The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (18 page)

Taking a minute to make
sure there aren’t any other men on the first floor or lurking in
the basement, he then jogs outside and does a quick perimeter
check, as well. He tells Helen to stay put a few extra minutes. He
needs to carry the cockroaches out of her house and dispose of
their corpses. The first two men are easy to carry to the bed of
their truck. The third is a little heavier, but he manages. They
conveniently even left the keys to the
truck
in the ignition, which makes
his disposal job easier. He doesn’t know the area but drives out to
the main road where he makes a left turn. A few miles away Cory
dumps their bodies in a small ravine and returns to Helen’s house.
Then he retrieves her and her daughter. He even helps her get the
splatters and puddles of coagulating blood cleaned up with old rags
she finds in the basement while Celeste is put down for a nap in
the guest room on the second floor.

“Thank you, Cory. Again,” she says
over and over as they dip rags into buckets and scrub the hardwood
floor.

“No problem. Stop thanking me,” he
utters. “Why don’t you fix us something to eat while I
finish?”

He’s mostly sending her to
another room because she’s driving him nuts. At first she’d
wept
uncontrollably
that men had broken into
her home. Then she’d
cried
because they’d wrecked it looking for anything of
interest. Her dining room chairs were knocked over, the drawers of
all dressers and desks opened or dumped onto the floor, and her
pantry raided. Cory understood her frustration. He also wouldn’t
like it if people had ransacked the farm. That would’ve got them a
short rope at the end of a sturdy branch.

When he finishes in the bedroom a
short while later and rings out the bloody rags, he goes back
downstairs where he finds a strange man in the kitchen. His hand
automatically jumps to his pistol.

“Hey, wait!” Helen says and dashes
between him and the other man. “This is our neighbor, Gus.
Remember? I told you about him?”

“I’m not a threat,
young
man,” the
old codger says. “You could just about do me in with a good pistol
whipping. No need to waste a bullet.”

He chuckles which puts Cory
a bit more at ease. Cory removes his hand from his holster. He
looks down and realizes that his hands are covered in blood, the
men’s blood that he’d
mopped
up. Gus extends his hand to shake
Cory’s,
but Cory
doesn’t mirror his movement. He holds up his hand to show him what
he’d be shaking. Gus
grimaces,
gives a nod of understanding
and takes a seat. Celeste
bounds
into the room in good spirits and
rested from her short-lived nap.

Gus is a slim older man,
his hair totally silver, what’s left of it, and he smells of stale
cigarette smoke. He has an awkward gate as if he has a bad back.
Celeste
obviously
trusts Gus because she sits on his lap at the
small dinette set in the kitchen. She’s resting her cherubic face
against his chest. He has his arm wrapped around her and is gently
bouncing his bony leg soothingly to comfort her. He is obviously
not worried about catching her illness.

“Guess I owe you a big thank you,” he
says. “I had no idea there was anyone over here. By the looks of
the place, I think they were here for a couple days. Maybe they got
here right after she left. I told her to leave Celeste with me, but
she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Nobody leaves their family, I
suppose. Not even for a few days.”

Cory tries not to cringe at
the comment that he knows wasn’t meant for him.

“You have about ten acres between your
house and hers,” Cory notes. “That’s too far apart to keep an eye
out for each other. You should really think about condensing to one
house for safety. If those men came here, others will,
too.”

“I’ve lived in my house for over fifty
years. It would be kind of hard to leave it,” he says.

“It might be a good idea, Gus,” Helen
says from the stove.

Cory notices that she has
started a new meal for them, having disposed of whatever concoction
those
fuck-heads
were preparing. He’s glad she did, too. No telling
what diseases those creeps were carrying. Her tiny kitchen is
immaculately clean. The whole house is actually, minus the disaster
that those men caused. He understands why she was so upset at them
causing the mess they had. This orderly, neat house is the only
thing she probably feels like she can control. The rest of the
world has fallen into chaos, but this young woman, who is his age,
has managed to create a tiny haven of security and safety and
cleanliness tucked away from the dirty, vile world out there. They
are still discussing a move-in together situation when she snaps
him out of his psych evaluation of her.

“I left some water in the bathroom
sink, through there, for you to wash up, Cory,” she says,
indicating with her spatula through to the other room.

He nods and thanks her then
heads into the dining-living area and into the small half bath.
Leaning his hands against the sink a moment, Cory gazes into the
mirror at the feral man staring back at him. His reflection is
frightening. No wonder he scared Gus. There are speckles of blood
on his forehead. His hair is long and wild. His brown eyes are dark
and haunted. Circles
that
look like an NFL player’s black, under-eye cheek
paint blend almost seamlessly into his untrimmed beard.

He’d only
slept
about an
hour this morning before dawn because he’d spent the night tracking
and then killing the two men who were after Helen and her daughter
for supposedly stealing from them. Then he had stolen from them. If
they were going to accuse someone of doing it, he figured he’d at
least make the accusation legitimate. He’d stuffed everything they
owned of value, including their food and guns into his pack. When
he’d left, he’d given them a proverbial Viking burial at sea and
torched the disgusting, rundown house where they’d
been
squatting
with rats and mice and whatever else that wanted to come in through
the broken windows. It wasn’t necessary, but it had given him a
clean, uninterrupted exit from the city since people would be
distracted by the tall, violent flames licking at the night
sky.

Cory plunges his bloody
hands into the sink, turning the water into malevolent pink and
ruby swirls. She’s left soap on the
ledge
of the pedestal sink for him. He
scrubs, repeats the process twice before getting it all removed.
Then he drains the water and uses a small towel to dry his hands.
The white porcelain of the sink is stained and smeared as if
someone has poured a glass of red wine down it. He uses the towel
to wipe it clean. He doesn’t want Celeste to see blood stains in
the sink. She’s just a kid. They need preservation from such
darknesses.

