The McClane Apocalypse Book Three (47 page)

Her head is spinning from hitting the floor,
and the wound on her forehead is trickling blood again. Her mouth
hurts just to talk from where Willy hit her twice, and she can
taste blood. Kelly pulls back, skimming his hands lightly around on
her face, her arms, checking her, Hannah's sure. He swears
profusely at whatever he is seeing.

"We knew something was up. Derek's guarding
the ones that we could find, and we knew when we couldn't find some
of them that something was wrong. Their women and your uncle and
that Frank asshole are up at the camp. And I found Rick out in the
apple orchard right before I heard about you. That's what took me
so long to get to you. I had to walk from the apple orchard with
him up to the camp and then back to the house to check on you.
That's when I found out you weren't there. And then Huntley told me
that this Willy freak hit him and told him to tell you I was out
here. If I hadn't come back to the house to check on you, Jesus, I
don't know what would've happened, Hannah. Reagan and John are out
in the woods looking for the teenagers because there's a problem
with them, too. Those people killed Sam's family and John's looking
for her in the woods. She's riding with Cory and Simon. But we need
to talk to her to find out more information about these bastards,"
he tells her and pulls her gently with him.

Then he just sweeps her up into his arms.
When they go a few feet Kelly takes a giant step, and Hannah
believes that he is probably stepping over the body of Willy.

"How?" Hannah asks when they reach the
pasture where Kelly carries her at a faster walking pace.

"How what, honey?" he asks quietly as if he
is trying to be.

"How did you kill him?" she asks and holds
onto Kelly's shoulders tightly because now her beloved farm is not
even safe from danger. They've allowed predators onto it.

"Baby, you don't need to know that," he
tells her rather firmly.

Hannah knows that he won't tell her.
Probably ever.

When they get to the house, Kelly carries
her through the kitchen door and sets her softly to her feet.
Grandpa is so upset over the state of what she looks like that
Hannah is genuinely afraid he'll have a heart attack. He says a lot
of swear words under his breath, but Grams doesn't reprimand him
for it.

"Most of that blood on her isn't hers, Doc.
Please, get it off of her quickly. It's from that damn, crazy
Willy," Kelly tells her Grandpa. "Her hand is cut open. I think she
hit her head or that bastard hit her because she seems unfocused.
She could have a concussion…," her lover's voice cracks.

He moves away from her and the rest of the
family, closer to the back door again if she hears correctly.
Hannah hates for him to be so upset. She can hear water being run
at the sink.

"Oh, Hannah," Sue says. "Are you all
right?"

"I'm ok. Kelly saved me," Hannah says
between sobs.

"I almost didn't," Kelly says with
guilt.

He is very angry with himself. On the
contrary, Hannah is very thankful for him.

"You did, Kelly. That's all that matters.
I'll take care of her, son. Go now. Get out there with Derek,"
Grandpa tells him.

He assures Kelly once more that she'll be
just fine because Kelly is reluctant to leave her. Her love touches
her arm lightly. Sue wraps an arm around her shoulder for support.
Hannah is more than glad for it.

Her lover leaves to look for the other
missing men in the visitors' group, and Grandpa relocks the back
door to the house with a fateful click.

They move as quickly as they can on
horseback on the steep hillsides, up one and down another and then
canter across the high pasture to where the forest begins again.
John leads the way into the woods and has to slow his gelding down
multiple times. The horse is rambunctious, but one of the teenagers
has taken his favorite mare. He's having trouble keeping this one
under control. The gelding is obviously feeding off of John's
tension. But he just has one of those tingling,
hair-on-the-back-of-his-neck feelings and in the military those
feelings were never wrong. These are the instincts that had kept
him alive in dangerous situations.

"If the kids went the other way like Derek
said, then we're heading in the right direction. I think we should
meet up with them any minute," Reagan tells him.

But she doesn't need to do so because John
knows these woods so well now.

"I think so, too," he says mostly to appease
her. "Don't worry. We'll find them. Everything's gonna be
fine."

