The McClane Apocalypse Book Five (42 page)

“Maybe,” Reagan agrees. “I’m new to this
parenting shit. I didn’t know it came with so much stress.”

“You’re just getting started,” Grandpa
reminds her.

“Oh, I know. Trust me, John’s better at this.
He was meant to be a dad,” Reagan says.

“Yes, I think you’re right about that. But
you are turning out to be a pretty damn good mother, little missy.
Don’t you forget it. You’re even trying to parent the kids that
aren’t kids anymore.”

“It’s kind of hard to look at Sam like an
adult. She still has a little girl face,” she says with a roll of
her eyes. Her hand naturally rises to the scar on her right
cheek.

Grandpa chuckles again and says, “Yes, that’s
true. I’ll give you that much. She is a precious little thing.”

“I hope they have time to get to shelter if
this storm rolls in,” Reagan worries. She gets another laugh from
Herb McClane.

“Don’t worry so much. It’s not good for you.
Don’t you know anything about the mind-body relationship?”

“Good grief,” Reagan says with a smirk. “Here
we go. Are you gonna try and sell me on some Eastern Indian or
Chinese medicine hippy shit again? I get enough of that from the
Professor.”

“He’s right, ya’ know. That young man is an
intelligent person. Reminds me of someone I used to know,” Grandpa
teases.

“And who would that be?”

“Hm, let me think. He was witty,
good-looking,
strong
, extremely
intelligent.”

“Do you mean you?” Reagan asks
with
a wry smile.

“Oh, yes. It
was
me I was thinking of,” he jokes with a
chuckle.

“Oh brother,” she jokes.

“Simon’s going to be a brilliant doctor
someday, just like you. And the two of you will help put this
country back to right. You’ll run the clinic together and maybe
even add other doctors eventually.”

She doesn’t like thinking of her grandfather
dying and leaving the practice to her and Simon or anyone else. It
makes her instantly depressed.

“I can barely hold my own shit together. I
don’t think I’m ready to run your practice. Besides, you and I are
doing fine there.”

“Hey, Mom!” Jacob shouts as he jogs closer to
them.

He’s yelling in his usual blaring
decibel tone. Now Reagan understands why parents cringe when their
children
yell
so much.

“Can we have a campfire tonight?” he calls
out.

He’s being followed by other
co-conspirators Arianna, Justin, and Huntley, who
normally
hangs out more with the men now
than the younger kids. Reagan can’t believe Huntley’s almost
fourteen already.

“I don’t know, bud,” Reagan answers. “It’s
going to rain. We could have a campfire in the fireplace,
though.”

“Ok, cool,” he answers.

Reagan frowns at his choice of words as he
runs away with his adopted cousins. He’s growing too fast. For a
five year old boy, he sure seems to be sounding more every day like
the pre-teens on the farm.

They arrive at the equipment shed where
Grandpa lights his pipe. The three men are already unloading oil
company equipment, also
looted
,
from the bed of the one truck.

“What is that?” Reagan asks, pointing to a
metal box that her husband is unloading.

“Compressor kit,” he answers as he sets it on
the gravel floor.

Then John comes over directly in front
of her and leans down for a quick peck
on
her mouth. Reagan tries not to blush in front of
Kelly and Derek, who seem oblivious as they discuss the new
gear.

“What’s it for?” Reagan
inquires
when her husband pulls back.
She swipes the lock of his blonde hair that has fallen across his
forehead to the back again.

“It converts the natural gas for the trucks.
We needed to have this thing to make the whole system work,” he
answers before returning to the others.

Kelly says, “We’ll mount it to the inside
wall over here, little Doc.”

Reagan joins them near the edge of the shed
where Derek has already cut a small hole in the wall earlier in
anticipation of this find. Apparently he is a clairvoyant because
Reagan wasn’t so sure that they’d find anything. Of course, maybe
John called on the radio to let his brother know of their
fortuitous trip.

“Did you guys run into any trouble? Are the
kids all right?” Reagan asks because she can’t manage to stop
herself.

“They’re fine, babe,” John reassures her as
he works distractedly alongside his brother.

