The McClane Apocalypse: Book Two (32 page)

“I know. I wish Mom was here. She’d probably be giving you better advice than I can,” Sue admits with a touch of defeat. Hannah reaches across the island and finds her hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.

“No way, Sue. You’re the best. I don’t think Mom could’ve done a better job. She’s always with you. That’s why you
are
so good at this,” Hannah tells her with a gentle smile, making Sue tear up.

“Thanks, Hannie. I will tell you one thing; men can get kind of jealous. You know, honey, maybe Kelly thinks you’re interested in Lenny,” she suggests.

“Oh goodness! I hadn’t thought of that. No, he couldn’t possibly,” Hannah says, shakes her head again and changes the subject with a frown. “Do you think John and Reagan are ok? We haven’t heard from them yet today.”

“Don’t worry, Hannah. John will take care of her, sweetie,” Sue assures her youngest sister. “Derek said that John probably won’t call in until tonight. They usually check in once a day, not more. If it was us women, we’d wear down the batteries.”

“That’s for sure,” Hannah agrees as they both laugh. They sit and talk and snip string beans together for about an hour until Cory comes to the back porch.

“Hey, Cory,” Hannah greets him first. The kid blushes and looks at his feet. He’s such a typical teenage boy.

“Hey, Miss Hannah. Just came in for a couple extra guns. Me and Kelly are heading out now for the Reynolds so we can take them to meet the new people,” he explains as he passes through the kitchen without pausing before going to the basement.

“Hannah?” Kelly’s deep voice comes through the screen door. Hannah doesn’t rush over there.

“Yes, Kelly?” she calls over to him as if she knew he was there. Her little sister is sometimes a tad creepy. But Sue still loves her, even if her dog ears prevent anyone from sneaking up on her.

“Can I speak with you for a minute, please?” Kelly asks. He is sounding sullen and put in his place.

“Sure, let me wash my hands first,” Hannah calls to him.

Once she’s on the back porch with Kelly, Sue can still overhear most of their conversation because Grandpa has not put the winter storm door on yet. It still sports a full-length screen instead.

“Hey,” Kelly says quietly.

“Hello, Kelly,” Hannah answers coolly. Good for her.

“I’m sorry, Hannah,” he begins. “I just don’t trust that guy. I don’t like the way he looks at you, and it just got me upset.”

“Ok, Kelly. I understand,” her sister says so patiently.

Sue risks a peek out the door from her seated position at the island. Kelly towers over Hannah as she twists her braid. His face is contorted and full of frustrated feelings and longing.

“Don’t be mad at me, ok? I don’t think I can bear it. You know I don’t like it when you’re upset, Hannah,” he tells her and reaches for one of Hannah’s braids.

He’s so smitten, even if he doesn’t realize it. Sue goes back to her basket of beans.

“Alright. I won’t be mad at you. You’re kind of hard to stay mad at anyways,” she teases to which Kelly gives one short chuckle.

Cory comes dashing up the basement stairs, full of teen energy and blasts out the back door, almost running into Kelly.

“Ready, bro?” Cory asks his huge brother, who he is starting to resemble in so many ways.

“Yep, let’s roll,” Kelly tells him. “Meet you in the truck.”

“Be careful, Kelly,” Hannah implores.

“Got it,” he replies and leaves.

If they kiss, hug, handshake or whatever it is that those two do, Sue will never know. They do need a
little
privacy.

“Everything ok again?” Sue asks coyly of Hannah who is blushing.

“Yes, we’re good,” her little sister says with a smirk.

“Maybe you don’t need my help after all,” Sue quips as she rises from her stool. She places her finished beans in the sink for Hannah and Grams to start in the canner later and takes the scraps to feed to the chickens in the barnyard.

“With the beans?” Hannah inquires innocently.

“No, honey, not with the beans,” Sue tells her and laughs all the way out to her garden where she’ll work alongside Grandpa and her studly husband hoeing in fresh rows to keep the rainwater away from the plants.

