The McClane Apocalypse Book Five (30 page)

“Like what?” Paige
inquires
as
a cool
breeze tufts her hair around. She isn’t wearing one of her
bandanas today and hasn’t braided it either.

“Like discussing your affinity for
moonshine?” Cory says, drawing curious stares.

Paige slugs him in the arm and nearly shouts,
“Jerk! You are such a dick. Oh, Hannah…”

Cory grabs his sister and whips her around,
covering her mouth with his large hand. Paige shoves away quickly
enough without Simon coming to her aid.

“If you two are done behaving like lunatics,
we need to work on this,” Simon reminds them.

“Cory started it,” Paige
sulks
and steps further away from Cory,
who looks affronted by the accusation.

The morning chores are already done,
breakfast is long over, and Derek and Kelly have gone to town to
work on the wall.

“I’d like to go over contingency plans with
you,” he tells his sister.

“Right,” Cory agrees. “We haven’t covered
that yet. We’ve gone over some of the basic hand signals. Remember
them?”

Paige
purses
her dark lips and kicks her boot around in
the dirt. “Sort of.”

Cory chuckles and says, “That’s fine. We can
do them again tonight.”

Paige makes a disgusted face and rolls her
eyes. “Why don’t we just do it my way and avoid people?”

Her comment angers Simon and he says,
“Because, Paige, that’s not always possible. We try to avoid
people, but…”

“Well, I don’t avoid them,” Cory
says
with
a smirk.

Paige is quick to jump in and jab with, “No,
you just go around banging them.”

“You’ve seen me without most of my clothes
on. Can you blame them?” Cory jests, earning an eye roll from
Paige.

Simon shoots him a look of impatience
for joking around and continues, “
Sometimes
we’re going to run into other people.
Most of the time they are harmless, but others are dangerous. You
need to be on the same page as us. You need to mimic our movements,
follow the plans and also understand us if we can’t talk to
you.”

He leads her to the picnic table in Grams’s
rose garden a few yards away and takes a map from his back pocket.
It is wrinkled, tattered at the edges, and covered in red ink
marks. It’s a map of the city of Nashville, one they’ve used many
times. She sits, and Simon goes around to the other side where he
can stretch over the table to show her different places. Cory
stands beside Paige, resting one foot on the seat beside her and
his elbow on his bent knee. She looks like she wishes that Cory
would have joined him on the other side.

“These marked areas are safe places.
When we go to the bigger cities, we always try to get a map and
mark very clearly the places that we’ve scouted and deemed as
clear,” Simon tells her, pointing to
individual
red stars.

“That could change,” she says smartly and
glances up at him from across the picnic table. “Just because they
were safe a few months ago doesn’t mean they still are.”

“Yes, that very well could be the truth of
it,” Cory says. “But we’ll check out the area when we go in. And
you should, too, if you get separated from us. Don’t just assume
that it’s safe because we’ve marked the map as it being a safe
zone.”

Paige nods with agreement before Cory
continues, pointing at the map in front of them.

“See here? This is the downtown
district. We’ll try to stay out of there. Those are usually
dangerous and still filled with people or scavengers. Some cities I
was in were
dangerous
in the
downtown districts, but some were total ghost towns. Now we know
already that Nashville is populated with people here and there.
That’s why we have the safe zones marked. We’ll stick to the
outskirts and work in our two teams.”

Simon tries not to flinch as he remembers
that he has to take Sam with him.

“This is a pretty big city, sis,” Simon tells
her. “You’ll have a compass like the rest of us and a map. If you,
for some reason beyond what Cory and I can control, get separated
from us, you’ll go to the safe place depending on what section of
the city you’re in at the time.”

“Ok, that makes sense,” Paige says with a nod
and studies the map. “My friends and I always had a plan like that,
too.”

“Good, then you’re used to it. There are a
few stadiums there, Vanderbilt University, some landmarks like the
Parthenon…” Cory rambles.

