The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (71 page)

He stops dead in his tracks. Simon
doesn’t answer right away but places his stool near the Jersey’s
udders.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t play coy with me, little
brother,” Paige demands rudely.

He’d like to squirt her
with milk. She’s poking her nose into business that isn’t any of
her
affair
.
He chooses to ignore her instead. It doesn’t work.

“So?” she prods. “How do
you feel about Sam? She’s
very
pretty
.”

“I think of her the same way I think
about you,” he tells her firmly and continues on with his
task.

“Hm, I don’t know about
that,” she argues. “She’s a
really
good
artist. She showed me some drawings
she did the other day of one of the horses. It looked like a
freagin
’
photograph. She has an incredible eye for detail. Oh, and did I
mention how pretty she is? And sweet and kind and generous? She’s a
real sweetie, Simon.”

“Don’t be annoying,” he
says testily. This time she does drop it, which is nothing short of
a miracle. They work on their respective milkings in blessed
silence. The only sounds are the occasional
moo
of the cows
outside,
or cluck of a
chicken, or the crow of the roosters.

The family mascot and dog, Molly,
comes into the barn and plunks herself down at his feet. He notices
that her left eye is runny as if perhaps she has a cold. It could
be an allergy. Maybe she’s run into a stick in the forest and poked
it. Dogs get into trouble like that from time to time.

His thoughts about the dog are
interrupted by his obtrusive sister, “I think you’re lying,
Simon.”

She’s standing next to him with her
pail of goat milk. They try to reserve the goat milk for the
children since it has a higher nutrient value. They use whatever
the children don’t drink to make cheese, usually about once a
month. His mother used to like goat cheese rolled in roasted
walnuts for dipping crudités in.

“What are you talking about now?” he
asks irritably.

“The same thing, ya’ dork,” she
teases.

Simon fails to find the humor. He
scowls up at her from his milking stool. She bumps her knee against
his shoulder.

“Cut it out,” he chides. “I’m trying
to work.”

“Ohhh, you are so
serious, aren’t you?” she jokes.
“Or is it
that you just don’t want to talk about this particular
subject?”

“Go away,” he grinds out
through his gritted teeth. He’s not ready to discuss his feelings
for Sam with his nosy sister or anyone else for that matter. He’s
not
ready
to deal with his feelings for Sam even in his own head. They
are feelings that are inappropriate and unwelcome.

She doesn’t leave but pulls her stool
closer and sets her pail in the stainless steel sink behind
them.

“How does she feel about you? Do you
know?” she presses.

Simon
frowns,
shakes his head with
irritation and says, “Like a big brother. As it
should
be.”

His sister is quiet for an unusually
long time until he finally looks up at her to find Paige staring
thoughtfully at him as if she is considering what he’s said and
doesn’t quite believe it.

“Drop it,” Simon warns.

“Hey, I’m just teasing,” she says in a
softer tone. “I just care about you, little brother.”

“I know,” he mumbles.

She
pets
the cow’s flank. In
return,
Paige gets
a flick of the cow’s tail to her face. Simon chuckles. His sister
gives him a fiery glare. He chuckles again.

“Pet the dog, ya’ dork,” he teases,
using her own lingo on her. “Cows don’t exactly like being
petted.”

“Shut up,” she murmurs in jest. “This
farming shit isn’t exactly my thing.”

“You’ll catch on,” he says.
“Besides, even if it never works out for you to be Farmer Paige,
you have proven yourself in town with drawing up those schematics
for the wall. Everyone has their own talents. Don’t worry about the
farming. You help
…
a little.”

She punches his shoulder
playfully.

“You’re just not used to it. Trust me,
I wasn’t used to it when I first came here, either. I had a lot to
learn, and it didn’t happen overnight.”

“I feel like a stupid idiot
most of the
time,
like I’m just getting in everyone’s ways,” she
admits on a frown.

“I know. I was like that,
too, at first. Mirroring Cory help me out a lot, though. He was
here before me so he
pretty
much
had it all down pat by the time I came
along. He’s a natural at this farming stuff,” he explains
patiently.

“Well, I need this Cory kid to show me
the ropes,” she complains.

Simon chuckles. His sister always
refers to Cory as a kid. If she only saw him, she’d stop that
immediately.

“Yeah, well we’d all like
him to come home and show you the ropes because that would mean he
was home,” Simon complains about his friend. He misses Cory
greatly
but also
understands his need to stay away. “He’s a great rider, too. I mean
I like riding, but I’m not as good with the horses as Cory and Sam.
She was into horses before the
…
well, you know.”

“Oh really? She’s never
mentioned
that,”
Paige says with surprise.

“She doesn’t talk about her life
before,” he mumbles.

“I know. She
clams
up if I ask
about it. Hannah said her family was killed?” Paige asks for
confirmation.

“Yeah, they didn’t live far from
here,” he explains. He can’t help the tension from entering into
his voice. “She used to do what’s called show jumping. You know,
city slicker, on horses?”

“Funny,” Paige chides and shoots him a
scowl. “Are any of those horses out there hers?”

“No, they were shot, too,” he recalls
the grisly scene in her fancy small barn.

“Aunt Amber’s group?” she asks, even
though she probably already knows.

Simon just gives her a nod and makes
eye contact for a brief moment. “Everyone’s been through something
bad, I suppose. Cory especially. That’s why he’s not
here.”

