The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (14 page)

He’s rolled up his sleeves to his
elbows, mindless of the cold air that feels downright arctic
blowing through the barn aisle.

“You’ve done a good job, too, young
lady,” Grandpa says.

This causes Sam to smile broadly.
“Thanks, Grandpa. I went to the house to get hot water, though, and
Simon got kicked in the shoulder by her.”

“You ok?” Reagan asks distractedly
from the rear of the horse.

“Yes, I’m
fine
. Sam’s just a
worrywart.”

Grandpa defends her, “No such thing.
Not anymore. We all look out for each other. It’s all right if
Samantha wants to worry about you. Better than not having anyone
worrying about you. Don’t forget that. Right, Samantha?”

“Yep!” she answers with good cheer.
She loves Herb McClane so much that her heart swells with pride and
joy and optimism whenever she’s around him. He smiles and squeezes
her forearm before releasing it.

She thinks Simon might scoff quietly,
but she’s not sure. That wouldn’t be like him to be cocky and
sarcastic. He’s not like that at all. He’s always so cerebral and
even-keeled. It causes her to frown. He glances up and gives her a
mean glare for tattling on him.

Grandpa moves around the
horse, checking her, making comments about different injuries that
he finds. Then he kicks into full-blown doctor mode and helps them
sew her up, patch her up and get her put back together again. Then
he announces that he thinks she’ll give birth in the next
twenty-four hours. She’s dilated, probably from the
duress
she’s been
under, he says.

“I’ll stay out here with her tonight,
sir,” Simon volunteers.

“Me, too,” Sam adds, getting another
half groan and sneer from her best friend. She furrows her brow at
him in confusion and tips her head to the side.

“Sounds good,” Reagan says.
“I’m not too thrilled about pulling a midnight shift in the barn.
Been there, done that, got the t-shirt
…
or the horse placenta.”

“Eww, that’s nasty,
Reagan,” Sam says
on
a laugh. Her “big sister” is lewd sometimes. She
is funny, though. Crude but funny.

Simon even grins and shakes his head.
Grandpa just chuckles.

“Such a delicate little
flower,” Grandpa comments. “Hand me another bandage. This one here
just
needs covered
to protect it from dirt. Good. There. We’re done.
Let’s all go inside and wash up.”

“Simon, come up to the house
immediately,” Kelly’s voice comes over Reagan’s radio in a serious
tone.

Reagan pulls it from her belt clip and
hands it to Simon.

“Yes, sir. On our way,” Simon
relays.

“Wonder what’s going on?” Sam asks
rhetorically. Simon shakes his head in answer as they carefully, so
as not to slip in slush, but expediently traverse the trail up to
the farmhouse with Grandpa and Reagan.

Sam steals a glance up at
Simon, noticing how his dark auburn hair sticks out below his navy
blue stocking cap. His mouth is set in a hard line, not the
demeanor he would usually radiate. There is no sign of the two deep
dimples on his cheeks that are always ever present. Now he sports
a
glower
of
despair. She’d
tried
to get him to talk about Em again this morning on
their ride. Perhaps that was what had set him off. Or perhaps it is
the injured mare.

Some of the family members
are waiting for them when they arrive, and some must be
off
doing chores,
working in the house or hanging out at Sue’s cabin in the woods.
Molly comes over and begs a petting from her by licking her gloved
hand. Sam smiles down at the mutt and gives her furry head and ear
a quick rub.

“What’s going on?” Simon immediately
asks of Kelly, who stands on the back porch with John.

“Got a radio message from the Johnson
family,” Kelly explains. “They want us to come over. They asked
specifically for you.”

“Is someone ill?” Simon
asks.

John shakes his head and answers this
time, “I don’t think so, bro. They said there’s someone over there
who knows you.”

“That’s weird,” Sam
remarks.

“Someone from the clinic?” Simon
inquires.

“I don’t think so,” John interjects.
“They said we’d better get over there quick. Sounds
urgent.”

“Let’s take the Suburban and go on the
main road. John already disabled the driveway,” Kelly says as he
turns to go.

The four of them go inside and do a
fast scrubbing of their dirty and bloody hands and arms. Then they
each re-bundle in their winter outerwear and head out to the
waiting vehicle.

Disabling the drive means
that they’ve unattached the wiring to the driveway explosives
alarms. She remembers distinctly those loud tremors that shook the
ground when she’d first come down this same
driveway
in a stolen RV with her
band of criminal captors.

Reagan is also present and apparently
ready to go, but some of the family aren’t. All of the younger
children are either in the music room or playing in one of the
basement rooms like they do most days when it’s too cold to play
outdoors.

“Who’s staying to keep guard?” Simon
asks.

“Derek will stay here to watch the
place while we’re gone,” Grandpa offers. “He’s upstairs in John and
Reagan’s room so he can see everything better.”

“Sue’s in the house with Hannie,”
Reagan offers.

“Can I go, John?” Sam asks
of Reagan’s husband. He’s such a sweet man, but Reagan told her
once that he also has another side to him that he doesn’t like to
show anyone. It’s a violent
side,
and luckily he only displays it
when the family or his wife is in danger. Most of the
time,
he’s a lot
of fun to be around.

“Sure, kid,” he returns easily and
ruffles the top of her head, sending her stocking cap
askew.