His sister glances up at him. Cory looks
directly down into her upturned face and stumbles on his words,
seems to forget what he was saying. Simon regards his friend,
catches his attention, scowls at him which gets returned.

Then Cory keeps going, turning his eyes back
to the map instead of Simon’s sister, “Anyway, let’s go over some
of the more important places, the ones where you’d meet for a
rendezvous if the shit hits and we get separated.”

“We won’t,” Paige says and looks up at Cory
again.

This time,
his
friend frowns deeply when he looks at Paige. Even though the sun is
glinting off of her red hair and high cheekbones and she looks
fresh and
pretty
, Simon knows
what his friend’s frown is about. Cory’s worried that she’ll get
separated from him or hurt or worse. He can read the hint of
anxiety in Cory’s dark eyes. Simon isn’t too worried. She’s going
to be
with
a one-man army
killing
machine
. He’s very
confident his friend will keep his sister perfectly safe. He’s a
heck of a lot more worried about his own role in keeping Samantha
safe.

“There are gonna be situations, things we
don’t plan for,” Cory tells her sternly. “You need to pay attention
to what we’re telling you and take this seriously.”

“I am taking it serious, but you have to
remember my past and how I got here. You aren’t the only one who
knows how to survive on your own. I didn’t always go with my
friends on runs. Sometimes we got separated. Sometimes I was alone,
and I’m still alive. Making a run to one city isn’t a big deal to
me. I traveled all over the east coast to get here. I didn’t have a
gun or skills or help other than my two friends,” Paige explains
and turns back to the map. “Do you guys usually run into
trouble?”

Simon looks at Cory, and they read each
other’s minds.

“Yes,” they answer in unison.

Simon explains in more detail, “In the bigger
cities, yes. In the small, surrounding towns, not usually. It’s
important for you to know where to go, what to do and how to handle
yourself if you get separated from him or he gets shot.”

“It was only a flesh wound,” Cory mimics in a
British accent.

Simon chuckles. They’d found a copy of
a Monty Python movie at a video store once and brought it back to
the farm. They’d asked permission to use the television and
old-fashioned
DVD
player in the
music room. Those two things never get used, especially not
frivolously. Derek had insisted they watch it, though. Apparently
he used to be a Monty Python fan. Simon found the dry humor mildly
amusing, but Derek,
Kelly
and
Cory had laughed their asses off. And now Cory’s repeating one of
the lines from the movie. His sister just looks at Cory likes he’s
a moron.

Then she asks, “You’ve been shot before? Is
that what you mean?”

“Grazed. Not really shot. No big deal,” Cory
says.

“On their way to the farm when Kelly and John
picked him up. Derek was shot, too. You’re looking at Cory 2.0,”
Simon jokes. “Didn’t you know? He’s some sort of invincible badass
now.”

Cory just chuckles and punches
Simon
in
the shoulder.

“How many people have you shot?” Paige asks,
earning a huge grimace from Cory.

“Paige,” Simon scolds, “that’s an
inappropriate question.”

“And none of your business, as usual, you
snoop,” Cory adds in for good measure.

She crosses her arms over her chest and
puckers her lips at Cory with distaste. His friend’s gaze drops to
Paige’s chest, where she has inadvertently pushed the scooped
neckline of her baggy, dingy brown shirt lower and her breasts
higher. A sudden flair of righteous temper ignites within Simon,
and he clears his voice loudly and jams his finger at the map.

“Hey, let’s get this done!” he barks
angrily, which shocks his sister and friend to attention. He
glances over his shoulder to find Sam and Hannah regarding him
strangely. He just frowns and turns back to the map. “Look here,
Paige. If we’re on the north side of the city, which we probably
won’t be too much, and you get separated, then head over here and
meet us at the James K. Polk tomb. We’ll probably skirt around that
area because there is a small community up there trying to make it,
so we don’t want to seem like a threat and start a war with them.
We’ll come in
from
the northwest
side and filter in from there.”

