The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (28 page)

He chirps up when Paige talks to
him.

“Yeah, it’s the right thing
to do. We have so much land
here,
and all of us guys can put
in
the extra
vegetables. As long as we keep the beef in production, it’s good to
share that, too.”

Sam smiles at him with a nod. He just
gives her the slightest of grins before turning the other way
again. She’s going to have to get him alone and discuss this. He’s
her best friend. She can’t stand his aloof behavior.

“Our herd size has increased
significantly, and the guys have closed off a big section of the
forest with fencing so that the cows can graze there, too,” Sam
tells them. Gavin nods and comments. Paige adds a comment. Simon
doesn’t say anything.

The small talk goes on a while longer
until they reach the paddock, where they pull the horses to a halt.
Simon allows his sister to swing off first. It’s comical because
Paige squats and grimaces.

“Whoa, owies,” she jokes. “I need to
ride a narrower horse.”

“You’ll get used to it,”
Simon says
with
a laugh and ruffles her light red hair.

Sam pats her chestnut’s furry winter
coat. She’ll start shedding this soon if the weather continues to
improve. She hasn’t worked up a white, foamy lather from the ride,
which is good. It’ll make brushing her down and getting her turned
out a faster job. They have only been gone about an hour, but this
day is long from over.

They laugh at Paige’s drama
while Gavin gets off of his
mare
more
easily
. He’s not
a particularly tall person
, but he
has a sturdy build. He’s even put on some weight, which is a sign
of forward-moving
progress
and that life goes on, at least on their farm. All
four of Paige’s group have gained some weight, but Paige is tall
for a woman, so she definitely still looks really
skinny.

Gavin comes over to Sam and reaches up
for her. She frowns but takes the offered help. She’s not sure why
he’s trying to help her. She could out ride him any day of the week
and twice on Sunday, but apparently he doesn’t know this. She
reaches down anyway.

“Thanks, Gavin. I
could’ve…” she mumbles as she steps away
from him.
She turns quickly back,
still in the middle of speaking, as Simon grabs Gavin’s shoulder
rather roughly.

“Hey!” he barks in an irate voice.
“She doesn’t need your help.”

“Oh, sorry,” Gavin apologizes and
backs away.

He holds up his left hand
in a posture of surrender. There is a sudden fear in Gavin’s brown
eyes. Sue had cut his dishwater blonde hair when he’d first
arrived
.
She’d
basically
buzz cut it as was his preference. Paige had explained that
they all four had lice once that they’d contracted while staying at
a temporary FEMA camp. It had taken them weeks to get rid of the
pesky bugs. Sam remembers shuddering at the thought. Gross. She’d
cut her own hair once with a semi-dull knife. She’d cut it for an
entirely different reason than invading bugs, but she doesn’t like
remembering that part of her life.

“Simon!” Paige reprimands and pulls
her brother back.

“Samantha doesn’t need his help,”
Simon explains through gritted teeth.

His blue eyes are alight with a fierce
and sudden anger. He never acts like this. The look in his eyes is
maybe even worse than the sneer he’d given the single dad over
Paige, and Sam can’t imagine what has set him off like this. Gavin
is a harmless, kind man.

“He doesn’t know that, Simon,” Paige
rails on. “He was only trying to be nice. Calm down.”

Simon’s eyes narrow on his sister.
They are almost eye to eye. Paige must be at least five nine or
five ten. Her long red hair is pulled back today in a single
braid.

Simon finally nods and says, “Sorry,
Gavin.”

“No problem, Simon. Look, I didn’t
mean anything by it. I just thought she seemed kinda’ small to get
down by herself,” he explains.

Sam frowns at him. “Hey! I’m plenty
big enough, thank you very much. And I’ve been riding since I was
two.”

“Oh, sorry,” he says again.

“It’s fine. No harm, no foul,” she
returns and tugs her gelding toward the barn. When she glances over
her shoulder, Simon is still looking at her. “We’d better get
moving! Going to the clinic today, remember?”

Simon nods but still seems
sulky about the harmless incident with Gavin. Sam’s not.
Gavin’s
a nice
guy. He’s been generous and considerate since he arrived that
first day and every day since. Before everything fell apart,
he’d
worked
for his dad’s construction business and was in Georgia on a
big commercial build. Repair work seems to be the one thing where
he is actually helpful on the farm, according to the men. Gavin
also gets along with and is very kind and affectionate toward the
children on the farm which is a good quality in Sam’s opinion. Even
though Paige trusts him, she knows that the men were wary of Gavin
at first. He seems to be a man of
strong
moral character and is a big
cut-up, which certainly doesn’t hurt anything. He and Talia are
always joking and having fun. Even though he is not
a particularly good
singer
, he joined in the other night when
Hannah had played the piano and John his guitar. He’d even
danced
around with
the kids.

Paige tugs at her
brother’s
sleeve
and Simon nods and follows her into the barn, as
well. It doesn’t take long before they have the three horses turned
out, the
tack
put away and are heading
in
to
pack for the clinic. They make the trek
twice a month to the
clinic
in town. It’s the only available medical care for
miles. There are usually people waiting outside for them when they
get there.

Sam takes Paige to the shed
with her to pack what they can while Simon convenes with the men
for a security meeting. They have a
security
meeting before every clinic
day. They have a
security
meeting once a week to discuss the farm. They have
security meetings to go over the surrounding neighborhoods they’ve
established into sections. They basically have security meetings on
a near constant basis. The ex-military men in the family take
security very seriously.

