The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (53 page)

Her brow furrows as she sits and
changes the subject, “What are you doing?”

“Reloading ammo,” Simon
answers and starts again. “It’s important to keep our ammo stocked
as full as possible. We blew through quite a lot last night,
so
…
”

“Yeah, this is
really,
really
important
. We need to help keep this place
safe. I’ll do whatever I can to help keep it safe. This is gonna be
our home, right?
Can I help
you with this?” she asks.

Simon notices that her eyes are puffy
and bloodshot from crying. There are still dark rings beneath them.
She needs something to do to take her mind off of the loss of
Gavin. She has finally showered and changed out of last night’s
soiled clothing. Her hair is pulled back into a tight bun at the
base of her neck and is still damp. He also notices her change in
attitude about leaving the farm or fleeing it when bad things
happen. It sets his heart at ease that she is bonding to the
McClane family and their farm. He has no desire to leave the farm,
but he’d never let his sister leave it without him.

“Sure, you can help,” he
allows. “How
‘bout
you hand me that box of
primers,
and I’ll show you how to
load shotgun shells?”

“Hand you the what?”

Simon grins and proceeds to
explain primers, the smokeless powder, the shells and the
equipment. It takes a while, but she catches on and actually helps,
even if she calls the shotgun shells ‘bullet
thingys
.’ He lets it slide.
Now is not the time to correct her. She’s just lost her friend. If
hanging out with him in the reloading shed helps to relieve a
little of her anxiety and take her mind off of the events of last
night
, then
so be it.

They work for a few hours while
chatting about anything but the previous evening or her friend’s
death before heading out and locking the door. On the way to the
house for dinner with the family, Paige holds his hand in hers. If
holding his sister’s hand will make her feel just a smidgen better
and offer her comfort, Simon’s ok with that, too.

Chapter Twenty-five

Paige

“Would you like some help?”
she asks Hannah, who is toiling away in the kitchen while the
others try to find their own tasks to keep them busy until the men
return for dinner later. Paige has spent part of her
day
in Simon’s
cabin cleaning and organizing it. She could tell that two young men
had lived there for the last two years. It was either clean it or
burn it.

Kelly and Simon are working
on something out at the med shed, but Derek and John are gone and
have been all day again. They are going
in
two-man
teams searching for the men who’d gotten away.
Reagan and Sam are in the horse barn,
which, of course,
is something of which
Paige has no desire to be a part. Talia is at the neighbor’s farm
keeping company with Bertie and the captive but now freed woman who
is living with the Reynolds family. Most of the children are
downstairs playing for the time being or until it gets
dark
and they need
to join the family on the first floor for dinner. They weren’t
allowed outside to play yesterday or today.

The men have worked
diligently on cleaning up the farm after the attack last week.
There were so many dead bodies to haul away. She asked her brother
what they did with them, but he wouldn’t answer. She’d
plied
it out of
him, regardless. Simon told her that they’d taken the bodies back
to that Target store and dumped them in front of the building. Then
they’d attached a large
wooden
sign to a post near the
bodies
that warned
passersby of the dangers of attacking the town of Pleasant View
again. Paige had shivered when he recounted it. Then she’d gotten a
lecture about not asking questions about things she couldn’t
handle. She’d felt like her father was giving her a talking down to
instead of her little brother.

The Reynolds brothers took the dead
townsmen back to their families to be buried. It must’ve been
horrible for the people to see their dead husbands or fathers being
brought home to them on the bed of a pick-up truck and not
returning of their own accord.

As soon as Simon had come
into Doc’s bedroom to awaken her the morning after the attacks,
she’d known. She’d known by the look in his distraught blue eyes
that her friend was gone. Some things don’t need fully explained.
She’d
cried
hard over the loss of Gavin. She and Talia both had. He was
their dearest friend, like a brother to them both. If this had
happened a few years ago, they
might
both be dead by now. He’d
been
their
protector of sorts and had gone on many runs without them to secure
food and supplies that had kept them alive. His loss is felt
greatly
by Paige
and Talia. They had even broken the news to Maddie. That hadn’t
gone well, either. She’d
cried
her little heart out over the loss
of her buddy. They’d buried him next to Kelly’s young sister on a
hill that Simon told her
will
bloom early spring
flowers.

“It’s me Paige,” she adds so that
Hannah knows who has approached her in the kitchen. The other woman
chuckles softly.

“I knew it was you,” Hannah replies.
“You don’t have to announce yourself.”

“Oh, sorry,” Paige returns
sheepishly. She doesn’t feel as if she knows Hannah as well as Sam
or Reagan yet. Even
though
Simon has told her many times how uplifting and
joyful and full of light that Hannah is, Paige hasn’t ever seen it.
She does see a deep-seated melancholy in the lovely woman, though.
Hannah is only a year or so older than her, but Paige believes that
she looks a lot older than Hannah. Her life on the road the last
few years have aged her, given her stress wrinkles around her eyes
as if she is thirty years old and not twenty-two. If Hannah doesn’t
snap out of her depression, she’ll be the next one with premature
wrinkles.

“What do you have? I mean what did you
just set on the counter?” Hannah asks her directly.

“My notebook? Oh, wow,
you
really
do hear well. Simon said that not much gets by you,” Paige
blurts and then feels gauche.

Hannah just
chuffs
again. “I
don’t know about that. I feel like everything gets by me most of
the time. I just heard you set something there. You carry it often,
don’t you?”

