The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (11 page)

Jet stomps
irritably
and
tosses his head against the tether that holds him to the tree
branch. Cory knows he’d like to sprint.

“Shh,” he whispers which seems to help
his stallion calm just slightly.

Nothing. No movement or
noise now. It’s frustrating to sit in suspended silence like this.
He’s learned a lot about patience from watching his brother and
John during a mission with them. John can be kind of a loose cannon
sometimes and tends to go all helter skelter and just kill people.
He is much more patient when hunting animals, though. He doesn’t,
however, have a whole lot of tolerance for
people
’s bullshit. His brother is
very different. Kelly is patient and
cool
. His tactics and maneuvers are calm
and collected, well thought out. He’s been with Kelly when his
brother has let people go that he knows for sure that John would’ve
just killed. Cory knows the time to sit calmly is upon him, even
though he’d like nothing better than to go on the offensive and
chase down whatever is lurking out there.

Suddenly there is a
tremendous amount of noise as dead underbrush is crushed, twigs and
branches broken and the sound of receding footsteps echo through
the valley where he’s camped. It actually causes him
to physically jump
, nearly out of his skin. They’d gone from complete and utter
silence to the crashing of something
very large
moving through the forest. It
doesn’t break into his line of sight. It has disappeared into the
night like some ghostly apparition.

He waits a short
while
longer,
but nothing happens. Not even the nocturnal sounds of animals
gossiping in the forest
start
back up. Owls don’t
hoot
. Foxes don’t
chirp to one another. Nothing moves except his stallion. Jet is
still rattled. He continues to toss his head and stamp his front
feet in aggravation. Cory decides to wait longer to see if his new
friend makes another appearance. Seconds and then minutes tick by,
but nothing happens.

Cory starts to rise from his squatted
position when a branch breaks above him, above the ledge of rock
and hill where he is hidden. Then another twig cracks in two,
followed by the huff of an animal’s heavy breath. Something is
coming down the hill to his right. It has attempted to flank him.
Clever beast.

The snout appears first followed by
its two thick front legs. Cory doesn’t think the bear sees him. He
swings his rifle slowly right, brings it to his shoulder tightly
and takes aim. He’s never shot a bear before, but he knows where he
needs to hit it for a clean kill shot. It’s definitely not a wise
move to take a head-shot on a bear’s thick skull. He waits another
second until it has come down a few more feet. It hasn’t spotted
him, probably smells him, though. He squeezes the trigger, and the
crack of the muffled shot is deafening in the still of the
night.

The black bear falls, tumbles down the
hill and comes to a stop near Jet, who freaks out and nearly breaks
free of his lead rope. The bear attempts to get up. He hasn’t
killed it. Cory rushes down the bank and lands on his feet after
jumping the last few yards to the ground. He stands over the
massive beast and fires a clean kill shot this time, putting the
animal out of its misery.

It is snowing again. The
white powder is sticking to the animal’s black hide. He is thankful
for this bounty, for the meat and for the
pelt
that will provide warmth. He’s
going to need a hell of a lot more lighting to gut and skin this
animal. Cory piles most of the wood from his stack onto the
fire-pit he’d built. Next, he unsheathes his knife and pulls the
small sharpening stone from his bag.

Four hours later as the sun
is rising, Cory has the bear strung up in a tree, the innards and
gut sack removed. The fire is still
going at
a steady click which is helpful
as it enables him
to see his work
better
. He doesn’t want to draw any more
predators to his camp. It takes him a good while to get the
unusable parts hauled away with Jet’s help. He ties a length of
rope to the saddle horn and attaches it to a plastic tarp where the
inedible parts lay and has the stallion pull it behind
them.

He has more meat than he
could ever possibly need. Some of
it,
he’ll cure with salt. Most of
it,
he’ll leave to
the wildlife in the surrounding forest. Now he just has to head
into town to find salt or alum somewhere if either are available.
He isn’t sure of its weight, but if he was to guess, Cory would put
it at around six hundred pounds give or take, a
very large
male. If black bear
hibernate, then he must’ve come out early. And he’d come out
hungry, sizing up either Cory or his horse for
an early
meal.

He hoists the carcass much
higher into the tree so that he can travel to
town
and search for supplies.
Ground carnivores won’t be able to get to the bear at eight to nine
feet in the air. Plus he dumped a large amount of meat and innards
about a hundred yards away which should keep thieves busy for a
while.

Mounting up, Cory guides his horse
through the forest, heading into Louisville, Kentucky, his latest
city of choice for raiding. He’s been rather busy in this big city.
There were more people still occupying it than were staying in
Clarksville or Nashville combined. It was surprising when he’d
first come into town last week. He camps a few miles outside of the
city limits, far enough away from the city and homes where smoke
from his fire can’t be seen above the tree line.

He stops
at a wide, deep stream
to wash the blood from his hands, cringing at the freezing
water. It’s a fast
wash
. He’s been to this particular spot
many times collecting water for himself and his horse. After
letting Jet drink, he’s up again and riding toward town. The snow
is deep, close to a foot in depth in drifted areas. It doesn’t
usually snow this much in Tennessee. Apparently Kentucky gets worse
weather than Tennessee. The undisturbed ground around him shimmers
when the scant bits of light hit it. He’s not sure it was a great
time to strike out on his own away from the farm, but there was no
way he could go back there, either. He is on a mission, and the
mission so far
has been
successful
.