“We did run into some of our old friends from
our outfit,” Kelly offers amiably.

He is leaning against the new pick-up truck
casually as the others work.

Grandpa asks, “Really? That’s very
interesting.”

“Yeah, they’re holed up near a town called
Hendersonville. Guess they’ve got a similar setup.”

“Good. We could always use more allies,”
Grandpa says.

Kelly laughs as he lights a cigarette,
something he must’ve come across in the city.

“Oh yeah,” he says. “Dave the Mechanic is
quite the badass. His group is all tricked out. We’ll make a trip
over there soon and see if we can’t set up some trade. John told
him about our clinic, so don’t be surprised if some hillbilly
lookin’ bastard carrying a military rifle comes in someday cussin’
and spittin’ chew.”

Grandpa smiles and nods.

“Mechanic?” Reagan asks. “Was he a mechanic
in your unit? You mean he was a Ranger or… you know.”

She doesn’t want to say Delta Force, but they
know what she means just the same. They don’t talk very often about
their pasts. This new soldier entering the scene is unusual.

John and Kelly laugh as if they find her
comment humorous.

“Nah, not a mechanic,” Kelly explains as he
blows cigarette smoke skyward. “Well, technically he could tear
just about anything apart and fix it, which in the Army used to be
a pretty handy trade to have because you never knew when some shit
vehicle or something was gonna take a full-fledged dump. I guess he
was in college before the shit started in the Middle East again.
After the country got attacked, he joined up. Probably about the
same time John and I got in. He’s our age.”

“Wow, he’s really old then?” Reagan
teases.

Kelly chuckles and explains, “You’d better be
nice to me or I’ll tell your sister.”

“I’m not scared of her,” Reagan lies.

Kelly looks off into the distance and
doesn’t laugh at her joke which is unusual for him. They
normally
razz each other
endlessly.

“What are you thinking?” she asks as Grandpa
wanders over to inspect the new compressor system. She knew it
wouldn’t take long. His brain doesn’t stop. He’s going to want to
know everything there is to know about this CNG system and how it
operates.

“Aw, I was just remembering some of the funny
shit we got into over the years.”

“Tell me,” Reagan asks of him. “John never
talks about any of it.”

“Most of it isn’t worth talkin’ about, little
Doc. But there were some funny moments.”

Reagan nods, indicating that she’d like to
hear. She climbs onto the open tailgate of the truck where she can
dangle her legs.

“We were doing a raid up in Pakistan- off the
record, of course.”

Reagan laughs. It’s not as if it matters
anymore, but Kelly winks.

“This dick leader of some newly-formed
radical Muslim group that was starting to stir up the shit again
was holed up in the area. We found him easily enough. Weren’t
supposed to be in Pakistan. Didn’t have the authority to be there,
but that’s mostly what our unit did. And we found that little turd
and took him out. Then we… disabled his small following of
dipshits. Dave the Mechanic hacked into the dickhead’s computer. He
was good at the computer stuff like I’ve never seen. That’s how he
got the nickname. It wasn’t because he was a car mechanic. The shit
he could do with computers made him the
mechanic
. He stole all the info he needed off of
it, then he…well, he was pretty good at making funny videos and
stuff, too. So he cropped a pic of this dickhead leader in a funny
video. It was pretty inappropriate. I’ll spare you the details, but
there were goats involved.”

Reagan laughs. She can only imagine. Kelly
takes one last puff on the cigarette and stamps it out with his
booted toe.

“You’d better get rid of that smell, or
Hannah will know you were smoking,” she warns with a grin.

“I’m not scared of her,” Kelly says, using
Reagan’s words.

“Uh huh. Sure you aren’t,” she says.

“I’m not. She’s a little pipsqueak,” Kelly
says, sniffs his shirt. “On an unrelated note, would you happen to
have some cologne or air freshener spray on you?”

Reagan smiles at her friend. “Are you guys
going back to Nashville?”

She’s still worried about the four young
people from their family being out there all night or for two
nights without the rest of them.

“Nah, they got this,” he reassures her.
“They’ll meet up at dusk. So not too long from now, they’ll get
together for the night and hunker down somewhere.”