“Yes, I do actually,” Paige admits
with confusion. “What would you like me to do?”

“Crack those hard-boiled
eggs over there into the bowl. We’ll stock up on egg salad for
tomorrow. It’s the only thing I can think of to do with all these
eggs. We’re overrun with them. As the days grow longer with more
daylight, the chickens go into full production. In the winter they
slow down a lot,” Hannah informs her and continues on without
missing a beat or pausing. “It’s just that
every time
I touch your arm, I feel
you holding it. Is it a journal?”

Her brother has also warned
her about this side of Hannah. She’s intrusive, sometimes
even
nosy
when she wants to know something and an unmatched general in
the kitchen. But Paige doesn’t mind. It’s actually kind of nice to
have people to talk to and a chore to do that she can actually
manage without feeling like an idiot. It’s been a long time since
she’s had this, other than having Talia and Gavin to talk to.
But
interaction
with new people, friendly people, is a
much-welcomed
change. It’s also a
relief to not have to worry about somebody stealing her things.
She’d had items
stolen
in the different FEMA camps and again on the road
while traveling with other people. She swoops her hair into a fat
ponytail to keep it back and gets to work.

“No, well…sort of,” Paige explains. “I
just think it’s important to record the things I’ve seen, the
things that have happened to me and others.”

Hannah stops what she’s doing and
turns directly to her.

“That’s funny that you do that,” she
says before pushing her long braid behind her. “Grandpa does the
same thing.”

“Really?” Paige asks. “That’s
cool.”

“Yeah, he says that it’s a
written history or something like that. He even records the names
and ages, birth dates, those sorts of things for our friends and
family and acquaintances in town. He feels like you
do,
that it’s
important to have a written legacy.”

“That’s interesting,” Paige
acknowledges. “Mine are more about events and stories that I’ve
witnessed or been a part of.”

Hannah’s toddler hides
behind her leg. She’s a timid, tiny thing but adorable as all get
out. Mary favors Kelly with her dark hair, but she has a decidedly
ornery streak. She has her daddy wrapped around her baby finger,
too. Kelly is the kind of man that Paige would’ve avoided at all
costs. He’s literally huge and highly intimidating. She’s a tall
woman, but she likes that. She likes that she’s as tall as most
men. He can tower over her. She’s never been fond of that. Now that
she’s gotten to know him better, though, he’s rather sweet. His
laugh is rich and hearty. He’s still not her type, not that it
would matter. He’s completely devoted to his lovely wife. Paige
respects that about him, about John and Derek, as well. It warms
Paige’s heart to see it, too. At least somebody in this world is
happy. It’s not that Kelly isn’t good looking, even if he does look
like a giant mountain man from Montana. It’s just that she’s always
been attracted to the clean-cut, blonde, preppy kind of guy. A Wall
Street trader would’ve been her type of
guy,
not some burly, large
lumberjack. Likely this comes from the fact that her father was the
clean-cut suit. Loafers and tweed jackets were always preferable to
big and imposing or grungy with a beard. She’d always
been
a daddy’s
girl. He’d doted on
her,
and she’d
basked
in his praise and
adoration.

“Up you go, Miss Mary,” Hannah says to
her daughter.

Then she bends to scoop her darling
girl into her arms where she plies her with kisses before setting
her on her bottom on the counter.

Barely any light comes through the
plywood that covers the window space above the sink. The glass was
shot by those men. The next morning they’d taken stock of their
bullet-riddled home and immediately made plans for repair work
including the porch which had been half scorched. They’ve worked
diligently on the repair. It doesn’t exactly match the intricate
spindle work of the previous porch, but they’ve almost got it
rebuilt. The men are also looking for replacement windows or sheets
of glass if they can find them while they are out also searching
for the escapees.

Paige continues to crack and peel the
hard-boiled eggs on the stone surface of the counter and drop them
into a big white ceramic bowl while Hannah mixes some different
types of flours together. She still can’t believe that people can
eat like this after what she’s been scraping by with for the past
three years. What they wouldn’t have given for some warm bread. One
time they’d found a box of bread mix in an emptied out store and
prepared it on their campfire. It was about one inch thick when
they were done. They hadn’t had a way to activate the yeast in a
warm space for three hours because they were out in the middle of
the woods. It was tough and chewy and coarse but had filled their
stomachs for the night. It was like eating a brick. Most nights
she’d gone to bed with a growling stomach to keep her
company.

Most days Hannah and Sue
whip up such miraculous concoctions like beef stews, vegetable
soups, stuffed cabbages, roasts with root vegetables, baked chicken
with potatoes and bacon pieces, pork roasts with home-canned
sauerkraut and even pasta. The second week on the farm, the men had
brought back fresh fish from wherever they’d gone ice fishing. That
had tasted sublime along with the creamy roasted red pepper soup
that Sue had made. The breads they make are
heavy
and dense and not like the
bleached and refined bread that she’d been used to before the
apocalypse. But they are nothing like the hard brick she and Talia
had made on the fire that time. Hannah’s breads are full of fiber
and cracked wheat and are a lot heartier in texture. They keep her
full, but that’s actually a good feeling. She hasn’t felt full very
many times in her recent past. She and Gavin had carried two of the
chickens with them when they’d left that farm where they’d
wintered
.
Eventually
they’d
stopped laying eggs for some reason and after a few weeks of that,
they’d become dinner. The meat had lasted them for a
week.