The McClane Apocalypse: Book Two (24 page)

“Put on your jacket, Reagan,” John orders as he slings his rifle over his left shoulder. “It’s going to get chilly tonight.”

“Don’t you want yours?” Reagan asks as she tugs on her zip-front jacket.

John shakes his head, causing a lock of hair to fall over his forehead. “No, I won’t get cold. The body temp rises under duress,” he explains.

She should know this. She just doesn’t think of things in the same context that he does. Her medical training isn’t comparable to the things he knows about the body. His all comes from a source of battle and warring.

“Keep the night vision goggles down. Don’t lift them and try to see with your eyes unless we’re somewhere that’s well-lit. I don’t think we’ll run into that, though. Doesn’t seem like anyone has much for lighting around the city,” John remarks to which Reagan nods. John stands in front of her, backlit only by the nearly full moon. He tugs and adjusts her goggles for her around the thick ponytail at the base of her neck. “Ready?”

“Yeah,” she half whispers. This is more nerve-wracking than it had been during the daylight.

They move out, jogging when they can and fast walking when they can’t. It doesn’t take long before they are in the city and surrounded by tall, brick and mortar buildings and skyscrapers with walls and windows made of glass that reflect the moonlight. This could be disastrous to move about in the city at night. Hopefully the night vision goggles will give them an advantage over whoever might mean them harm.

John holds his hand up to halt her, “There’s movement over there.”

Reagan doesn’t see anything, but she also doesn’t naysay him, either. He has just a tad more experience with this shit than she does. They are stopped in an alley near the downtown arts district where Grams had brought them for exhibits and Broadway plays on tour.

“They’re moving this way,” John whispers and tugs her back into the alley with him and away from the street corner. “In here.”

John tries a knob on a random door near them and finds it locked. Naturally, he gives a hard shove with his shoulder and easily breaks through. She follows him inside where he props a chair against the door. It’s a fragile-looking, piece of crap chair that looks like it wouldn’t hold out a small kid let alone an adult man.

“Come on, Reagan,” John whispers to her, and she follows close behind as he moves deeper into the building. It seems to be some sort of former office space. “Stay close.”

They pass through the office, stepping over debris, around turned over chairs and desks, and completely avoid the two dead bodies they come to. John crosses directly west until he comes to the opposite side from where they’d come in. It leads to an exit door to another alley. They pause a moment until he’s sure it’s clear, and John two-finger gestures for her to move forward. After another moment, they reemerge onto the main street again where they don’t see anyone else. Thank God.

“Reagan, there,” John says as he points across the four lanes. “That one, let’s go.”

They cross the road carefully, looking both ways many times but not for moving traffic in this desolate city. The bigger concern now is getting shot, not getting run down by a taxi. They duck under the cover of a striped window awning of which the lovely, large picture window has been broken out. The sign above the red painted door still reads: La Patisserie.

Reagan remembers Grams bringing her and her sisters here a few years ago for coffee and French pastries, which had been rich, buttery and rather divine, before they’d gone to an art exhibit of van Gogh’s paintings. His decline into madness had clearly been evident in his work. Reagan had offered the opinion that a goodly dose of anti-depressants would’ve helped him immeasurably, even though it had pissed off Grams. Her grandmother liked art and had even sat on the arts council in Clarksville when she was younger.

John finds a place where there are no sharp shards of glass sticking up and helps Reagan through the window. The area inside looks similar to the trashed out office building from which they’ve just exited. The glass display case for baked goods has also been broken, the areas picked clean. Reagan tries to ignore the splatter of blood against the wall behind the counter. John leads her to the back where they find a thirty pound bag of sugar, two large canisters of baking powder, several boxes of yeast, a two pound box of salt and two bags of butterscotch baking chips. John stashes all of the baking supplies in his long rucksack that he’d brought with him to the farm. It can hold more than their two backpacks.

Reagan follows after him as he exits, using the rear door meant only for deliveries. It leads them to another alleyway where all of the businesses on this side of the street would have received their deliveries. They go only a few yards when movement across the narrow alley catches John’s attention first and then Reagan’s. He instantly shoves her behind him.

