The McClane Apocalypse Book Five (35 page)

Pointing in all directions, Kelly adds,
“Watch our six, Professor, and find some high ground with Sam.
Cory, you and Paige set up on the two corners of this street.”

“Yes, sir,” Cory and Simon say in unison.

“We’re going to loot the inside first, see if
we can find equipment we might need. Also, we need to take apart
that compressor over there where they used to fuel up. We need that
at the farm to compress the natural gas,” John explains.

“Got it,” Sam says.

“Stay close,” Kelly warns. “Stay alert. Call
it out if you see anything.”

“Yes, sir,” Simon repeats.

He tugs Sam’s jacket and together they jog
away. Sometimes when they are out like this with other people,
she’ll act as his spotter. This will be one of those times. He
takes her across the street and down about a block and into a tall
building. Simon sweeps his shotgun left and right, checking for
potential problems. Then he gives her the hand signal to move
forward. She stays tight to his back. The structure seems to have
once been some sort of office building. They pass the reception
area, cross the hall and Simon quietly pries open a door to a
stairwell. He eases a flashlight from the cargo pocket on his left
thigh and flicks it on. Stairwells always creep her out. They are
dark, pitch dark and spooky. She always has a jittery feeling like
something frightening is going to come running at them from above
or from below, grabbing her ankles. It never fails to give her the
willies. She also hates abandoned parks. It’s strange, but Sam
hates the public parks that she’s seen since the fall. The weeds
growing up around the play apparatuses always depress her. The
graffiti, the unkempt nature of rusting slides, the squeaky hinges
of the swings when the wind catches them, and flower beds that
haven’t been maintained just always come off as sinister. She
wishes she would’ve never watched scary movies during sleepovers
with her girlfriends. Although now real life has turned out to be
worse than anything that came out of those Hollywood directors’
brains.

She slides in behind him, closing the door
with a soft click. Simon glances over his shoulder at her and nods.
They ascend together, keeping close and going slow. Simon takes her
up three flights before opening another door and leaving the
stairwell behind. They come into a work area with cubicles and
enclosed offices. It reminds her of her father’s construction
firm.

“Over here, Sam,” he instructs.

They cross the room to a long row of windows.
Simon is able to shove one open. Then he pushes hers up too because
she can’t manage to get it to budge. The windows haven’t been
opened for years and are stuck in place. They have the perfect view
of the oil company and about four blocks in either direction. He
pokes the barrel, equipped with a silencer, towards the window and
immediately starts spying.

“Watch that way, Sam,” he says, pointing to
their right.

She does as he instructs, scanning the
area. Apparently this district is
fairly
abandoned.

“Think Paige is nervous?” she asks
quietly.

“I’m sure she is,” he confesses. “But
she’ll be
fine
with
Cory.”

“I haven’t been off the farm for a while.
I’ve even missed a few clinic days lately,” she hints. She’s missed
them because he ditched her at the farm before she could even get
out of bed in time to get ready to go with them. He doesn’t afford
her an answer. Sam grins. He’s so easy to read.

“Looks like they’ve just about got that
system disabled,” he says, changing the direction of their
conversation.

He occasionally looks
behind
them to make sure that nobody is
sneaking up on them. Sam inches closer to him and spies further
down the street. It’s a good thing the sun is high or they may be
in a considerably darker building. She doesn’t like the interior
parts of the abandoned buildings that are so dark. Those are
creepy, too.

“That’s good,” she whispers.

“We…we’ve got company,” Simon suddenly says
and then repeats it into his throat mic. “Someone coming in from
the south. Maybe four blocks away.”

Sam presses her
earpiece
closer and listens for John or Kelly to
make the call. She sees the car Simon has spotted. She turns the
knob on her spotting scope to bring it in more clearly.

“Single driver, no passengers,” she
reports into her own mic. The vehicle is an older model, turquoise
mini-van. The driver is wearing a jacket that conceals their head.
She doesn’t see anyone else inside but continues to watch it
closely
. She also quickly scans
around
the area and down the road to
make sure this van is alone.

