The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (62 page)

Once she hits the
pasture,
she says
over her shoulder, “Just leave me alone, Simon. Everything’s
fine.
Sorry
I went that far into the woods. I won’t do it
again.”

“But wait a minute. What’s going on?
Why are you crying?”

She doesn’t answer but speeds up until
she is switching between jogging and walking. A glance over her
shoulder lets her know that he’s stopped following her and is
standing near the cow barn staring at her. He’s wringing his hat in
his hands with clear frustration.

She ditches her dirty shoes on the
back porch. Upon entering the kitchen, she finds Hannah and Reagan
hard at work. They are making cheese, which is a long and
malodorous process.

“Sam, just in the nick of time!”
Reagan jokes.

She’s at the stove while Hannah
resides at the island working.

“Gimme’ a hand?” Reagan
asks.

They haven’t noticed her distressed
state or the dampness on her cheeks. Good. She doesn’t want them
to, either.

She plasters on a happy
face and
replies
in
a tremulous
voice, “Sure. Let me just scrub up first.”

They work for the next few
hours on making the cheese, which is generally a multi-step
process, one that they all know by heart. Today’s project is cow’s
milk cheese instead of the softer goat’s milk type. She knew this
was coming because the milk has been souring and scalded twice in
the last few days. Reagan and Sue have been
baby-sitting
it, skimming the loose
liquid on top and putting it in the chicken scraps bowl. There are
still many steps to go.

“Grab the cheese knife out of the
pantry for me,” Reagan requests.

Sam finishes drying her damp hands on
a cotton kitchen towel and moves quickly to the pantry.

Hannah is already preparing the wooden
molds. Sam grabs the long sharp knife and meets up with Reagan, who
has also moved to the island. The cultures were already added, so
they are ready to separate the whey, which Hannah will use to
improve the texture of her baked goods. Any that is not used will
be fed to the chickens. Hannah’s baked goods are sublime on any
given day, but adding the whey makes them transcendent. It’s one of
the benefits of cheese making in Sam’s opinion. Hannah could put
the best French pastry chefs to shame. Of course, France probably
isn’t even functioning on the same level as the McClane farm. There
were mixed reports at the beginning of whether or not France had
been nuked. She prays they were not.

Sam hands the long knife to
Reagan, who pierces the semi-solid mixture in the
heavy
pot all the
way to the bottom. This lets them know they are ready to
begin
straining
.

“Whatcha’ been up to, kiddo?” Reagan
inquires.

Sam doesn’t understand why everyone
calls her kiddo. She’d like to remind them that she’s an adult, but
for some reason they all still look at her like she’s a
child.

She lies, “Nothing, just working in
the garden with Paige.”

“Yeah? Paige came in a
while ago to wash up and go help Simon. What have you been up to
since then?” Hannah
boldly
questions.

Sam pokes her finger into the soft,
creamy solid mass. Liquid whey immediately fills the small hole
where her finger had been.

“We’re good to go,” Reagan
announces.

“Nothing really,” Sam lies again.
“Just went for a walk.”

“Everything ok?” Reagan asks and makes
eye contact.

Her frizzy curls are escaping her
ponytail. Reagan’s intelligent green eyes see her too clearly. Sam
looks down quickly and nods.

“If you want to talk, you know where I
live,” Reagan jokes and bumps her shoulder into hers.

Sam affords her a pained grin and
says, “Just thinking about my family again.”

“I figured,” she returns.

Sam’s not sure why Reagan
isn’t in town working at the clinic. They’ve been busy lately with
injuries from so many men working on the wall. This is not the kind
of work that she usually does. Sam,
Hannah
and Sue
usually
make the cheese. Sometimes
Simon and Cory help if they aren’t doing other laborious tasks
outdoors.

“I
’m fine,
” Sam lies again. She gets
a look from Reagan that lets her know that this falsehood isn’t
going to be believed.

Reagan places the knife on
the counter and lays a hand
to
Sam’s cheek. This is a comforting
gesture that Reagan would’nt have been able to offer anyone a few
years ago. Sam can relate to Reagan’s mental blocks. She has the
same problems, but not in an all-out aversion to touch.

“Careful, kiddo,” she warns
softly.

Sam nods shakily and answers, “I
know.”

“The colanders are ready, girls,”
Hannah says.

She has spread the gauzy
cloth over two wide, steel colanders stretched tight and secured
over two buckets. This process will go
slowly
until all of the liquid whey
has drained
completely,
and all that remains are the cheese curds. Then
the
curds
will be placed into the molds, packed down, salted and
covered. They’ll have one of the men carry the heavy
molds
to the new
section of the basement where it is cool and dry and dark. It will
take a few weeks of tending and turning the
molds
until this particular cheese
is ready. Sometimes they’ll make mozzarella, which is
ready
to
eat
immediately
as it is a soft cheese. Other times they’ll make goat cheese
which requires a lot of stirring
over
a hot pot. It is very back-breaking
and tiring
work
but tastes great when Sue adds fresh herbs from her garden.
They like to serve goat cheese for the family to spread over
Hannah’s warm bread from the oven. They already have three wheels
of cheddar aging in the cellar, some of which they’ll trade
in
town
with other families for items they might need.

When they are finished, Sam
excuses herself. She wants to get away from Reagan and her prying,
knowing eyes. The sisters let her know to come down in a few hours
for dinner. She grabs an apple off the counter before going to her
bedroom for some alone time and to get a grip on her feelings.
Working and talking with Hannah and Reagan had been helpful, but
her mood is still dark. She knows before she gets to her room what
is coming. Making a straight line dash to her desk, she takes out
her art supplies, which are severely dwindling. Her hands,
fingers
and mind
take over in such vigorous fervor that she can’t stop.

