The McClane Apocalypse: Book One (6 page)
Her shoulder wound is open enough that she can feel blood running down her chest, pooling into her bra as her face wound, which she’d barely had to time to even address, drips onto the console and passenger seat as she leans. Her stomach lacerations and deep wounds must be seeping, as well, because her waistband is feeling damper by the minute. She gives the back seat a cursory glance, sees a wool blanket, grabs it up and wraps it around her shoulders. Reagan decides she’ll stop again in a few hours to address her bleeding and clicks off the dome light. She starts the car again, not using the headlights until she’s a few more miles down the road and sure that there’s no other traffic. Reaching over, she snatches up the sandwich and eats it. And again there is no flavor. She can appreciate the simple nourishment that her body will take from it and the fact that it will help to keep her awake for the long trip.
Once moving again, she feels safer just in the simple act of making slow progression. Some of the roads Dr. Krue has routed are difficult to find in the dark unknown. But she sticks strictly to his route, knowing he only had her best interest and safety at heart. She tries her cell phone a couple of times but gets nothing, no signal, no ringing on the other end, just nothing. Deciding that listening to bad radio is better than falling asleep at the wheel, Reagan clicks on the satellite system radio. There isn’t much at all coming through, but she does find a sketchy, static-ridden news channel where dreary, updated reports are being given. It doesn’t exactly lend hope to an already grim situation.
“...flooding is occurring everywhere along the East Coast... tens of millions... Canada... state of emergency... California latest state hit...” the reporter is trying his best to be composed, but his voice along with radio coverage is cracking.
“California hit? What the hell does that mean?” Reagan wonders aloud to the empty car.
“parts of Arizo... Mexico and Texas nearly gone... massive waves... cliffs falling into the sea, just as has been predicted for years... many more millions dead on the west coast... President to speak at midnight...” The radio coverage seems to be getting worse instead of better, and the static is so loud that Reagan lowers the volume. She needs a respite from the darkness into which she is being drowned anyways.
Hundreds of millions of people in Asia and Europe are dead. Reagan doesn’t want to dwell on the same thing happening in America, the country she so loves. She wonders where her father could be on this night of misery. He’d last been stationed in Japan, though he travelled quite frequently throughout Europe on military business. She’s pretty sure that he was stateside just a few weeks ago. The government had suspended air travel after the European stock market crashed following the third tsunami strike which took out nearly the entire coastlines of Great Britain, France and even parts of Spain. The high levels of active radiation from the damn nukes were also too much of a risk to allow travel. Even peacekeepers and volunteers from the Red Cross were not permitted to fly overseas to help the victims of WWIII or the tsunamis. Satellites had tracked what scientists were calling rogue waves that had hit the Russian coastline, but naturally the Russians had denied it ever happening. The military has been running non-stop flights bringing our soldiers back to America. The last time Reagan had spoken to her grandfather he’d relayed that her father was flying out the next morning. He’d been in Germany of all places. She just hopes he made it out and made it back to the United States safely. Even if he did, he’ll not be able to come to the farm with the rest of them. His duties in the military will keep him away now more than ever. The military will have to be deployed or the country will fall to chaos just like so much of the rest of the world as Dr. Krue had confidently predicted.
She looks at the dashboard clock; it is already 1:30 a.m., so she is left to assume that the reporting is on some sort of repetitive loop.
“So much for the President’s speech,” Reagan remarks sardonically. He isn’t really such a bad guy. He’s done some good since taking office, bringing America back into super-power status. It had been years since anyone had thought of the United States as a super-power, but he’d changed all of that with strengthening the military might of the U.S. and drastically reducing trade with China and Mexico. They hadn’t taken well to it, but manufacturing had increased ten-fold and the country slowly started coming out of its debt-ridden status. People felt optimistic for the first time in a long time, they looked up to their president and the government in general. With having so many members of the government killed during the Syrian terrorist attack on the capitol years ago, there was a huge turnover of senators and congressmen. It wasn’t such a bad thing, and it was something that had needed done for many generations. Perhaps not in the exact manner that it had happened, though. Term limits had immediately been enacted while positive progress had sent the country in the right direction. And now, in the year of our Lord 2031, when we were finally getting our shit together the world as everyone knows it is ending.
