The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (64 page)

Simon glances out of the
corner of his eyes at Sam. She’s chewing a long, thin blade of
grass. Her small, dark
mouth
puckering as she nibbles it.

“We’d find water when we
could and store it in jugs. Then we’d try to heat some on a fire or
on the rare occasion on a stove that actually worked. Then we’d
pour it into whatever we could find and use that to scrub up.
It
was pretty
primitive
, to say the least. When there
wasn’t a whole lot of water to go around, we did community sharing
of that wash water between the four of us. You do
not
want to go last, let
me tell you.”

They all laugh as Paige climbs down
the rails of the fence.

“It was more important to make sure we
had drinking water, so we tried to limit washing to once a week
unless there was a creek or lake or pond nearby,” she
adds.

Simon doesn’t laugh at this. Neither
does Sam. His sister’s harrowing journey just to make it to the
farm is like nothing that he’d ever experienced or even heard of
before.

“Alright! I’m off,” she
announces. “I’ll meet you
at
the cabin later, ‘kay?”

He gives his sister a grin
before she
leaves,
her long legs sprinting for the house. He’s so
glad she’s here with him now. Simon frowns as he remembers Cory.
He’s sure that Cory would like his sister, too. They’d probably get
along great. They are actually a lot alike. Simon misses his friend
greatly and worries that he’s never coming home.

“We should head in, too,” he says to
Sam a few minutes later. He hops down lithely, reaches up for
Sam.

“Get out of the way,”
she
retorts
. “I can jump down, too.”

“You could sprain your ankle. You
really shouldn’t do stuff like that, ya’ know,” he tells her with a
grim expression.

“Simon,” Sam says
dramatically.

He just jerks his arms in
front of him with impatience, letting her know to take the help.
She gives him a snarky,
little
lopsided
grimace. He can’t help it. He
returns it with a big grin. She places her hands on his shoulders
and allows him to help her.

“You know I jump off the horses
without your help, sir,” she remarks.

“I know,” he says
with
a frown. “You
really shouldn’t do that, either.”

Sam actually laughs up at him. She’s
definitely not laughing with him because he’s not laughing at all.
She’s laughing at him as if he’s being ridiculous. Her insolence is
slightly irritating.

“You’re being rather dramatic, don’t
ya’ think?” she asks.

She hasn’t stepped back,
and neither has he. Her hands are still at his shoulders.
He is hyper aware of her standing so
close, so he backs up quickly.

“And you are being purposely defiant,
young lady,” he reprimands and gets laughed at again.

“Young lady? Really?
You’re so silly,” she mocks
arrogantly.

Sam doesn’t say anything
else but walks around him and toward the house. He is left
following her, which
is not a good
idea
. Her shorts are too short. He’d like
to tell her this, too, but doesn’t need any more of her
impertinence tonight.

Reagan blasts out the back door before
they even get to the house.

“Hey!” she yells at them. “You and
Grandpa gotta go, so get your ass in here and clean up!”

He regards Sam before they both jog
the rest of the way to the house. They ditch their shoes quickly
and go in.

“What’s going on?” he asks of
Reagan.

“Anita’s labor started a
few hours ago. Just got
off
the radio with Paul,” she answers.

“Oh, ok. Yes,
fine
. I’ll grab a
five minute shower first. Be right back,” he stammers. Condo Paul
has a
radio
and so does Roy in town in case they come under
attack.

For some
reason,
he can
hear Reagan and Sam chuckling as he ascends the stairs at lightning
speed to the second floor. Less than ten minutes later, he has
showered and is wearing clean duds and ready to go. There is a big
meeting taking place in the kitchen.

“Change of plans,” Reagan tells him
quietly as he comes to stand next to her.

Paige has also joined them
with damp hair but clean clothing. Most of the
time,
she showers downstairs
in the bathroom attached to the bedroom where she and Talia used to
stay.

“What’s going on? Aren’t we leaving?”
he asks and notices that nearly everyone with the exception of the
children are in the kitchen. Doc is conversing with John and
Kelly.

Reagan answers, “You’re taking Sam and
your sister. I’m going with Grandpa. You guys will drop us off in
town on your way to the condo community. We’ll radio Kelly when
we’re ready for him to come back to town and pick us back
up.”

“Why? I don’t understand,” Simon
admits.

“There’s a problem in town,” Reagan
says. “The new sheriff called on the radio and said that there was
a small explosion, nothing set on purpose, just some guys screwing
around with shit they shouldn’t have been. Anyway, two of them are
pretty fucked up. A few others aren’t as bad, but the sheriff said
there are six men and one woman who are burned. So, Grandpa and I
will need to get there immediately. Guess they’re burned pretty
badly. Multiple severe burn victims in one day. No wonder doctors
are skinny. Peeling off layers of charred flesh is fucking
gross.”

“But I’ve never delivered a baby by
myself,” he says nervously, ignoring Reagan’s colorful language.
“I’ve only assisted.”

“Yeah, but you’ve
assisted
probably
a few dozen times. You’re ready,” she says. “Trust me, I’d rather
trade
you
places and not have to treat the burn victims, but from what
the sheriff said, it’s
a bad
scene in town. We gotta’ go.”

Doc comes over and lays a
hand
to
his
back to offer comfort and support and probably an ounce of his
strength.

“You’ll be fine, son,” Doc
says. “She’s had a normal pregnancy so far. No problems. No
complications. She’ll be
fine
and so will you. You’ll have
Samantha for help, Kelly as your guard and your sister.”

