The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (73 page)

“Hey,
young
man,” the hooch maker
says as he taps Cory’s shoulder.” Ain’t nobody here. Ain’t
nobody
been
here for years, son.”

“How do you know that?”

“’Cuz this is where I come to get my
stuff,” he says as they go into the kitchen. “See? This is where I
come once a month now. Not the town, that place dried up a long
time ago. But nobody comes here no more, so I can sneak right in
and take what I need.”

“Like what?”

The old man pushes open a door in the
kitchen and says, “Anything I need. See, kid?”

Cory is astonished at the
amount of canned goods and bags of dried foods like beans and sacks
of rice that are still in the pantry of the college’s kitchen. Why
hadn’t people thought to come here to raid for goods? Well, anyone
other than the hooch maker. He also ponders why rodents haven’t
destroyed and eaten the food in the sacks. Apparently they’ve
snacked
on enough dead
bodies
to forego a meal of
beans.

He nods slowly and tosses some ideas
around in his mind. It doesn’t take long to come to a conclusion.
There are two options in this scenario, but he’s not completely
lost his sense of humanity. He’s not going to take any of this, nor
is he going to tell the armory group about this place. Someday
people will think to come back onto this campus to search for food
or shelter. Until then he’ll leave this stash to the old hooch
maker. They have enough food with the garden and hunting to last a
while. He’s not too worried about it for now.

“Come on, kid,” the other man says.
“I’ll make us some dinner out at my cabin. You can stay there for a
few days if you like.”

“Where’s your son you were talking
about? Is he out there?”

“You ain’t too
trustin’
of
people, are ya’?” he asks
with
a devilish grin and adds canned
meat and another can of potatoes to his threadbare sack. “My boy
was like that, too. Nah, he ain’t out at the cabin. Nope, he joined
the Marines and got himself killed over there in Syria nigh on
seven years ago.”

When the hooch maker’s eyes meet his
own, Cory can see that the loss of this man’s son still haunts him
today. Kelly and John were also in Syria, but his brother never
talks about it.

“Sorry,” Cory apologizes.

“It’s alright, kid,” he
says. “Come out and keep me company. Tell me what’s been going on
in the world. I ain’t got no radio or television or nothin’ fancy
out there. Just me and my goats
is
all.”

Cory has absolutely no
desire to hang out with this guy for the evening, but he
feels
bad
that he’s alone and has been for years. He’s probably not even
aware of how the fall of the country happened if he has no outside
communication with people. Plus he’s just packed about thirty
pounds of crap from the kitchen into his sack. The least Cory can
do
is
carry
the damn thing for him.

“You want any more of this shit?” Cory
asks before he leaves the room.

The old man shakes his
head, so they head out. Cory attaches the man’s bag to his saddle
and leads it instead of riding the stallion. They travel through
the woods for about an hour until they come to a ravine where the
hooch maker’s tiny cabin is located. It’s a ramshackle
structure,
to say
the least. Cory will not spend the night. He’d already decided
that, but he will keep the man company for a few hours because he
seems lonely, at least long enough to explain the current events of
their nation.

Upon entering the shack, Cory is
greeted by the smell of something cooking that stirs his stomach
into wakefulness. There is a cast iron pot on top of a wood-burning
stove. The old man wasn’t lying. There wasn’t a soul in sight and
hadn’t been for the whole trek to the cabin.

They eat at a small table
in the one room shack while Cory enlightens the other man on what
happened in the world. Then he introduces Cory to his first sip of
homemade moonshine, which burns his mouth, his
throat
and all the way to his
gut. He’s surely gonna piss fire after drinking this shit. They sit
on the front porch with a single lantern glowing on the floorboards
between them while sipping at the hooch.

“Got a girl, kid?”

They have not exchanged names. The
older man is wise enough to realize that Cory won’t be staying and
that names are not necessary for an evening of
companionship.

“No, none for me,” Cory tells him
before taking another sip. Damn. This is going to give him rot-gut.
He’s surprised that the hooch maker is still alive after drinking
this for who knows how many years.

“Really? A good looking kid like you
and no girl?”

“Nope, not lookin’ for one, either,”
Cory admits.

“Gotta have a family,” the hooch maker
says. “You have to have kids so that you can pass down your
legacy.”

“I don’t think in the current state of
things that there’d be too much legacy to pass down.”

“You pass down your story, who you
are, who your family was,” hooch maker says.

Cory thinks on this for a
few moments. His legacy isn’t too commendable lately. What would he
tell his kids?
That he spent eight
months killing creeps to keep people safe from them?
That he was hell bent on ridding the earth
of them so that his sister didn’t die in vain?
The legacy that he’d pass on to future generations would be
something twisted and dark, full of gory and macabre tales. Since
he’d taken his first life, that of the man named Levon with the
visitors’ group, he’s never looked back. In his
mind,
it was a justified
killing. Every murder he’s committed since then has also been
justified. He has shot and killed men. He
killed
a woman, too. She was the
evil, fucking aunt of Simon’s who was going to stab his brother in
the back. She got what she deserved. He’s shot men, stabbed them to
death, killed one with a piece of lumber when he’d
dropped
his rifle
when he was ambushed and grabbed a broken two-by-four nearby. Cory
doesn’t think these are the kinds of stories one should pass on to
his children. So far in his life, he has no other stories to pass
on to anyone.

