The McClane Apocalypse Book Five (23 page)

“Exactly,” Paige remarks and snaps her
fingers. “That’s precisely why he
isn’t
attractive.”

“It sounds like your judgment may have
been impaired the other night, so maybe you don’t remember what
he
really
looks like. You
were probably seeing
double,” Talia
teases her friend.

“Shut up,” Paige mumbles with
embarrassment.

“That would explain why he gave me those
quarts of moonshine the next day and said something about keeping
it out of reach ‘cuz it’s dangerous. I thought he was kidding,”
Reagan muses.

Paige frowns hard and says, “It is dangerous.
Especially if you get dumped on by a guy and start feeling
pathetic.”

Reagan smiles and so does Paige. “Jason’s
kind of a dick. We weren’t too fond of him when we were young. He
was always kind of cocky. I couldn’t understand why John and Kelly
thought he was cool, but he wasn’t, not really. They didn’t really
know him all that well. They do now, though. Simon and Cory
explained it.”

Sam adds, “Oh well, you’re better off.”

“Yeah, maybe you ought to give a real man a
chance. Like maybe a… what is it that you always call him… a
Neanderthal?” Talia says as she nudges her shoulder against Paige’s
shoulder.

“Gimme’ a break,” Paige scoffs.

“Speak of the devil,” Sam remarks.

Kelly,
John
and Cory come barging through the back door laughing at
whatever those crazy men are always joking about.

Of course,
John
comes right over to Reagan and pulls her in for a sweat-covered
kiss in front of everyone. His open regard for her used to bother
Reagan, but she’s grown used to it and could give a damn what
anyone thinks anymore. She has no idea how long she’ll be on this
earth, and she’s never going to waste another minute of it holding
back her feelings for John.

“Where’s Hannah?” Kelly inquires.

“She’s out with Sue putting up herbs in the
barn,” Sam offers kindly.

“Simon’s in town with Grandpa and Derek,”
Paige tells them.

“We already knew that, beanpole,” Cory says
snidely. “We’re on security detail while they’re gone.”

If he wants to get along better with Simon’s
sister, he should learn some manners. Reagan watches the scowl that
comes over Paige’s face deepen into a grimace of loathing.

“Don’t you ever wear a shirt?” she asks
angrily. “It’s fall. It’s cold out today.”

Cory laughs and answers, “Wonder why I don’t
have anything to wear? Someone’s always stealing my shirts ‘cuz
they’re always gone from my basket.”

He’s indicating toward Paige’s shirt,
which
obviously
must belong to
him. Reagan can’t imagine Cory wearing a tie-dye shirt, but perhaps
it does belong to him. Paige’s cheeks redden with anger, or maybe
embarrassment. Reagan speculates that if the kitchen
weren’t
full of people, Paige would just
pull it off right now and throw it at him. She looks like she’d
like to.

“Makin’ soap, huh?” Kelly asks, distracting
the two combatants.

The men are covered in wheat dust and
bits of ground-up rain. Harvesting the
grains
on the farm is a sandy, gritty affair and
one that Reagan is glad she doesn’t have to be a part of
anymore.

“Yep,” Sam answers with a smile.

“Don’t want you men to get stinkier than the
livestock around here,” Reagan teases.

John slips an arm around her from behind and
buries his face in her neck.

“Smell like the
livestock
, huh?” he razzes and rubs his face
against hers.

“John,
quit!” she
reprimands and gets a laugh from her devilish husband. She conceals
her grin from the others and places a quick peck to his cheek to
get rid of him.

“I’m gonna go find my woman,” Kelly
says as he grabs a handful of
scones
from under the glass pastry container. Then he snags a
pitcher of milk from the fridge. “Make her take a break with
me.”

John, because he’s John, says, “Yeah? The
last time you two took a break together, Mary happened nine months
later.”

Kelly
chuffs,
winks at John and heads out the back door
again.

“Gross,” Cory mutters. “I really didn’t want
to think about that.”