Chapter Nineteen

John

Reagan points out a good area where there are more trees toward the edge of a public park. It’s heavily wooded with dense enough foliage to keep their horses concealed. It also opens up in the back to the same woods that they will need for traveling to the cabin later. It’s safe, quiet. No children play in this park, no joggers or bike riders make use of the blacktop path that skirts the perimeter, and no picnickers use the pavilions. The horses are glad for the break and are once again tied to tree branches. They immediately start tearing off leaves and foraging lazily. John and Reagan dismount and take out their rifles.

“How are you holding up, boss?” he asks Reagan with genuine concern while they are still in the cover of the woods where no one can hear them. After consulting his watch, John sees that it’s almost ten a.m. which means they’ve already spent about four hours of the day moving around the city. They’d come in this morning just after dawn and hit a few more places in the business district without much fruition.

John was able to locate another auto supply store where he took a couple small parts, a grocery store where most of the shelves were picked clean, and a drug store where the OTC drugs were wiped out. They did each snake a candy bar, which they’d readily eaten as a mid-morning snack. He’d also found two packs of cigarettes but, at Reagan’s deadly glare, had placed them back on the shelf.

They’ve moved around the city center to position themselves closer to the shopping and entertainment district of Clarksville. He has to find that tractor part today. The work at the farm has ceased for the time being without it. Their situation could become desperate.

“I’m fine,” she answers and slings her rifle behind her. “This is where Grandpa and I left the horses when we came the other time.”

“We’ll move in through this park, but when we get closer to the city I want to take a knee and check it out first,” he informs her as she wipes her brow.

“Ok,” she answers obediently.

They walk near the tree line, and Reagan tugs his sleeve, pointing toward a cement block building. John frowns at her with confusion.

“I need to use the restroom,” she says with embarrassment.

John just nods nonchalantly, and they sprint quickly to the small building. He signals for her to wait outside while he checks it. A few minutes later after they have both made use of the women’s restroom, they are moving again. John leads, weaving through the sparse trees the park offers for cover. A flash of movement catches his eye, and he tugs her down to a squatting position. It ends up only being three stray dogs, though, so he nods for them to continue. This has to be killing her. He is the last person on earth she’d ever want to take orders from, but she doesn’t seem as if it is bothering her and, more importantly, she isn’t cursing him.

“Do you want another drink or something to eat before we go any further?” This question is probably a waste of time, but he can’t stop himself from worrying about her. She just predictably shakes her head before they move out of the trees and into the city.

They stop so that John can scout the area while Reagan stays behind him and is completely silent. If she’s afraid, she doesn’t show it.

There are no signs of life at all in the city today. Maybe most of the people tried to move around at night. Or maybe the few people he’d seen in the dark the other night were just passing through on to other towns or were trying to get out of this town altogether. Some, however, had sounded like they were trying to reenact the shootout in Dodge City. He’s hoping for a more peaceful day with Reagan. They are positioned directly in the center of a very large shopping district with just about every store they could possibly need, if those stores still have anything left in them.

“I need to get into an alley where it’s safe, where there are cars. I need a few things off of the car seats,” he whispers, and she looks at him with a queer expression. “They’re called pressure switches, and I need them to make more explosives.”

The light bulb clicks on, and she opens her mouth in a silent “oh” and nods. He hand signals for them to move out, and she follows silently behind him like the stealth elf she is.

It doesn’t take long to find an alley with abandoned vehicles- one of them has been rolled over, apparently a popular thing to do nowadays. But it has also been torched. These gamers must’ve gotten tired after the first car because four others sit on their tires. Most have at least one window broken and all have been vandalized and robbed. John takes cover with her at the trunk of a mid-size, silver sedan, just what he needs. He takes Reagan to the brick wall of the alleyway and finds her a covered doorway to stand under while he loots this vehicle for something he knows the average pick pocket would’ve missed.

“Stay here. Watch my back, boss,” he tells her as her eyes widen with worry. She reluctantly nods anyway.

