The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (47 page)

“I’m not really ready to go
back…”

“Too fucking bad, kid,” he says on a
hiss. “No wonder your dad’s gonna be pissed. He should be. This was
a dumbass move. You could’ve been killed by someone.”

She rolls her eyes at him. Cory would
like to knock some sense into her but refrains since he’d like to
return her unscathed to her family. Instead, he grasps her arm and
tugs her behind him.

“Hey! You have a dog?” she asks
excitedly.

“It’s a guard dog. Don’t try to pet
her or she’ll bite your hand off,” he threatens.

Of course, she bends right over and
rubs the dog’s ears. Damn Dog wags her tail vigorously. Mutinous
traitor.

“Let’s go!” he tells her and pulls her
arm again.

When they get closer to the guard
post, Cory calls out to the sentries. “Hey! Don’t shoot! I’ve got
one of your people!”

Something dawns on him and
he
whispers
, “What the hell is your name?”

“Kim. Kim Sanderson,” the blonde
replies with a sunny smile.

“Her name’s Kim Sanderson!” Cory
repeats her name to the guards while still keeping them both
concealed around a corner a block away. He then shouts for their
clarification, “I’m not gonna hurt her. I just want to return her
safely to your group.”

This kid is so dumb that she could’ve
gotten her ass shot by her own guards. They call for them to come
forward, so Cory moves with her in front of him.

“Hi, Uncle Joe!” she blurts to the
guard on the left.

“Damn it, Kimmie!” Uncle
Joe reprimands. “You got out again? How many
damn
times do we have to tell
you not to go out alone? And at night again?”

Cory stands back, leery of the other
men with guns. He’s not putting his down. Uncle Joe extends a hand
toward him, his rifle lowered.

“Thanks, man,” he says. “We
owe ya.’ We
really
owe you.”

Cory shakes the man’s hand. “Nah, it’s
cool. I just didn’t want anything to happen to her. It’s not safe
out there.”

“No shit, right?” the other man
says.

“Hey, Uncle Joe, can Cory come in and
meet Mom and Dad and eat with us?”

“No thanks,” he answers before her
uncle can. “I’ve gotta get back.”

“You live around here, too?” Joe asks
of him.

“No, just passin’ through,” he
replies.

“
Well,
at least let us get you some
food or some provisions for bringing her home safe. It’s the least
we can do, man,” Joe offers.

“Yeah, come on in for a rest,” the
other man offers. “At least grab a cup of coffee before you go. And
my wife makes some damn good biscuits. Take a few with you for the
road.”

“Um…”

“Come on, Cory,” Kim says and takes
the sleeve of his coat between her fingers.

“Sure, but only for a minute. I do
need to get going,” he says unsurely. It’s hard to trust people.
Kind, giving people like these are so few and far between out there
that he’s skeptical and distrustful of everyone.

Twenty minutes later, he is
well-ensconced within their small village and hearing more stories
about people and their families than he cares to. Most of them are
asleep since it’s after midnight, but those who aren’t come forward
to talk. Everyone wants to know where he’s been, what it’s like
elsewhere, and if it’s better than it is here.

“We heard that an EMP went
off over
D.C.
and that’s what caused the power outages,” one them
says.

“I don’t think so,” Cory
rebuts with confidence.
If that was
true, the men at the farm would’ve known this.
“It was the tsunamis that took down the East Coast power.
There wasn’t an attack on U.S. soil, not yet at least.”

“I can tell you for sure
that there won’t be any, either,” one of the men answers. “I was
Army National Guard when it happened. Those other countries out
there are totally screwed. They couldn’t attack anyone if they
wanted to. The last report I heard before leaving South Carolina is
that Russia had to shut down their nuclear program. They were
pretty messed up from getting nuked themselves. They
won’t
be a threat
to anyone for probably damn near a hundred years if I was to guess.
North Korea or China, either. They all lost
a huge portion of
their people,
too. I heard they lost even more than we did. At least for us it
was mostly coastal states. But those nukes took out major cities
over there like Moscow and Beijing.”

“We’d only just
flown
home the
week before the first one struck,” Uncle Joe replies. “We were
coming from Germany. Stationed there. Think we were the last ones
out. Good thing, too. It was way worse over there. The nukes were
dumping fall-out all over Europe.”

The other enlisted man says, “Right.
We’ve got it way better than they do. At least we can grow food
again. They won’t be able to grow anything over there, not with the
nukes and fall-out.”

Kim’s father says, “Well,
inland they should do a little better, just like we have here.
They’ll eventually get on their feet. The interior of Europe should
be
fine
.
But someday it’ll be a far different group of world
super-powers.”

“Hopefully we’ll still be one of
them,” Uncle Joe says.

“We will be,” her father emphasizes.
“We always will be.”

“How’d you get the gas up
and running to power your lights?” Cory asks, changing the subject.
He’s not sure anyone will ever be a
super-power
again. This country and
overseas countries are
fully
fucked. He’s seen it firsthand.

“As a kid I grew up in
Amish country,” Kim’s father replies. “All of our neighbors were
Amish families, so I knew how they lived off the grid with propane
lighting and appliances that don’t need electricity. So when it
hit, we made a quick trip up north into Holmes County and
hit
the hardware
stores there. They sell gas appliances and lighting fixtures on
account of the Amish not using electric lights.”

“The natural gas lines still have gas
pumping through them. I’m not sure how,” the uncle explains, “but
they do. It’s not all that reliable, so we try to be really
conservative with it. Haven’t you seen anyone else with power or
gas?”

