The McClane Apocalypse: Book Two (39 page)

They come to the front of the bookstore, which is a two story brick building, and John scans the area, coming up with nothing, no movement. There are more cars that have been abandoned, but he’ll not risk the seat switches out in the open like this with almost no cover from predators. However, he does use the vehicles to move stealthily with her through the streets and parking lots until he comes to the front of the huge hobby store. This isn’t the kind of hobby store he’d gone to as a kid back in Denver tucked away in a quaint suburban village outside of the city and run by a man that could’ve been an eighteenth century innkeeper as much as a hobby store owner for all of his eccentricities, manner of dress and wire-rimmed glasses. This store is massive, two storied and when they enter John immediately notices that it is one of the only places they’ve been in the past few days that hasn’t really been looted all that much. He guesses that most people, him included, aren’t too interested in taking up needlepoint, either. The building is much darker than the other stores and is singularly lit by overhead fixtures, which no longer work, and by only a few windows near the front of the store.

He takes Reagan to a seven-shelf high, pine bookcase and has her squat with him behind it. They listen intently and hear nothing. A world without the constant whirring of electronics and the humming of lighting is a tomb-like and eerie place to be, but it does make it a heck of a lot easier to listen for potential ambushes.

She tugs his sleeve and points to a book beside her about needlepoint projects for beginners and raises one eyebrow saucily. He smirks and shakes his head at her. Reagan, in turn, actually smiles in return, exposing the dimple in her left cheek again.

“I need squibs,” he tells her quietly. She frowns curiously at him and almost smiles again.

“Squids?” she asks, and John almost laughs out loud and has to bite his lower lip to keep from doing so. No wonder she almost smiled.

“No, squibs with a “
b.
” They use them to build rockets and projects like that for kids. Something they can make homemade and launch in their backyards, you know?” he explains patiently.

The look she gives him is something akin to embarrassment, so he pats her hand once to let her know it’s ok. She shrugs as if to say that she has no idea where they’d be as John helps her stand again. He hands her back her own rifle, and they go through each aisle of the store with caution, John at point. They both flick on their flashlights to better move through the dark store.

Reagan snags a few coloring books for the younger kids, colored pencils and two small boxes of crayons that she makes him stash behind her in her bag. She might be a hard-ass most of the time but not when it comes to the kids in the family. Of course, those kids basically have all of them wrapped around their little phalanges.

“This is it. Got ‘em; watch my back,” he says in an aisle toward the rear of the store.

He opens every box on the shelf and dumps the small packages into his pack and then re-zips it and slings it back over his shoulders. There isn’t much room left in his bag, so he hopes they don’t find anything that would be too big to carry in what’s remaining of the space inside. He’d much rather keep both hands on his weapon, and he’d like the same for her.

Next, he finds nine volt batteries and four bulk boxes of rubber bands that he’ll need and places everything into her bag. She regards him with a confused expression.

“Tell ya’ later,” he answers. John needs to take a few minutes and reset and adjust everything in their bags to distribute the new items before they head out for the horses again. It could be a battlefield they’ll be moving through to get back to the horses, so he needs to take every precaution now to get them fully ready.

“Let’s go upstairs and wait for dusk. It won’t be long, and I can shuffle the new supplies around in our bags so I’m carrying more of the weight. It’ll give us a break and you a rest,” he whispers to her, and they move quickly to the stairs.

When they reach the landing of the second floor, John hears a child’s cry at the same time Reagan does because she bumps into his back, and they both freeze. He’d thought the building was empty, but he had been very wrong.

Chapter Twenty-three

Reagan

John pushes her down behind him as he stoops and slow walks, swinging his rifle left and right. This floor is just as big as the first floor with an open balcony overlooking the front half of the showroom below them. The carpeting underneath them silences their footsteps as he leads her toward the sound of a whimpering, unhappy baby. Together they move toward the back wall of the second floor where faint sprays of sunlight come in and most of the items are still intact on the shelves because looters have no interest in where the toys, model airplane kits, children’s books on crafting, or glitter pen sets are located. They even pass an Easter display still intact and complete with a six foot tall, stuffed white rabbit with long floppy ears. It reminds Reagan of how long ago this all started and how that holiday had come and gone without so much as a Good Friday nighttime celebration at their church. Mostly because their church had been burned to the ground.

