The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (17 page)

“For a while. Once the
generators gave out, that was it. And that was when it got bad,
too,” she says
with
a shaky sigh.

“Let’s feed the horses, all
right? That’ll help with the evening chores,” he explains to guide
her
off
subject
and receives a grateful
nod.

They spend the next half
hour tossing flakes of hay to the horses outdoors and pouring grain
and dumping
hay
to the two pregnant mares
in
stalls
in the barn. Simon carries buckets
of water and pours them into the small holding containers inside
each mare’s stall.

“Do the ones outside need water?” his
sister asks.

“Nope. They have a spring that feeds
into a big cement trough up on the back hill. The cows have two in
their pastures. That’s how the cabins have water, too. It’s fed in
from a spring.”

“Oh. That’s good. This
place is efficient. I gotta say that much,” Paige says
on
a
grin.

“Yeah, well we have to be.
If it wasn’t set up like this, we’d be in trouble,” he tells her.
“It’s a lotta’ work. But it’s worth it in the end because the
animals provide us with transportation, food and when the tractors
don’t work we can use the horses to pull plows. Luckily we’ve only
had to do that a few times. It’s kind of hard
on
them. They aren’t exactly
draft horses. But they’re
pretty
cool
. I like riding. I can teach you,
too.”

“Hm, I don’t know,” she says and
wrinkles her nose. “Seems kinda’ scary. I prefer to keep my feet on
the ground.”

Simon laughs. He actually
laughs aloud for the first time in a long time. “Scary?
After
everything
you’ve been through? You’re a nut.”

Paige shrugs and grins.

“Wanna see my cabin? It’s kind of a
hike out there, but we could check it out if you want to,” he
suggests.

“Heck yeah!” she says. “I want to know
where you’ve been hiding out the last three years.”

“Zip up your jacket, sis,” he orders
and gets a peculiar look from his sister in return. “Think it’s
gonna storm later. Don’t want you gettin’ sick when I just got you
back.”

“Oh, so now you’re gonna be my
protector?”

“I sure am,” he
returns
with
a nod and a smile.

“Great,” she adds sarcastically but
smiles, too.

He chuckles as they leave the barn. He
can’t stop looking at her. He still can’t believe she’s here and
alive and safe. He’s going to do everything in his power to ensure
she stays that way.

Chapter Nine

Cory

The next morning Cory loads Helen and
Celeste onto his horse with all of his gear and packed meat. He
will see them safely home and settled in before moving on. He is
leading them on his horse while trekking through the snow on
foot.

“Won’t you stay
on
a few days with
us, Cory?” Helen asks. “It’s the least we can do for helping
Celeste.”

Her daughter is already feeling
considerably better with the one dose of antibiotics in her system.
Her color has come back to her small pink cheeks. It’s an
encouraging sign that she’ll not get worse. Unfortunately, she
still seemed too weak and fatigued for them to walk home on their
own, so that’s how he ended up on this route. And even more
unfortunate is the fact that her mother literally woke up this
morning in full chatter mode. And she’s still doing it.

“No thanks. Gotta keep moving,” he
declines for the tenth time.

“We’re almost there,” Helen says,
ignoring his refusal. “See that place?” she asks, pointing to a
small, shake shingle cottage tucked away behind brambles and ivy.
“That’s my neighbor Gus’s place. He’s a sweet, old man.”

Cory grimaces as she
recounts more stories of her neighbor who looks after her and
Celeste. They come through a small meadow dotted with oaks and
maples and apple trees.
The tree
groupings becomes denser, forest overgrowth takes hold, but he
finds her narrow, snow-covered path that she tells him leads to her
own place.
Her small white house, shed and
chicken coop
come
into view. It’s a picturesque setting surrounded
by tall oaks and overgrown, unmanicured bushes. The door to the one
car, attached garage is pushed up and has been left
open.

He is just about to clear the forestry
around them when Jet startles, planting all four feet wide so that
he can take flight if need be. Cory reins him in and backs the
stallion up. It snorts angrily. They circle back while Cory keeps a
keen eye on the house and their surroundings.

“What is it? What was that all about?”
Helen asks, not aware of the horse’s warning of danger. “Did I kick
him by accident?”

“Something’s not right,” Cory tells
her. “Get down.”

He reaches up for Celeste,
places her behind
a wide
elm tree and then collects Helen from the horse’s
back. He makes her stand next to her daughter.

“You live here alone?”

“Yes, yes, of course. I would’ve told
you if someone else lived here with us. I swear. I didn’t lie to
you, Cory,” Helen says, pushing a strand of brown hair back under
her pink stocking cap that is embroidered with white
flowers.

He is quite sure she
would’ve told him in great, blathering detail of her
housemates
had
she
any.

“There was a truck in the drive, and
the garage door was open. Is that truck yours?” he asks.

“What?” she asks
hysterically. “No! We don’t have a car at all. Remember? I told you
that it died right before we made it to the house.
Ran
out of gas. I
left it up on the road about a mile from here.”

“Stay here,” he orders. “Hold the
horse. Know how to shoot?”

“Um, a little. My foster dad taught me
after things got bad.”

He hands her the easiest
gun to manipulate, the shotgun, and tries not to roll his eyes with
impatience. Jet is prancing with agitation. Cory jams one into the
chamber for her and tells her
to
just pull the trigger
if she needs to.
Something is
wrong,
or his horse wouldn’t behave this way. If it’s
just a squirrel, he may have to shoot Jet for being such a
contrived imbecile.

