The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (25 page)

Reagan places her hand on Hannah’s head and
strokes her soft hair. “You won’t, Hannie. I’m tough. Hell, look at
me. I’m in peak form.”

Hannah raises her head and chuffs
softly.

“I wouldn’t be bragging too loudly right now if
I were you,” Hannah chides gently.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she emphasizes again.
“I’m here to stay. You’re stuck with me.”

A short time later, her husband bursts through
the door. Reagan can immediately tell that he hasn’t slept much
during the week that she’s been sick. His hair stands up on end,
and his eyes are hooded and exhausted. He rushes toward her bed
and, without thinking, gathers her into his arms. He plies her face
with kisses and leaves a final one on her forehead. The rough beard
he’s grown this winter rubs against her cheek.

“John!” Hannah exclaims. “You could get sick.
Don’t do that.”

Before John can rebut her sister, Kelly
reappears at the door and escorts Hannah away. Reagan can hear her
arguing with him all the way to the house. John grasps her chin and
turns her toward him. He has taken up residence in Hannah’s
chair.

“Don’t you ever do that to me again, Reagan
McClane Harrison,” he threatens.

His blue eyes are bloodshot. His brow is so
tightly knitted together that she fears it’ll stay that
way.

“I
’m
fine,
” she says weakly. Maybe not
fine
but doing
slightly better in her opinion. She’s getting a blinding headache,
one of the many symptoms of the flu.

“We weren’t so sure
yesterday morning,” he tells her and kisses her hand.
“You were at your worst yesterday.
All day your fevers were so high.
Doc said one time that you were up to one-o-six.
That’s dangerous high, he said.”

Reagan nods. “I know. That’s pretty bad. I
remember feeling like I was on fire,” she acknowledges.

“He said there could be complications, a
relapse, infertility issues, pneumonia still,” John frets with
full-blown anxiety.

“I’m feeling much better, babe,”
Reagan says. “You know I can’t get pregnant, so that doesn’t even
matter. Is Jacob ok? Are you? Have you felt any of the
symptoms
…
”

“Reagan, we’re all fine. You’re the one that’s
sick, honey,” he says with a soft smile. “Don’t worry about the
rest of us. Just get better.”

“Shower when you go inside, John,” she orders
softly.

She blinks heavily and then the next thing she
knows she’s snapping back awake. Grandpa has returned, but John
still sits beside her. Reagan has no idea how long she was out. A
warm blanket is covering her. It feels delightfully cozy. Having
John beside her and Grandpa taking care of her makes her feel
safe.

“There’s our girl again,” Grandpa remarks with
wit.

“You two don’t have to stay out here,” Reagan
says weakly. “You can go back in. It’s not like I’m going to be
doing anything other than lying here, maybe dying a little
bit.”

“That’s… not funny,” John scolds as
usual. “I’m not leaving,” he states
simply
and squeezes her hand.

“I need to use the restroom,” she tells
them.

“Just a moment, honey,” Grandpa says. “Let me
get your stats again and then you can go.”

The men added on a small, rustic
bathroom to the med shed a few years ago so that the house bathroom
would not have to be used
by
sick people or the medical staff taking care of
them.

“How long was I out?” she asks.

“A few hours,” John tells her.

Reagan frowns lightly. Damn, she
thought she’d only
been
out for a few minutes not hours. Her throat feels
like she’s swallowing razorblades.

“Can I get a drink?”

“Sure, babe,” John agrees.

He holds a glass of
cool
water to her
mouth, but Reagan takes it from him. She even pushes to a slightly
elevated seated position.

“Take it easy, Reagan,” John
complains with
worry.

Reagan shakes her head. “I actually feel a
little better…”

“It’s my tea working!” Grandpa states with
zeal.

She rolls her eyes at him, earning a chuckle
from John.

“Anyone else sick?” she
nervously
inquires
after her family.

“Sue is feeling a little down, but she’s not
running fevers,” Grandpa tells her.

“Oh no,” Reagan says
on
a sigh. “She’s
not getting this, is she?”

Grandpa places his hand reassuringly on her
shoulder and smiles gently.

“I don’t think so,” he says. “But if she is,
we’ll treat it the same way.”

Reagan feels sick with guilt now instead of
fevers and body aches. What if she’s infected her whole family?
What if one of them dies?

“My granddaughters are tough
cookies, little missy. Everyone will be
just fine
. You don’t need to worry
about any of that. Just get well,” Grandpa tells her.

“Right,” John agrees with her grandfather.
“Don’t worry about everyone else. Just concentrate on getting
better.”

Reagan nods but can’t help the frown
she knows
is
on her face. If Hannah contracted this, then she might not be
able to have any more children. Sue already can’t conceive more.
After her mid-term miscarriage that had gone so badly almost four
years ago, Grandpa and Reagan had come to the conclusion that she
would likely never conceive again. She’d
been
so devastated, but at least
she and Derek have their three healthy munchkins. Reagan’s still
not convinced that people should just continue procreating as if
nothing has changed in the world. Grams had not agreed one iota
with that philosophy and had told her so many times. It’s not like
it would’ve mattered,
though
because she can’t have kids. It doesn’t bother her
because she has Jacob, and he’s all she needs.