“It’s just hard not worrying,” Reagan admits
and kicks a pebble off of the tailgate with her Converse.

“Well don’t,” Kelly tells her, laying a hand
on her shoulder for just a second. “They’re fine. They’re trained.
And Paige survived for three years with just her friends and hardly
any weapons. She may have a few things that she can teach my
hard-headed little bro.”

“Yeah? Maybe. I don’t think they get along
all that great,” Reagan reminds him.

“I’m not so sure about that one, little Doc,”
Kelly tells her.

Reagan furrows her brow and says, “What do
you mean?”

Kelly shrugs and says, “I think I’ve seen a
spark of interest in my brother where Paige is concerned.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think he’d act on
it. I don’t think
he’d
risk
ruining his relationship with Simon by acting on it.”

“Wow, that’s… I don’t know what to say about
it. I didn’t notice anything like that.”

Kelly laughs and says, “Little Doc, you
didn’t even
notice
John’s
interest in you, and you were personally involved in that one.
Don’t feel bad, though. Cory’s a pretty hard person to
read.”

“Most people are hard to read,” Reagan admits
with a frustrated frown. “What about Simon’s sister? Do you think
there is a mutual interest there?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t know her well enough
yet to tell.”

Reagan chuckles and says, “I’m sure you will.
Better yet, we should be asking Hannie this shit. She is the
all-knowing.”

Kelly laughs and nods his head in
agreement.

“Hey, Kelly,” Reagan says, “how is she? Is
she doing any better?”

“Yeah,” Kelly answers and then looks at his
boots. “I think she’s getting there. Having Cory home is helping. I
kind of figured it would. Not sure why, but she likes that little
bastard.”

Reagan laughs and says, “Yeah, she does.
Hell, Hannie likes everyone. It’s not in her nature to dislike
anyone.”

“Another reason I don’t ever want her going
to town with us when we do the clinic days,” Kelly tells her.

“Me, too. She’s too trusting and
kind
for her own good
. I’m
thankful she doesn’t go to town with us. She’d be bringing home
strays, and I don’t mean more dogs.”

Kelly just chuckles and nods.

“I’m just glad that she seems to be getting
better. I didn’t like seeing her so depressed,” Reagan
confesses.

“Me either, little Doc,” Kelly tells her. “I
didn’t know how to help her.”

“Grandpa said she just needed time. Maybe he
was right. Who knows? It’s not like I’m a shrink. Hannah is so
tender and gentle spirited. She had me worried. I didn’t think
she’d get over Grams, but when we lost Em, too…” Reagan pauses,
aware that she’s just brought up Kelly’s dead sister, probably
breaking his heart all over again. She knows how much Kelly loved
her.

“I know,” Kelly laments. “I was worried, too,
but I think she’s coming out of it. She seems happier lately.”

“She does,” Reagan agrees as cursing comes
from the other side of the equipment shed, not from John, of
course.

“I’d better go and help. We’re losing
daylight, and I think Derek’s trying to get some of it hooked up
tonight. No time like the present,” Kelly remarks with sarcasm.

“Sure, I’m heading back down to the house to
help with dinner,” Reagan says and gets an incredulous look from
Kelly. “Don’t worry, Hulk. I’m mostly going down to raid the
kitchen for sweets. I won’t get too involved with the cooking
process. It wouldn’t matter; Hannie wouldn’t stand for it. I almost
burned the biscuits the other morning, so she’s got me on menial
tasks. To think I used to study microbes under a microscope all day
long and my annoying little sister won’t even let me near the
stove.”

“You’re still needed around here, little
Doc,” Kelly assures her. “If one of us fucks ourselves up by
getting blown up with this CNG shit, then you can sew us back
together.”

Reagan frowns, “Great. Just what I want to
think about.”

“Well, ya’ see? Now you aren’t worried about
the kids in the city anymore,” Kelly says with a slap to her
back.

“Kelly,” John reprimands as he comes to stand
next to her. Then he helps her down from the truck and wraps an arm
around her waist. “Good grief. Don’t worry, babe. Nobody’s getting
messed up. It’s safe… relatively.”