He looks at Paige. His
sister doesn’t
look
too thrilled about this arrangement. Her eyes
widen, she grimace and shakes her head ever so subtly at Simon. Doc
takes him to the hallway where they won’t be overheard.

“Your sister needs this.
She needs to get over her squeamishness, Simon. She has to start
helping more in the clinic. We need all the hands we can get.
She’ll be
fine
, too. She’s a smart girl,” Doc explains his
decision.

“Yes, sir,” Simon answers.
There isn’t much else he can say. Doc has
the final say
in how things are
handled, and if he thinks Simon can deliver this baby into the
world without his assistance, then he can. “I’ll do my best. I
won’t make any mistakes, sir.”

“I know that, son,” Doc acknowledges.
“That’s why I’m sending you.”

Simon feels that one all the way
through to his marrow. Doc’s confidence in him gives his fatigued
body a surge of energy, his harrowed mind a boost of
empowerment.

When they are all in the SUV and
moving at a very fast pace, John driving, Doc tells Simon that he’d
personally packed his medical bag. He’d put everything Simon could
possibly need to deliver Anita’s baby safely. There is even local
anesthesia in there for an emergency cesarean section. Simon prays
it doesn’t come to that.

“Yes, sir,” Simon answers solidly.
Their group breaks into a planning conversation while he mulls over
the coming evening.

Sam sits next to him in
the
rear
while everyone else sits in the middle and front. He’s
nervous. He doesn’t feel ready for this, but it’s going to happen.
Life has a way of doing that. It moves forward with or without a
person and whether or not they are ready and have given it
permission.

“You can do it,” Samantha says
quietly.

Her small hand covers his,
and Simon takes
a huge amount
of
reassurance from her faith in
him.
He looks down at her upturned
face so full of trust and hope and unabashed support of
him.

He gives her a short nod and says,
“Thanks, Sam. Thanks for having faith in me.”

“It’s not faith, Simon,”
she corrects, regarding him through her thick black lashes.
“You
can
do it.
You don’t need me to tell you.”

Simon bites the inside of
his cheek and drags his gaze away from her. The innocence permeates
from her, draws him in like she does every time he’s
around
her. He’s
never brought up the kiss she’d
bestowed
upon him in the side yard
before he’d gone on the Target raid. She hadn’t brought it up
again, either, so Simon just figures it was a fluke and that she
didn’t mean it the way that he took it. Sam always calls him her
best friend, so she obviously doesn’t have romantic feelings for
him. But sometimes when she looks up into his eyes, Simon thinks
there is something more than kinship there in her blue gaze. When
he permits himself, which isn’t often, Simon can still remember the
way her soft lips had felt against his own and the sweet smell of
her skin that teased his nostrils. This is
exactly
why he doesn’t allow
himself to think too long about Sam’s kiss that he’d mistaken for
something else. She’s
a huge
distraction. How the heck could Sam even think of
him in a romantic way? He’d
failed
her on every level possible. He’s
just thankful that she can even think of him as a friend, let alone
her best friend.

Sam holds his hand all the
way to town where they drop Doc and Reagan in front of the medical
center, along with
John,
who will guard it. There are men from
town
waiting. Some
women linger and are crying. Some of the men are
armed,
the new
town militia. There are people milling
around,
townspeople worried about
the burn victims. Kelly jumps in the driver’s seat and speeds them
along to the condo village. His sister has climbed over the seat
and
rides
next to Kelly. They talk quietly in the front. Kelly says
something that makes his sister laugh loud and obnoxiously. Kelly
is probably trying to take her mind off of the task that awaits
her. Simon and Sam have agreed to stay in the back without verbally
communicating it.

The moments tick by as each
mile passes way too quickly. They pull up to the gates of the condo
community, met by Paul and offered entrance
by
him and his teenage son. They
are whisked along to the condo where Anita and her husband and
children reside. Armed guards are walking their patrol route along
their own fence of which Paul had overseen the construction. It had
taken them nearly two years to complete. Simon knows it will take
just as long to complete the much larger one in town. Their system
is effective, though, and no one discourages the decisions they
make within their small community because they are thriving, which
is more than most can say these days.

They disembark from the
Suburban and file into the spacious condo. Paul and Kelly stand
outside, near the front where Kelly will stay until it is time for
them to leave again. It doesn’t take long to find Anita. Her cries
of agony can be heard from the foyer. Her husband, the ex-Navy
Seal, meets them in the hallway and leads the three of them to
the
first-floor
master bedroom.

“Oh, Simon!” Anita calls out to him
from the bed. “Thank God! I thought I was bringing this baby into
the world on my own. Or with his help.”

She points to her husband as if she
finds him offensive. He hangs his head in shame. Such is the way on
the day of a baby’s birth. Most women can’t stand the sight of
their husbands as if it is their fault they are in the situation to
begin with, and nobody argues because all men value their lives and
their testicles.

“Everything will be just fine, Anita,”
Simon tells her in a calm voice, much calmer than he feels, as he
squeezes her hand. “We’re here to help you.”

He’s heard Doc say similar things
before, so he takes a cue from history and tries the same approach.
It works because she passes a barely there smile to him.

“Let us just scrub up and get ready,
all right?” he says.

They use the master bath to
clean up. Water in the condo community works, although the system
is not always reliable or steady, and the pressure sure
isn’t
strong
. They’d hand dug wells, four to be exact, that feed the
twelve homes. The pumps and water storage tanks run on wind
turbines and solar attached to the roofs of each condo. Paul is
planning on digging at least three more wells. Their families are
expanding every year with people finding them and taking shelter
there.