Paige asks, “How will I know for sure that
you guys can find me if we get separated? I don’t understand.”

Cory answers, “We’ll come for you. If
we can’t
because
we’re… dead or
something, then the Rangers will come for you. If no radio calls
come
in to
the farm at the
allotted twelve hour mark, then the guys know to get the
contingency plans rolling. They’ll know we’re in trouble. You’d be
picked up within twenty-four hours. They hit each of the pick-up
zones, unless we’re all at the same spot. You’ll carry enough in
your pack to get you by for at least that amount of time. You just
have to make it one day, or less.”

“I can do that, no problem. It’s better than
three years.”

Simon continues showing his sister
where they should meet should a situation arise by pointing at
different red stars on the map. She pays more attention this time.
Cory pays less attention to his sister’s body. And Simon completely
ignores Sam who has come to sit by him on his side of the table. A
short time later, they finish explaining other contingency plans to
Paige and how to handle
adverse
situations. Then Simon tells his sister that he wants to show
her how to make a particular tincture he’s been working on.
However, Cory changes his plans.

“Take Sam and show her,” Cory says. “I’m
gonna take Paige into the woods with me and work with her on
maneuvers.”

“Oh yeah? Maneuvers, huh?” Simon asks,
remembering the heat of his friend’s gaze on his sister.

“Just tactical
maneuvers
, man,” Cory says apologetically and holds
up one hand.

Simon isn’t in a position to argue with
Cory since John has put him in charge of Paige’s
training
, which is fine. But he sends his friend a
warning look anyway before they roll up the map and rise.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t want to hang out any longer with Sam than
he has to, either. He would’ve preferred it if she would’ve
followed Hannah to wherever she’s gone off.

“Sounds good to me,” Paige agrees,
oblivious to the meaning
behind
their exchange, and leaves with Cory.

Without looking at Sam, he says, “You don’t
have to come with me to the med shed to work. You can go and do
whatever.”

“That’s fine,” she says. “I want to help. I
like working in the shed with you.”

“First I need to go to the barn to get some
garlic,” he tells her. “I think Sue said she has garlic hanging out
there.”

“Ok, I’ll come, too,” Sam volunteers.

Simon winces and tells her, “Why don’t you go
and get me about a dozen onions from the cold storage in the
cellar?”

“Oh, sure,” Sam answers so amiably and with a
big smile.

Simon jogs out to the barn where he spends
way more time than is necessary to look for the strands of hanging
garlic. Then he grabs about six hot peppers Sue has curing in
another area. They’re still fairly fresh and haven’t dried out yet.
When he gets to the shed, Sam is already there waiting for him and
sitting on a stool at the side counter.

“So what kind of project are you working on
today, Mr. Mad Scientist?” she asks with spunk.

Simon removes his hat, runs a hand through
his hair and sets his produce on the counter.

“It’s an herbal tincture, the antibiotic
kind,” he responds and takes a bucket from under the counter. “We
need ginger and horseradish root, too.”

“Okey-dokey, sir,” she says with a salute and
leaves to retrieve them from the back shelf.

He and Doc spend a lot of time grinding herbs
and curing them so that they can be stored in small glass jars in
the shed for this exact sort of use. The tiny sprite returns a
moment later with two quart-sized jars of herbs.

“What’s this?” she asks and picks up the book
he’d left on the counter the other day.

“I found it the last time Cory and I went on
a run to Clarksville. There was an acupuncturist’s office over
there that I raided. Most of the bottled pills were gone, but I
found some books and a few boxes of surplus herbs in the back. Some
of the books are written in Chinese, so we’re not sure what they
are yet. Speak Mandarin?”

“Nope, you’re outta’ luck,” she quips. “I
barely got passing grades in English class. I hated it. I hated
most of school actually. I just always doodled in my classes.”

Simon shoots her a smile as she checks out a
book in English.