The McClane Apocalypse Book Five (33 page)

“I’m sure. He was probably wondering how they
got through all of our security on the road,” Cory agrees.

“I know. But I guess they did,” Evie says.
“They explained who they were and who they were looking for. I
mean, it was shocking. They were… I don’t even know how to explain
it. We went to live up north with my other brother, but we drove.
We had provisions from home, a car, supplies. Even though it didn’t
work out because… well, you know why, we still made it back here in
our vehicles. These three young people show up with a little girl
and they were on foot, Cory. Can you imagine?”

He shakes his head and pushes a strand of
loose blonde hair away from her cheek.

“Me neither,” she says, widening her
eyes. “We couldn’t believe it. Paige was tiny. I guess Paige is
still
tiny
, but she was skin and
bones. Her friends, too. They looked like homeless people. They
were dirty and skinny and about half-starved to death. Dad let them
in the house while we called over to get Simon over
here.”

“That was pretty trusting of him. Your dad’s
not usually like that,” Cory says, thinking of the Johnson
patriarch, Ryan, who is a close friend of Doc’s.

“Trust me, it only took a second to realize
they weren’t a threat. It was just so sad. I can’t even describe it
other than that. It was just sad seeing those three kids and a
toddler. I can’t imagine what they went through to get here.”

Cory can. He knows exactly what they’ve seen
and been through. He was on his own for almost eight months out
there. He knows what’s out there. None of it is good news. And he
overheard Paige telling her story about Talia’s rape and her
near-rape. He just nods sympathetically.

“I’m glad for Simon, though,” she says. “It’s
good that his sister made it here. She’s been good for him. He
seems happier having her with him on the farm. And she’s really
nice, too. I like her. She seems kind of shy, but she loves her
brother and friends so fiercely. Kind of like someone else I
know.”

Cory tries not to wrinkle his nose, but it
still happens.

“What?” Evie questions. “Seriously? You don’t
like her? Why not?”

He explains their first meeting in the woods
and the hard grudge she’s been holding against him for it and her
nasty attitude since. Evie laughs at him. He scowls back.

“I’d probably hate you, too,” Evie
admits and lays a hand against his cheek. “Give her a chance.
She’s
a good
person,
Cory.”

He shrugs and scoffs.

“She’s very pretty,” Evie says as if she’s
trying to get him to admit it.

“She’s all right,” he lies.

“Yeah, right,” Evie says, forcing Cory to
confront his own falsehood. “She’s more than pretty. She could’ve
been a model or something. She’s so tall and beautiful. I like her
a lot. Guess some of the guys in town do, too.”

She’s hinting at what he already knows. He’d
like to change the topic but can’t seem to do so with any
subtlety.

“Fine, she’s pretty. Happy?” he asks
impatiently and starts pulling her closer.

“I don’t know,” Evie says as he plies her
neck with kisses. “I think I saw something the other day when you
brought her over here.”

“What do you mean?” Cory asks, not stopping
with the kissing but adding a caress of her hip.

“I think I saw a mutual attraction if you ask
me,” she offers.

Cory wishes she’d stop talking about Paige.
Now his brain is filled with images of her. It’s also filled with
images of her coming home skinny as a rail and hungry and tired. It
bothers him to think of her suffering. He tells himself that this
is exactly how he ended up with Damn Dog.

“Nope, not attracted to her at all. She’s
probably attracted to me because, well, let’s face it, who isn’t?”
he says, attempting a lighter banter with her.

He goes back to kissing Evie, this time
behind her ear, which she usually likes. Then he strokes his hand
down her back and pulls her up against him.

“Oh, your cocky attitude is gonna get you in
trouble one of these days, Cory,” she warns with a grin. “You’re
gonna get swept off your feet and you won’t even know it. Boom,
like a lightning bolt.”

“Not likely,” he says wryly.

“Maybe
Paige’ll
be the one to do it, too,” she
suggests.