Cory shakes his head. The others don’t
even try to hide their disappointment and surprise at hearing
this.

“No, not really,” Cory
explains. “Some people are using propane for heat and gasoline to
fuel generators. The government dropped a few big generators and
crates of food by air that some areas were using, is what I heard.
The National Guard moved into some of the big cities and
distributed boxes of food and small generators,
too, in
the beginning. Won’t
matter, though. Still need fuel to make them work, so unless oil
refineries get up and running again, we’re still screwed. Unless
coal mines open up and start delivering coal to power plants again,
electric won’t be fully restored, either. Some folks are using
solar; others use wind.”

They are all sitting or
standing in the dining room of Kim’s father. He had explained that
this was his in-law’s home and that he and his family were actually
from the Cincinnati area before the fall. They’d come here to help
his wife’s mother. Unfortunately, his mother-in-law hadn’t lasted
long and had passed away shortly after they’d
arrived
. They hadn’t felt like
it was safe to try to make the trek back to their own home. It had
become dangerous almost overnight in their own suburban
neighborhood. Cory wonders if they know about the earthquake that
had
obviously
hit Cincinnati hard enough to crack open the freeway in the
downtown district. He doesn’t tell them about it. They all
have
enough
to worry about. Chances
are
that earthquake was from an
aftershock or some other disturbance that had rocked the
city.

Kim’s younger sister
clings
onto
her side and occasionally peeks at Cory. There are eight of
them piled in discussing the shitty state of the world. Cory was
fed a bowl of steaming hot bean soup whether he’d wanted it or not.
He’s pretty sure it had pork in it. At least that’s what he hopes
it was and not opossum or rat. Damn Dog had even begged a soup bone
and is now sitting at Kim’s feet chewing on her bone while the girl
rubs
at
the
dog’s head. She explained to him that her other sister died last
year of sickness that had swept through their small town with a
fury. They’d lost almost a dozen people. They have no doctor in
their precinct and only two nurses. One of the nurses said that she
thought it was small pox. That seems so out of the realm of
possibility that Cory almost didn’t believe her. Then he remembered
the pneumonic plague that had hit their farm. Nothing is impossible
anymore.

“We work with another community just
south of here,” her father explains. “We got them up and running
with gas, and they supply us with meat when we need it.”

“That’s good,” he
says
with
a
nod. “Establishing trade with your neighbors is
important.”

“Yeah, we’ve been somewhat lucky,”
Uncle Joe observes. “We have had some problems from people out
there. You run into any of that?”

Cory smiles. “Every damn
day.”

Kim’s father says, “That’s
unfortunate. Were you in the military or something?”

He’s indicating toward Cory’s
M16.

“Nah, I was still too young to join
when it fell apart.”

“You sure seem like you can take care
of yourself pretty well,” the uncle’s friend says.

“My brother’s ex-Special Forces, so he
trained me. We have three men in our group that are Special Forces.
They train everyone that wants to learn. We work with the people in
our community, too. It’s important that you know how to keep your
neighborhood safe.”

“That’s smart,” the uncle says. “Maybe
we should start doing that, too. Whatcha’ think, Merv?”

He’s asking his military
friend.

Merv nods and says, “Seems like a good
enough idea to me. If we train the people over in Lewis Center, it
could help to keep the scumbags out of our area. That’s who we
trade with, Lewis Center.”

“That’s good,” Cory says. “Try to join
in with other areas, too. Strength in numbers is a good policy
now.”

“No kidding,” Merv says.
“We had trouble with some nomad types passing through about a year
ago. Man, they were some real ass-hats. They managed to get a
couple of the women from the next town over and had ‘em for a few
days before we got to them. That was a real mess. Lost four men
from our
town
, too. But we managed to kill most of them before they got
away.”

“
Fewer
assholes in the world helps
everyone,” Cory says to them.

“Right?” Uncle Joe asks rhetorically
and bumps fists with Cory.

“Cory, we heard that Cleveland has
power, like full power,” Kim says with naïve excitement.

“You know anything about that?” Joe
asks him.

Cory just shakes his head again. “I
haven’t heard that.”

“They have a nuclear power plant up on
Lake Erie, so some people passed through here last year and told us
that there’s power up there,” the uncle provides.

“I don’t know. Maybe,” Cory answers
noncommittally but doesn’t believe this rumor. “I sure as hell
wouldn’t leave here to go out there to find out, though. It’s safe
here. This is safer than a lot of places I’ve been.”

How the hell would they still be able
to run a nuclear power plant without supplies being delivered and
people trained in running a nuclear power plant still working
there?

“Where’s your place? I mean where is
your community, your people?” her father asks.

“Pittsburgh,” he
lies
easily
. Nobody at the farm divulges its location. Ever. “Got family
over that way. Just heading home.”

“Do you guys have
power
, Cory?” her
father asks.

“We use solar mostly,” he divulges.
“It’s not a hundred percent reliable all the time, but it
works.”

“Solar? Oh man, we never
thought of that. How’s that work exactly?” Merv
inquires
before adjusting his
rifle sling on his shoulder.

“I can draw you out the schematics for
it if you’ve got a paper and pencil,” he offers.

Ten minutes later he has
the solar diagram drawn out and explained thoroughly. He’s done
this many times for people
in
their town and surrounding areas.
They’ll need to modify some things about their electricity and find
the supplies to build them, but he is
fairly
confident they’ll figure it
out.