The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (12 page)

Cory just gives her a nod. He wishes
she’d go away and quit talking to him. He has no desire to make
human connections anymore. She talks as much as the women at the
farm. Damn, do they talk a lot!

“My foster mom was killed the first
week. Me and my foster dad stayed alive with Celeste, that’s this
one here, for the last three years living in Cincinnati, in the
suburbs of it. Then he got sick, like really sick. There wasn’t
anything I could do for him. It’s not like I’m a doctor or
anything.”

Cory gives her a scowl hoping she’ll
take her daughter and leave.

“I’m Helen,” she says, extending her
dirty, gloveless hand.

“How come you’re in Louisville then if
you’re from Cincinnati?” Cory asks before begrudgingly shaking her
hand.

“We moved out here to a
small farm that my foster dad owned. It was his parents’ place. He
inherited it a long time ago and told me that if anything happened
to him that Celeste and I should go there. Told me to get out of
the city. Told me we’d be safer there. So
far,
we have been. Well,
‘
cept
for
those jerks. We’ve been here almost a year now.”

“Did you talk this much back then,
too?” Cory chides.

She shrugs impishly and replies,
“Yeah, I guess. It’s just that you’re the first person my age that
I’ve talked to for months. I mean other than those guys. Think they
were older than us, though. Right? I mean you are my age,
right?”

Cory just gives her another
scowl.

“Well, anyways, we packed
up what we could into my foster dad’s car and came here. It’s a
good thing we made it ‘cuz that car was on fumes by the time I
found the farm. So, I’m here.
It’s
safer.
It’s pretty hidden away. But
sometimes I need stuff from town. I came here to find some
medicine. She’s sick. Has had a fever for a few days
now.”

Cory grabs the tools he needs,
surprised that he can find anything at all that he can use. Most
people must not be looking for the tools that he requires for
processing bear meat.

“How come you were with those guys?”
he asks.

“We weren’t,” Helen tells him. “We ran
into them last night in a drugstore. I couldn’t find any medicine
for her, and they said they had some chicken broth. I was stupid to
trust them, I guess. But we followed them a couple blocks to a
house where they were camped out. They did have chicken broth in
cans. But when I went outside to use the restroom, I overheard them
in the kitchen.”

She grows quiet. Cory looks
over his shoulder at her. He knows what the conversation was
between the men when he
sees
the look on her face. He nods gravely. Damn.
Opportunity missed. He should’ve shot
them,
after all.

“The one guy was kind
of
nice
,
but the other one…”

“Yeah, you’ll find that a lot. You
shouldn’t trust anyone,” he warns.

“I was desperate. She’s still sick,”
Helen says. “So I snuck back inside and grabbed
Celeste.”

“What’d you steal from
them?”

“Nothing! I swear,” she says with
sincerity. “I was too scared of what the one guy was saying he was
gonna do to me that I just grabbed my daughter and took off. We hid
in a building and then came here this morning when I spotted their
car again.”

Cory grunts. “They probably stole from
each other. Looked like the types that would.”

“I guess so.”

“I have some medicine back at my
camp,” he tells her as he grabs a plastic bucket that looks to have
once held nails or screws. “You’re welcome to follow me back and
I’ll give it to you for her. How far’s your house from
here?”

She seems hesitant to tell him.
“I’m not interested,” he confirms for her. “If I was, I wouldn’t be
volunteering to help you.”

“Sorry,” Helen apologizes. “We’re
about two miles from here give or take.”

“Which direction?”

“I think east. I don’t know
for sure. I’m not good with directions. I take this road right out
here until it turns
left,
and then I keep going until I get to our
turnoff.”

“That’s southeast. You probably aren’t
too far from my camp,” he says. “I’m to the south. You want my
help?”

Helen nods and says, “Yes, please. I’m
desperate.”

“Come on. I’m done here. Let’s get
moving,” he orders firmly.

Celeste coughs. Cory doesn’t even
pause. He flings his rifle over his shoulder and picks up the small
girl. She doesn’t smile at him or cringe. She just rests her hot
little head against the base of his neck. When he gets to his
horse, he mounts the stallion with the small girl in front of him.
Then he extends his hand down to Helen.

“Oh, no. It’s ok. I’ll walk. I don’t
want to burden your horse, sir,” Helen says.

Cory
chuffs
and replies,
“He’s
fine
.
He can carry the three of us just fine. It’s not far that we have
to go.”

She takes his hand nervously, and Cory
yanks her up behind him.

“Just wrap your arms around me and
hold on.”

He has enough salt and
tools for the time being, but he’ll have to come back to raid
for
more
later tonight. Right
now,
the most important thing is to get
this kid healthy again.

They arrive at his camp where the fire
has died down to just gray embers in the pit. The bear carcass
still hangs in the tree. He feels Helen stiffen up behind him at
the ghastly sight.

“You guys eat bear steaks?” he asks as
he helps her down.

“Can’t say that I’ve ever had it,” she
admits and continues to stare at the dead animal hanging high in
the tree undisturbed.

Cory ignores her and carries the girl
up the short incline to his cave. He sets her gently to her feet.
She immediately sits on his sleeping bag. Rummaging around in his
sack, he quickly locates the bottle of mixed pills. He pulls out
the fever reducer. He has no idea how many pills to give her. He
almost wishes that Reagan or Simon was here, but they are so far
away.

“Get her to take this. It’s just
Tylenol, but it should help,” he tells her mother.
“Here.”

