The McClane Apocalypse Book Five (43 page)

“Gee, now I feel totally reassured,” Reagan
mocks and gets a laugh from her husband. “Do you even know what
you’re doing?”

“Um…” he says with a shrug.

Reagan scowls and asks, “Want to walk me back
to the house?”

“You know I do, woman,” John confirms with a
sly grin. “Wanna’ go for a walk in the woods?”

“Spare me the details,” Kelly jokes and
punches John’s shoulder.

They both chuckle as John leads her away. He
immediately snatches her hand into his own, and Reagan takes
pleasure from his touch. She never flinches from John or Jacob.
Sometimes, she still flinches when other people reach for her. She
tries hard not to, but it still happens as a reflexive
reaction.

“We have a problem in town,” John tells her
quietly as they get further away from the others.

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve noticed a few things missing at the
build site. Your grandpa said that he thinks a box of our medical
supplies at the clinic was stolen, too, the other day when it was
just him and Simon working,” he explains.

A knot tightens in the pit of her stomach.
Years ago before the fall, this might be written off as nothing out
of the ordinary as far as petty crime goes. But not today.

“What was taken?” Reagan asks him.

The slowly sinking sun sneaks through the
dark cloud cover, kissing John’s blonde hair and high
cheekbones.

“We had some lumber and a few tools taken.
Doc says that the box of stuff stolen from the clinic wasn’t a big
deal, mostly bandages and homemade salves.”

“I guess we’ll have to go back to
keeping everything
at
the farm
instead,” Reagan says. “Did someone break a window or something
like that to get in?”

“No, and that’s the interesting thing. Nobody
in town saw anything and there weren’t any signs of a break-in at
the clinic. Somebody knew what they were doing.”

A chill runs unbidden down her spine. The
idea that someone in town has stolen from them is a frightening
proposition. They go to town all the time to help the people with
the wall build and at the clinic. She can’t believe that someone
would do this.

“I don’t understand. This just sucks,” Reagan
says. “Why would anyone do that?”

“We’re not sure who did it,” John
admits, the line of his
strong
mouth tightening, his blue eyes intense. “We have sentries
working the wall now and walking the beat at night. It doesn’t add
up. The wall is far from finished, but you’d think that someone in
town would’ve seen something.”

“What about the new people that Cory
invited to our
town
?”

John shakes his head and says, “We considered
that, but most of those people are old or just little kids with
their moms. I don’t see that they would have a benefit of doing it,
either. They’ve actually been pretty helpful in town. Everyone has
good things to say about their group.”

“Yeah, I haven’t heard anything bad about
them, either,” Reagan agrees with a frown.

“We’ll root them out,” John says.

For some reason, this statement scares
Reagan. She doesn’t want her husband in danger tracking down
thieves in town. If someone felt brave enough to steal from them,
then perhaps they may get ballsy enough to kill, as well.

“Maybe it was someone passing through the
area,” Reagan suggests.

John looks down at her and nods,
although Reagan can tell that he doesn’t believe this hypothesis.
When they arrive at the back porch, John presses a reassuring
kiss
to
her mouth and hugs
her.

“Don’t tell everyone else about this yet,” he
requests.

“Ok, why?” Reagan
inquires
because that kind of dictate is unlike the
way they do things on the farm. Everything is shared, especially
when the information could entail danger.

“We don’t want Cory to go into town and take
care of this on his own. He’s still kind of intense,” John tells
her.

“Hopefully he doesn’t show that intensity
with Paige on this run. He might scare her,” Reagan suggests,
standing on the first step so that she can be eye level with her
husband.

John chuckles and says, “Yeah, that
might not be good. I’m sure they’ll be
fine
. His intensity is what will keep them alive if
they run into trouble, which is why we sent him.”

“Do you think they will?”

“Nah, don’t even worry about it. They’re not
in danger,” John lies badly.

Reagan smirks at him and nods. He presses
another kiss to her forehead, squeezes her waist, and turns to
go.

