The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (69 page)

Moving furtively and using the
buildings for cover, he jogs down a long alleyway of sorts and
comes in behind the building where the women were working. When he
spies inside through a back door, he can see people sitting around,
talking, and working together cooking food. Mostly they seem like
older people and the women from the clothes line and the children
who were playing outdoors. Are the men out hunting, foraging, or
worse?

“Can I help you?” comes a woman’s soft
voice from his left.

He hadn’t seen her before. She’s
standing outside near the corner of the building as if she’s just
rounded it and come upon him. Cory instinctively swings his rifle
her way. She squelches a scream and immediately puts her hands up
in surrender, dropping her basket of wet clothing.

“Please, don’t shoot,” she pleads.
“I’m not armed, sir. Please. I have a little boy.”

“What’s going on here? Where are the
men?” he asks in a harsh tone.

“What men? The soldiers? I
don’t know. They probably
…
”

“No, not the soldiers. This
place hasn’t had soldiers here for years. Your men, the men
with
your group,
where are they?” he asks. The blonde with the fair skin seems
confused.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she
says. “The only men that are with us are in there.”

She points
toward
the door
opening where Cory still has his foot in the jam, preventing it
from shutting all the way.

“Are you being held against your
will?” he asks as his gaze skirts around the area watching out for
problems.

“What?” she asks with
confusion. “No, we’re here together because we want to be.
We
work together to
survive
. This is our little
home
…
for
now.”

“No husbands? No boyfriends?” he
probes. This seems strange. Most of the groups he’s run into have
men with them.

“No, most of us are
either
widows
or just never married,” the blonde says. “My husband was in
New York City when the first round of tsunamis hit. He’s gone. All
of us have lost people. We’re kind of a band of misfits. I have a
sister in there and an aunt and uncle, but there aren’t any young
men.”

“Are any of you armed?” he asks, not
wanting to take a surprise shot to the back.

“We have a few guns, but
we’re not very accurate with them,” she clarifies. “Look, I’m not
gonna lie. We’re barely managing. Please don’t rob us, sir. We’re
farming the ground here as best as we can, but we’re not farmers.
We figured with the buildings and the little bit of
ground
, we’d be
able to stay here for the season at least. So that’s what we’ve
done. We’re going to start harvesting the gardens soon. We’ve
started breeding some chickens we found at a farm up the road. And
we’re surviving. We’re just surviving.”

She has walked closer and
is now within ten feet of Cory. She’s a tad on the short side and
thin. Her cropped pants hang on her hips. Her legs are skinny. But
she’s pretty enough. Her brown eyes regard him cautiously as if
she’s afraid of him. And no wonder. He hasn’t shaved since he left
home, which has left him with a scraggly beard. His hair is now
lower than his shoulder line. He could use a good clean-up in the
form of soap and running water. The last time he’d
bathed
was three
days ago in a creek, but he hadn’t had soap to do the job well
because his bar from the farm was completely depleted.

“Do you hunt? Do you people know how
to hunt for wild game?”

She shakes her head in answer. Cory
just nods. Well shit. He’s actually starting to feel sorry for her.
Not knowing how to hunt would just about guarantee a person’s death
in this day and age.

“What do you do for food?”

“There’s food here on this base!” she
tells him so trustingly. “It’s canned goods mostly, but it works.
And we know how to butcher the chickens. We have a steady supply of
eggs, too. And when the garden’s in we’ll have fresh produce again
soon.”

“How can this place have food? It’s
been abandoned and shut down for years.”

“Josephine is from around this area,”
she explains. “She’s one of the older ladies here. She said that
after the fall, the military came through and set up here for about
three months. They must’ve left stuff when they pulled out. She
said they all poured out of here in a hurry. Not sure where they
were going, but they’ve never come back.”

“When did you guys set up
here?”

“Before winter set in last fall. We
thought we’d be safe here ‘cuz it looks so abandoned. Didn’t think
anyone would come all the way back here to check it
out.”

Cory nods his head and looks around at
the desolate, lonely buildings and unkempt grounds of this formerly
secluded military establishment. It’s kind of fucking depressing
actually. Proud men, brave men like his brother probably once
roamed these grounds.

She adds, “You’re the first person
who’s come back here. I’m Jackie.”

She’s extending her hand as if he
isn’t still pointing his M16 at her. It’s amazing she’s made it
this far. She’s rather trusting since he likely resembles a
well-dressed yuppy caveman and is pointing a loaded weapon at her.
Cory sets the safety and slings the rifle behind his shoulder
before he extends his hand.

“Cory,” he returns and gets a big
smile from her.

“Do you want to meet everyone else?”
she asks.

“I was just gonna rest up here for a
few days before I move out again,” he tells her. “I’m not staying
now. I’m gonna take off.”

“Wait! No way. You gotta at least stay
the night,” she says amiably. “You can stay as long as you like.
Maybe you can help us with a few things before you leave,
Cory?”

Cory frowns and gives a long,
exasperated sigh. “Like what?”

“
Well,
we found an abandoned truck
with a full tank of gas, but it won’t start,” she adds with a sly
grin. “There’s another one, too. Uncle Steve said that
it’s
called a
Deuce and a quarter.”

Cory frowns harder. He doesn’t correct
her mistake about the truck’s name.

“It’s pretty
big
, though. We
don’t need anything like that! The other truck’s more like a big
pick-up. We were thinking we could run to the nearest town to pick
up some supplies we need,” she says and quickly adds, “if there’s
anything left to take, that is.”