Five days ago before the
bear had decided to change up his plans, Cory had sniped a man
who’d been in the process of abducting a woman from her children.
Cory had left the man’s knife and gun with the widowed mother. She
was on her own and trying to make it to her family in Chicago. He
suggested to her that she stay in Louisville but join up with
others that could help her. She didn’t adhere to his advice. Cory
had then found her an abandoned car and managed to get it started.
He siphoned gas from a city maintenance
truck
and she was on her way, three
kids in tow to the windy city. He wished her good luck. She tried
to hug him in return to show her gratitude and invited him to go
with them. He politely declined both.

Three days ago he’d gone
back
into
the city at night and had taken out a small group of four men
who were the kind of people who’d murdered his little sister. He
hadn’t lost any sleep over it. As a matter of fact, he’d
slept
better than
he had in days because the first dickhead Cory had caught in the
act of raping a woman in a dirty alley. The man’s friends he’d
found later that night robbing an old man.

He guides his stallion into
the city and ties him securely where he won’t be seen by prying
eyes. He’ll move on foot the rest of the trip until it’s time to go
back to their camp. On the back deck of an abandoned home, Cory
snags the small, steel grate of a gas grill. He’ll need this to
cure strips of meat. He raids the home and finds a
three-quarter
full
container of Morton salt. That’s hardly going to get it. He hits a
half dozen more homes, then two townhouses and finds another
seven
containers
of salt of various measure. He jogs through the
snow, no longer being plowed and salted and scraped by city and
state snow plow trucks, back to his horse where he stashes his loot
in a canvas rucksack.

Cory
pats
his mount’s neck and
takes off again. The sun has risen somewhere in the world but not
here in the outskirts of Louisville because it hides behind ugly
gray cloud cover. The dull, hazy light filters down through the
atmosphere which lends a depressing gloom to the city, offering an
even more downtrodden appearance than just a post-apocalyptic
world.

The next place he
loots
is a
hardware store, which is mostly picked clean. He doesn’t find what
he’s looking for but does hear an engine
trolling
slowly down the street
outside of the building. He ducks behind a check-out counter, the
cash register long gone. Some people proved their demonstrable
idiocy at the beginning of the end. They would’ve been better
off
stealing
spools of rope or lighter fluid than a cash register full of
worthless money.

The vehicle pulls in close
to the curb. A man leans out the passenger window, observing Cory’s
footprints in the
deep
snow. He can see at least one other man in the
car. They cut the engine and get out. Cory
slinks
to the back of the store and
awaits whatever they might be bringing to him. It could be a fight.
It could be harmless. He’s not sure, but he’s not about to run. He
flicks off the safety on his sidearm and slings his rifle over his
right shoulder.

A sharp intake of breath
off to his left catches his ear, causing him to swing on the person
with his pistol up. A young woman and a
small
girl are standing in the dark
shadows of the corner.

“Please, don’t shoot us, sir,” the
woman says.

Her voice is
young
as if she
may still be a teenager. The young girl with her can’t be more than
five years old. Cory holds his
gloved-finger
to his lips. The
girl-woman nods. The tiny girl buries her face in her companion’s
stomach. They both resemble homeless orphans. They look like the
kind of “street kids” that were used in promo ads for charitable
causes that supposedly benefited
kids
who were homeless before the
apocalypse hit.

“Do you think she went in here?” one
of the men asks to the other or others.

There is no answer, so Cory
has no idea how many men are with him. He backs up to the wall
and
scoots
an aisle closer where he has a
better-concealed
view of the man. He’s
lean, lanky and has a shaved head not covered with a winter hat.
Another man comes into Cory’s line of sight. He’s shorter, probably
around five-five, stout and has bleached blonde hair that hangs
below his stocking cap. Reagan would call him a
hippy
.

“Little bitch,” the first one
says.

“We’ll find her, man,” stout guy says.
“C’mon. Let’s get outta’ here. I’m freezin’ my ass off.”

He tugs at his friend’s jacket only to
be shirked away.

“Fuck that!” the lean one exclaims
angrily. “Bitch stole from us. I’m gonna fuck her up.”

“Hey, man,”
stouty
says. “They
were just kids, ya’ know? Let’s just get going. We got to get back
to our house ‘
fore
someone else finds our stash.”

Lean Guy comes within one
aisle from Cory before deciding to give up the search and leave
with his friend. He’ll live another
day
although he never knew it. Cory
waits another moment before letting out his held breath. They’ve
driven away without another glance back. Cory clicks the safety
back on and stashes his .45 in his holster again.

He asks, “They lookin’ for
you?”

She nods her head shakily.

“Where you from? Around here?” Cory
asks the woman who still cowers in the dark corner.

“Yes, sort of,” she
answers.

Cory nods and continues searching for
things he needs while talking to her. “Yeah?”

“Yes, my daughter and I…”

Cory stops
her, “Daughter? She’s yours?” She seems too young
to have a kid who is likely five or six years old.

“Yes, sir,” the woman says. “I got
pregnant in high school, seventeen, and my parents threw me out. I
was taken in by a foster family in Cincinnati. That’s where we’re
from.”

Cory walks away to the
tools department, searching for
one,
in particular. The woman just keeps
chattering on.

“Before all this I lived
there. My foster dad taught at Cincinnati Bible Seminary. He even
got me
into
taking some classes there. That is until this all happened. My
girlfriend and I were supposed to move to Louisville into our own
apartment, but that didn’t happen.”