The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (19 page)

“I need to get going,” Cory argues,
even though his legs feel about ready to buckle.

“Please, don’t,” Helen pleads. “Just
one night. Look, I’m not trying to pressure you. I would just like
to pay it forward for everything you’ve done for us. The hot water
tank is small, but it works most of the time. Might not be the
hottest water usually, but it works. I don’t have a shower, just a
tub, but at least you can clean up and rest up before you leave.
I’m gonna put a big pot of stew on the fireplace for later. I’ll
make some bread, too.”

The idea of spending a night clean,
indoors and with a full belly draws him in like a sweet,
mind-altering drug.

He nods and says, “Ok, one night. Then
I’m gone.”

“Deal. And I won’t try to stop you
again, either. I promise,” Helen says.

Upstairs he runs a shallow
bath full of
moderately
hot water, conserving for the rest of them to do
the same. Cory makes a quick scrubbing job of it, using Helen’s
soap. When he’s done, he uses it to scrub his face and beard and
hair. The water has turned murkier than he would’ve thought. He
lets out t
he
water and wraps a towel around his waist, leaving the bathroom
to the next person.

“Oh, hey!” Helen says.

She’s standing in the open door of the
guest room where he is rummaging through the drawers. Cory notices
that she takes a second to look him up and down, pausing extra long
at his stomach.

“I… I was just going to lay out some
clean clothing for you. They might be too big, the pants I mean,”
she stammers.

“Got it. Thanks,” he says and stands
aside to let her dig out clothing. She probably has a better idea
of where the different items might be.

“I can wash your dirty stuff for ya’
if you want me to,” she offers kindly. “I was going to wash some of
our things, so it’s not a problem. I do it by hand in the tub and
then hang them by the fireplace.”

“I can do it myself,” he declines the
offer. This is all way too comfortable. “I’m going to Gus’s house
to help him get whatever he wants to bring over here. I don’t want
you two to have to do all that work when I leave. Is he still
here?”

“No, he left to go home and start
packing,” she answers.

“I’ll head over
there
with
that truck. It’ll go faster,” he says as he surveys the
plethora of clothing she has placed on the double bed. The room is
sparsely decorated with a bed, covered in a hand-sewn quilt in navy
blues and reds, a bedside table and lamp, and two antique-looking
dressers. There is a Bible on the nightstand.

“You should just take all this when
you leave, Cory,” she says. “It’s not like I’d ever be able to wear
any of it.”

“No, but you can cut some of it down,
re-sew them and repurpose them. It’s not like you can go to the
mall anymore,” he reflects.

“I wasn’t much of a mall-goer before,”
she explains and then lays her hand on his forearm.

Her thumb rubs a few times
against his skin. Cory looks down at her small, pale hand against
his
darkly-tanned
flesh. He pulls away, and Helen takes
cue
and leaves him
to his privacy. A few minutes later, he packs up for Gus’s house
and drives the chicken kicker’s truck over there. His house is
slightly bigger than Helen’s but not as neat. As a matter of
fact,
his home is
kind of cluttered and messy and even disgusting. Tall stacks of
newspapers, yellowed with age create narrow paths from one room to
the next. It’s a fire hazard. The curtains and walls are
coated
with
a brownish glaze in places from nicotine staining. The acrid
smell of tobacco smoke hangs in the air. Cory is surprised that Gus
wasn’t more excited to get the hell out of his home and into
Helen’s.

He helps Gus get his four
goats loaded into the bed of the pick-up truck along with his small
flock of chickens. Then they
load
his food items, which are mostly
crates and boxes full of canned vegetables and a box full of apples
from his
special
tree- as he’d
called
it- in the
grove
. The four cows, they
will leave in the small enclosed pasture until Gus and Helen can
move them in the spring. The work takes a few hours and four trips,
but he and Gus get his belongings, the ones he cares to take, moved
into Helen’s home. Cory checks on his horse
again,
helps milk the two nanny
goats, gets them settled in and feeds the chickens. The sun set
hours ago, and his body is feeling the effects of no sleep for the
last few nights.

He joins the group at the dining table
again, this time noticing that Celeste sits next to him. Her color
has completely returned, and before dinner he saw her sitting on a
braided rug of muted red tones on the living room floor playing
with her dolls. She smiles up at him through her long brown
eyelashes, exposing baby teeth and dimples. She’s looking at him
with some kind of parental hero worship. Definitely time to move
on.

They share in a meal of bear stew
based in a thick broth of stewed tomatoes, braised carrots and
potatoes. Apparently Helen knows how to keep a garden and how to
can the harvest. If not, she would’ve been dead three years ago
like so many others who hadn’t known how to take care of themselves
and had died from starvation.

He offers to help with the dishes when
the meal is over but is rejected and ejected out of Helen’s
kitchen. Gus is sitting in the living room in a recliner snoozing,
snoring softly. Celeste is sent upstairs to start her bath water,
and Cory makes a mad dash to his own room.

Helen comes into his room an hour and
a half later as Cory is reviewing his map.

“What are you working on?” she
asks.

Cory glances up as she sits next to
him on his bed which is still made. She’s wearing a simple, pink
cotton nightgown that comes down to mid-calf. Her hair is still
damp from bathing.

Instead of answering her or
acknowledging why she sits so close, her knee touching his thigh,
he asks, “So what’s Cincinnati like again? Dangerous? Safe? Still
people living there?”

