The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (22 page)

“He’s so silly,” Sam
answers
with
a soft sigh and a gentle smile that reveals her straight white
teeth.

Talia and Paige regard each
other again. Sam’s response is strange and not what they would’ve
expected. She behaves as if she has a funny little secret that
she’s keeping all to herself. She’s still distracted with tucking
her art supplies away into her pack. There are articles littered
everywhere on the bales of hay, where she has
apparently
been sitting and
sketching for some time in the cold barn.

“We’re ready to go in!” Chet calls
from the other end of the barn.

“Well, looks like we’d better get
going,” Sam remarks.

The young woman slings her
yellow floral sack behind her back. Her backpack is mostly brown
and grungy, giving it the appearance of being carried by a homeless
person for about ten years. Most everything that people own now
looks this way. Tattered,
holey
, patched many times over. This is
the appearance of most people’s clothing, bedding, bags, or
anything made of cloth that Paige has come across. The McClane
family seems to have a plethora of extra clothing and bedding
items, but they are very conservative with the usage of
them.

When they get to the other three, Sam
asks first, “How is he doing?”

“Reagan says he’ll be just fine,”
Simon answers her. “Don’t worry, Sam.”

Her brother’s concern for
Samantha is endearing. He doesn’t even want her to worry about a
stupid horse. Of course, they all actually seem to enjoy the
horses
, unlike
Paige.

“Good,” Sam says and
then
coos
as if she’s talking to a baby. “He’s a good boy, aren’t you?
Yes, you are!”

She rubs the huge horse’s
muzzle through the open stall door into which she’s moved. It makes
a funny
nickering
through its nose against her hand and pushes at
the front of the small woman’s jacket, leaving a dirt mark. Sam
just giggles quietly. Simon, however, gives a short, pained grin
and turns away.

“Let’s head inside, everyone,” Reagan
says. “Wanna’ stay for dinner, Chet?”

“Hm, yeah, sure,” he says. “If you’re
gonna twist my arm and all.”

Paige catches the slide of his eyes
toward Talia. Interesting. Her friend smiles openly back at the
handsome neighbor with the permanently reddened, leathery skin of a
farmer.

“Let me shut the door,” Reagan
says.

She coughs again as she slides the
heavy stall door closed. Then she turns around, sways hard and then
passes out altogether. Chet catches her halfway down.

“Oh my goodness!” Sam
shrieks.

“Holy shit!” Paige nearly yells. “Is
she ok?”

“Get her to the house!” Simon orders
loudly. “Never get sick my ass,” her brother swears prolifically
through his gritted teeth.

They all move quickly
through
the sn
ow toward the back of the house where Reagan’s husband John is
unloading firewood. He’s laughing loudly at something Kelly is
saying to him. Those two always seem to have something to laugh
about. She’s overheard them reminiscing funny stories from their
military
pasts
. The older brother, Derek, is more se
rious
than John, who seems to find
humor in everything. When he turns around to find them coming
toward him, the color drains from his face instantly. The
humor
is gone
immediately from his handsome, bearded face. He literally drops his
firewood, runs at them, grabs his tiny wife from Simon and races
into the house yelling at the top of his lungs. Paige hangs back on
the porch with Talia. They’ve seen this type of situation before.
Many times. It never ends well.

Chapter Eleven

Cory

The chipped white lettering on the
faded green sign in the shape of the state of Ohio reads
Welcome To Cincinnati
and
hangs askew on its post. He stands beside his horse, overlooking
the city through binoculars from the crest of a hill. Cory pulls
the thick bearskin up over his shoulders to guard against the
arctic winds whipping through the valley.

They are leaving Kentucky and
moving at a steady pace northward. Cory mounts his horse again,
leading him down the incline. The terrain is treacherous and slick,
but they manage to get to the bottom where the pavement starts
without falling end over end. Jet’s hooves clip-clop on the
blacktop beneath them and echo noisily throughout the desolate
area. Cory pulls the hood of his coat down over his face tighter to
keep out the chill of the bitter wind. The softened bearskin is
tied around his throat to aid as a subzero wind barrier. It hangs
down over Jet’s rump, which Cory is sure he appreciates, as
well.
The road is empty, deserted
as usual, but he’s not taking any chances.
He unbuttons the catch on his rifle scabbard just in
case.

They travel further north on route
71 until he comes to a massive suspension bridge with steel girders
overhead. There are two tall sandstone towers with strong, steel
cables connected to them. It’s
an
amazing
structure to behold on foot. He’s
never been to this area of the country before. His family hadn’t
traveled much before the apocalypse, not like
Kelly,
who’d been around the
world many times over with the Army. His own plans of joining were
thwarted by the shit hitting the fan in a worldwide sweep. He’d
been angry at first. Then he’d
reconciled
himself to what his life
would be. Until Em, he’d
been
fine with the choices that fate had
decided to deal him for a future life. Now he’s back to being angry
but for different reasons this time. Now he’s looking for a
reckoning, not a career.

The bridge seems like it could be a
potential danger, but there’s no way he’s crossing the flooded Ohio
River down below them on horseback. Many of the neighborhoods are
flooded from the
Ohio,
the banks having long since swelled over from
the
wide
river not being controlled anymore. The bridge has to be close
to a hundred feet high, the water
below
it rushing and roaring along
unhindered by man-made locks in the North. Abandoned cars, taxi
cabs, buses,
motor-homes
and semi-trucks are littered about on the long
structure. Beneath him, Jet snorts and prances in place. He does
this when he’s nervous, but Cory urges him forward onto the
bridge.