“Got any money, man?” a bum, lying on his side in garbage and filth calls out to them. Reagan wonders if he has even realized that a worldwide nuclear apocalypse has taken place. John crosses tentatively to him where they see that he wears sunglasses and has long gray hair and a matching beard. He’s very thin and smells of urine.

“No, sorry. We don’t have money for you,” John tells him in a subdued tone.

“Any booze?” the bum with the pee smell asks.

Drying out is going to prove difficult for alcoholics. It isn’t as if anyone with drug and alcohol addictions could go to AA or the nearest methadone clinic for help.

“No...” John starts to explain but stops when they hear voices again. He grabs Reagan’s jacket sleeve, hauling her back against him as she was standing out in the open road. He gently covers her mouth with his hand. “Ssh, quiet. That sounds like a mob of people.”

Reagan bobs her head up and down in fast, jerky movements. His arm is wrapped around her waist while the other slides away from her mouth. Reagan can feel every distinct outline of his hard body pressed against her back. John releases her but sets her against the brick wall of the building. The bum doesn’t understand the necessity of being quiet, though. He starts babbling about his family and how hungry he is. Now is not the time for heartfelt sharing, so John squats beside him.

“Hey, quiet, man. Don’t make me use this,” John shows him something. It’s not his gun, so Reagan is left to assume it’s his dagger. The man’s eyes widen with fear of John. Funny how she never thinks of him as a threat like this. He is usually a cut-up and never serious-minded at all. John takes one of the bags of sweet butterscotch baking chips from his bag. When he hands them over to the old man, the bum grins like it’s Christmas morning. “Be quiet or I’ll take these back.”

“Ok, I can be quiet as a mouse, mister,” the bum says and must also sense danger because he slinks back farther, getting behind the dumpster until he is completely concealed from view.

“Where’s the nearest car parts store?” John whispers over to him.

“Three blocks east of here. Dangerous area, though. Lots of rats come out at night in this city now,” the man tells them. Apparently he isn’t as unaware of the current events of the world as they’d thought.

“Thanks, man. Stay alive,” John tells him to which the old bum gives John a single salute. “Let’s move, Reagan.”

The voices grow distant as whatever group of people has moved on, obviously seeing no point in coming down their deserted alley. She and John jog to the opposite end of the alley, preferring to stay as far from that hoard as possible. They come to an intersection where John has her take a knee beside him before they move into the open. He’s checking the area for potential trouble.

“Where are we going?” she whispers but hates the way her voice shakes. It’s not from the jog.

“Car parts store. We need to get the Hum-V back at the farm running again. It’s a good vehicle should we need to move around in something armored. Plus they might have the parts for Doc’s tractors, too,” he answers her quietly. He seems so calm. “Let’s move again.”

Before she can even say no, if she’d wanted to, John rises and sprints with her but stays very close to the building fronts for added safety. She inadvertently kicks something that makes noise, a discarded empty bottle of beer. John glances back at her over his shoulder.

“Sorry,” she whispers.

He just shrugs and keeps moving. He doesn’t scold her or pass judgment for being noisy. John’s like that. It isn’t as if she is a professional soldier like he is. He’s always patient with the kids at the farm, too. It’s something that she’s heard Grams comment on, as well.

They pass quickly by a coffee shop, but John turns back and they go into it. The condition of this Starbucks is just slightly better than the other buildings they’ve been in so far. Apparently looting for coffee making supplies isn’t the most important thing on people’s minds. They fan out and grab whatever they can, taking seven small bags of coffee, prepackaged coffee cakes, imported granola bars with exotic fruits, and an entire box of snack-size bags of chocolates.

John comes over to her behind the counter and hands her something. “Here, thought of you when I saw this.”

He has a silly grin on his face. It’s a huge mug for heavy caffeine addicts. Reagan reads the printed message on the side: World’s Best Boss.

“Is that supposed to be funny or something?”

“It’s not supposed to be. It
is
funny, boss,” his grin pisses her off, but the sounds outside the coffee shop do not.

Those are the sounds that are frightening in this city. It is the sound of more muffled voices, and John practically drags her to a storage room at the back of the shop meant for employees. He shuts the door and sets the lock. “We’ll wait it out here. I don’t want to engage in a full-on firefight with you.”

