The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (63 page)

“I’m sorry,” she replies softly,
refusing to meet his gaze.

Simon very slowly and carefully folds
her drawing and tucks it away into his jeans pocket.

“I won’t tell anyone, all right?” he
says reassuringly.

Sam nods because it is all
she can manage. Sometimes on this precipice Simon is the only one
who can talk her down, usually the only one who can because she
doesn’t share it with anyone else. He’d
discovered
her issues with
depression and lapses into it shortly after they’d been taken in by
the McClane family. She’d
been
in the barn sitting on a bale of
hay toward the back wall and drawing something just as sinister as
what she’s sketched this afternoon. It was a picture of her
slaughtered horses, shot and killed by the men who’d taken her.
They were dead in their stalls, locked there that morning by her.
If she hadn’t locked them up, perhaps they wouldn’t have been
killed. They had probably made a fuss and lot of racket when
Frank’s group had taken her family out there to be executed. Horses
sense danger. They sense evil. They know when to be
wary
of people.
She often wished that she’d had that same intuition back then.
Simon had caught her in the middle of drawing her murdered, shot to
death horses who were unable to escape because of her.

Tears are plopping onto her bare legs,
just landing there and adding to her overall embarrassment at being
caught by Simon. She hates upsetting him like this. He has more
important things to do with his time than to be bothered by her
encroaching bout of depression.

“Don’t cry, honey,” he
pleads.

Sam raises her eyes to meet
his. There is a
painful
recognition there in his gaze. They both know why
she is so upset. Neither of them wants to recognize it, though. It
is too painful to reconcile, to admit, to share.

“Come here, Sam,” he says.

Simon pulls her gently to him and
stands. There he hugs her close while she weeps against the front
of his soiled shirt. He and Derek have been finishing rebuilding
the porch where the Target men had caught it on fire the night of
the attack. When she pulls back, Sam can see that she has turned
some of the grime and dirt on his shirt to a richer, muddier
appearance.

“I’m sorry, Simon,” she apologizes
again, shaking her head. “I just got… messed up again.”

“I know. It’s ok, honey,”
he says comfortingly. “You don’t have to apologize to
me
.”

Sam just attempts a grin
and looks at her feet. His hands are
on
either side of her
face
the next
instant, and he forces her to look up at him. His thumbs wipe at
her wet cheeks. Simon shakes his head at her.

“No more, all right? You have to
control it. Use your music. Talk to me. Go for a walk with me, but
don’t do this. Don’t let it pull you in, honey. Don’t let it drag
you down,” he says.

Sam notices a
wrinkle
between
his brows. A lock of his auburn hair has fallen over his forehead
in a boyish manner. She nods again and sniffs.

“”
Kay,” she accords and
attempts a lop-sided smile.

Simon pulls her toward him,
places a brotherly kiss
to
her forehead, lingers there a moment and steps
away. His eyes are haunted and darker than just a second ago. He
gives a quick puff of breath through his nose as if he is confused
suddenly and leaves her room.

Sam stands there another moment before
hiding the other four drawings in a drawer, which were under her
sketch pad. There was no sense in revealing those equally macabre
spectacles to her best friend. She uses the upstairs bathroom to
clean her face, brush her hair and straighten herself away before
plastering a sunny smile on her face and going down to dinner with
her beloved family.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Simon

Two weeks have gone by
since he’d
caught
Samantha trying to lapse into severe depression
again and had hopefully stifled it. As far as he knows Reagan is
the only other person on the farm aware of Sam’s issues, and Simon
fully believes that she recognized it in Sam because of what she,
too, had gone through. He doesn’t know the entirety of Reagan’s
story, but he knows it was horrific. He’s also seen glimpses of her
physical scars, as well as, her emotional aversion to touch, which
has improved exponentially.

Tomorrow is technically the
fourth of July, although he doubts they’ll be lighting off any
fireworks, nor do they have any with which to celebrate. He just
hopes they don’t have to light off any other types of explosives.
The heat today at the wall build had been excruciating.
They’d
had
to take three men to the clinic to be treated for heat
exhaustion by Reagan, the only doctor on duty. Plywood still covers
the front windows of the
clinic
, which doesn’t help to cool the
building in any way. It is almost unbearably hot in the clinic.
Another man had been severely injured when a telephone pole had
been cut with a chainsaw and landed on his leg. He’d admitted to
not paying attention to what the other men were doing. Reagan had
declared deep tissue bruising along with a slight, hairline
fracture of his tibia. A woman was burned
accidentally
while assisting her
husband on welding two particularly important steel support braces
on the exterior of the wall. Simon had needed to scrub up to
assist
Reagan on
that one. Her burns were second and third degree and will need to
be carefully monitored for infection as time goes on. Luckily for
her, the burn had only encapsulated her right forearm and nowhere
else.

Now he’s relaxing a moment before
hitting the shower. Sam sits on his left. Paige is on his right.
And they are all sitting on the top board of the cow pasture fence
where those beasts graze lazily in the last, fading light of dusk.
Dinner is over, chores completed, and the rest of the evening he
plans to devote to study. He’s in the middle of studying a book on
human microbiology. Tomorrow if the weather is good, they plan on
cutting hay, but tonight he’ll study.

