The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (55 page)

“Yes, I see,” Paige says, her task
before her on the counter completely forgotten.

“They found Sam in a house not far
from our farm actually. They killed her whole family and took her,
even though your brother tried to hide her. The men went and buried
her family for her, all of her family including her parents, her
brother and the twin toddlers.”

“Oh my,” Paige whispers. She feels
sick to her stomach suddenly. A bead of sweat breaks out on her
forehead and runs down. She whisks it away. She sways on her feet
and grabs the counter for support.

“You know that Simon stabbed your
cousin, right?” Hannah asks.

“What?” Paige asks on a sharp
inhale.

“Don’t tell anyone that I’m
telling you this. He must not want you to know. But he did.
Reagan
told me
. Your cousin and another
really bad
man in that group caught
Simon, Sam and Cory out in the woods. They got away, but then
Reagan and John were jumped. Cory killed the one man, Simon stabbed
your cousin and then John shot him. You have no idea how bad that
whole day was,” Hannah says and turns away.

Paige thinks there is
probably more to this story than she
realizes by the way
that Hannah reacts
to the memories.

“I guess not,” Paige
allows. “I feel
bad
I wasn’t there for him in Arizona. I
should’ve
gone
home as soon as the nuclear war started overseas. I should’ve
taken care of him. He would’ve never had to travel with Aunt
Amber.”

“You can’t carry that guilt around
with you the rest of your life, Paige,” Hannah says. “You could’ve
both been killed in Arizona. What happened to both of you was
supposed to happen. But you’re a young woman. You need to be happy.
You just have to force yourself to find some sort of happiness in
this world the way it is.”

Paige smiles with a touch of
melancholy and irony. Hannah talks to her like she’s her mother or
even grandmother.

“Guess I’ll have to work on that,” she
says with a grin.

They don’t revisit the topic of Sam
and Simon’s stay with the visitors, and Paige believes that they
are both grateful to put it to rest.

“I’m glad you’re here, Paige,” Hannah
says, her mismatched eyes meeting Paige’s briefly before losing
focus again. “He needed to have someone from his family here,
especially since Cory left.”

“Me, too,” she admits. “Were they
close?”

Hannah snorts delicately,
“That doesn’t even come close to describing them. They were like
brothers, maybe even closer than most brothers. They are both
orphans. They’ve been through a lot together. They are
bonded
like
no two young men I’ve ever known. Well, other than John and
Kelly. Those two are the same way. Maybe it’s what you go through
together that makes people so close. I don’t know really, but Cory
and Simon are… I mean,
were
inseparable.”

Paige just nods.

“You know I can’t see you nod or shake
your head, Miss Paige,” Hannah reprimands.

“Oh, sorry!” Paige apologizes for her
imbecilic gaffe.

“It’s fine,” Hannah says on
a smile. “It takes a while to get used to
constantly
verbally expressing
oneself. You’re forgiven.”

Paige
nods,
smiles and then quickly
corrects it with an awkward, “Thanks.”

They work together on food
preparation for tomorrow until it is time to prepare today’s
dinner. It seems
never to
end
, the food preparation on the farm. Sue
joins them and is carrying paper packages of frozen meat. Hannah
announces that they’ll be making cabbage hash. Paige has no idea
what that is, but she’s willing to help.

A short while later, the
ground beef is cooked,
drained,
and the cabbage is frying with
onions on the stove. Potatoes are frying in two other large
skillets. Simon blasts through the back door, dripping wet and
carrying an armload of dry firewood. Everyone is keeping a keen eye
on the wood-burning stove in the basement and the fireplace in the
music room. It’s not quite warm enough outside yet to eliminate
heat in the house altogether, especially not with the children
sleeping in the basement bedrooms.

“Let me help!” Paige cries
as she rushes toward her brother and takes a few of the split logs.
They are exceedingly
heavy
, but she’s not going to complain.
He’d
been
carrying the whole load by himself. Her little brother isn’t
quite so little anymore.

“Thanks, sis,” he mumbles.

“Any word yet?” Sue calls out to him
from the stove.

“No, not yet, ma’am,” Simon returns on
a shake of his head. “Don’t worry. They’re fine.”

“Right, don’t worry,” Paige says
mockingly.

She follows her brother to
the basement where they stack the wood against a stone foundation
wall. Paige has already marveled at the century old, hand-hewn
beams in this
basement
. The amount of labor that
would’ve gone into the oak beams is mind boggling.

“Thanks for the help,” Simon
says.

He averts his eyes from her, which
immediately puts Paige on alert.

“Hey, what is it?” she asks and
touches his damp forearm.

“Nothing,” he returns and pulls
away.

“Simon,” she says and stops following
him toward the stairs. It works because he turns to face her. “Talk
to me.”

He starts arranging the glass jars of
canned vegetables on a shelf to avoid looking at her. Paige
positions herself between him and the shelf.

“What is it that’s bothering you?” she
asks quietly.

Simon shakes his head before
answering, “I’m sorry about your friend.”

“Honey, I know,” she replies. “You
already said that, Simon. You don’t have to feel guilty. Sam talked
to me, too. She explained what happened. Gavin was just in the
wrong place at the wrong time.”

“I know,
but
…
”

“Look, he was my friend, my really
good friend, but I’m not going to blame you for the rest of our
lives for not saving his life or accuse you of being a bad doctor
because you couldn’t save him…”

“I’m not a doctor, Paige,”
he says
on
a sigh.

