The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (20 page)

Hannah
laughs
once and says, “Oh yes,
I guess that is me. Nobody uses my married last name. Just call me
Hannah. Making? I’m making glazed cinnamon rolls for Reagan, well,
for everyone. But these are her favorite.”

Sue chuckles and says, “She’s a sugar
addict, so we’ve had to learn how to be creative since we don’t
actually have sugar anymore.”

Paige nods and replies, “Those smell
better than the ones my local bakery near my college used to make.
They would smell up the whole block with the scents of sugary baked
goods.”

Sue bumps her hip against
Paige’s, “Scooch. We gotta share the stove. I need to get these
eggs on. The guys will be in soon from
chores,
and the then monsters will
be up. I say that with the utmost affection, Paige.”

Paige smiles unsurely. Sue
is a
very warm
and open woman and the oldest of the three McClane sisters.
She has a charming way about her, motherly and tender. Maddie had
even allowed Sue to tuck her into bed last night.

Reagan comes blasting into the kitchen
from the mudroom with frosted red cheeks and a matching nose. She
coughs once and blows her nose on a handkerchief. Her hair is damp
with snowflakes. She has some seriously untamable curly hair. Paige
used to whine about her light red color, but it’s not as bad as
Reagan’s frizzy, wild curls. At least her red hair usually lays in
soft waves. Paige had asked her brother about the faded white scar
that runs the length of Reagan’s cheek, but he hadn’t known how she
got it and told her that she’s had it since he’d come to the
farm.

“What up, chicas?” she asks in a
joking tone.

“Breakfast, cooking, cleaning, trying
to survive, you know, just another day in the apocalypse,” Sue
teases with her.

Paige smirks and shakes her head
disbelievingly. The two women laugh, but Paige notes that Hannah
does not.

“Brats up yet?” Reagan inquires
presumably after their children.

“No, thank God,” Sue jokes again. “Do
you notice that it’s peaceful in here? The guys still
working?”

“Yeah, they’ll be along in a minute.
Then the really annoying noise will start,” Reagan
teases.

“The chest beating will commence,” Sue
says waving her spatula like a sword before going back to
scrambling the pan full of eggs next to Paige.

Hannah
chuffs
this time and says, “I
thought you liked the chest beating.”

“Only in private,” Reagan jokes
bawdily.

Paige furrows her brow. These three
women are kind of rotten and ornery. It is homey and comfortable
hanging out with them, but she still feels mostly like a
stranger.

They get everyone fed, the kids on
dishes and clean-up duties with a lot of groans, and the men back
out the door to work on whatever the hell those crazy dudes are
working on. Paige is highly intimidated by the three men on the
farm. They are like military badass barbarians. She chooses to tag
along with her brother.

Today Paige is working in
the woods collecting herbs with Simon, Talia and the neighbor Chet
Reynolds. He seems like an honorable man. His sense of loyalty to
his family is
strong
, and Talia seems to get along
well with him. He comes over to the farm rather frequently to help
out with projects and for the company of the McClane men. His
brother Wayne and his wife and daughter visited a few days ago to
discuss some sickness that has been affecting their dairy cows.
Paige had been confused about two minutes into that conversation.
She knows nothing about livestock but is starting to appreciate
the
cows,
in particular. She hasn’t had milk in almost four years, so it
is welcomed commodity.

Another snow storm blew
through the valley the other day, leaving them with a thick
blanketing of fresh white powder. The temperature is miserably
cold, probably only hovering around twenty-five degrees, but the
sun is shining brightly through the trees in the forest and
reflecting brilliantly off of the snow. She has her hair pulled
back in a braid and covered with a black stocking cap. She borrowed
a coat from Sue’s stash of clothing that says “Carhartt” on the
front, but Paige has no idea what that means. It’s warm enough,
however. Simon and John had gone to some nearby neighborhood
and
raided
for a few small boxes of clothing for her and her friends.
Most of the clothing is baggy and loose, but she’s appreciative
anyway. All of the pants are too short for her since she’s on the
tall side. She just tries to wear longer socks to fill in the gap
and not have cold skin on her bare legs.

“Look here, Paige,” Simon calls over
to her.

She joins him near a tree as he picks
off the bark with his knife.

“What are you doing?”

“See, sis, this is wild cherry bark,”
he tells her and turns the piece of bark over in his
palm

“So what do you do with
it?” Paige asks of her brother who wears a long navy blue wool
dress coat and a ball cap that advertises the Tennessee Titans
football team. He was never a football fan, so it’s obviously just
something he’s picked up. He’s always worn baseball caps since she
could remember. They were usually emblazoned with some comic book
title, video game, or science equation. Simon has always been more
self-conscious of his red hair than her, and their mother used to
get mad that he kept it covered. The long wool coat is out of
place, but he’d
explained
that his short winter coat is being repaired by
Sue, patched in many places. His worn and threadbare jeans have
patches sewn on them at the knees and on the back of one thigh. His
short black rubber boots are practical but don’t go with the rest
of his unusual get-up. His preppy gray sweater is just one more
mixed up part of his ensemble. Of course, nobody really thinks much
about what they wear anymore.

“It’s good for medicinal
uses,” he tells her. “We’ll also try to find a verbena tree- really
more of an indigenous shrub actually. You can boil them together
and make a tea.
Doesn’t taste too
great.
But we can also mix a little
cinnamon with them. Helps the
taste
just a tad. And cinnamon is great
for lots of things. Keeps blood sugar low, good for
metabolism.”