Cory snags a brown
butter glazed
cookie out of the same container his
brother had raided and chomps away at it. Sam pours him a glass of
milk and then one for herself. She tugs him by the hand to sit next
to her
at
the island. He just
gives his usual, patient grin to Samantha and plops down beside
her.

“Whatcha’ been up to, kid?” he asks
cordially.

Reagan doesn’t wait around to hear her answer
but follows John from the room as he furtively signaled her to do.
She leaves Talia and Paige to keep an eye on the soap.

“What is it?” Reagan asks

Her husband runs a hand through his
hair, causing some of the dust and flecks of
grain
to fall out onto the hardwood floor. They
have moved to the front hall near the music room and the entry door
where it is private and quiet.

“We need to have a meeting tonight,” he says.
“We’ve got a fuel problem. We’re not going to make it through the
winter without finding gas or even diesel fuel. We’re going to need
it for getting back and forth to town. I don’t want to ride the
horses to the clinic this coming winter. That would be too hard and
time-consuming, especially on your grandpa.”

“Right, I agree,” Reagan confirms. “What are
we going to do, babe?”

John sighs long and hard, his mouth forming a
worried and uncharacteristically pinched line.

“We’re working on it. We’re gonna need to go
on some runs to forage for gas, but I’m not sure what we’re going
to find out there. Cory has an idea for using moonshine as fuel. I
don’t even know if that’d work. We’ll see.”

Reagan nods with a concerned frown. She
doesn’t like it when they leave the farm to do supply runs or to
track down and hunt creeps like the Target men. She doesn’t like
them to leave for any reason unless they are all going
together.

“This is something Simon and Cory can handle.
I’m gonna get Cory on training Paige soon, too. She said she liked
going on runs. We’ll see if she still does.”

Reagan shakes her head and says, “Wait. Why
don’t you just have Simon or you or someone, anyone other than
Cory, work with her?”

“We talked about it,” John tells her. “They
have some issues they need to work out. This’ll help. She needs to
know that she can rely on Cory, that she can trust him just like
anyone else around here.”

Reagan knows that he means the men have
talked about it. Derek is and always will be the head of security
on the farm. It’s a job that weighs on his mind every day. Kelly
and John are in charge of training people. If they’ve decided that
Cory should train Paige, then who the hell is she to argue? They’ve
forgotten more than she’ll ever know about
proper
procedure and how not to get one’s ass shot
out in the field on a run. They’ve passed this wisdom on to Cory
and Simon. And Cory must’ve taken to it because he kept his own
hind end alive for almost a year while he was gone from the
farm.

“All right, babe,” Reagan agrees with her
husband. “When are you going to have them start?”

“As soon as possible,” he says. “We’re
gonna keep working on the wall in town until the weather shuts down
production, but we need that fuel. We need other supplies, too,
like meds for the clinic so if they can get some of those, that
would be great. They’ll be
fine
to go without us.”

“I’ll let her know. Or maybe I’ll let Simon
tell her,” she suggests on a wrinkle of her nose. “What about Sam?
Is she going with them?”

John shrugs, “If she wants to. She’s
been trained, so I don’t see why not. It’s up to her. She hasn’t
been off the farm for a
while
so
it might be a good idea to let her go with them to keep her
fresh.”

Reagan nods and leans in for a quick snuggle.
“Hey, where’s our kid?”

John laughs and ruffles her hair, “I didn’t
lose him. Yet. He’s out in the hog barn with the other kids.”

He pulls her up close for a fast, heated kiss
before he takes off again. John heads back out through the kitchen
door, taking Cory with him.

“This sure does smell good,” Talia remarks as
they pour the last of the soap mixture into the molds.

“We’ll give you a few bars to take home,
Talia,” Reagan tells her just as Sue and Hannah come in through the
kitchen door. They are carrying a basket of vegetables from the
last row in the garden and a new jar of dried herbs.