“Cory, move in,” John’s voice dictates over
their headsets. “We’ve got ya’ covered.”

She pans right and watches Cory move closer.
John and Kelly have scattered behind vehicles and are hunched down
for cover.

“Woman driver,” Sam reports. “She’s
alone.”

“Don’t think it’s a threat,” Kelly confirms.
“Take it slow just in case.”

“Try not to have sex with her,” Paige says
into her mic.

Sam almost blurts out a loud laugh.
Simon doesn’t even chuckle. He
obviously
finds his sister’s humor offensive. He
probably doesn’t think she should be talking like that over the
mic. Sam thinks it’s funny.

“Got it,” Cory returns with good humor. “No
sex with the natives.”

Sam watches as he approaches the vehicle,
jogging down the middle of the road.

“Wait a minute,” Cory says. “I think she
might be hot. All bets are off.”

John’s chuckle comes
over
the ear piece. “Hey, get your game faces on,”
he reprimands.

“Wait,” Sam says. “I think there’s a baby’s
car seat in the front seat next to her.”

“Sam’s right,” Simon confirms.

They watch
in
tense
silence as Cory closes in on the driver’s side
door as the vehicle rolls to a complete stop. He has his hand on
his mic to allow them privilege to the conversation.

“Ma’am,” he says.

The woman doesn’t answer, so Sam is left to
assume that she either nods or is afraid of Cory.

“Where are you headed? That area straight
ahead isn’t real safe,” Cory tells her.

They already know this because of their last
trip to this city. About another mile down the road and she’s going
to be driving into a battle zone. They know from experience. The
groups that have formed down in that district are all out for
themselves and violent.

“I just need food for my baby,” the woman
finally repeats.

“Yeah?” he asks.

Sam watches as John closes in on the
unsuspecting woman. Cory just keeps making small talk with her, but
his eyes are scanning the vehicle and back seat.

“You need food, huh?” Cory says. “I can
probably help with that. What do you need? I have a few provisions
I could give you.”

Sam hopes her child is old enough to take
solids if she needs food for it. They don’t have baby formula or
even goat milk with them. Sam can’t make out the child. The woman
has the baby seat covered with a blanket, probably to ward off a
chill.

Suddenly the woman says, “He’s cool. All
clear here.”

“What did you just say?” Cory asks in a very
guarded tone. “What the fuck? Is that a mic on you? Get outta the
van!”

He backs up a step and points his weapon at
the woman in the car, who has pulled down her neck scarf to reveal
a throat mic similar to their own.

“Hey, hey, hey, don’t shoot me, dude,” the
woman says. “I’m one of you guys, ok? We’re on the same team. I see
your buddy sneaking up behind the car. I’m Navy. I’m with men who
are military, too.”

She explains this in great haste so as not to
be shot by Cory. She even places her hands in the air.

“Don’t
shoot
me. My
friends’ll
get pissed if you do,” she says lightly.

“Get out,” Cory orders as John makes his way
to the passenger side and opens the door.

He takes the baby doll out and tosses it to
the ground. Now that Sam can spy on the woman more clearly since
she’s standing in the road next to Cory with her hands still in the
air, she can see her combat boots and olive drab camo pants. She
has a handgun strapped to her thigh in the same manner that Reagan
wears hers.

“I’m with the
4
^th
Armored Division. What was
left of my Navy team joined up with them,” the woman explains.
“We’re a hodge-podge crew put together by our leader.”

“And who’s that?” John asks brusquely.

Sam can’t make out what they are saying as
clearly as before. A rumble of vehicles in the distance does reach
her ears, though.

“That’s my squad coming,” the woman’s muffled
voice comes through.

“Who’s your C.O.?” John asks.

“Sergeant Winters, but we call him Dave the
Mechanic. What division were you with?”

She’s
obviously
picked up on John being former military.
They seem to be bloodhounds, these military people. They can
literally sniff each other out in a crowd.

She doesn’t hear John’s response because
Kelly’s voice interrupts, “Simon and Sam, come in closer. Paige,
stay on point.”

“Yes, sir,” Simon says into his mic.