John signals for her to stay put, and she frowns at him which pisses him off because he gives her his best wide-eyed, irritated look. He shakes his head with exasperation.

He leaves her near a display shelf full of cupcake decorating kits and birthday cake molds as he circles the opposite direction from the crying child. It’s obviously some sort of covert military counter move or something because she would’ve thought they should head straight toward the sound. Of course, she also probably would’ve been shot.

After another minute, John sprints over to her, “Reagan, come.” His directive is short and to the point and almost desperate.

She jogs behind him to the far corner of the second floor and gasps in shock when they come to a makeshift tented area about five feet by four feet and constructed of clipped together sheets that are open in the front and facing the rest of the store area. There is a woman under the tented area who just about jumps out of her skin when John tentatively pulls the sheet farther back to peer inside, leading with his rifle. He holds his arm out to stop Reagan from going with him any closer.

“Ma’am? Are you armed?” he asks, keeping his voice softer than usual and calmer.

“Nnnn... no, it’s just me and my baby,” she responds but does not get up from her side-lying position. “Please don’t hurt us!”

“Are there any men with you and are they armed?” he prompts again.

Reagan peers into the tent and sees that the woman is barely conscious. Her baby is sitting in an upright position beside her and tugging on her shirt while he whines and whimpers weakly.

“No, sir. Please don’t hurt me. My... my husband is dead,” she croaks out.

Reagan needs to help her; the woman is clearly sick or malnourished or both. Her hair is lank, greasy and hanging against her face in stringy, dirty strands and looks to be at one time some shade of blonde. There are dark circles under her sunken eyes and she is very, very pale.

“We won’t hurt you, ma’am,” John appeases her.

Reagan steps forward, prepared to pass John and his arm that is outstretched to keep her back.

“Stop!” the woman says and holds out a hand weakly. A hand that is covered in blood.

“Oh my God! You’re injured. Let me help you. I’m a doctor,” Reagan explains, but John has still not put his arm down yet.

“No,” she pleads and then coughs long and hard into a rag. When she removes the rag there is blood visible on it and on her lips, as well. “I’m sick. I’m... dying.”

“I have medicine, so let me help you. Please,” Reagan beseeches but again John won’t move.

“You can’t. It’s too far along... killed my husband, too. I got it... from him,” her words are difficult to hear and understand as she coughs bloody phlegm again.

“Ma’am, have you been shot? You’re bleeding,” John remarks.

“Not... shot. Stabbed two days ago. Tried to get food... for my baby,” she says and coughs more weakly this time.

John looks to Reagan. There is so much behind that look. John’s expression is haunted and clouded over with bad memories as if he’s seen this situation play out before in his past as a soldier.

The woman rasps as she inhales and exhales before continuing, “He’s just a baby. He’s hungry. My milk dried up months ago. Husband... found formula, but it ran out.”

“What’s your name, ma’am?” John asks as he takes a knee and encourages Reagan to do the same.

The baby immediately crawls over to John and smacks at his rifle sling with his chubby fist. Apparently babies and dogs can’t resist the charms of John Harrison, and Reagan is starting to understand why. He just has a way about him that makes her feel marginally safer, no matter the situation.

“Melissa. Please help me,” she begs and takes a raggedy breath.

“We will help. My name’s Reagan, and he’s John. He’s a soldier, so you’re safe, ok? Let me give you something for the pain,” Reagan offers and swings her pack to the ground beside her.

“No, don’t waste it on me. I’m not... going to make... the night,” Melissa predicts with dreadful certainty. “Please take... him.”

John looks at Reagan, and they both know what she is asking of them.

“Please. He... he’s just a baby. He didn’t deserve this. None of this is his fault. He didn’t ask for this to happen to his life. This should not have been the life my son would have had. No children should have this mess we all have now for a life. Look,” she says and takes out a piece of paper from the black bag beside her. It is barely legible, spotted with blood and badly wrinkled. It is paper with pink roses on it, from this store, no doubt. “I wrote his birthdate and... name and our names and some other...” Melissa is unable to finish her sentence because she becomes less lucid, more asleep or passed out. Her eyelids flutter closed.