He takes another sip, feeling the
effects of the liquor starting to work in his system. It’s not such
a bad feeling tonight. He doesn’t want to think about his
family.

“I never had much of a family, just my
boy. But you’ve got family. I can tell,” the man
assumes.

“Humpf,” Cory grunts.

“You better hold onto ‘em,” the man
tells him.

It almost sounds like an order, but
when Cory looks at him, his face is complacent again and smooth-
minus the million wrinkles. They sit another few minutes in the
dark before Cory decides to take off for the night. The man insists
that he take three mason jars of moonshine with him, even says that
he could use it for cleaning a wound if he needed to. Cory leaves
the fresh vegetables from the garden at the armory on the man’s
table without him seeing. The hooch maker could use them more than
him. Cory also leaves the wrapped, cooked deer meat there, as
well.

He rides back to the college, sacks
out in the library on a couch. Jet and Damn Dog join him in the
building, not on his sofa. He thinks they’d both like to, but
there’s really no room for a mangy German shepherd and an eight
hundred pound stallion.

Sleep won’t come to him,
even with the liquor in his system and the room slightly spinning.
He rubs at Em’s gold bracelet twined around the leather cord at his
neck and
thinks
about the hooch maker’s words. He’s made a decision tonight.
It’s time to go home.

Chapter Thirty-three

Sam

“Grandpa! Grandpa!” Sam calls at the
top of her lungs from his study.

She sprints down the hall, through the
kitchen- startling Hannah and Sue- and jumps off the back porch.
Grandpa and Simon were supposed to be herb hunting in the
forest.

She was dusting his bookshelves when
the radio, which usually never plays anything but the constant hum
of static, actually started broadcasting a message.

“What’s going on?” Reagan asks as she
pulls her gelding to a halt.

Jacob rides happily behind her, and
John rides beside her on his own horse. It’s still relatively early
in the day, not yet even noon, and they’d gone on a patrol. Derek
also jogs over to hear the news.

“The radio!” Sam blurts but keeps on
running. “Go listen to the radio!”

She doesn’t even bother to stop and
explain. They’ll figure it out as soon as they get to the house.
She spies Simon and Grandpa coming toward her, rounding the corner
near the hog barn. She waves like a crazy woman, her ponytail
bobbing around. They pick up the pace, realizing her
urgency.

“Grandpa, there’s a radio broadcast!”
she says excitedly while also trying to catch her
breath.

“Calm down, Samantha,” Grandpa
instructs. “Take your time, honey.”

Sam takes a deep breath and says,
“There’s a broadcast looping over and over again on your radio. It
just started a few minutes ago.”

Grandpa looks for the
briefest of seconds to Simon before the three of them walk briskly,
or as
briskly
as he can walk, toward the house again. When they get to his
study, everyone except for the children
is
crammed in there listening
intently.

“…again God Bless America
and…”

Derek interrupts, “This is the end of
it. Just wait, it restarts, Herb. It isn’t coming in too
great.”

Grandpa is wiping his sweaty forehead
with a handkerchief as he takes a seat behind his desk and adjusts
the volume to be a little louder.

“This is a message for the
citizens of the United States of America. This is your President,
Ezra Hofstetter
…
”

“That’s the Vice, not the actual
President,” John interjects.

“Something must’ve happened to the
President,” Derek adds.

“Shh!” Sue demands.

“…there have been many
changes in our government and our country since the tragic events
that destroyed our coastlines and infrastructure. From what
information we have been able to gather during the last four years,
we are doing better than most other nations.” Static interrupts
the
transmission,
and it becomes sketchy. “…are going to need to
work together to re-establish our country back to its former
glory…men and women in our country with military experience or who
are active-duty ….set up as temporary
…
”

“What the fuck?” Reagan yells. “What
is he saying? Do they want you guys to come back? No
way!”

Grandpa holds up his hand and says,
“Let’s hear the rest, dear.”

“…Iowa and Oklahoma.
In
2033,
our country came under direct….”

This is all they get, no matter how
fast Grandpa and Derek adjust and readjust the controls of the old
radio.

“What’s going on?” Sue asks with
apprehension. “What do you think is happening? The feed wasn’t any
better when I came in here.”
“Yeah, are they wanting the men to return to active duty status and
report in somewhere? Is that what he was trying to say?” Reagan
asks angrily.

“I’m not sure,” Derek answers. “Kind
of sounded like it. I don’t know.”

“Wonder what happened to the
President? That guy was the Vice President,” John
remarks.

“He probably died,” Reagan
remarks coolly. Some of the family regard her as if she is being
insensitive. “What? I’m just saying that he’s probably dead. I
mean, would it really be all that surprising? If he survived the
initial
catastrophes,
then he could’ve died from
disease
.”

“They have a bunker out in Wyoming or
Colorado in a mountain, a massive structure meant to withstand
anything and meant for living in for fifty years if they need to. I
would’ve thought they would’ve taken him there immediately,” Kelly
says.

Hannah inches closer to him
and leans into his side. He
immediately
wraps an arm around her
shoulders and kisses the top of her head. Sam knows that she must
be worried that someone will take Kelly away from her.

“Do you think they want us to report
in somewhere?” John asks his brother.

“I don’t know. That wasn’t a very
clear broadcast,” Derek says.

“If the government’s getting back on
its feet, then that would be a good thing, right?” Sam
asks.