“Oh, thanks, Reagan,” Talia says. “We
have soap over there, but I think it’s whatever the guys have found
over the years from who knows where. I
miss
the smells of the homemade soap when I lived
here.”

“Well, now you know how to make it!” Sue
remarks. “And here, you can have these herbs, too. You and Bertie
can make your own soaps. This is a jar of mint and thyme mixed.
It’ll smell great in soap.”

“Wow, this is wonderful,” Talia says when she
unscrews the lid on the pint-sized mason jar full of herbs and
takes a big whiff. “Thanks again. I can’t wait to start.”

“Wanna’ stay for dinner?” Hannah offers.

She’s clean from head to toe. Spic and
span in her white dress, white ankle
socks,
and brown loafers paired with her pale
yellow sweater. The only thing out of order is the few wisps of
light blonde hair that have escaped her braid. Reagan doesn’t know
how she does it.

“Thanks, but I’d better radio Chet to
let him know to come and pick us up. That
is
if I can drag Maddie home,” Talia says
with
a laugh. “Bertie was gonna show me
how to make pigs in a blanket, whatever the heck those are. Sounds
like another weird Reynolds food. I hope I don’t have to go out and
butcher a pig or something.”

She laughs and they all do. Talia’s a hoot.
No wonder Paige likes her so well. Other than her one friend at
college and her sisters, Reagan has never been good at making
friends with women. She really wasn’t good at making friends with
men, either. Mostly she was only good at making friends with old
men who were her grandfather’s medical colleagues. When Paige’s
group first came to the farm, Talia had been quiet and withdrawn.
Reagan doesn’t know what all they’ve been through, but it is
probably a horrific story.

Reagan asks Hannah, “I thought Kelly came out
to find you.”

Her lovely sister laughs and says, “He sure
did. And then I kindly informed him that I am just too busy to…take
a break right now.”

Reagan chuckles and says, “I bet that went
over well.”

“Not too well, no,” Hannah admits with a
grin. “He’ll get over it. He’s a big boy.”

“Big? That’s about an understatement,” Talia
jokes.

They
ensue
in teasing Hannah about Kelly for a few minutes before
returning to the soap. Talia and Maddie leave a short while later
and the women start on dinner. Unfortunately, just when they are
ready to put the chicken into the oven, the gas to the stove gives
out. It’s happened quite a few times in the last months and is
something that concerns the men. They worry that the oil well on
the property is going dry. So while Kelly and Grandpa tend to the
gas line, John
stokes
the
fire-pit outside, and they cook the chicken over a grate on
reddened coals and wood. Sue takes two cast-iron pots full of
scalloped potatoes out to John, who is manning the whole cooking on
an open fire concept. If Reagan
were
in charge, it would all be charcoaled to a black crisp and
disgusting. Many times during the canning season they’ve used the
fire-pit to run their
canners
instead of using the gas stove in the kitchen.

When it’s time to assemble for dinner,
Reagan notices Simon and his sister running from behind the
barn
area toward the house. She’s said
how much she used to like running, but she hasn’t done so since
coming to the farm. Apparently she’s gone for a run with her
brother. When they arrive at the back porch, her cheeks are flushed
with high color and strands of her red hair have come loose of the
bandana. She looks
pretty
and
fresh and happy for a change.
Unless she is
hanging out with Simon, which she likely doesn’t get to do much
because of their demanding work schedules on the farm and at the
clinic and the wall build, then she doesn’t seem like a very happy
person.
Reagan feels sorry for her. At least she has
her sisters and John and her grandfather. All that Paige has
is
Simon. Reagan knows that Paige used
to be close
with
her father, but
now he’s gone and so is her mother.

She’s laughing and shoving at her brother as
they push through the back door. Reagan follows them carrying a
platter of chicken.

“Here, Reagan!” Cory calls out and trots over
as he rounds the corner from the front of the house. “Let me get
that for you.”

“Thanks,” she acquiesces. The
platter
was heavier than she’d thought
it would be.