“Don’t try to follow me,” he warns.
“If you hear shooting, just stay here. I don’t need help. Keep her
hidden. Keep the horse hidden. If I don’t make it back, then leave
with her and my horse. Go to your neighbor and get out of the area
with him.”

Helen’s eyes are wide
with
fear,
the brown color darkening slightly as her pupils
enlarge.

“Do you understand?” he asks for
confirmation and gets an erratic nodding in answer.

Cory turns and jogs to the
edge of the woods again, pulls out his binoculars and squats down
behind a holly bush. He waits at least two full minutes before he
spots a shadow through a small window moving around in the house.
Then he watches a second shadow take the same path. A moment later,
a man comes out the back door, letting it slam on its squeaky
hinges. Cory flanks him as the man heads to the chicken coop. He
remains hidden for the time being just quietly observing. The man
has a .38 pistol shoved down in the back of his pants. He doesn’t
wear a coat, even though it’s freezing
cold
and the snow is deep. His hair
is wet. His long-sleeved shirt is damp in the back as if he’s just
come from the shower.

“Gimme’ those fuckin’ eggs, you
dumbass chickens,” he shouts.

One of Helen’s brown chickens goes
flying out the door as if he kicked her. The hen had some air time
that chickens just don’t get on their own. Cory screws the silencer
onto the end of his pistol and slings his M16 behind him. He stalks
up behind the coop and rests his back against the outer wall,
staying concealed.

The man, in his early
thirties or so, emerges from the
coop
and jogs back to the house. Cory
follows silently and
stays
outdoors. He needs to do recon on them and see if
they are a threat or if they are just squatting on her property out
of desperation. He peeks into a nearby window and spots them. Two
of them including chicken-man are in her kitchen raiding for food.
There is a fire going in the fireplace in the next room which
appears to be a living room. A man lounges or is asleep on the
sofa. Cory
slinks
around to the other side of the house where he
spies through the windows there but doesn’t find anyone
else.

He steps onto the porch railing, pulls
himself up and climbs onto the lower roof line of the front porch,
careful not to slip on the snow. He eases up an unlocked bedroom
window. Nobody notices his entry. And after a quick perusal of the
entire top floor, which is just two bedrooms and a narrow bathroom,
he finds it empty. He can hear the men talking downstairs from his
position on the landing of the second floor.

“Don’t burn my eggs, you two bitches!”
the man, presumably from the sofa, calls to the others.

“Fuck you, asshole!” one of the men in
the kitchen yells back. “I ain’t the cook around here.”

Quieter conversation comes from the
kitchen as the other two converse without their alpha male leader.
Cory inches closer so that he can hear them.

“Hope that woman comes back,” one
says.

“If there was a woman here,” the other
comments. “He could be full of shit, man. There might not be no
woman livin’ here.”

“Sure there is, man,” the
first one contradicts. “Her shit’s still upstairs. Undies, bras,
soap, all that women type of
shit
.”

“Can’t wait to see what goes in those
panties and bras, if you catch my drift,” the sous chef
says.

“
No
shit. I get first dibs, though.
Hey, maybe she’s got an ugly sister for you.”

“Who says you get first dibs?” the
second one whines.

“You know how it’ll go, man. I don’t
even know why we’re arguing. He’s gonna claim first dibs. You know
how he is,” the first one says more quietly than before.

“The only reason he gets first dibs is
‘cuz he’s got more bullets left than us since we only got one
each,” one of them says.

Their conversation
becomes more muffled as Cory’s ire becomes more intense.
They mean Helen harm. Hell, they may mean her
small, sick daughter harm, as well. This isn’t the way he and the
other men at the farm talk about women. This is aggressive talk
reeking of implied rape.

He backs away, purposely
knocks over a small stack of books resting on the ancient, scarred
hardwood floor on his way
to
the bedroom farthest from the stairs. Putting his
back to the wall on the other side of the open door, he waits. It
only takes a few seconds. They’ve heard him, which was the plan.
One set of footsteps
clambers
up the creaky stairs. Then one
of the men is in the first bedroom and then in the hall, the
bathroom and Cory’s room will be last. The man
appears,
the one from the
sofa. A shotgun is the first thing Cory sees coming through the
door. Then the man’s body is next. Cory shoots him point
blank
to
the back of his skull. He falls with a hard, loud thud. Cory
wastes no time and exits through the window again and down to
the
ground,
the snow muffling his drop.

He jogs around back where he climbs
the four porch stairs and tries to open the screen door with the
noisy hinges as quietly as he can. He knows for sure that at least
one of the other men would’ve pursued the noises of a gunshot and a
clatter on the top floor since his friend wouldn’t be answering his
calls by now.

The head chef, he catches
in the kitchen. The man manages to get
a round
off before Cory hits him
with
a round
of his own point blank to his narrow chest. By now the
chicken-man
has
figured it out and found the
upst
airs vacant, probably discovered the
open window. He comes sprinting into the kitchen where Cory gives
him the same treatment as he offered his friends. They weren’t
exactly difficult to take down and obviously had no tactical
military training on clearing a room. Helen’s kitchen cabinet took
the cook’s bullet instead of Cory’s body for which he is
thankful.

He feels no remorse over
the killings. These men were going to use Helen and probably kill
her eventually. They’ve trashed her tiny house, her sanctuary for
herself and her young daughter. And Celeste they probably would’ve
abandoned or
killed
, as well. These are just like
other groups he’s run into and taken care of. They don’t care about
stealing from people. They don’t lose sleep if they take food from
women and children and old people. These are the new cockroaches of
society. And Cory has appointed himself as their personal
exterminator.