This is another conciliation because John
has his doubts, though he won't tell her this. These men have been
wanting a fight, and they sure as heck don't want to leave the
farm. He should've known the other day, when Frank had easily given
up their argument of staying, that these people weren't leaving
without a fight. And if John is right about it, then Frank is the
one behind all of it. He's afraid to even consider that Grams's
brother Peter is also manipulating this set of circumstances
they're all in.

"Let's go through here," John says as they
head north on a dry creek bed. His horse tosses its head
impatiently.

"Ok, this will short cut us to the other
trail that the kids probably took," Reagan calls to him.

They ride a few more minutes while John
fights near constantly to keep his gelding under control. Even
Reagan's horse is more excitable than what is normal. John just
wants to find the three teenagers and get back to the farm so that
they can talk to Sam with Grams and Doc present. And if she
confirms that these people have killed her family and kept her
captive all this time, then the men will have to take care of the
visitors. They will have to take care of them the way that they
take care of any terrorists they've ever encountered.

They are riding through a deep ravine
encased by tall hills when John's horse spooks—very badly.

"John!" Reagan screams.

Her horse sidesteps about a million miles an
hour, startling and stumbling sideways. Somehow it manages to stay
upright. Crazily, Reagan is still in the saddle but is half on the
side of Harry who doesn't like his rider's new position.

Simultaneously John's flighty gelding lets
out a bone-chilling scream and rears, and he rears high, nearly
falling over backward. John knows he isn't coming down the same way
he went up because the horse has himself half on a hill and
twisted. And as the horse falls onto its side, John sees hadj three
with the amber eyes and the dirty dreadlocks coming out of the
woods. He hears Reagan scream his name again, and there is nothing
he can do as the horse falls hard and lands on John's leg, pinning
him to the ground. He's upside down, angled going downhill. The
pain in his hip is excruciating as the eight hundred pound horse
crushes and grinds himself into his thigh and hip, unsuccessfully
trying to right itself. If the beast decides to roll, John will be
crushed and maybe even killed. Obviously horses were the good watch
dogs that Reagan had once informed him of months earlier this
summer. John just hadn't read the signs of their distress correctly
because the animals has sensed an ambush was afoot. They'd likely
heard people in the forest around them.

Harry runs in front of John's gelding. The
horse is not carrying Reagan anymore, but John can hear her cussing
and screaming. Somebody's got her. John's vision is blurry. He's
not sure if he hit his head when he went down, but he feels like he
got his bell rung pretty good. He's been shell-shocked before from
grenades and mortar fire, so he knows the feeling well.

The gelding tries once, twice and finally
gets to his feet, using John as leverage and, more importantly,
John's leg. Unfortunately, when the animal is back on its hooves,
John's boot is hung up in the stirrup. Levon advances on him,
jumping over a fallen tree. His menacing, fast approach is
frightening John's horse even worse, though, and it bolts about
twenty feet. The animal is dragging John through foliage, rocks and
sticks that scrape his back and side as they go until it finally
decides to stop. His foot finally comes free of the stirrup as the
horse bucks once trying to rid itself of its fallen rider. John
rolls to his side and springs up onto his haunches just in time to
take a punch square to the jaw by Levon. Reagan screams again as
John spits blood.

"Leave him alone, you asshole…," Reagan
yells.

In John's peripheral vision he can finally
see who has her. They are at the top of a small hill across from
John who is still in the ravine. He must've dragged her up there,
though she would've fought him tooth and nail like the banshee she
can be. It's that punk Bobby and he's got her around the waist.
Reagan's gun is also gone from her thigh which means she's either
lost it or the kid has it. She's fighting him like a wild woman,
but Bobby's much bigger than her. Most people are much bigger than
her. Knowing that sadistic punk has her, gives John the fortitude
to get up again.