A murmur of thunder off in the distance
echoes down through their valley, their safe and secure little
hideaway from the rest of the violent world. Reagan looks skyward
at the storm moving in and sends up a quick prayer to ask for the
kids’ safe returns. She hopes the worst thing they run into in the
city is finding shelter from this storm.

Chapter Eighteen

Cory

“Behind you!” Paige screams.

Cory barely gets a fast glance over his
shoulder before some freak lands on his back. Without letting go of
Paige, he elbows the guy to the chin. It’s not as
effective
as he’d like it to be,
however, because he’s lying flat on his stomach trying desperately
to haul Paige to
safety
from the
wide hole she’d fallen into. He can’t let her go or she’ll fall to
her death. There isn’t anything else for her to hold onto but him.
He’s her only way out of the pit. A trap set there on
purpose.

“Get off him, you asshole!” Paige yells
angrily as she tries to grasp his hand with both of hers.

The guy has to be close to his size in
weight, making it difficult to breathe. It is times like this when
Cory is glad that he works out so hard in his downtime or he
would’ve dropped her already. They are four stories up, so she’d
likely die if she didn’t just end up in a wheelchair for the rest
of her life.

“Cory,” she pleads shakily as her legs kick
about below her in an attempt to find a foothold on something. Cory
isn’t about to tell her that it’s just empty space all the way to
the marble floor way below. There is nowhere to place either of her
feet.

Her light eyes sear into his with fear for
her life and probably his own. The man on his back wraps a sinewy
forearm around Cory’s neck. He’s going to choke him out.

“Cory,” Paige says again, tears falling from
her frightened eyes.

“I’ve got you,” Cory assures her, ignoring
the beast on his back.

He tucks his chin tightly to his chest
so the creep can’t lock his arm and
completely
cut off his flow of air. With all his
strength, Cory pushes upward lifting the man on his back as he
goes. His muscles strain and shake with the weight he’s hauling
with Paige in his grip and the man on his back. She can’t weigh
more than a buck twenty, but the man is roughly close to one
eighty. It is the equivalent of bench pressing about four hundred
pounds, but there’s no way in hell he’s letting her go.

“When I’m done with you, I’ll take your
woman,” the man taunts in Cory’s ear.

With a roar of rage, Cory yanks her to
the ledge where she grasps on firmly. One more tug and she’s pulled
halfway onto the edge of the broken floor and can scramble up to
her knees. Cory shoves backward, elbows the man in the ribs and
dislodges his attacker. He gasps a few times to gain air into his
lungs again. He even stumbles once. The man is clambering noisily
behind him. Cory turns to face his opponent, still seeing stars
from the lack of air. The man is close to his age and clean-cut in
appearance, even clean-shaven. His head is shaved, his clothing is
neat, and he doesn’t seem like the usual suspect he’s run into over
the years. Usually men like this look like homeless wretches down
on their luck since the apocalypse hit and desperate enough to
steal, rape, kill if need be. He almost resembles a yuppy college
jock on roids. He’s wearing a polo shirt and corduroy jacket. His
khakis have a stain on the left knee, but other than that, he’s
well-groomed and relatively
unsoiled
.

Cory reaches for his sidearm since he’d set
his rifle in the corner when Paige had gone through the hole. He
barely has it unholstered when the man is on him. Unfortunately,
the man shoves him again before he can even get it drawn all the
way. This time the creep’s wielding a knife and has knocked Cory’s
handgun to the ground where it skids a few feet away. He hadn’t
expected his foe to be so fast. He figured for more time when he’d
tossed the thug off his back. Fine. This fight is going hand to
hand. He has no problem with that. He’d just like to be a little
less foggy-brained.

“Think you’re tough, huh, punk?” Roid Rage
asks. “I’m gonna gut you like a pig in front of your woman.”

Cory doesn’t respond but offers a sardonic,
lopsided grin of defiance. In his peripheral vision, he sees Paige
scrambling away on her hands and knees.