He sprints back the seven steps to the sedan and opens the passenger door, squats, and digs the small set of tools out of his pack, which he places on the ground beside him. Within minutes, John has both driver and passenger front seat pressure switches disengaged from the vehicle and placed in the bottom of the pack. He moves surreptitiously to the next two cars and also takes those switches. Six should be enough to last for a while, and he can always hit the cars in the expensive neighborhood closer to home that they’d gone to with Derek. He joins back up with Reagan, nods and they traverse the alley which opens into the heart of the shopping district.

John spies two people, possibly husband and wife, as they sprint toward a trendy burger joint across the street. John doubts they’ll get good service today since the façade of the restaurant is charred, the striped awning hanging in tatters. Their furtive movement makes John think they are more scared than a possible threat. They are both dirty and look as if they haven’t bathed in weeks, and the woman keeps glancing around nervously as the husband tugs her along.

Beside the restaurant is a party food supply store and a dollar store. Both have been looted and burned out. An athletic shoe retailer which still appears mostly intact is next to the dollar store. John scans around the corner, left then right, sees it is clear and signals Reagan to follow him. They sprint across the street straight toward the shoe store, crossing four lanes of non-moving traffic and two additional turn-only lanes, all containing abandoned or torched vehicles. Some of them contain dead bodies; some are burned like their vehicles to a black, unrecognizable char.

Once they are in the building, John does a quick perusal of the one-room shop and realizes that it is empty and that most of the shelves are also bare. He marches quickly to the open door in the back that leads to a small supply and control room. The storage shelves are a mess. Empty shoe boxes lay discarded on the floor in a heap, but these aren’t what he needs from this room anyway. He closes the door again so that if anyone approaches from the rear they will alert John with the noise of this door.

“Watch the entrance,” he whispers to her, and she goes straight toward the front door. “No, Reagan. Squat down over here, honey. There were two people in the restaurant a few doors down. Keep an eye out for them. I don’t think they’re a threat but be on high alert.”

John leads her to the front of the store where there is a knee high, brick wall facing the street and pushes her down where she will be better protected from stray bullets and not so out in the open.

“I’ll only be a minute. And if you need anything from here, then we’ll switch and I’ll keep watch, ‘kay?” She nods, looks troubled and turns back toward the windows and doors.

John jogs to the men’s footwear section where most of the shoes are gone, but he is able to find a pair of size sixteen leather hiking boots and a pair of Nike cross trainers for Kelly. Lucky for his friend, he has the biggest feet in the state and the recent fire sale has not depleted the inventory. He also grabs a pair of eleven Nike’s for himself which is a fortuitous find, but they aren’t exactly the cool new trendy ones with some star athlete’s name on the side. His jump shot probably won’t improve. He grabs two more pairs of a few odd sizes hoping that Derek or Cory will be able to use them and then switches places with Reagan. She comes back with three pairs of kids’ shoes, a few sets of women’s gym shoes and a pair of red low-profile Chucks. Wonder who those are for?

“Really?” he whispers with a smile, and she sticks out her tongue at him to which he grins. She’s also found a duffle bag that he must’ve overlooked, and they cram all of the shoes into it, including about ten pairs of random socks that she’s found. “Let’s go back where we were and stash this bag in one of those cars so we don’t have to carry it with us everywhere, ok?”

She gives him the nod again. Before they leave the building, though, John remembers the control panel he’d seen in the rear storage room.

“Wait, come with me first. I forgot something,” he tells her and leaves the bag of shoes near the low wall. They go to the control room; he leads. “Shut the door and lock it.”

They are in a room with no windows, so John pulls out his flashlight and has Reagan hold it for him.

“What are we doing?” she asks with trepidation as she follows him to the far wall, stepping over the debris littering the entire floor, slipping once. He grabs her upper arm so that she doesn’t fall. “Thanks.” Well, that’s a first.

“Getting more supplies I need,” he answers her question and takes his dagger out, using the butt end to crack the glass case surrounding the thermostat. The broken shards fall noisily to the floor, but he’s confident nobody will hear it since the door is closed and most of the people in this part of the city seem to be dead.

“See back in behind here?” he asks and points to the thermostat which he’s roughly jerked from the wall with one hand. “There’s a mercury switch I can use to also make detonators. We’ll try to find these along the way in the different buildings we go in.”