Cory hands her his canteen
full of purified water. He leaves them to collect more of the
firewood from his pile. Within a few
minutes,
he has a small fire inside his
rock formation cave of sorts burning again. Helen sits beside her
daughter in the dirt and leaves instead of on his sleeping bag. She
cradles her child and looks like she’s going to be sick herself
from distress. Her concern for her daughter is apparent on her
face, which is younger looking than he’d
thought
.

“It’s ok, baby girl,” she coos
softly.

“My ear hurts again, Mama,” Celeste
whispers raggedly.

Helen looks up at Cory helplessly and
shrugs.

“I don’t know what to do for
her.”

“How long has she had the earache?” he
asks. Man, where’s Simon when he needs him?

“About four days or so,” she answers
and rocks Celeste gently.

“I don’t know much about this stuff,
but I have a packet of three-day antibiotics we could give her,” he
offers. He knows that Reagan used to give kids at the farm medicine
like that when they got really sick. He doesn’t, however, know if
this is the right call for this situation. This kid looks very
ill.

“I can’t take that from you,” she says
sadly.

Her sense of honor is stronger than
both of the men who’d been searching for her.

“And I can’t allow you
to
not
take it for
her,” he says lightly.

She smiles at him. There is so much
sadness behind her smile that Cory has to look away and dig out the
packet of pills. He reads the instructions, not that it’s probably
going to help. Hell, these could even be expired for all he knows.
They probably aren’t even an appropriate dose for a kid.

Helen breaks the large pill in half
and lets her daughter take it in two doses to get it down. Cory
forgets things like that, like trying to get young kids to take
pills that are large. Everything is a struggle for them.

“I have work to do,” he tells her.
“Why don’t you guys just stay in here while I work and then I’ll
cook us some food.”

“Let me help,” Helen offers and moves
to dislodge herself from her daughter.

Cory holds out his hand.
“No, just stay with her.
Call me if
she gets worse.
Rest.”

Helen agrees to it, but he
can tell that she’d like to repay him for the pills. He pulls the
flap of his tarp back down over the opening of the shelter, leaving
a gap to free the smoke from the fire. He gets straight to work on
the bear carcass, trimming fat, cutting away chunks of meat, strips
of meat, sharpening his blade and the new tools on his stone and
cutting more. Time speeds by as he continues to work. Some of the
thinner strips he sets on the fire where he’s added more
wood,
stoked
it and placed the stolen grill grate. The work is laborious.
He removes his coat very quickly
into
it since he’s working up a sweat.
Mixing about three of the containers of salt into the bucket, he
collects water from the nearby stream and mixes and dissolves the
salt. Then he places thin strips of the bear meat into it. Checking
the meat on the campfire, which is more smoking than cooking it,
he
places
a
jar of beans on the
grate
and lowers it. He would not normally cook so much
food, but he has two extra mouths to feed tonight.

He cuts as much of the meat away that
he can, only what he’ll be able to consume within a few weeks. Then
with his horse’s help again, he hauls the carcass far away into the
woods to attract carnivores away from his camp. When he returns,
Helen is waiting for him near the fire. She’s removed her small
backpack from her shoulders and is squatted on her
haunches.

“I said you don’t need to help,” he
says.

“You’ve been out here for
hours. She’s out. I think I even
dozed
off for a minute,” she confesses
guiltily.

Cory is surprised. He
hadn’t realized he’d
been
working so long. Time flies when hard work is the
order of the day. This is the kind of day he prefers. It keeps his
mind off of memories on which he does not wish to dwell.

“That’s no problem. You were probably
worn out from hiding from those assholes all night. Didn’t sleep
much last night?” he asks.

“Not a wink,” she admits.

Cory frowns and nods. He can’t imagine
the pressure she must feel trying to keep her daughter
alive.

“Thought I’d contribute,” she
says.

As he draws closer, Cory
notices that she has placed a small loaf of bread on the campfire
and has a small pile of eggs near her foot.

“We have some chickens,” she explains.
“I found them at a neighboring farm. Then my only neighbor who
actually still lives in his house gave me a rooster last month, so
I guess I can have chicks in the spring. He had to teach me all
about them. He’s a really nice man, a widow, probably in his
sixties. Gus is his name.”

Cory just nods.

“What’s your name? You never did tell
me,” Helen asks.

He really doesn’t want
to
tell
her. He really doesn’t want her and her kid at his camp,
either, but he couldn’t have left them behind. Tomorrow he’ll take
them back to their farm. It’s too late now to do so.

“Cory,” he returns
simply
, hoping
she’ll stop with all the personal questions.

“Do you have
family
, Cory?
Around here maybe?” she asks.

He just shakes his head and adds more
meat to the bucket of brine water. “You’ll need to stay here
tonight. I’ll take you guys home tomorrow, and then I need to get
moving.”

“Ok, thanks,” she says
politely.

“Where do those guys from town live?
You said you went to their house,” Cory inquires.

She gives him a
relatively
clear
idea of where their home is located and how far it was from the
hardware store. He knows he can find it. She gives him an uncertain
look, but Cory turns away.

He starts on the bearskin next. He
hangs it from a branch so that he can scrape the fat and sinew from
the fur. He’s going to make a blanket of this. He may need it if
this shitty winter never ends. Using a scraping tool he’d taken
from the hardware, he gets to work. This is going to take hours.
Helen comes over, picks up a tool and starts mimicking his
motions.