He’s in full-blown nerd
mode. He was always like this. Even when they were kids, he’d be
studying something and almost unaware of other people and what they
thought. He’d
had
a few friends in school, but not many. Paige often
wondered if that was the reason her parents sent them to a small
private school.

“What kinds of medicinal uses?” Paige
asks him, genuinely wanting to know. All of the information her
brother has in his head about medicinal cures would’ve helped her
small group greatly over the years. She feels like it’s very
necessary to learn this. Anything could happen. She and Simon may
need to leave this farm someday. He could become ill. She may be
his only source of help.

“It’s good for respiratory illnesses,
colds, sore muscles. Most of the herbs we grind will be made into
teas. It just makes it easier for our patients because that way
they don’t overdose,” he explains patiently.

“Overdose? Seriously?”

“Oh, yes!” he says with
enthusiasm. “There are a lot of herbs that can kill people if they
consume them too
heavily
or too frequently.”

“Like what?”

He smiles patiently and
stops searching for a moment before answering, “Well, for instance,
licorice root can be dangerous in large quantities. It can cause an
irregular heartbeat or cause it to stop altogether. Foxglove is
another plant that’s highly poisonous. Pharmaceutical companies
used to make Digoxin with it. That’s a heart medicine, but it can
stop your heart,
too
if taken in the wrong dose. Hemlock, of course, is
deadly. Wolfsbane is highly poisonous, as well.
As a matter of fact, the Chinese used to tip their
arrows with it to ensure their enemy died in case the wound hadn’t
been fatal.
In old
folklore,
they used to believe that
you could kill a werewolf with it.”

Her brother chuckles.

“Right, werewolves. I wish that’s all
we were up against today. Did you learn all of this from Dr.
McClane?”

“Some,” he says with a shrug. “I went
on raids with the guys and would hit the local libraries to bring
books about herbs back home. I guess I just like studying
it.”

Paige regards her
big-little
brother
with awe. He’s so different than when they were young. He’s so
mature and responsible now. His physique is also much different.
His body is bulky and thick with muscle and a new height he didn’t
have when he was fourteen, which was the last time she saw him
before leaving for college.

“That’s good,” she offers forth. What
he hands her looks like something that would taste like the tree
from which it came. Her brother is excited about the find, though,
and stuffs the brown bark down into his distressed leather
messenger bag he carries with him everywhere. “It seems like you’re
always reading a lot of Dr. McClane’s medical books.”

“I still have a lot to
learn,” Simon says
with
a shrug.

“Reagan said you’ve been
reading and studying twelve hours a day for the past four years,”
she says
on
a chuckle but gets no reply from him.

“Cory reads a lot, too, but it’s all
military stuff.”

“Sorry about your friend. I can tell
you miss him,” Paige offers and gets a nod and grimace from her
brother. “I never would’ve thought you’d be a medical doctor
someday.”

“I’m not. That’s why I
study hard.
We need more
doctors.
The population is going to
continue to die off from diseases that we conquered a hundred years
ago if we don’t push hard to fight back.”

Paige nods solemnly
and
stares
with wonder at this strange man in front of her. His sense of
responsibility is unprecedented.

“Sometimes I find wild thyme out
here,” he tells her as he climbs over a boulder sticking out of the
hill.

“And what would you do with that?” she
inquires.

“It’s helpful with the flu
and cold symptoms,” he supplies. “And there’s ginseng out here,
too. It grows
in
the ground like a root. Doc says there used to be
a big issue with people
growing
it and fighting over it and
stealing each other’s harvests. Not around here, but elsewhere. You
can find it at the base of elm and oak trees. It’s good for
digestion, your immune
system
and overall health.”

He’s like a walking herbal
encyclopedia. Something occurs to Paige, though.

“Hey, where are your glasses?” she
asks. He used to wear black-framed eyeglasses.

“Oh, I don’t wear them all
the time,” he says
distractedly
as he bends to pick at more
weeds, carefully scraping away the snow with his bare
hand.

“How do you see?”

“I can see just fine,” he
tells her. “My eyes have strengthened without wearing them
constantly
. I
still have them. Sometimes I wear them at night when my eyes
get
tired
and I’m trying to study. Sometimes I wear them at work. But
I’m also kind of worried that if I wear them too much and they get
broken, then I’ll be out for good. The optometrist office in town
is destroyed. It was burned down really soon after, I guess, and
the doctor fled town to… I don’t know, somewhere.”

“That’s interesting,” Paige says as
she watches him cut a limb from a bush with his knife. By “work”
she knows he means the clinic. She’s heard a lot of talk about this
clinic of theirs.

“Well, that and Bobby would hit me and
then I’d lose them or they’d get broken and I’d constantly have to
keep fixing them. So I just learned to live without them,” he adds
quietly.

“I can’t believe you got stuck with
them,” Paige recalls sadly and places her hand on his forearm. “I’m
really sorry about that, Simon. I wish I had been there for
you.”

Simon shakes his head and frowns.
“It’s not your fault. Heck, I sure am glad you weren’t with me,
sis. Aunt Amber was a horrible human being.”

“From what you told me about the men
she was with, they sound pretty horrible, too.”

“Oh yeah, they were
sickening freaks. Drug addicts, thieves, murderers, rapists. The
worst kind of
people
imaginable. She probably would’ve let
them
…
”

“I can imagine. We ran into a lot of
those types,” Paige recalls.

“I’m glad you finally made
it here safely. There were a lot of times I thought about taking
off to find you, but I didn’t know where
to even start
. I don’t care what
you had to do to survive. I’m just thankful that you are
alive.”