, they have the
equipment
on
the trailer that
they’ve hitched to the Hummer. It took a lot of
straining
, swearing on Cory’s part, and self-doubt
on Simon’s, but they got it done. They’ll not stay longer in the
town, not with heavy equipment, fuel and parts on the trailer. They
can’t make a quick get-away if they need to now. They’ll drive
slowly and carefully the few short miles back to the
farm.

Cory hops in the driver’s seat,
which is how it usually goes since Simon is better with sniper
style shooting from a moving vehicle should a situation
arise.
His friend plugs his stolen iPod into the
outlet on the dashboard. Reagan brought it home for Cory a few
years ago. Later, they figured it out that it belonged to Sam’s
older brother. Then he’d felt like shit for using it. But Samantha,
being her kind self, had insisted that Cory keep it. She said it
made her happy knowing that Cory would get some use out of
something that belonged to her brother.

Before long, rock music pumps at a low
decibel through the vehicle, but not loudly enough to interfere
with surveillance of their surroundings. There are even tracks on
it from Samantha’s dead brother’s band. They aren’t too
bad,
or weren’t. Maybe he would’ve been
some big rock star someday if the world hadn’t gone to hell and he
hadn’t been murdered by the men in Simon’s traveling group.
Listening to her dead brother’s tracks usually makes Simon feel
even guiltier and eventually sick to his stomach at the fate of her
family, the fate he was helpless to stop.

“Deer in the road up ahead,” Simon alerts
Cory as he spies through his scope.

“I miss the good old days when I actually
hunted them with my dad. It’s not that hard gettin’ one anymore.
Not much of a hunt.”

“No kidding,” Simon agrees as his
friend slows the vehicle while they wait for probably twenty
white-tails to cross the road. They can’t afford a busted grille
and radiator. It happened one time a few years ago when Kelly had
been driving to Nashville on a run. He’d hit a buffalo in the road.
It had caused quite a lot of damage to the Hum-Vee, which had been
difficult to repair. Simon had been on that trip with Kelly and
Derek. Luckily, though, Derek’s a hell of a mechanic when the
situation calls for it. He’d been able to repair their vehicle
enough to get the rest of the way to Nashville and back home.
They’d found a lot of parts for the Hummer at an Army base up
north. He, John and Cory had gone on that run. They’d brought back
a veritable bounty that time. Simon knows that John had been hoping
to run into old friends, but the base had been deserted. It’s the
same place John suggested they steal fencing. K-Dog is going with a
group of men from
town
next week
to dig up a massive amount of chain-link fencing from that base if
it’s still abandoned.

They pull onto the oil well road near the
Johnson’s farm and move at a snail’s pace to avoid destroying the
trailer or losing the thresher in the deep ruts of the dirt road.
It’s nearly midnight when they make it to the barn. Derek and
Kelly, both on watch, immediately come out to greet them. Doc even
comes over to join them. They are genuinely excited about the
thresher and some of the other finds they’ve brought back. Doc, on
the other hand, is concerned about stealing the thresher. He
explains that the former owner of the antique farm museum was a
friend of his. It is very likely that the man is dead. And in no
uncertain terms, Kelly tries to let Doc down gently. The Rangers
agree that the other equipment should be commandeered, if for no
other reason than to offer some of it to neighbors and friends who
might have a need.

They decide to call it a night and unload
everything in the morning when there is more light. He and Cory
head out to the cabin, where Paige should already be asleep. They
try to move around quietly in the cabin so as not to awaken
her.

“I’m not asleep,” she whispers to him.

“Oh, sorry,” Simon apologizes. “Hope we
didn’t wake you.”

“Nope,” she replies. “I can’t sleep when you
aren’t here.”

She’s lying on her simple mattress beside his
bed.

“What about me?” Cory asks, stirring Paige’s
ire. “Have a hard time sleeping without me here, too?”

She snorts in the dark, barely visible by the
dying fire in the wood-burning stove.

“Hardly,” she answers. “It’s just too bad you
came back.”

“Aw, now you know you’d miss me,” Cory
teases.

“Tomorrow I’m going to haul your mattress to
the hog barn,” Paige threatens.

Cory crashes loudly onto his bed and laughs.
Simon climbs over his sister and lies on top of the blankets in his
own bed. She has the cabin a little too warm for his taste.

Simon reaches down and ruffles her messy
hair, “You don’t need to worry when I’m not here, sis. We take a
lot of precautions. We don’t make mistakes.”

“Everyone makes a mistake at some
point, Simon,” she
says quietly
.
“Even when they’re careful. Even when they take
precautions.”