John slips the paper from her fingers, and it startles her awake again. He discreetly folds the note and stashes it in his right hand cargo pocket of his pants. No mother should ever have to ask as her dying wish that two complete strangers should take her child. John is visibly disturbed and scowls deeply. The baby tugs at his rifle and then uses John’s pant leg to pull himself to a teetering stance before he plops down again onto his soiled diaper. His chubby fist rubs at his nose and eyes before he starts squawking again.

“He’s hungry. I have this cup for him with just water in it,” Melissa pushes the child’s cup with a screw-on lid toward Reagan, and she takes it.

She immediately rummages through her sack for one of the protein shakes, unscrews the lid of the sippy-cup like Arianna used to use and dumps a small amount of the chocolate-flavored drink into the water. She figures that the proteins may be too much for a baby this size and as malnourished as he most likely is, so she waters it down. John takes it from her, lifts the boy onto his knee and hands him the cup which the little boy greedily sucks from almost immediately. He makes tiny cooing and gurgling sounds like Isaac.

“Do you have diapers here, Melissa?” Reagan asks, wanting to get him out of his soiled diaper and pants before he gets a rash or infection if he doesn’t already have one.

“Yes, in this bag here. I was trying... to gather everything I could for him... in case someone found him.” Melissa starts into a fit of coughing again and then winces at the pain from her stab wound.

Reagan scoops up the bag and then the baby, gently laying him on his back on the carpeted floor. He doesn’t cry or throw a fit because he is too happy with the improvised bottle of chocolate milk. When she gets his soiled cotton pants off and then the diaper, it’s just damp through from urine and not fecal matter. Melissa even has powder in the bag and a change of clothing for him. She deftly changes, powders and puts a dry diaper on the baby. She’s not great at this shit, not like Sue or even Hannah, but she’s had a little practice with her three nieces and nephews. This baby is cute as hell when she actually takes a second to look at him. He has brown eyes, big and round and trusting and just a patch of blonde hair on his head. But he is on the thin size for his age unless he was a preemie.

“Please take him. I’m not going to make it. I tried to get him food a few days ago, and that’s how I got stabbed. He’s a good boy. He’s real quiet. He won’t... give you any trouble,” Melissa explains unnecessarily. “He’s not sick; I swear to you that he’s not. My husband and I tried to keep him away from us so he wouldn’t get this. He hasn’t had a single fever or cough. I swear, John.”

“What’s his name, Melissa?” Reagan asks and touches the other woman’s leg through the sheet. She puts the baby’s socks, rummaged from the bag, on each of his tiny feet. His mother must be cold, though it’s warm for September because she is under the sheet and what looks like an old blanket, as well. Of course, she has probably lost a lot of blood from her stab wound if she wasn’t able to get it stopped on her own.

“Jacob. Jacob Radcliff. Just like his daddy. You won’t have to tell him about me or his... dad. He can just forget us. It will be so easy,” she says on a cough again. She pauses a lot in her speech to rasp and wheeze and catch her failing breath.

“That won’t happen, ma’am. We won’t let that happen,” John firmly promises.

Reagan fishes out a clean, long sleeve tee and pants for Jacob and slips them on, earning a momentary squeal of irritation for the interruption of his food. Once he’s dressed, she sets him on his bottom between herself and John to finish his drink. Reagan digs around in John’s pack for her half eaten sandwich.

“He won’t ever know that you aren’t his parents. You’re an angel sent from God,” Melissa whispers.

When Reagan raises her gaze to the woman, Melissa is looking so directly at her that it’s almost like she’s seeing straight into her soul. Although if Melissa is soul-searching her, then the woman shouldn’t be calling her an angel.

“Can he eat solids yet?” Reagan asks, changing the topic as she re-zips John’s pack.

“Yes, he has some teeth. I’ve been giving him cans of soup and whatever... packages of food I could find.”