Her face falls
slightly,
but she
answers, “There are a lot of people there, but it’s not safe at
all. That’s why I came here.”

“Not safe like how?”

“Like the men that
were
after
me and Celeste yesterday morning, like the ones in my house
earlier. Dangerous,
bad
people that will kill each other and anyone they
have to
just to
survive
. Some of the men
are
…
” she
shudders her answers.

That’s all he needs to know. Her
confession’s good enough for him. Now he has a new course to
plot.

She touches his leg and says, “I know
you aren’t like them, Cory. You’re a good man. I want you to stay.
Can I convince you?”

Her hand gives the meaty
part of his thigh muscle a squeeze. Then it travels higher before
he clasps his own over
top
. He shakes his head and tries to
temper his rising lust.

“It’s nothing against you.
Trust me,” he says but watches the rejection settle in on her
features. “I can’t stay. It’s not that you aren’t appealing. You
are. This whole
…
everything,” he tells her, gesturing with his hand
around the room, “is great. But I can’t stay. I have things I need
to take care of and someday… someday I have to go home to my own
family.”

A new understanding etches creases
into the corners of her brown eyes. She nods once, leans forward
and kisses his mouth softly. She’s not looking for more, Cory
knows. It’s more of a thank-you than another sexual
invitation.

“I hope you find what you’re looking
for out there, Cory,” she says and rises from his bed. At the door,
she turns back and says, “You’re still a good man. Remember that,
ok?”

He nods again, and she leaves. Cory
listens and waits until her bedroom door closes with a soft click.
He commences with a few hundred push-ups to alleviate his sexual
frustration. Then he gets back to work. He also oils down his rifle
and cleans his pistol before going to bed and turning off the
low-wattage lamp.

Before dawn, he rolls out, dresses,
packs and pulls on his boots. He slings his backpack over his
shoulder, grabs his rifle and heads out to the rickety barn. Most
of the bear meat he leaves for Helen and her little family of
three. Cory keeps one small bag of dried bear jerky for himself.
He’s not worried about food. He can always hunt a deer, squirrel or
a rabbit in a few days. He cracks three raw eggs from Helen’s coop
straight into his mouth. The protein will keep him warm and
metabolizing for a few hours until he can hunt.

He doesn’t want any more
sad
goodbyes
. If Celeste were to ask him to stay, he might. She’s a damn
cute kid. He’s glad that he could be of service to the single mom,
her
kid
and
the old man, but staying here would prevent him from accomplishing
his goal of ridding the world of as many scumbags as he can. He
can’t stay. Although her offer had been enticing. He has a new
destination calling his name.

As he’s riding away, he
glances over his shoulder one more time at the tiny cottage tucked
away in the apple grove. They’ll make it, he tells himself. He’s
left them enough firepower for a few years. He turns back around
and steers his horse toward the east. There are people out there
upon whom he will exact his vengeance and the
vengeance
of his dead sister.
Next stop on the train of death: Cincinnati.

Chapter Ten

Paige

She’s been living on the
McClane farm for a full week and still doesn’t really feel as if
she belongs. The family has been more than welcoming, but she just
doesn’t feel connected to them. They have a very specific way of
doing things and have strict schedules and seemingly
important
family
time. Mostly she stands off to the side and observes like a useless
tool. She works with Simon on whatever he needs help with, and
every day she tries to aid with food preparation. Hannah is by far
the easiest person on the farm to get along with, even if she does
seem sad and depressed most of the time. When they work together in
the kitchen, however, she tries hard to put on a happy face for
Paige.

She is standing in the
massive kitchen, hanging back somewhat in a corner as the other
women work. Sue breezes around her sister Hannah at the island.
Paige has no idea what they are working on
preparing,
but the whole house
smells good. The smell of food cooking had actually awakened
her.

Sue says, “Paige, turn the sausage
over on the stove.”

Paige hops to attention, “Oh, yeah
sure.”

She quickly crosses the
room, picks up
tongs
and turns the long, fat links of some sort of
sausage onto its other side to brown. It smells divine.

“Excuse me,” Hannah says as she pours
a container of something into a pot of boiling water.

“Oh, sorry,” Paige blurts and backs
up.

Hannah grabs her arm
without hesitation and says, “No, you’re fine. Stay here. Stay
right where you are. I’ll work
around
you.”

“Oh, sure,” Paige says. This kitchen
is hopping at six a.m. The children aren’t awake yet and running
through the rooms of the grand, old house. The noise and being
around so many people has been a bit difficult to adjust to. It’s
sometimes hectic for her.

“What was that you just poured in
there?” she asks Hannah, who has gone back to the island where she
is rolling some sort of dough into a roll.

“Grits,” Hannah answers.

“Just give them a
few
stirs
now and then, would ya,’ Paige?” Sue requests
kindly
as she
crosses to the fridge.

“Oh…oh… ok,” Paige answers.
What the hell are grits? She bites her lower lip and uses the
wooden spatula that Sue jabs
at
her
to stir the grits. It looks like
medieval porridge. She stirs it anyway.

She was awake downstairs
for a while and was going to head up earlier, but
ev
eryone keeps
telling her to take it easy and rest. It
is difficult to sleep
for more than
a few hours at a time, which will be a hard habit to
break.

“What are you doing there, Mrs.
Alexander?” she asks.

Paige doesn’t get an answer. She
thinks perhaps she’s gotten Hannah’s last name wrong.

Sue laughs, “Hannie, she means you,
silly!”