“Here, Paige,” Sam
instructs. This is Paige’s first trip to the clinic with them.
“Take a crate. We need certain supplies for the
clinic
. We don’t keep anything
at the clinic because it could be stolen or looted when we’re not
there. So every time we go to town, we take the supplies with
us.”

“Ok, sure,” Paige says and takes the
wooden crate. “What do we need?”

“We’ll fill my crate and
then yours. We try to keep the supplies separated by their
uses
so that when
we get to town it’s a lot easier than having to sort it all out. We
usually take bandaging, which we’re getting low on,” Sam remarks as
she checks the third shelving unit. They’ve added five metal
shelving displays in the med shed for storing hospital supplies
looted from surrounding, deserted medical facilities. “This shelf
is all for wound care, so
there're
syringes, rubber tourniquets
for blood draws, needles and thread for stitching, bacterial
swipes
and
bandaging. Oh, and we need antibacterial cream.”

Sam starts adding items to
her own crate as Paige stands by watching. She’s unsure of herself,
but she won’t be for long. Sam hands her
items
to stow in her
crate.

“This unit,” she indicates
the next set of five shelves, “has
the most
surgical types of supplies.
This shelf has forceps, scalpels, canisters of oxygen, surgical
staples and, well, just about anything else we might
need.”

“Do you usually use all this? I mean
does it get that bad?” Paige asks.

“Oh yeah,” Sam says
on
a sarcastic
chuckle. “But then sometimes it’s not too bad. We’ve delivered
fourteen babies there!”

“Really?” Paige asks with cynicism.
“That’s kind of ignorant. I can’t believe people are even still
getting pregnant.”

“Grandpa says that life has to go on,
so we should encourage it,” Sam says.

“I noticed that you call
him
that,”
Paige comments after she shrugs.

“Yeah, I know. He’s not really my
Grandpa, but he’s kind of everybody’s grandfather if you ask
me.”

“Yes, he’s quite the patriarch of this
place,” Paige admits.

Sam notices for the first
time how
pretty
Paige’s eyes are. The color isn’t exactly blue like hers, but
more of a pale bluish gray. Sam has officially found her new muse.
She’ll sketch Paige with pastels instead of charcoal so that she
can capture the
interesting
light to dark red shades of her hair, the tiny
brown freckles on her cheeks and nose, her excessively high
eyebrows and her deep-set pale eyes.

“Grams was great, too. It’s just too
bad that you didn’t get to meet her. She had a soft spot for Simon.
She was so sweet and wonderful,” Sam explains. She frowns and
shakes her head, trying to get rid of those thoughts. Remembering
Grams is difficult. “This shelf is full of Simon and Grandpa’s
medicinal concoctions.”

She points to the display
of herbs and pastes,
balms
and
talcs
all stored in baby food jars or pint sized canning
jars. This unit looks like an
eighteenth-century
apothecary’s shop.
Everything is labeled with small pieces of paper or stickers that
are beginning to yellow with the passage of time. This shelf holds
special meaning for her. It represents all of the time that she’s
spent hunting herbs and berries and plants with Simon. Those
cherished, safe moments with him are suspended in her memories
forever.

“Simon or Grandpa usually come out and
pick what they want to take to town from this shelf,” she tells his
sister. “Then we have this last unit and a half, give or take, of
bottled medicines from before the apocalypse hit.”

“Wow, you guys have a ton of shit out
here,” Paige exclaims as she rounds the final corner.

Sam chuckles, “You better not swear in
front of Hannah. Since Grams passed, she’s the cursing police
around here. Oh, except for Reagan. Nobody’s ever been able to
clean up her language, not even her husband. Not for lack of
trying, however.”

“Good to know,” Paige returns and
raises her eyebrows.

“…I said I’m going,” Reagan’s voice
spills into the shed.

“Babe, you’re still
very weak
. You’re
just getting better. Why don’t you just stay home this time, sit
this one out?” John
retorts
.

They both come into
the
shed;
Reagan flailing her arms while speaking and John
scowling.

“I’m
fine
!” she argues. “I’ve had a
little more energy the last few days.”

Her recovery from that
intense flu has been very slow, indeed. She’d
been
down for almost two full
weeks. Everyone was surprised at how ill she’d become. John and
their son Jacob and then Sue had also come down with it, but they’d
each kicked it within forty-eight hours. Reagan still carries with
her a slight cough and seemingly chronic fatigue.

John tugs her arm, effectively halting
his wife and swinging her around to face him. Then he plants a big
kiss on her mouth. He’s not exactly shy about showing his affection
for her. Reagan wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him
back.

“I’m going!” she says when she jerks
back.

“All right, you hard-head,” he says
before kissing her cheek. “I’m going too, then.”

“That’ll work. Tell Kelly, though,
because I heard him say that he was going with us.”

“Right,” he says and takes off at a
jog.

Normally
Kelly, Derek, John and Cory take turns going in
teams of two to the clinic with the medical crew. However, with
Cory being gone, they can’t afford to have both Kelly and John go.
Grandpa, John,
Reagan
and Simon will have guns to defend the practice
should a problem arise. But Kelly will need to stay
on the farm
to
keep it protected with Derek. They also offered to work with Gavin
on firearms training since they found out that
he’s
not very experienced with
them. He mostly hunts with a bow.

“Got everything packed up, Sam?”
Reagan asks.