He joins the others in the
dining room where Celeste has brought bowls of food. They say
grace. Cory refrains. He and God are not in good standing of late.
He has no wish to have Helen’s
nice
dining table burnt to a crisp from
a lightning strike.

“How do you have
power
?” Cory asks
when Gus passes a bowl of scrambled eggs his way. The lights of the
chandelier, circa 1960 something, flicker but don’t go out. The
ones in the bathroom had, as well.

“Wind turbine on top of the house,”
she answers and hands him a platter of bear meat. “It’s pretty
good. Sometimes it doesn’t draw enough power for the stove, so then
I just cook over the fireplace. But most of the time it’s reliable
as long as we use it sparingly.”

“Helen told me how much you’ve helped
her, Cory,” Gus says, observing him quietly.

He just frowns and gives a brief nod.
“What do you do for electric?”

Gus shrugs and says, “Haven’t had
electric for years. Never wanted to let those electric company
people on my property. Don’t get mail, neither. Don’t trust the
government. Never have.”

Cory considers him a moment. This guy
is kind of strange. Was he some kind of off-grid survivalists or
something even before the fall? He sure as hell doesn’t look like
it now. He looks like a crooked, bent, skinny old man.

“Retired with disability
from the railroad. Got hurt on the job back in ’12. Some young punk
hit me in the back with a
coupler
, not paying attention to what he
shoulda’ been doing. Half o’ me is metal and pins and screws, and
the other half is piss and vinegar.”

Cory has no idea what he’s
talking about with the
coupler
thing but also doesn’t ask. He’s
not enjoying their conversation. He wishes that he would’ve left
already. This is beginning to feel comfortable, domestic. He
fidgets in his chair, itching to flee.

“You two young pups should
think
‘bout
gettin’ hitched!”

That startles Cory out of
his daze about splitting the scene. He nearly chokes on his
tough
bear
meat.

“Gus!” Helen exclaims. “Goodness me.
That’s not very subtle.”

“She’s a good girl, Cory. You could do
a whole lot worse. Seems like you could take care of them,” Gus
replies, looking directly at Cory.

“I’m not stickin’ around. I’ll be
leaving later today. I have places I need to go,” he
says.

“You shouldn’t take off. Stay till
spring. It’s not safe out there,” Helen says.

“Yeah, you and your horse
would do well to winter here. I have hay out in the barn for that
big stallion. Brought it over here for Helen to bed down her
chickens. But I could bring more. I keep a few beef cattle. Always
have. Got a couple goats at my place, too. Good for the milk. Goat
meat ain’t bad, neither. Not as good as this bear steak. Haven’t
had
bear
since I was a young pup like you, Cory. Used to hunt up in
Alaska every year with my pop.”

Cory refuses to make eye contact with
her or Gus. He wishes they’d stop talking to him like they are all
some big happy family. He keeps his head down, shovels his food and
then leaves the table in the middle of the conversation to go
outside. There he removes Jet’s saddle and tack and places him in
the small barn, which isn’t much more than a shed. He even finds
the hay there which doesn’t seem moldy. The stall he places his
horse in is small and rickety. Jet could easily get out, but Cory
doesn’t think he will, not with three flakes of hay to fill his fat
gut.

He leaves some of his
items, including the bear skin on the dirt floor of the barn. He’ll
work on the bearskin some more tomorrow once he’s gone from here
and set up somewhere on his own. There is still a good amount of
fat clinging to the skin that will
need to be removed
before he cures it
with salt water.

When he’s done, he checks the area
again. He takes his rucksack to the house where Helen is finishing
with cleaning the kitchen. The home is warm and cozy. No, he
definitely isn’t going to hang around here.

Gus and Helen join him at the dinette
again where he unloads a pile of items from his pack. He retrieves
the weapons from the other room which he’d confiscated from the men
earlier.

“Where’d you get those other guns?”
Helen asks.

He gives her a look that clearly lets
her know that she really doesn’t want the answer. Her dark eyebrows
rise as she nods with understanding.

“Look, I’m gonna leave you with most
of these. I don’t need them, and they’re just taking up room in my
bag.”

“I’ve got a shotgun at my house,” Gus
offers. “We been talkin’ and I think I am gonna move in over here,
especially if you’re not staying…”

“I’m not,” Cory reiterates
firmly.

“Well, then I guess I
better move over here. Seems like we should keep a better eye on
each other,” Gus tells him. “House is plenty big enough for
the
four
of us,
though.”

Cory shoots him a glare for the added
hint. “I take it you know how to shoot?”

“Was in the Army for four years
straight outta’ high school, young pup. I can shoot just fine. And
Helen, here, does fine, too.”

“Good. I’m leaving you with
another shotgun, two .38’s, a .45 and three 9 mills. There’s enough
ammo in this other bag,” Cory says and digs out a smaller canvas
bag and also places it on the table, “to get the job done. Whatever
job that
needs
done
, I suppose.”

He also removes the stolen food items,
mostly just canned goods and some dehydrated fruit pieces mixed
with nuts.

“Cory, why don’t you just get a hot
bath, ok?” Helen suggests. “We can go over all of this later. Stay
the night at least. You’re exhausted. Your horse seems tired, too.
Just take a day and clean up and rest. There’s clothing in the
spare bedroom. Men’s clothing. I have no idea who they belonged to,
probably my foster dad or his relatives. But you’re welcome to
them.”