The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (15 page)

“Mama, can I play with those toys?”
Maddie asks.

Her face is half buried in Paige’s
neck, but Simon still manages to hear her request.

“Sure, little one,” Simon answers
instead. “Play with whatever you want.”

She doesn’t get down
from
Paige
but does peek at him from beneath her thick, dark lashes. Her
light mocha skin is so crystal clear and smooth that it resembles
soft velvet. Her frizzy curls are endearing. Hearing the other
child interested in playing with toys, Ari gets down from her
father’s lap across the room while also giving Derek one of her sly
looks. Her dad just grins at her like he always does. He’s a big
softy for his kids. Sue is the disciplinarian, not that she very
often needs to be. Ari crosses the room to stand in front of
Paige.

“Do you like Barbies?” she asks the
new girl, Maddie, with her munchkin voice.

This gets a shrug of indecision from
Maddie.

“They’re dolls, Maddie,” Paige
explains. “Go play with her. Make friends. You’re safe here,
honey-bear. Momma will be right here.”

The girl looks once at Paige, then at
Simon and then finally at Ari, who she seems more willing to trust
than him. She hops down lithely and soon they are engaged in
animated play in the corner of the room on the window seat and then
half under the huge piano.

“Your daughter is adorable, Paige,”
Sue comments.

Paige shakes her head and
answers quietly. “She’s not really mine. I mean not technically.
She calls Talia and
I
both by momma, but the truth is that she’s not
related to either of us. Her mother was our friend at a FEMA camp
in Georgia. Maddie was only about a year old when her mother got
sick and died. She doesn’t understand. She was too young to. So
when we took her in with us, she eventually started calling us both
momma when she started talking. We never had the heart to tell
her.”

Talia adds with a playful
grin, “She doesn’t call Gavin her daddy, though. We’re not sure
why. She just calls him Gavin. I think he’s too much
like
a kid himself
for her to take him too seriously as a father figure.”

She and Paige chuckle, but the family
does not because none of them really understand anything about the
dynamic of Paige’s group. They are all eager to learn more,
however.

“Speak of the devil,” Talia notes as
Gavin enters the room.

“Hi, everyone,” he says sheepishly and
offers a wave.

“Join us and have a seat, son,” Doc
says.

Gavin does so, sitting next to Talia
on the other sofa. His new borrowed clothing also fit him
loosely.

Reagan and John stand near
the doorway, and their son Jacob has joined the girls in their game
of whatever they are playing
under
the piano. He’s about the same age
as Maddie, so hopefully they’ll get along. Justin, Sue and
Derek’s
eleven-year-old
son, also joins the group after he noisily bounds
into the room, earning a warning glare from his mother for the
interruption. Sam is sitting on the stone slab of the fireplace
hearth beside Huntley. He hangs out a lot with Samantha because
he’d also
been
traveling with the visitors and is an orphan. Her bright blue
eyes are expectant and hopeful for Simon. He can see how happy she
is for him, for this reunion. He has to look away from
her.

“So you were in a FEMA camp?” Simon
asks, wanting to know more about his sister’s whereabouts for the
past three and a half years.

“Yes, for a short while,” she answers.
“That didn’t last too long. I think about a month the first
time.”

“Yeah, that place went downhill fast.
Crime, sickness. It was all spreading like a wildfire through
there,” Talia says.

“Then we went on to find Gav’s parents
and family and then Talia’s,” Paige explains patiently.

Simon notices the flicker of bad
memories come across her features, so he doesn’t press for more
information. He doesn’t want her to do a full confessional in front
of a room full of strangers.

“Ok,” he says complacently and
squeezes her hand. The look in her eyes tells him that she’s
thankful for the reprieve in that line of questioning.

“And then we made our way here,” she
says with a grim smile. “Took us a while.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he says firmly,
shakes his head, and puts an arm around her shoulders, pulling her
to his side. “You made it. That’s all that matters.”

“Where is Aunt Amber?” she asks when
she draws back slightly. “You said when we last communicated that
you were going with her group to come to Tennessee, to Pleasant
View to the McClane farm. I wrote it all down so I wouldn’t
forget.”

“Tell ya’ later, ok?” he implores and
gets a nod of understanding. There will be much that they will
discuss in private.

“This place is amazing, Dr. McClane,”
Gavin praises.

“We do all right, Gavin,” Doc returns
with a nod.

“Better than all right,”
Gavin counters. “I haven’t been somewhere this safe and remote and
well… anything that resembles
civilization
for a few years
now.”

“It takes a lot of work, but we’re
making it,” Derek says.

“There are a few towns here and there
and some small neighborhoods that are making it like this, but they
aren’t too welcoming of strangers,” Talia puts in.

“Where have you all been staying?”
Derek asks.

Talia takes the lead on this one,
“Abandoned homes, apartment buildings, tents when we were out in
the woods. Caves a few times. That was scary. I was scared to death
we’d find a bear or bats or something. City slicker here! Never
been out in the boonies like we’ve had to be since this all
happened.”

“Sometimes, back when it
first hit, we’d find a FEMA center or an Army base where the
National Guard was keeping things under control,” Paige provides.
“Other times we’d sleep in abandoned cars or sleep in whatever car
we were driving. We had a lot of them stolen for their gas,
though.
Seems like we were always
trying to find a running car with gas in it.”

“What did you do for heat?”
Kelly asks from a nearby chair where Hannah
sits,
and he stands behind
her.