Damn, she’s killing his boner. He wishes
she’d just shut up about Simon’s sister already. He and Evie don’t
have a flowers and poetry kind of relationship, but this isn’t
exactly getting it, either.

“No way. Not the beanpole,” he tells
Evie.

“She’s not a beanpole anymore,” Evie
argues. “I think you are attracted to her. And I also
believe
it’s a good thing, Cory.
And
I think we shouldn’t see each
other for a while. Not until you get this thing worked out with
Paige.”

And there it went. He rolls away from her
onto his back. Evie leans up on her elbow to talk to him.

“I’m not attract…” he starts.

“Yes, you are. And now you need to decide if
you have actual feelings for her or if you are just looking for…
more of what we have,” Evie tells him.

As usual, her wisdom goes far beyond his own.
Cory just looks over at her.

“She’s a beautiful woman, but you have to
think about if your relationship with Simon could be damaged by
pursuing his sister,” Evie says.

Damn. What is she, a psychic or something?
He’d just been thinking about this shit on his way over.

“I think you should allow your heart to open
up to this woman,” Evie counsels, whether he wants it or not.

“What?” Cory asks with disbelief.

“It wouldn’t be the worst thing ever. Heck,
it might be the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”

“No thanks,” he replies smugly. “That’s not a
good idea at all.”

“It was for me. I loved my husband very much.
I think someday I may find someone else to love, but I don’t know
that anyone could ever replace my Richard. He knocked me off my
feet. Sometimes that’s ok, Cory. It might be what she needs, too.
Paige has been through ten lifetimes of bad things I’m quite sure,
and so have you.”

“Evie,” Cory warns.

She just laughs softly and touches his face
with her fingertips.

“Look, I know what losing Em did to you.
Trust me, I went through the same damn thing when I lost my
husband. But you don’t have to throw your whole life away because
of it. You have to find some happiness in this world, even as
messed up as it is now. And Em would want that for you. And I’m
sure that Paige’s family would’ve wanted that for her, too. Just
tread lightly where Simon is concerned. Don’t do anything rash or
stupid.”

“Stupid is my specialty,” Cory says with a
grin and pulls her closer so that she can rest her head in the
crook of his arm. He knows that sex is off the table tonight, but
she still deserves some comforting human contact from him.

“Don’t I know that,” she teases. “Seriously,
though, don’t hurt Simon by doing anything with his sister that you
don’t mean to take seriously or by dishonoring her. She’s still his
sister. Imagine if it were you in his shoes. Be careful, ok?”

“You got it,” he says and kisses her
forehead.

They lie together for another hour
before he walks her back to the barns. He waits until she is safely
inside their old farmhouse before retrieving his horse again and
leaving. Her words are rattling around in his brain, irritating him
and confusing him at the same time. When he arrives at his cabin,
he finds Paige still awake reading and Simon gone. She has a single
candle burning on top of the wood-burning stove and
a low
, dying fire going inside of
it.

“Hot date with the farmers’ daughters?” she
asks snidely from her mattress on the floor.

Why couldn’t she just have been asleep? He
tries to suppress a groan.

“You have no idea,” he says with sarcasm that
she won’t understand. Let her think about it. He doesn’t care what
she thinks of him or Evie or their relationship or any other
opinions she might have of him and his sexual prowess- or tonight,
lack of.

“Spare me the details,” she says and then
snorts.

He strips out of his clothing down to his
t-shirt and boxers and climbs into bed, pulling a sheet over his
body to conceal it.

“Where’s the professor?” he asks after his
friend.

“Supposedly my brother does
middle
of the night emergency
house calls
with Dr.
McClane.”

“Someone’s goat giving birth or something?”
he jokes.

“No, I think someone’s wife is giving birth
or something,” she says with disgust.

“What’s with the tone?”

Paige lowers her book and regards him with
open criticism, “Because, I’ve witnessed one live birth. That was
about as gross as it gets.”

Cory chuckles at her.

“Childbirth is supposed to be a beautiful
thing,” he teases.