Sam grins at him, and they
pile into the SUV. It only takes a few minutes to get to the main
road, which is actually just a gravel road surrounded on all sides
by forestry. Some of the vines and underbrush has crept onto the
road and has clogged the drainage ditch on either side. Without
road crews maintaining any streets, roads or alleyways anymore,
most roads in America look like this now. The men on these
three
farms
try to keep their road cleared away. The highways and main
roads, however, are starting to resemble an unkempt front yard of a
repossessed home. They pass the Reynolds farm and come to the
Johnson’s. Something big must be going down. Even Wayne Reynolds
has come over on his ATV to the Johnson’s farm. They must’ve
radioed him, as well.

The Johnson family had left
this valley when the apocalypse first hit to go and live at their
son’s farm up north. However, they’d found him murdered and
his
family
barely surviving. They’d come back through Illinois and picked
up their other son and his family and returned home to their farm
here. They probably figured it was safer in this valley than out
there in the rest of the country. Sam can certainly attest to that.
And now their family is
flourishing,
and there are young kids, a
new baby, two teenagers and two, single adult Johnson daughters, as
well. One of them lost her husband to a sickness a year after the
fall, and the other is in her mid-thirties and never married. Em
used to go over and hang out with one of the teen girls, Christal,
who was the same age as her. The Johnsons work with the Reynolds
family and a few of the families from the condo community, which
John and Kelly had established, to keep their farm going. It takes
all of them pulling together to keep these farms thriving which
enables their survival.

Kelly turns down their short drive and
pulls slowly to a stop. There is a crowd of Johnson and Reynolds
family members hovering around. Getting out of the vehicle, Sam’s
group makes their way closer.

“Ryan,” Grandpa extends his
hand cordially and shakes the hand of the
Johnson
family
patriarch.

“Herb,” Mr. Johnson
returns.

“What’s going on, Ryan?” he
asks.

“Simon,” Mr. Johnson says and turns
toward him. “It seems like these young people might know you,
son.”

Mr. Johnson signals to his son, Zach,
who disappears into the crowd to likely retrieve whomever it is his
father is referring. He’s a kind man like his father and the only
living son of Mr. Johnson. He’s in his late forties and has two of
the teenagers, one of the younger children and a wife.

“Said they’ve been walking for months
to get here. Got lost a few times. Had to ask around in town how to
find us out here,” Mr. Johnson explains as he smokes a
cigar.

“Simon?” a woman’s voice says from the
crowd as she breaks through, dropping her heavy sack on the ground.
“Simon?”

She is emaciated
thin,
her long,
stringy red hair hanging below the wool cap covering her head. Her
drab brown coat is in tatters. Her jeans match. She wears short
leather boots, but they have seen some mileage and are no match
against so much snow and mud.

Sam looks up at
Simon,
who is
standing directly beside her. There are unshed tears in his eyes as
he steps forward.

“Paige?” he asks weakly.

The red-haired woman nods
and runs for Simon. He lifts her clean off the ground, but as he
sets her back to her feet she collapses. Her legs give out as she
sobs and smiles and laughs and cries over their reunion. She is
nearly hysterical. Simon tries his best to support her. Sam has to
look away for fear that she’ll start crying, as well. This woman is
Simon’s dead sister. Except that she
isn’t dead
at all. She has
clearly
survived
the apocalypse and somehow, against all possible odds, has found
him again. He’s hugging her so tightly, pausing only to kiss her
forehead, remove her cap, and run his hands and fingers all over
her pretty yet gaunt face. He just keeps repeating her name as if
he can’t believe he’s actually seeing her. They’d all falsely
assumed she was dead.
They were all
so wrong.

Chapter Eight

Simon

Their group has returned to
the farm, after introductions were made with the other two
families, and now Simon is awaiting
his
sister and her friends while they
get their first hot shower in what Paige said was nearly two years.
They had a small Shetland pony with them that they had been using
to transport the little girl. Sam volunteered to take it out to the
horse barn. Forty minutes later, Paige comes upstairs to the
kitchen carrying the small girl on her hip.

She hugs Simon again and shakes her
head. There are tears in her light blue eyes again, but she manages
to hold them back.

“I thought you were dead,” Simon says
as he indicates that they should go into the music room where he
offers her a seat. Most of the family is there waiting for them.
There is much to go over, and everyone is curious.

“Thanks,” she says as she takes a
seat. “I didn’t know if you were dead, either.”

“I thought I’d never see you again,”
he states the obvious but can’t help it.

“Ditto,” she replies
softly.

Simon stares at her in
disbelief as if he is seeing a ghost. Many times over these last
years, he would’ve been happy even
just to see her ghost
.

Paige readjusts the child in her lap.
The tiny girl’s short curls are springing back to life, and she
wears recycled clothing from Sue’s daughter, Ari. Nothing is ever
thrown away or donated to a thrift shop anymore. Everything is
saved, repurposed, reused, patched up and put back to
use.

“Where have you been?” he asks as
Paige’s female friend also joins them in the music room.

His sister gives a sigh and shakes her
head. “Where haven’t we been would be a better question?
Everywhere, I guess.”

“Please, sit,” Sue offers the woman
named Talia Jones.

“Thank you, ma’am,” she returns as she
takes a seat near the piano, her pale, greenish-blue eyes looking
nervously around at the strangers.

Simon is still staring with
wonder at his sister. It had taken him a moment to recognize her
over at the Johnson’s.
She’s so
thin.
Her long red hair is drying, but
still manages to saturate her clean sweater loaned by Sam. She’s
also wearing borrowed pants and probably
borrowed
everything else. Even
though she’s wearing clothing
from
women who are also lean, these
clothes hang on her as if they are three sizes too big. She takes
his hand in hers and holds on tight. Simon can feel every bone in
her slim fingers.