All she wants is to be in the safety of her family’s arms. Reagan’s thoughts drift down memory lane and the clench in her stomach is from the heartache of missing her family and not from the stab wounds. She can almost hear the musical laughter of her sister Hannah. She is simply angelic. Everything about her is soft, light, feminine. Her flaxen blonde hair always hangs poker straight almost to her waist and her skin is always pale. She is very nearly the exact opposite of Reagan in every way. The girl is insufferably graceful where Reagan can and does trip over her own two feet all the time. And Hannah is two years younger to boot. Hannah is the right hand of their Grams. That girl follows Grams all around the large kitchen at the farm and had from the minute their father had dropped them there. She loves cooking, and her one chore on the farm outdoors is taking care of the chickens. Those stupid chickens love her, too. Wherever she goes, they follow her around as if she were the mother hen. Unfortunately, she also got her fashion sense from Grams. On most days she wears long house-dresses of just plain white with her hair in a simple braid. Very rarely does she ever wear shoes or socks, unless there is a foot of snow on the ground. The kitchen is where she could always be found anyway, so it was a shoes optional area. She and Hannah do share one passion other than their family and that is music. Hannah plays the piano as well as any concert pianist, and Reagan would play along on her battered, old guitar or on the piano with her. Their love of music and each other is so powerful that Reagan pines for her sister and her comforting presence.
Voices on the radio come in clear again, prompting Reagan to turn it back up. “...there aren’t going to be UN troops to even be deployed. This just confirms what a haphazard decision that was to have them stationed in upstate New York. Those were supposed to be our peacekeepers in times like this. Wow, this could be bad. This could get really bad. We’ve all been witnesses to what a mess Europe has become with the rioting, mass looting, military rule and everything else that’s been going on over there. Thankfully, the last of our deployed military in Syria have been brought home, just last week. That war is no longer even relevant. I just don’t know. I don’t know. But we are still the United States. We will persevere and act civilized, the rule of law...”
“Rule of law is out the window, woman. What an idiot,” Reagan chides and clicks off the radio. Dr. Krue, dear Dr. Krue, had also told her and Uma that the police and eventually the military will abandon their posts to be able to better protect their own families. He’d said that men would not report for duty, leaving their own families unprotected and vulnerable. Reagan had also not thought this would happen. She may be gifted when it comes to medicine, but not when it comes to real life. He’d been so right about so much.
It’s been almost four days since she’s spoken with anyone back home, and her mind is going frantic with worry that something could have happened to them, too. The thought of her precious family being in danger gives her the push she needs to keep going. An RV zooms past her going the other way at about ninety miles per hour if she was to guess. Knowing how the deer move in these desolate, wooded areas off of the main interstates, Reagan keeps her speed to about sixty. If she hits one, she’d rather not have it ruin the car, rendering it useless. Her sister, Sue, had hit a deer in Kentucky a few years ago and totaled her Honda.
Susan is the oldest and naturally the most serious sister. The burden of feeling responsible for the two younger sisters must have been heavy for such a young girl who’d also lost a mother while trying to find her own way in the world. For all of their disagreements over the years, Sue is the first person who Reagan goes to for advice. She is six years Reagan’s senior and acts like she is thirty years her senior. Sue is simply an old soul. She is earthy, motherly, a natural beauty with light brown, lustrous hair that lays in smooth waves. She and her husband, Derek, have two children, Arianna and Justin. They are the best kids, and Reagan loves being their aunt. Sue and the children are already staying at the farm. Thank God Derek had insisted on them going there while Sue waited for the birth of their third child. He is stationed out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, with his younger brother whom Reagan has never met. She knows they are both Army Rangers and do a lot of secretive type missions that Sue isn’t permitted to know about. Reagan had received many a late night call from her older, independent sister when she just needed to unload her burden of stress and cry out her worries about her husband on Reagan’s ear. But she has no way of knowing where the two brothers are and whether or not her brother-in-law is safe tonight.