He wants to find new ways,
unconventional methods to prevent and cure disease through herbal
treatment. Reagan had lent the microbiology book to him, so there
are notes scribbled, pages bent over, yellow highlighting marks and
general messy disorder to try to weed through. He’s been
wondering
lately
if a mixture of oil of oregano combined with
stinging nettle will cure a severe case of
lung
ailment like pneumonia or even
influenza. Unfortunately before the apocalypse, doctors hadn’t
really put much stock in herbal remedies. If only they’d
listened
to
instinct and not pharmaceutical sales reps, people might know more
now about surviving since those drug companies are gone.

They’d
talked
to a group of people
who’d passed through town a few years ago, friends of the Johnson
family, about what they’d seen out on the road. They’d
told
Doc about a
new form of money called drug bartering. Supposedly people had
located a few drug manufacturing plants and had commandeered
everything that was left. They would then trade off useful drugs,
anything from heart medicines, aspirin, high blood pressure meds,
to antibiotics and more. One such manufacturing facility had been
located in New Jersey and
raided
by jack-booted thugs, another in
Indiana. If the people had nothing to trade, then the drugs
were
withheld,
and the peddlers would move on to the next established camp or
town. Simon would like to get his hands on those kinds of people,
people who would hold out giving medicine to the sick. Or snipe
them from afar and not sully his hands on the likes of that type of
scum.

“Now that’s a sunset,” Paige observes
beside him.

He’d
been
too lost in thought,
angry about jerks who treat others badly for their own gain. He
nods absent-mindedly to his sister, observes the streaks of orange
and pinks and fiery reds in the sky. Some areas look like his
sister’s hair. Good grief. He’s starting to
look at
colors like Sam and her
little artist brain.

“Yes, it is,” Sam chirps up. “I like
watching it fall behind those old, tall pines.”

Her artist brain never
shuts off. Her black ponytail is missing, and her hair hangs long
and loose, halfway down her back like black silk. It’s still damp
from her shower but mostly dry. Her light blue tank top fits
loosely, revealing her pink bra strap on her slim shoulder. Pale,
muscular legs stick out below the hem of her black shorts. She
doesn’t seem to tan. She does burn
easily
, though, which is something he’s
always warning her about taking extra precautions to prevent. She
usually laughs at him. Her skin always looks so smooth and creamy,
like freshly squeezed goat milk. Simon frowns. Goat milk? What the
hell? He makes a note
never to say
that
out loud. She’ll just laugh at him
again.

“Right?” she asks, hitting Simon with
those piercing blue eyes of hers.

“Yeah, sure,” he answers,
although he has absolutely no idea to what he’s agreeing.
Hopefully
it
wasn’t something he was agreeing to
do
for or with them that he wouldn’t
enjoy.

“It feels like a moment of
grace sitting here with you guys,” Paige says solemnly and tilts
her head back to take in the last rays of the
sun
. “I think this is the
first sunset I’ve actually sat and watched and felt
true
peace in
years.”

Simon takes her hand into his and
gives it a reassuring squeeze.

“We’re glad you’re here, Paige,” Sam
offers kindly. “You’re one of us now.”

He’s not sure how his independent
sister is going to feel about Sam’s comment.

She replies, “Yeah, I guess I am,
aren’t I? I’m not leaving unless Simon does.”

“I’m wherever you are, sis,” Simon
tells her. “We’re a team in this together. I won’t ever let us get
separated again.”

“And Sam?” Paige asks.

Simon
alm
ost flinches at the
boldness of his sister’s question and the
serious
intent of her stare. He
also
questions
the motivation behind it.

“Yes, Sam, too. I won’t let you get
separated from us, either, Sam,” he says and looks directly at Sam.
Unaware or uncaring of social etiquette boundaries, Sam just lies
her head against his shoulder.

“I know, Simon,” she answers directly.
“You’ll keep all three of us safe.”

The weight of her words feels like
cement blocks on his shoulders, but he’s happy to carry them,
honored to do so. These two women are solely his responsibility.
Samantha is an orphan, and Paige is his sister. They need him. He
doesn’t take this job lightly.

He also feels this way
about Huntley, the other orphan in their group, but he’s darn near
capable of taking care of himself. He’s
a fairly
good shot already. He runs
around the farm with a bb gun and
plinks
at everything. Then he shoots
real guns with Derek and Derek’s oldest son, Justin, as
well.

Simon feels the same about
the whole entire McClane family, but they each have protectors or
husbands or just each other to look out for them. Sam and Paige
need his protection. They have no one. Sam is small and fragile.
His sister is not so on either account, but she has no idea how to
fight or shoot or use a knife. Her one ability is her speed at
fleeing on foot. But he knows well enough that she can’t run from
every single situation that life throws at her. Soon he plans on
starting her on basic combat training to enhance her skills.
They’ve just been so busy since the planting season started. The
garden’s planted, the hay is ready to cut for the second time, and
the building of the wall has commenced and
is
a time-consuming, slow process.
If anything were to happen to him, to take him from his sister, he
needs to know that she could take care of herself.

The last rays disappear behind the
tall hills surrounding the south side of the farm. Paige sighs
contentedly.

“Guess I should go get a
shower, clean some of the grub from myself,” she says with a
laugh.
“Go ahead, Paige,” Sam says cordially. “It’s a lot of
dirty
work we do
around here. It always feels good to get clean before
bed.”

“I’m just thankful for a
shower.”

“What’d you and your group do before
you came here?” Sam asks with curiosity.