His leg is badly injured or sprained or
broken for all he knows, and he pathetically goes down again. He
reaches to his hip for his pistol, but it's not there and has
obviously come off during the fall or the dragging. Hadj three
lunges at him, and John kneels because he can't do much else. The
man has a dagger in his left hand that he wields with slightly more
skill than John's opponents in the Home Depot had displayed. This
man has been in knife fights before, but he isn't ex-military. John
punches the guy to the low gut and blocks an oncoming stabbing
meant for his chest. It successfully knocks the knife quite a
distance away into the weeds and underbrush.

"Kill him, Levon! Kill that prick!" Bobby
yells.

Reagan stomps his foot hard like John showed
her to do. She gets loose, sprints a few feet away, but the kid
grabs her again. Her foot stomp has enraged Bobby, and he shoves
her to the ground.

"You want to take a look at my dick now, you
little bitch? Yeah, let me show you what I can do with it. I was
gonna wait till later after we killed your boyfriend over there,
but…"

John is too distracted by this interaction
and takes another blow to the side of his head by the man that he
now knows is a part of the coup on the farm, the same man who'd
been giving him the hard looks the other day when they'd been told
to leave. This fight isn't going in his favor, making him feel
weak. This isn't a feeling with which John is familiar and it
pisses him off. He can't let Bobby rape Reagan or hurt her in any
way. He's never felt so stinking helpless his whole life, and he
vows that if he lives through this, he's going to shoot that stupid
horse.

His radio is sounding off from somewhere
either still attached to his saddle or in the dirt where it
could've fallen. It's his brother's voice coming across the radio
using their call signs, but John can't take the time to find it now
as he deflects another punch and jabs Levon in the spleen. With
John on one knee, the blow doesn't have the force behind it that
he'd like, and he takes a shot to the side of his face.

"Not so tough now, are you, badass? When
Bobby's done with your woman, I'll show her what a real man can do
with a fine piece of ass like hers," Levon threatens.

The big man comes at John with a kick to his
stomach which John partially deflects because he's busy unsheathing
the one weapon he's still in possession of. John stabs it into the
side of the other man's knee. Levon even screams but doesn't go
down. He shoves John hard, making him land on his back and
successfully dislodging the knife at the same time. That move
should've taken Levon to the ground, but it didn't. Perhaps he is
on drugs. They hadn't found these people's stash of drugs. John
clenches his knife tightly so as not to drop it as he comes up onto
one knee and then to his feet.

He can still hear Reagan fighting and
screeching at that stupid kid, and it's making him sick. He manages
to hobble a few feet away before Levon can make another move. By
the grace of God, John spots his pistol in the fallen leaves and
forest ground cover and clumsily hobbles over to it as quickly as
he can manage.

A shot rings out loud and clear in the
silence of the forest and John spins with his .45 ready to shoot.
He watches as Levon staggers backward. He's been shot to the
shoulder but not by John. The surprised look on the man's face must
mirror John's own. Three more rounds follow in lightning quick
succession to the man's center mass and he falls dead. John turns
to find Cory behind him on the other side of the ravine's hill
holding his handgun with one hand. And he's still seated on John's
favorite mare. He's glad that Cory took her because Lady is steady
and easy to handle and doesn't take flight at the slightest rustle
of leaf or, in this case, gun shot. Sam is riding behind him for
some reason and not on her own horse. John's mare stands quietly
under Cory, who looks unfazed and calm although he's just shot and
killed a man. Good, it is a valuable quality to have nowadays.
He'll be a lot like John when he gets older. And now to find his
woman who is still swearing and yelling.

Cory swings a leg over the neck of the mare
and helps Sam down, who he leaves with the horse. John hobbles to
the hill where he can still hear Reagan. As he stalks as fast as a
spreading wildfire to the top of that hill, leaving Cory behind, he
is shocked as Simon stabs Bobby in the back from behind. Bobby the
punk screams. That little piece of shit was on top of Reagan but,
thankfully, she still looks fully clothed.

Simon drags Reagan out from under Bobby as
the kid howls in pain. Simon literally picks Reagan up by the waist
and then flings her over his shoulder. He is running toward the
woods with her and surprising John that he is even strong enough to
do it. John fires a bullet right into Bobby's heart, disabling the
creep and putting him out of his misery.