To feel Grams’s soft, chubby body encircle her in a safe, warm hug now means more to Reagan than anything. To stand next to Grandpa and defend their farm, their family heritage, to their last dying breath if it comes to that keeps her pushing on. And to see her sisters’ smiles again; these are the only things keeping Reagan alive and awake- functioning on some primitive, cellular level. This road trip will be like no other. There will be no monuments to stare at, no natural wonders to behold, no souvenirs to be brought home to loved ones. This road trip is life or death, the only one that will ever matter, the trip that will see her home to her family, to safety.
Susan
“I just don’t understand why we haven’t heard from them for so many days now,” Sue complains for maybe the hundredth time in the last twenty-four hours. It has been almost two weeks since she’d heard from her husband Derek. She is desperate for just one word or sign that he is ok.
“Darling, now don’t you go worrying yourself. You’ll just make yourself sick, and you know it’s not good for the baby, dear,” Grams says while giving Sue’s shoulder a comforting squeeze.
They are all in the kitchen, of course. Not even Grams’s strong hand can quell the fear she feels rising in the pit of her stomach. Obviously the baby feels it, too, because he begins kicking her in the ribs incessantly.
“Right, Sue. Let’s not worry until there’s something to worry about,” chirps in Hannah in her sing song-y, irritatingly cheerful voice. Hannah continues kneading the dough that will be bread for this evening’s meal. “I’m sure they’re fine. You know how the communication systems are right now. But Derek’s so big and strong. He’ll be fine. Besides he’s got his brother John with him.”
Sue chops tomatoes that Arianna had picked from the hothouse earlier this morning. She slices and slices and tries to keep her mind off of her absentee husband and his unknown whereabouts. The last she’d spoken to him was right after she’d passed her six month mark. She is terrified of giving birth to a fatherless baby. She’d begged him to come home. But her husband is a Ranger and Rangers don’t just leave the Army and run home to wipe their pregnant wives’ brows. Besides, there is still that small issue of desertion.
The back, screen door slams open, hitting the wall as Reagan noisily barges through. She’s changed so much since she came home. They had all prayed for so many hours together in the parlor after it all fell apart. They couldn’t reach her, and Grandpa couldn’t reach Dr. Krue. It had sent them into a full-on panic. It had been one of the most helpless feelings Sue had ever dealt with. It was even worse than how helpless she’d felt when Arianna had fallen ill when she was four. That had seemed insurmountable. The thought of losing her sister was a dagger to her heart. She had wanted to jump in her car and drive to the school, but Grandpa had stopped her. After the first full day of not seeing her turn up, their hope had diminished. They had become desperate, Hannah had wept most of that day. And when Reagan had made it home, their prayers had been answered. But it became quickly apparent that Reagan had changed. Whatever had happened to her, it had scarred her inside as well as the visible scars she carries on the outside. She won’t talk about that night, not even with Sue. Grams said to give her time. Something about “time healing wounds” and some such nonsense. Sue knows that her young sister will never totally return to her old self. She can see it in her green eyes.
Sue takes one look at her sister’s appearance and smiles to herself. Reagan’s dirty as usual and covered in dust. Hay sticks out of her wild, blonde curls in places, the usual. Her boots are the biggest problem, though. Sue almost chuckles but checks it at the last minute.
“Reagan McClane, you get those filthy things back on the porch this instant, young lady!” Grams screeches at her. Sue believes that if Grams had been holding a broom, she would’ve swooshed it at Reagan like she’d seen a rat in the house.
“Sorry, Grams,” Reagan says quickly as she chucks her boots unceremoniously onto the back porch. Mud literally falls off in big clumps. Reagan comes in and sits directly in front of Sue on a matching stool at the island. “Any word?”
“No, we were just talking about it,” Sue informs her. Her sister takes a piece of tomato and pops it into her mouth. At least she’s finally putting on a small snippet of weight again, Sue thinks. Reagan had become emaciated during her recovery period. “I just have this horrible feel...”