“Don’t be a pussy,” he scolds. The horse
tosses his head angrily as if he understood the insult.

They move slowly, weaving around
the vehicles, but staying far away from the edge so that the horse
doesn’t further spook. He has no wish to chase down his mount if he
gets unseated. It doesn’t
happen
often
, but when it does it pisses him
off.

Cory
glances
right and sees another bridge,
older and one that looks to have been built for trains. This one,
unfortunately, has collapsed and now lays partially in the city and
partway in the Ohio River. The steel support beams of the old train
bridge have apparently buckled and weakened with time and without
regular maintenance. This isn’t the first time he’s seen
such
huge
,
seemingly unbreakable infrastructure in ruin on the ground, but it
never fails to shock him. This is not even the first destroyed
bridge he’s seen. He just hopes that the one he’s on doesn’t decide
to do the same thing- at least not until he and his horse are off
of it.

There is a long barge which has
been left unattended and has crashed into the side of the collapsed
bridge, just floating and bobbing there. The freight is still
perched rather precariously on the flat surface of the
heavy
boat.

As they pass the open door of an
older model motor-home, a cat scurries out of it,
startling
his
stallion. Cory laughs at him, even though the horse damn near
dumped him when it lurched forward.

“Chicken-shit,” he reprimands and gets an
indignant snort in answer.

At least the vehicles are empty.
Sometimes when he’s with the
Rangers,
they find dead people in them.
A wild animal calls out to another, drawing his attention to the
source. He whips around in the saddle to look over his shoulder.
There is a massive buck standing on the other side of the freeway
divider about sixty feet behind him. His
rack
is
wide
and majestic. His chest is
nearly all white. Cory could use those antlers to make knives, but
he’ll let this one pass. He’s too noble to take down, and Cory
doesn’t need the meat. Besides, the big stud has some balls on him
to walk onto the same bridge as Cory and his horse without
fear.

They make it to the other end of
the bridge where they pause behind a school bus to spy with
binoculars toward the downtown district of Cincinnati. There is a
professional football stadium and a major league baseball stadium
nestled
within
the city center, both of which had once stood so proudly to
draw in excited spectators. Tall office buildings surround the
perimeter which will put him on edge if he heads that way. He
doesn’t like feeling closed in by buildings, narrow streets
or
…
people.
The windows of these structures are covered in dirt and filth. Ivy
grows wildly up the sides of nearly every building,
marring
their
sophisticated status. This area of the city is very tight and
crowded. Cory makes a note to stay close to the buildings for
protection and to prevent himself from standing out as a target if
he goes in there.

Gunfire in the not too far off distance
startles his stallion and alerts Cory at the same moment to
potential dangers. He pulls his mount to a swift halt.

“Easy,” Cory says softly. “Settle down,
knucklehead. Easy.”

It is essential that his horse not give them
away, bolt and leave him in the dust, or whinny loudly. That
gunfire hadn’t sounded more than a few hundred yards away. Time to
go and investigate.

He weaves around vehicles, a city
bus, a semi on its side, which looks to have contained liquid
oxygen, and crosses many
lanes
of the congested freeway as
quickly as possible to get to an exit ramp since his horse isn’t
winged and they are still at a
relatively
elevated position. Cory takes
the first exit he comes to so that he can make progress through the
city. He starts heading northeast, crossing streets that contain
more vehicles with their gas caps open, letting him know that
the
city
has
been
well-pillaged. A man sits behind the wheel of one such
vehicle, a skeletal corpse really. A spray of dried, brown blood
smears the inside of the driver’s window. There is a shotgun wedged
between him and the steering wheel, and his skull is mostly
missing. Apparently nobody wanted
a
shotgun
used in a suicide, and neither does
Cory.

He glances right and notices that a
section of the freeway he’s just come from is destroyed about a
quarter mile further east. He would’ve needed to get off of it
regardless. He can’t tell how big and
broad
of a section is ruined, but what
he can see is laying in a pile of cement rubble on the city road
he’s on. It looks to have taken on full mortar fire or a missile or
about a ton of dynamite. The cracks all around on the pavement
below him, some of which are sizable tell him that it was possibly
an earthquake ranking about a solid twenty on the Richter
scale.
He’ll be glad to get out of
the city later and back into the forest where he feels
safer.
First he has work to do, probably a
lot of work.

He circles in between buildings covered in
moss and black dirt and mold and vines. Many abandoned vehicles
line the streets, and one that he passes even has another
decomposing dead man in the back seat. His stage of decomposition
indicates that he isn’t a victim from four years ago, but perhaps
four days ago. Likely this one froze to death, thinking he’d
survive the cold Ohio winter in a car.

Cory rides down a short alley which has more
grass growing from the cracks than some of the lawns he’s seen. The
gunshots could be a harbinger for help, or it could just be bad
people doing bad things to others who are unarmed and incapable of
defending themselves.

As he comes closer to the source of
the continued commotion of gunfire, he rides his stallion directly
through and into an empty building’s
man
door. Jet is used to being pushed
forward into buildings and shelters. He’s never known the
difference between where man should be and where he should go. He’s
trustworthy, even for a stallion. The building looks to have once
been some sort of manufacturing plant. He dismounts, ties Jet to a
piece of steel poking out of the wall and rests his hand a moment
against the horse’s muzzle.