“Whoever came up with that is a moron,” she
tells him. “I went with my brother and Sam when Anita gave birth.
Don’t get me wrong, the baby was cute but the birth of it wasn’t.
I’ll be happy if I never see that again.”

Cory laughs loudly this time. She’s brutally
honest; he’ll give her that much. He considers her comment for a
moment. She’s the exact opposite of Evie, who tries to see
something positive in everything, even within the apocalyptic
society they all live.

“So, no babies in your near future?” he asks,
grinning.

“I think between the two of us that you might
be a father sooner than I’ll be someone’s mom,” she says
testily.

Cory laughs again and replies, “Nah, no baby
daddy moments for me. But you might keep your options open.”

“Options? What options?”

“Haven’t you seen any action since you came
here? There’s plenty of fish in the sea, well, in our town,” Cory
pries. He can’t help it. He wants to know if there was someone in
town before Jason in that window of time when he was gone from the
farm and when she arrived.

“Hardly,” is all he gets from her.

“So, you’re telling me that the last time you
had sex was four years ago?”

“I’m not telling you anything. You don’t need
to know about my sex life,” she remarks with fire.

He has to go about this more tactfully, “Come
on. I’m taking a post-apocalyptic poll. You know, for future
generations. People need to know these things. They’re gonna want
to know about our sex lives, not just how we survived off the
grid.”

She chuckles this time.

“Shut up,” Paige says, but Cory can tell that
a smile is touching her mouth.

“So, more recently than four years ago? Catch
any action on the trip here?”

“Are you daft or something? Is that what you
were doing while you were gone from this place? Hooking up, blazing
a trail from here to… wherever you went? I was actually just trying
to survive.”

“Ok, so nothing out in the field. What about
since you got here? Anyone in town? Anyone from a neighboring
town?”

“Get real. No!” she blurts angrily.

Her temper sure does match her hair
sometimes, most of the time, always. For some reason, her admission
makes Cory grin like a fox.

“What are you reading?” he asks, changing the
subject.

“I found this book on your shelf,” she says
before closing it and blowing out her candle.

“Shirts, bed, books, anything else I own that
you want to use?” Cory asks and then has to erase the thoughts that
come to mind when he considers what he just asked her and how she
might take it. He definitely hadn’t meant it as a crude suggestion,
but after giving it some thought, Cory gets stuck dwelling on Paige
using him for sex.

“It’s about tank battles,” she tells him,
ignoring his question. “Do you like reading about stuff like
that?”

“Yeah, I do. I think there’s always a lot to
learn from studying past battles,” he explains, folding his arms
behind his head.

“What did you want to do after school?
College?”

“Nah, Kelly wanted me to go to college and so
did my folks, but I was joining. They couldn’t have stopped
me.”

“Joining what?” she asks.

“The Army, what else? I was following Kelly
into the Army. I don’t know if I wanted to go Special Forces like
him, but I loved tanks and choppers. I don’t know. Maybe I would’ve
went into the armored division.”

He hasn’t thought about this topic for a long
time. There’s no sense in dwelling on the past, on what could’ve or
should’ve been.

“That’s interesting,” she notes.

“I liked drawing out schematics for new
types of military vehicles. Engineering is where I probably
would’ve ended up. I like putting shit together,” he tells her.
He’s not sure why he’s sharing so much with Paige. They
don’t
usually
talk this much or
this personally or civilly.

“I could’ve designed new buildings, and you
could’ve designed the tanks to blow them up,” she reflects, a smile
touching her voice.

“Except for assholes already beat us to it,”
Cory says, thinking of the war that started all of this.

“Yeah, assholes,” she agrees.

Cory rolls onto his side where he can just
make out the outline of her body across the room beneath her
blanket.

“Remember when the farm was attacked while I
was gone?” he asks.

“Of course I remember. It was scary as hell,”
she says dramatically.

“What do you remember exactly? Can you tell
me anything about the men who did it or any details about the
event?” he asks, trying to gain some sort of insight into that
night.

“Not really,” she starts. “It all happened so
fast. Why do you want to know?”