“I just came from there,”
he says and looks over his shoulder to ascertain that none of
Jackie’s friends are about to club him over the head. Two little
kids are hovering around the other corner of the building. The girl
giggles and waves. Cory scowls. “There’s a pharmacy. I snagged some
drugs if you need any medicine. Wasn’t much left. The grocery
store’s been wiped out. The outlet mall is still filled with some
items that you might need.” He also still has a full sack of
medical supplies from the zoos of Pittsburgh,
Cleveland
and Columbus, but
Cory is hoping to take those home to the farm someday.

“Hm,
that
’s too bad
about the pharmacy, but we’re ok for food. It would be nice to
not have to eat canned meat, but we’re doing ok. One of the kids
has asthma, though, and we’re down to his last two inhalers. Plus,
we were thinking of some gardening tools. We found shovels here on
the
base
but couldn’t find anything else for gardening. And some kind
of pesticide. The bugs have been getting at our
tomatoes.”

“I can show you how to make
some pesticide. It’s pretty
simple
really,” he offers, although he’s
not sure why he’s even doing so. His first thought when he’d
seen
the shelter
full of old people, women and kids was to get the hell out of here
and hit the road again. And now this single mom with the doe eyes
is suckering him into staying on and working.

“Oh my goodness! That would be
amazing. We don’t know anything about that stuff. We’re all from
big cities,” she explains and steps even closer. “I lived in
Cleveland. Some of the others are from there. Some are from
Pittsburgh and Toledo. Maeve and her husband were from Buffalo.
They traveled to a town near here to her daughter’s place, but they
were gone.”

“It’s a miracle you’ve survived this
long,” he mutters irritably and allows the door to the building to
close again.

The two children have crept closer and
are joined by three more who have sneaked up behind Jackie. A
tugging on his shirttail gains his attention.

“Is that your big huge horse behind
that building over there, mister?” one of the youngest girls
asks.

She has two dark brown
pigtails that bounce around when she speaks.
She reminds him of Ari back at the farm when she was
younger.
He frowns hard at her, though. He
thought he’d hidden the stallion better than that. Of course, these
kids probably run and play on this base at their
leisure.

“Yeah, you didn’t bother him, did
you?” he demands harshly.

“I petted him. He’s
really pretty
,”
she adds without fear of him.

“Don’t mess with my horse,”
he orders
her
but gets a giggle for an answer. She has a lisp when she
speaks and a devilish set of dimples in her cherubic cheeks. She
can’t be more than five or six. Jet is not an overly friendly
horse. He’s downright territorial back at the farm, especially
around his mares. Apparently he and his horse have a soft spot for
ruffians with pigtails.

“You’re really scruffy,” she says in a
tiny voice. “You look like a great big hairy gorilla.”

“Hope, cut it out,” Jackie corrects
the girl. “Honey, that’s rude. His name is Cory, and he’s going to
be staying here a few days and helping us.”

“Uh, wait a minute,” he
interjects.

“Come on in,” Jackie orders as she
brushes past him. “I’ll introduce you to the rest of our group.
They’ll be happy to see someone like you is going to be sticking
around for a while to help us.”

“Yes!” Hope shouts and jumps up and
down. “And I wanna’ ride on your horse, too!”

Good grief. It truly is
nothing short of a miracle that these people have made it this
long. They are way too trusting, gullible, and much too
friendly
for their own
good
.

By later in the evening,
Cory knows everyone in their small camp, which turns out to be
seventeen adults, seven
children
and a cat. He’d
been
welcomed in
with open arms as if he’d just been some long lost old friend of
the family. A few of the women had even heated hot water for him to
wash in one of the former barracks bathrooms. He’d cleaned up his
beard, as well, trimming it a bit shorter and scraping some down
from his cheeks. It’s not likely to get repeated
anytime
soon. They
each had a story to tell him
about
their real families, their losses
and how they’d all come to be together as a new family. Damn Dog
ditches him and sleeps next to Hope. Some
watch dog
.

Chapter Thirty-one

Simon

It is almost dawn. The sun
will soon be peeking above the tree line on the horizon. They are
near Clarksville, not far from home, but far enough away to make
Simon nervous. They got a lead from a farmer between their town and
Clarksville about three men traveling through their area who were
robbing people while they slept. The farmer had fired a round from
his shotgun at those men
which
seemed to work since they hadn’t
tried to return to his farm. His story had turned Simon’s stomach
because the man had been close to Doc’s age and because they
believe those men were the Target creeps. He had no idea what sort
of people he was shooting at.

Now they are stalking on
foot, hopefully closing in on the men who’ve evaded their grasp so
far. A bead of sweat trickles down his back. He is with Kelly, and
Wayne Reynolds is partnered with John and Condo Paul. Simon wishes
that Cory was also with them. They certainly don’t need five men to
take out four, but they also don’t know if the men who’d escaped
have come to Clarksville to join up with others from their group
that the family had not known about or have just recruited new
jerks to their band of bastards. They’ve been tracking the last
four men nearly the entire summer. He has no idea if there are
still four or if they are down to three. He understands
implicitly the importance of finding those
rats
. But he’s also pragmatic enough to
realize that they might not ever do so.

They’ve gathered enough intel on them
to know their names, where they are all from- which is Clarksville
and Nashville- and their potential hideouts. Simon just doesn’t
like being away from the farm and leaving them in possible danger.
They only make these trips twice a week now because of the fuel
shortage and the looming harvest. Plus, it’s exhausting since they
are working long hard hours finishing the wall in town and keeping
the farm going.