“Ok,” she tells him simply as they hang out for a good ten minutes. There are no sounds coming from the store area, but still John doesn’t order their exit.

“Reagan, look over here. Here, set your goggles up for a sec.”

He crosses the small room until he is standing directly in front of her. John doesn’t wait for her to do it for herself but places his hands at either sides of her temples and pushes back her set. His are already pushed back, and he’s turned on his flashlight.

“Come over here and check this out.”

On the manager’s desk lay piles of money that look to have been stacked neatly for preparing a night drop to this Starbuck’s local bank branch. There must be ten thousand dollars sitting there for the taking. Apparently the fast demise of the country had occurred during this particular manager’s shift, and he or she hadn’t felt like depositing the coffee giant’s money was more important than probably going home to their loved ones. Reagan just hopes that this person made it home.

“That’s a lotta’ dough for a cup of joe,” he quips, and her answer is an impatient grimace. He chuckles, and this is the John that Reagan knows and not the seriously intense soldier who runs about cities at night like some sort of death stalker. “Guess I should’ve franchised a coffee shop.”

“And miss all the fun of blowing shit up?” she asks with the barest hint of a grin.

“Yeah, I could’ve. If I’d met the right girl, that is. I could’ve given it all up,” he says with no small amount of suggestion aimed at her. His tone and implication make her look directly up at him in the silvery, gray light of his flashlight.

“Well, I suppose we’ll never know now,” Reagan mocks to change the direction of their conversation.

“I think we will,” John murmurs softly and steps closer to her.

His hand presses lightly against her cheek which causes Reagan to startle, but not pull away. Then gunfire beyond the brick wall behind John startles them both back to reality.

“What the hell?” Reagan whispers.

“It’s ok. They are on that street we left. Sounds like automatic fire. FN for sure. There’s a .38. That one was definitely high power,” he rattles off the different guns and calibers as if he’s just going over the morning stock report.

“How the hell can you tell what’s what?” Reagan asks him quietly.

“Here that purrrr?” he asks with a roll of his tongue to mimic the sound. Reagan has to hold back a laugh.

“Are you trying to sound like a cat?” she asks with a snarky smirk.

“Yeah, actually I was, smart-mouth,” he jeers. “That’s the FN. They have a quiet purr like that.”

“Do it again,” Reagan taunts.

John turns for a moment to face her straight on. He towers over her with one hand on his hip and the other resting on the forearm of his rifle.

“Don’t make me discipline kiss you,” he murmurs, walks past her and bumps his shoulder playfully against hers. Reagan’s eyes grow wide, she backs up a step and John chuckles at her. “That’s what I thought. Let’s go.”

She’d like to butt stroke him to the back of his hard head as they leave the storage room, but figures that as long as he’s keeping her alive then she’ll let him off the hook for the kissing comment. What a smart-aleck. He doesn’t want to kiss her. He just likes messing with her.

“Those guys are busy trying to kill each other, so it’s a good time for us to move,” John tells her as they come to the front of the Starbucks store again.

John continues moving east, or at least Reagan thinks they are because she’s never been good with directions. Plus moving around at night like this is disorienting. John, however, is in his element, cool and calm and decisive.

They arrive at the auto supply store, which she’d never even realized was located anywhere near this part of the city. John checks the area just inside the store, declares it clear and ushers her in while sweeping left and right on the street before following her.

“What do we need? I’ll help look,” Reagan offers.

“Just stay close. I don’t want you wandering around in here. It’s too big of a space to allow you to go off on your own,” he informs her.

He’s right; this store is huge. Most of the front windows are destroyed, as well as the bottom low wall as if a vehicle had rammed into the façade. The high ceilings have huge chunks missing in them for some strange reason. Reagan’s not sure how that would even happen. It’s as if someone threw about four grenades into this building. Some of the long white tiles of the ceiling are even hanging down, the wires dripping like sinewy tendons. Shelves are knocked over, picked clean. Bottles of motor oil neatly displayed with cardboard cutouts of the latest popular race-car driver are scattered about the tiled floor.