“We had a small kerosene heater,”
Gavin explains. “Someone stole it a few years ago, but I managed to
find another.”

“When we camped out in our tents, we’d
just start a fire,” Paige says. “We got pretty good at starting
fires.”

“And water?” Reagan asks.

“Creeks, streams, lake water. Bottled
water at the beginning, but those ran out. We learned real quick to
boil the water after all of us got sick on creek water once,” Paige
offers.

Simon frowns at this. Some
of the sicknesses from tainted water such as adenovirus or
leptospirosis can make a person very ill and even kill them.
Sometimes other sicknesses can stay in the gut for years and come
back in a flare up. He’s so thankful that his sister is still alive
and, other than being
gaunt
, appears to be healthy.

“That could’ve been bad,” Reagan
mirrors his thoughts.

“It was bad enough,” Talia
says
with
a
weak laugh.

“No kidding,” Gavin agrees.

“And food?” John asks. “What have you
guys been doing for food? I mean, I’m no doc like these two, but
you don’t look like you’ve been eating much.”

“That was somewhat
tougher,” Paige says. “We looted stores and homes where nobody
lived anymore. The disaster centers had food, but when they got too
dangerous to live in, we had to leave. The military camps were a
lot better, a lot safer.
For
a while. But then they turned dangerous, too. We
found a book in a library about how to set snares and traps and how
to clean a wild animal for
...
well, you know what I
mean.”

“What did you do with a baby? How’d
you feed her?” Hannah asks.

“She was taking formula
in
bottles,
and we did manage to find some cans of formula for a few
months,” Paige answers again and shakes her head. “Then once we
figured out that she could eat soft food, it got a lot easier. We
even found jars of baby food and then got her on powdered rice and
instant potatoes. Stuff like that.”

“You guys are some hardcore
survivors,” John says with an appraising smile.

“Ha!” Gavin exclaims
with
a laugh. “I
don’t know about that. Most of the
time,
we’re barely making it. There have
been a lot of days when we didn’t eat at all so that Maddie could
have a little food. I know she has to be undersized for her age.
We’ve just been doing the best we can.”

“Yeah, it’s not like any of us three
had kids or knew what to do with her,” Talia remarks.

“How old are you?” Doc asks, fiddling
with his unlit pipe.

“I’m twenty-six,” Talia
answers.

“I’m twenty-eight,” Gavin
replies.

Paige speaks next, “And I’m
twenty-two.”

“Oh? Cory just turned twenty-two, as
well,” Hannah says with good cheer.

She hasn’t had much lately to be
cheerful about and rarely acts like herself. It’s disheartening for
Simon to see this in Hannah.

“Is that your brother
or
…
” Paige
asks Hannah with confusion.

“No, and he’s not here
right now,” Kelly quickly jumps in. “He’s
my
little brother.”

“Oh,” Paige says confusedly but
doesn’t push for further information.

“Dinner should be ready soon,” Sue
remarks.

Simon knows that she’s trying hard not
to discuss Cory or let the conversation become
depressing.

“Something smells great,” Gavin says
and then blushes.

He has sandy blonde hair
and is somewhat short in stature. The pants he has borrowed drag a
few inches below his feet. Simon’s
fairly
sure that he won’t complain,
though. His brown eyes are warm and full of kindness and humor,
which is a stark contrast with Simon’s best friend,
Cory’s.

“Well, if there’s one thing you’ll
learn about our farm it’s that nobody goes hungry,” Reagan informs
them.

“Right!” Sue agrees.

“Really?” Paige asks with a furrow of
her pale brows.

“Yep, we’ll get you guys fattened up
in no time and then we’ll see where you all might be helpful,”
Reagan adds.

“What do you mean?” Talia
asks.

“Everyone has
responsibilities on the farm,” Kelly answers. “Some of us do farm
work, some do planting, others work on medical things at our
clinic. Some of us work on construction projects. Those who are
trained to do it, go on runs for supplies when we need them.
There’s always something that
needs
done
.”

“And when we all work
together, we get it
done,
and that’s what enables our survival,” John
explains.

“Sounds like a coordinated effort,”
Gavin says.

“We’ll figure out whatever
it is that each of you is good
at,
and then we’ll get you on some daily
chores with the rest of us,” John suggests and they nod.

“I don’t know anything about farming,
but we studied some books from the library about what grasses and
plants that you can eat. That was a life saver, let me tell ya,’”
Talia says.

“That’s great,” Simon
remarks.

“Yeah, it came in handy when we
couldn’t find anything else,” Paige says.

“You won’t have to worry about that
anymore. There’s always something here to eat,” Hannah adds in with
a warm smile.

“As a matter of fact,” Sue
says. “Why don’t we head
into
the dining room and start setting
up for dinner while Hannah and Reagan pull it all
together.”

“Sure,” Talia offers cordially. “Let
us help.”

Gavin nods and everyone
slowly disperses from the room, even the children. Simon is left
alone with his sister and is content
just to hold her hand
for a few moments
of silent reflection.

“Is it gonna be ok, I mean us staying
here, Simon?” she asks and turns to face him. “Do you think this
McClane family will want us to leave?”

“I don’t think so, but we’ll probably
have a meeting to discuss it after dinner,” he tells her. “It’s
what we usually do when a tough decision has to be made. We make it
together.”

“You say ‘we’ like you’re a
part of their family,” she says
on
a frown.

“That’s because I am,” he informs her.
“These people have been my family and Sam and Huntley’s family for
the past… almost four years.”