They move out fast, leaving the windows
open and abandoning their position. Simon takes her back the same
way, but they exit to the south and come out behind the
group
on
the street. Now they
have a new position where they also can’t be seen but can view the
back of the woman’s vehicle and whoever might be coming down the
street.

A large Army truck rolls into view, not
bothering to attempt silence or stealth. Kelly
comes out
from behind the gas company truck. John
starts laughing, and they call everyone in including her and Simon.
They walk cautiously closer, and Simon puts himself between her and
the other men, who start hopping down from the truck.

It’s like a family reunion all of a sudden.
John and Kelly are bumping fists with some of the other men and
laughing.

“Dave the Mechanic!” Kelly shouts at a man
who has jumped out of the driver’s seat. “How the hell are you,
man?”

“Not bad, brother, not bad,” the other man
declares.

Sam inches closer to Simon, who
seems
fine
to have her there. He
holds his sniper rifle at hip height. All totaled there are seven
men with this woman. Sam doesn’t feel as safe and comfortable as
she had a moment ago from inside the building. She notices that
Cory steps close to Paige on the other side of the woman’s car. The
woman in the car has moved nearer to and is eyeing Cory with
interest. Good grief. Everywhere he goes, women do this.

“What the hell, man? What’s going on?” Kelly
asks the other man.

“Just surviving, D-boy,” Dave answers.
“That’s all us D-boys can do anymore.”

“Yeah, I hear ya,’” John concurs and shakes
Dave’s hand. “What was with the decoy?”

Sam assumes he means that the woman in the
car with the fake baby was their decoy. She also has no idea what a
D-boy is. It must be one of the many military terms they use that
she doesn’t understand.

“It’s how we root out the fuck-heads. We do
it when we’re moving through a city. If they try to haul her out of
the car, we know we’ve got genuine assholes on our hands. I wasn’t
too sure when the big guy came up to her car.”

“That’s my little brother,” Kelly tells him,
which gets a laugh from Dave.

“Figures, Hulk,” Dave says, using Kelly’s
nickname.

“Where you been?” Kelly asks.

“We were deployed out of fuckin’ Fort Benning
when we got back to the states. But that got fucked up quick. Some
of us left after a couple months of that shit. Some of us wanted to
find our families. Some of us wanted the fuck outta there. We
weren’t sure if it was gonna stand,” Dave explains as his men stand
back and nod. “Shit was gettin’ real.”

John laughs and nods.

“I got to my old lady in Philly and
took her and our kid the fuck out of that rat maze, too. We kind of
just went around picking up everyone’s families. Then we settled in
at
Wright Patt
with some
fly boys
I used to know. That ending up
being the big suck, though. Fuckin’ civilians were gettin’
fugazi
on us. We didn’t wanna’ end up
killing a bunch of them, but what the fuck? Then we ended up goin’
black on water. Don’t know what the hell happened to all the water
there. Had to get the fuck outta there right quick, too. Where ya’
been, brothers?”

Sam finds his swearing funny, but Simon
frowns. She’s not sure if he’s frowning over the sudden influx of
strange men or the other man’s love of colorful language. Simon is
a lot like Grandpa in that regard. She suspects they both swear
when they are around other men, but neither do so in front of the
women. He’s just old school.

“They sent us out West,” John explains. “That
fell apart fast, too. Then we came back through Arkansas to pick up
Kelly’s little brother and sister and then here to get Derek home
to his wife and kids.”

“Hey, how is your brother, man?” Dave
asks.

Apparently these men have
a past or
were in the same unit or
served together. Sam’s not sure, but he is funny. Dave the Mechanic
has a long, reddish brown ponytail, a matching beard,
eyeglasses
and a cigarette hanging out
of his mouth that bobs around when he talks. There is a pair of
aviator style sunglasses perched on top of his head, and he’s still
wearing
mostly military issue
clothing
. He’s a lean, sinewy man about the same
height as Simon with intelligent blue eyes. His hands are covered
in dirt or what looks like could be grease. Cory’s hands look like
that a lot from working on the tractors or trucks around the
farm.