“I can’t believe he just up
and took off,” Paige says with confusion. “Who would want to be
alone now?”
“It’s not so much about the being alone stuff, sis,” he explains.
“He had some things he had to work out. You know how you felt when
your friends and boyfriend were
killed at
the beginning?” Simon
gets
a simple
nod. “Well, multiply that by about a thousand. He feels
responsible for his sister’s death. You can’t understand unless you
knew them, saw them together. She was his shadow for the last four
years. She hung on his every word.
She hero-worshipped
Cory. He’s a
really good
person. You’d like him a lot. I do.”

“I’m sorry, Simon,” she replies, trying
to comfort him.

“Me, too,” he says. “But I think he’ll
come home someday.”

“That’s good,” she observes. “I think
Kelly would like that, too. Reagan said that the family really
misses him, especially Hannah. I guess she really likes
Cory.”

“Yeah, he’s great. Everyone
likes him. He’s a good guy, fiercely loyal to the
family,
and
has
a really
high morality that has no room for gray areas.”

“There are a lot of gray areas out
there right now. A lot of people are having to do things they never
thought they would or could do just to survive,” Paige
says.

“Not with Cory. There’s right. There’s
wrong. No gray areas. He can be pretty intense sometimes, but he’s
still a great guy,” Simon tells her.

His sister smiles grimly and
says, “Simon, honey, he could be dead. You need to think about
that
….
”

Simon smirks. “You don’t know Cory like
I do.”

Paige drops it but continues with,
“What I went through with my friends was nothing compared to what
this Cory kid has. It was nothing like losing my sister. Or in our
case, you.”

“Yeah, we got lucky,” he says. It
sounds strange, but they were lucky. They are still alive, and
they’ve found each other. He’s never going to let Paige out of his
sight again. He can’t.

“As lucky as we could be, I guess,” she
agrees sadly.

His sister unties his cow, and they
turn her out together. Then they collect their buckets and start
toward the back of the house.

Sue is ahead of them
carrying a basket of eggs. The children are running and playing a
game of tag. Reagan is walking toward the horse barn. Sam passes
them with a wave of her slim hand as she rides bareback toward the
horse barn on one of the geldings. Her bottom is going to be
covered with gray dirt, too. She doesn’t even have a bridle on the
horse, but a lead-line wrapped around its neck. He really doesn’t
like it when she takes chances like that. The horse could dart
or
startle,
and she could be unseated. He’s only ever seen that happen
once before. They’d
been
come upon in the woods by those creep visitors.
His degenerate cousin, Bobby, had waved his hands frantically at
them, causing Sam to fall from her frightened horse. He’d done it
on purpose so that he and the other man could overtake them, use
them as bait to get at the family. She’d
been
hurt by that fall but only
superficially. Bobby had hurt her more than that one time. He’d
hurt and abused and damaged her for life. That bastard cousin of
his, whom he’d
stabbed
in the back and John had shot and killed, is the
reason that she sinks into that well of despair from time to
time.

And this is the reason that
Simon sometimes has a hard time reconciling his feelings about
Samantha. He’d
failed
to protect her from the demons within his group.
He hadn’t known they were that evil, but he’d known they were bad.
He’ll never be able to forgive himself for not saving her from
them.

Paige breaks his train of thought
again, causing him to shake his head to clear it of such morose
feelings.

“So how do you feel about her, Simon?”
she asks him in a quiet, serious tone this time.

Simon doesn’t even pause.
And maybe it’s because he’d just
been
thinking of the shared, dark past
that he and Sam have together. Or maybe it’s because he
truly
feels this
way. But he states very clearly and soberly, “I’ll do whatever it
takes to keep her safe. I’ll kill anyone who ever even thinks of
touching her.”

He leaves his sister standing there,
mouth agape, pale blue eyes bulging in shock and staring at him as
if he is a madman. Perhaps he is where Samantha is
concerned.

Chapter Thirty-two

Cory

“Watch the gut bag,” Cory
instructs the small group of people around him. He has a dead deer,
dead by his shot, hanging in a maple tree on
a low
branch. He slices
carefully through the tough inner skin of the deer’s
carcass.

“Eww, this is so
disgusting,” Jackie responds on a horrified grimace.
“I think I’m going to throw up.”

She turns away, and Cory
tries not to laugh at her. This is
important
for her group’s survival. He’s
not going to be with them forever. They need to learn how to
hunt.
Two of the older men step
forward to help him after saying that they’d gutted a few deer when
they were younger.
He hands his knife to
Clint, a gray-haired older man with gnarled, crooked
fingers.

“You need to learn how to do this,
Jackie,” he says to her after he leads her a few feet away from the
group.

“I know, Cory, but this…
this is
…
ugh,” she says
with
a shiver, curling her top lip in
disgust.

He’d rub her back to soothe her, but
his hands are covered in deer blood. He just shakes his head at her
instead. Jackie offers him a sly grin. Then she puckers her lower
lip with a pouty sexiness.

They’ve been sleeping together since
the third night he’d come to the closed armory. The group is housed
in just the one building where two old Army jeeps are located. They
don’t separate and go into their own buildings, although there are
certainly enough places where they could be on their own. They’d
moved mattresses from the barracks to the cement floor of the
building. Cory moved another one for himself when it became clear
that he couldn’t leave as fast as he’d hoped since he felt
obligated to help them. Sticking together is a good idea for this
group. They aren’t exactly brilliant in the security
department.