“You should go in and sleep in the
house tonight, John,” she tells her husband after he’s helped her
to the bathroom and back to her bed again. Her legs had felt like
rubber and had given out on her when she’d
stood
. Her husband, her husband
with the
huge
arm muscles and
strong
back, had insisted on carrying her. Just being in
his arms again for a few brief moments had made her feel like
everything would be ok. He always makes her feel this
way.

“Not a chance, boss,” he says
with
a handsome
grin.

She just gives him a jeering look. “If I’m not
fevering tomorrow, do you think I can go back to the big house,
Grandpa?”

“We’ll see, honey,” he says as he writes
something on her chart.

Reagan almost laughs. He’s so thorough, even if
he’s just taking care of his own family. Some doctorly habits must
be hard for him to break. She would also like to get her hands on
those notes.

“Let’s not push this, ok?” he says and touches
her shoulder again.

Reagan nods and feels that familiar
tug of fatigue enveloping her in a warm embrace of restful promise.
She slips away again to that place where she doesn’t have to think
about the world as it is now. Where she can
believe
that everything’s still
unicorns, rainbows and
teddy
bears
and not death,
deconstruction
and devastating
diseases.

Chapter Thirteen

Cory

A late winter snowstorm explodes with
a vicious fury as Cory battens down and takes refuge from the
torrent of snow and icy sleet that started over three hours ago.
His shelter of choice is a beauty salon and spa in Cincinnati. It’s
unlikely that anyone would suspect a man to take shelter there. He
has no particular destination in mind other than to stay as far
away from people as possible. He has tied his stallion right
outside the front door under the overhang of the roof
line.

A few days ago when he’d
first
arrived
in this city, he’d found two, fifty pound sacks of grain in a
tractor and farm implement supply store. He also salvaged a ten
pound bag of chicken feed in the warehouse section of a huge pet
supply company. His stallion doesn’t need to lay an egg, but Cory
knows that it’s not much different than the mix they use at the
farm for all of the livestock as long as it hasn’t molded. It’s
just compounded differently and packed together into pellets
instead of loose corn and crimped oats. The other bags he’d found
had mold spots
in
them from where the roof had leaked and ruined an
entire pallet. When he’d decided to head out on his own, he only
had a few coffee cans full of feed and one bale of hay. It hadn’t
lasted
long,
and he’d
had
to stop for hours on end for the horse to forage
on wild grasses. Then he’d come through a few small towns and had
stopped in northern Tennessee where he finally found suitable, dry
hay in an abandoned barn. It was a few years old, but not ruined.
He’d found more in a cow barn in a small town in Kentucky. Luckily
for him, there had been many other abandoned barns there since it
used to be such a big horse breeding state.

He’d found three more
scumbag creeps that he’d killed yesterday morning in this big city.
They’d
been
messing with an old lady, robbing her of her tiny supply of
food she had stashed where she was apparently living in a
small,
two-room
former furniture and appliances rental store. She’d
unnecessarily
told
Cory her whole life story including the fact that
she’d been forced to leave her
first-floor
apartment a few years before
because it had flooded. She’d confirmed his hypothesis about the
earthquake. He’d
dragged
the dead bodies away and stashed them in a parking
lot where she wouldn’t have to look at them. She didn’t have much
food, so Cory had snared a rabbit for her later and took it back to
her. She’d
been
so appreciative that she’d cried.

He’d also finished the job
on the group of thugs who’d been terrorizing the people in front of
the church when he’d first
arrived
in the city. The one in the
restaurant had confessed about their whereabouts, confessed because
Cory had shot him in the leg. They’d
been
hiding in an abandoned home just
like their friend told him. He’d taken care of them at night. It
had been easy. Then he’d
redistributed
their weapons and ammo to
the family near the church who had been attacked. He had carried
away their former pastor, removed his dead body from the
sidewalk.

He’d gone back to the
restaurant where he’d killed the sidewalk rape simulator turned
snitch and found two cans of something called
Skyline Chili
on the floor near the
deep fryer. The name on the
blue-labeled
can had matched the sign
missing two neon letters on top of the restaurant that looked more
like
yline
Chili
. Later that day he’d eaten the
one can of unusually flavored chili, heated over
a low
fire in an
abandoned warehouse after he’d scrubbed his hands clean with cold
snow. The other can he’d taken back and given to the small group at
the church. He’d also given them a squirrel carcass he’d killed
earlier that morning and the last of his bear meat. There were
three little kids playing in a pew. He couldn’t exactly justify
eating food when
kids
were hungry.

Yesterday he’d
stayed
at the
Red’s stadium and had allowed his stallion to free-range graze on
the field around the baseball diamond. It was very overgrown, gone
to seed numerous times in the last years and not maintained by
anyone. Jet had made quite the feast of it, too, pawing through the
snow to graze. He’d galloped and bucked and ran around like a
maniac for the first few minutes of his uninterrupted freedom. Then
Cory had found bats and a bucketful of baseballs down in the
dugout. He’d taken some time to crack a few around the field. It
wasn’t like he was worried about someone attacking him. He used to
play baseball in
school
but had given it up for the full contact sport of
football instead.

Cory had slept down in that
dugout and had allowed Jet to roam around the field throughout the
night. He’d
had
shelter,
and the horse had his
freedom for about twelve blissful hours. When he’d left there this
morning, he’d taken two of the bats and a few of the signed balls.
The
bats
can be used as a weapon if need be. But if he doesn’t use
them, he can always take them home someday to the farm for the
kids. If he ever goes back there.