The man jabs at him as the fog clears the
rest of the way from Cory’s head. He sizes up his foe and slows his
breathing to control the fight and his movements. Cory doesn’t
bother to take out his own dagger, the one he’d used quite a few
times during the period when he was gone from the farm. It was not
just used for skinning squirrels. He jumps deftly to the side, now
that he has oxygen and his wits back. The man stabs again toward
him.

“I’ll show your woman what a bitch you are,”
the man brags.

Cory fast jabs the guy to the jaw,
making direct, square contact. The yuppy staggers and
lunges
recklessly. Cory punches him
again. He staggers but doesn’t go down, which surprises Cory just a
little. This foe may need a slug to go down and not from his fist.
Roid Rage’s pupils are dilated as if he’s just been huffing
something.

“That all you got, boy?” Roid Rage asks.

Cory doesn’t engage with the shit talking but
dodges the knife again. This time, though the man’s knife is able
to make contact with his stomach. It feels like a long bee sting
across his middle. He’s barely been nicked, but it pisses Cory off
just the same. Paige screams with fear for him.

“She’ll be doing a lot of that later on
tonight,” the man taunts with confidence. “I’ll have her screamin’
my name by the end of this day, asshole. She’ll be screamin’ all
night long.”

The corner of Cory’s eye twitches. This
bastard means to violate her if he wins this fight. The man lunges
again, this time with less finesse and skill. Cory moves straight
in on his opponent. Whatever the man is on has made him fast but
not necessarily smarter or better-trained. They are locked up where
the man can’t stab at him anymore. Roid Rage tries to head-butt
him, but Cory dodges the impact. The guy punches Cory in the
stomach where he’s been stabbed,
obviously
thinking the
blow
will incapacitate him. Roids doesn’t know the
conditioning that Cory and the rest of the men put themselves
through. He
simply
tightens his
stomach muscles and takes the hit
easily
.

He slides his arm through the other
man’s,
effectively
using an
arm-bar technique to disable the man’s right arm and the knife.
Then he spins them both until he’s behind the man. He swiftly takes
the serrated dagger before his enemy even knows what’s happened. He
plunges the
semi-dull
knife into
the other man’s chest.

“Not with you she won’t, motherfucker,” Cory
swears and stabs him again, this time to the heart.

He gives the bastard a good shove,
sending him into the dark pit of hell that he’d likely constructed,
the pit that almost took Paige’s life. The man’s dead body plummets
to the ground with the knife still sticking out of his chest and
lands with a loud thump at the bottom. Cory cocks his head to the
side inspecting his work and mostly making sure that the man
is
indeed
dead. Then he steps
back. When he looks for Paige, she’s still cowering over in the
corner but has his rifle in her hands.

“Uh…hm…,” Cory feels like he should apologize
for the murder scene but awkwardly shrugs instead. What the hell
can he say now anyway? He killed the dude in front of her. He’d do
it again. He hadn’t wanted to do something like that in front of
her on this trip, but there wasn’t exactly much of a choice. She
knows he has a dark side. She’d witnessed it the first time they
met. Cory just didn’t really want to show it to her again. He’s
been working on being nicer to her. John is afraid that she will
convince Simon to leave the farm with her if she is miserable. His
mentor had basically threatened him to be nicer, and he’d taken
well to the suggestion. Plus, lately he hasn’t actually wanted to
be mean to her. He has had a lot of other feelings that he also
can’t act on, though.

She’s staring at the gaping hole the man
disappeared into and she almost fell to her death through. Then she
runs to him and flings herself against his chest. Her grip on the
front of his jacket is enough to tear it to shreds. She’s shaking
like a leaf and breathing hard.

“Hey, it’s ok,” Cory tells her and pats her
back uncomfortably. Where’s her brother when she needs him? He
wishes they would’ve brought Reagan with them. Of course, she’s not
exactly a consoling, tender woman. Plus, little Doc could’ve fallen
through that floor and been the one killed by the trap. He takes
his rifle from her, slinging it over his shoulder again.