“You are practically a doctor, little
brother,” she corrects. “Reagan talked to me, too. It wasn’t your
fault. I’m not a naïve child, Simon. I know that none of it was
your fault. He decided to go after that man. He wanted to help. Gav
was like that. He couldn’t have stayed here at the house if he saw
someone was going to burn down the barns. He had to go. And he was
shot. And likely his murderer was killed by one of you or he died
from Gavin’s shot.”

“I’m sure he was. We didn’t leave
anyone alive over there,” Simon confirms but looks away.

“Good,” she says firmly. “Those
assholes got what they deserved. Justice was dealt.”

Simon nods solemnly. Paige pulls him
in for a close hug. She almost starts crying again over Gavin.
However, she manages to hold herself together, barely. She’s not
going to confess that she’d cried herself to sleep last night again
in their cabin. He already feels guilty enough.

“I love you, Simon,” she
says quietly. “I know I never said it enough when we were dumbass
kids. That would’ve been uncool, right? But I
do,
and I’m not gonna
not
say
it from now on. I love you.”

Simon grins, exposing his deep
dimples. “Who’s the dork now?”

She punches his arm.

“I love you, too, sis,” Simon finally
says.

Her little brother ruffles
the hair on her head as if she is the younger sibling and he the
older. It’s as if their roles have been reversed. It’s not
a completely unwelcome feeling
thinking of Simon watching over her. She feels
safe for the first time in a long while.

They head back outside to the wood
shed where they collect another wheelbarrow load.

She gets winded quickly and
apologizes, “Sorry, Simon. I feel like you’re working circles
around me.”

“You just got clubbed over the head
last week,” he says. “I was hoping it knocked some sense into you,
but I think you’re actually worse.”

“Ha ha, are you trying to be a
comedian?”

He chuckles and leads her by the
shoulder to a massive chunk of log where he forces her to
sit.

“Nobody expects you to haul firewood,
sis,” Simon explains with a soft smile and pulls the collar of her
borrowed raincoat higher. “Just take it easy.”

“I feel so useless
around here most of the time,” she tells him with
embarrassment.
It’s true. She mostly just
gets in everyone’s ways.

“Nah, not useless. You shot
some dudes the other
night
so I hear. Reagan said you did very well.
Saved
some lives
by doing so. So I’d say not useless at all. We’re gonna work on
your training, though. Can’t keep saving your skinny butt all the
time when you get taken hostage,” he jokes as he carries another
armload to the wheelbarrow and motions for her to follow. “Come
on.”

She frowns and follows
after him as he pushes the wheelbarrow which is weighted
down
with
a
heavy load of split wood through the rain and mud.

“Nobody thinks you’re
useless, Paige,” he says with a slight grin. “Annoying maybe, but
not
useless
.”

“Hey!” she complains lightly at his
jest. Her brother smiles at her. His smile could light up a room.
His kind blue eyes twinkle with merriment. He’s so devastatingly
handsome and mature now, not at all like the gangly boy he used to
be. Even his hands at the handles of the wheelbarrow are big and
thick and strong, just like his wrists and arms. But Paige can
still see hints of her nerdy, innocent brother there in his eyes.
She hopes he never completely loses that part of
himself.

“I want to check that laceration again
and give you a quick exam before dinner, ok?” he asks.

They come to the side entrance that
leads into the mudroom where everyone always stashes their wet gear
and shoes.

“Reagan already checked me,” she tells
him as he holds the door for her. “Twice!”

Simon chuckles once and nods. “Yeah,
that’s not surprising.”

“She was mad when she found out that
the last man was leaving the shed this morning to go home to his
family,” Paige observes as they carry armload after armload of
firewood to the music room.

“I figured she would be,”
he concludes. “She didn’t think they were ready to go yet, but what
could we do? They wanted to go home. We can’t force them to stay.
Once we get the practice in town going again, we can check them out
there. I’m sure they’ll be
fine
. Doc told them how to watch for
signs of infection.”

“She’s kind of bossy,”
Paige says
quietly
as they go back outside to collect another armload
each.

“Kind of?” Simon asks on an uproarious
laugh.

Paige even laughs once. She
hadn’t been joking. For being a tiny thing, Reagan Harrison is
extremely commanding of her surroundings and everyone within arm’s
reach. She’s
pretty
cool
, though. Paige actually likes her
quite a lot, but she is bossy.

“You think she’s bossy? Ask
her husband
sometime
,” Simon jokes. “He could tell
you an earful, I’m sure.”

Paige chuckles as they finish their
work. Reagan walks into the mudroom as they are shutting the door
again.

“What’s so funny?” she
asks.

Paige and Simon just look
at each other and both
mumble
, “Nothing.”

They get a queer look in
return, but the little boss leaves the room without discovering
that she was the source for which they’d taken a joyful moment, a
rare moment of laughter. Neither of them
is
about to tell her anytime soon,
either. They aren’t complete lackwits, after all.

By the
time
they get washed
up
and Simon has
checked her against her will, the men have returned.

They quickly take care of the outdoor
chores and the animal feedings and milkings. Paige even helps milk
the goats. She hasn’t felt comfortable tackling a cow milking chore
yet. They still scare the hell out of her. After they eat dinner,
John announces that a meeting needs to take place.

They ready the children for
bed. When that task is accomplished, the adults commune in the
music room where there is enough space for everyone to sit. Talia
opts out and goes to bed early. She’s taking the loss of their
friend very hard. Nobody questions or judges her. This family has
seen enough of its own travesties
to be
compassionate and understanding of
her grief.