“Sam?” Huntley asks from the
door.

His voice startles Sam. The
sun has disappeared from her window view. She’s lost time again.
This
frequently happens
when she draws. She swings around in her seat,
observing her intruder with surprised eyes. He’s such a sweet boy,
also an orphan like her, also a former slave to Amber’s group, and
also taken in by the McClane family.
He is becoming so handsome.
His tanned,
Native American skin a dark reddish brown contrast against the
light hazel of his
pretty
eyes and black hair. Although he’d probably have a
fit if she called his eyes pretty to his face. He’s too proud for
that kind of girl-talk. It’s hard for her to believe that he’s
almost fourteen. They have been through some horrible things
together. First he’d
been
incessantly
,
physically abused by his bastard father, Frank, from the visitors’
group. Then he’d lost his twin brother Garrett to the pneumonic
plague. Finally, the Rangers had killed his father, although she
isn’t really supposed to know that part. Nobody ever told Huntley,
either, but he’s too smart not to know. Surely he does.
She’d
overheard
the men talking of it one day soon after the visitors had
“left.” She knew from the
gun
shots
that they hadn’t all just left of
their own accord. Plus she’d
watched
Cory kill one
man
and John kill
the other out in the forest. John had killed that evil Bobby, and
for that reason alone she’ll always be grateful to him. But for
everything that Huntley’s been through, he is a good kid. He
sometimes suffers
like she does from certain dark spells in his mood and
behavior mostly because he lost his twin brother. Grandpa tries to
spend a lot of time with him, teaching him how to work on projects
like the tractors and equipment and reading books.

His light eyes regard her
warily.

“What is it, Huntley?” she
asks.

“Hannah said to come up and get you.
Dinner’s almost ready,” he tells her.

“Thanks, bud. I’ll be down in just a
minute,” she says.

“What are you doing?” he inquires
shyly.

She smiles gently at him, “Just
sketching some. I’ll be down soon, ‘kay?”

He nods and leaves quietly.
Wow, she
really
has lost time.

Huntley is usually with his
cohorts in crime,
Justin
and Arianna. Those
three run
the farm like feral children,
getting into everything, climbing trees, running through the barns,
shooting BB guns, playing tag, and hide and seek. The younger ones,
Isaac and Jacob usually have to stay behind since they are both
only four and five years old and much too slow to keep up with the
cool kids. They have to
stay
in the immediate front or back yards or the
swing-set. Sometimes the older
kids
take pity and hang out for a while
with them, but most of the time those three are gone from morning
until dusk.

She turns back to her current drawing
and tries to finish it before needing to wash up for dinner.
Another noise at her door lets her know that Huntley is
back.

“I said I’ll be down in a minute,
bud,” she says over her shoulder without turning around.

“That’s a new one,” a deep voice says.
Simon adds, “You’ve never called me ‘bud’ before.”

Sam spins
in her seat
to
find him closing in on her and smiling. She rubs at an itch on her
cheek and frowns.

“I thought you were Huntley,” she
acknowledges. “I know dinner’s almost ready. I’ll be along in a
sec.”

“I didn’t come up to tell you that
dinner is ready,” he says, standing at her shoulder. “I came up to
see how you were doing. You were upset earlier.”

“Fine. I
’m fine,
” she
replies.

Sam tries
to place a blank sheet furtively
over her sketch. Simon
places
his hand over hers,
though.

“What’s this?” Simon asks.

His eyes meet hers, and he
knows. She can see it. Simon pulls the sheet of
heavy weight
sketch paper free
and regards it pensively. His mouth turns down as his eyes slide to
hers again.

“Sam,” he says with
disappointment.

She starts picking
her
thumbnail
.

“Sorry,” she apologizes as Simon
squats onto his haunches beside her.

“Honey, you can’t do this. We’ve been
over it many times. This is a wrong turn for you, Sam. Don’t do
this to yourself again,” he says gently and places his hand on her
knee.

Sam swallows hard past the lump in her
throat. She takes the drawing from him and places it back on her
desk. She also tries not to think about his long, tanned fingers
squeezing her knee.

“I know,” she answers in a
squeak.

“Sam, look at me, honey,” he orders
softly.

She drags her gaze to his.
Simon gathers her hands into his and gives them a squeeze. He takes
a linen handkerchief from her desk and
wipes
at her cheek where she
must’ve smudged charcoal.

“Don’t do this again, Sam,” he orders
more firmly.

He picks up the drawing
again and holds it between them, forcing her gaze to drop down upon
it as he speaks in soft tones, his usual tone. Sam wills herself to
look at it again. The somber shadows and harsh lines, the
melancholy feeling that exudes from it is like the dark hand of the
grim reaper himself coming
from
the paper. The picture depicts a
hallway that is shadowy and foreboding, no end and no beginning. In
the center of the corridor is a young girl sitting directly in the
middle
of
the floor, her knees drawn to her chest, her arms wrapped
around them. The hue is black and gray charcoal monotones. The tips
of her fingers carry the remnants of blending those dark colors to
such blurry, muted tones. This is the style of art she succumbs to
when she is in the bowels of depression, when the depression is
so
profound
and has such a tight hold on her that she can’t breathe around
it like she’d felt earlier at the tree in the woods. Everything
that is on her mind, all of the negativity and anxiety of bad
memories come straight from her subconscious down into her
fingertips. It is like the darkness takes over, takes hold, and she
is helpless to stop it.