The McClane Apocalypse Book Five (70 page)

John has mostly been outside on guard
with Dave’s men talking about the battle and the people from the
river. She’s heard snippets of the conversation and pieces of
information about the
battle
from
the women she’d treated. She’s glad that Dave’s men offered those
bastards no quarter. Even the men who were just paying customers of
the rats who ran the camp were guilty in her opinion. To be
knowledgeable of such an encampment of evil where women and
children were being used and hurt was cruel and sick in and of
itself. They all got the justice they deserved for their
sins.

She’d met Annie from Dave’s group and had
treated her gunshot wound. Luckily she hadn’t needed a transfusion.
She’ll heal nicely if she takes it easy and doesn’t pull out
Reagan’s perfectly applied stitches. Annie seems like a real
pistol. Even though she was as pale as a ghost and going on her
last pinch of energy, she’d volunteered to stay across the street
at the makeshift hospital house to guard the women there. Reagan
had chuckled at her right before hitting her with some medicine
that knocked her out. One of the men had carried her out and placed
her in the hospital house.

The rescued nurse from the river camp
had been very helpful, after Grandpa had insisted that she scrub up
well in the back room. She’d come back and quickly pulled on latex
gloves and got right to work. The poor woman looked like she hadn’t
eaten much in a long time. She’d explained to Reagan while they’d
worked in tandem
on
a
young
woman
who’d been knocked
clean out that the river camp was nothing more than a sex slave
camp. She’d been a victim of that place for over three months. The
girl they’d taken care of together is in a coma. They don’t have
CAT scan capabilities, but she and Grandpa had come to the same
conclusion. She may or may not ever awaken. They will need to watch
her for signs of bleeding on the brain or swelling of the brain or
stroke. They don’t have an ICU anymore. But one of the particularly
fierce looking soldiers had carried her across the street and
promised to stay with her and alert them over the radio if she
comes to. He reminded Reagan of Kelly when he’d first come to the
farm. He also seems like a man of
great
integrity like her beloved brother-in-law.

“You ready, babe?” John’s husky timbre
announces from the doorway.

“Just another minute,” Reagan explains.
“Putting things away and cleaning.”

“Rough night?” he asks with the usual concern
he feels for her.

Reagan turns and shrugs. “Typical, I guess.
Gets old.”

John crosses the room, slides his hands into
the hair on either side of her face and pulls her up for a quick
kiss. There isn’t passion in the kiss but a comforting warmth. She
can’t believe she’d rebuked this man so many times. What was she
thinking? That she could get through this disastrous life without
him? What a fool she’d been.

John pulls back and kisses her forehead
before stepping away. Reagan resumes wiping down the countertop and
rinsing the rag that hopefully has enough sanitizing solution on it
to kill whatever pathogens could be lingering. She drops her towels
and soiled
rags
into the burlap
sack. Without being asked, John takes the bucket of hot water and
dumps it
down
the sink. Reagan
hits the
sink
with some more
bleach water spray and
rinses
again. He takes the sack out to the truck so that the linens
can be laundered at the farm while Reagan stows away her equipment
and the two boxes of supplies in the back room. When she returns to
the waiting room, John is standing there leaning against the
countertop where Grandpa’s receptionist used to work. How can he
look so damn good after pulling an all-nighter at the clinic with
her? His tattered jeans are hanging just so on his slim hips. The
sleeves of his button-down denim shirt are rolled back to his
elbows, exposing his tan forearms. A lock of his sun-kissed blonde
hair has fallen forward onto his forehead. Reagan steps closer and
pushes it back only to have it fall again. He grins patiently and
helps her into her jacket.

“You look like some sort of GQ model and I
look like I got run over by a truck. Not fair,” she complains as he
tugs her hand, pulling her closer.

“This,” he says, indicating toward the front
of himself, “is no easy feat. It takes a lot of work to look this
good.”

Reagan rolls her eyes at his lopsided grin
and teasing.

“But, ma’am, you look pretty darn sexy
to me,” John
says quietly
as he
rests his head against hers. “And you smell good, too.”

“It’s the sterilizing solution,” she
jokes.

“Nah, my girl always
smells
good,” John says and sinks a hand into the
hair at the back of her neck, pulling her hair free of its
ponytail. “Let’s go home. You need some rest.”

“I feel dead on my feet, but I also think I
should just sack out at the house with the patients. I’m not sure
it’s a good idea to head back to the farm in case something happens
with one of them.”

“No way,
boss
,” John says firmly and pulls her along with
him out the front door of the clinic before locking it. “You’re
going home to sleep. Two of Dave’s guys are staying over there.
They’ll radio if they have a problem. They’re used to keeping weird
hours.”

“The sheriff’s got a few guys over there,
too. He stopped in earlier to tell me and Grandpa,” Reagan says,
although she’s sure John probably already knows this. Not much gets
by him when it comes to security.

“Good. That’ll help,” John says as he opens
the driver’s door of the truck and allows her to crawl in first to
the middle of the front seat. Then he tucks his rifle in between
his body and the driver’s side door.

Once they are on the road and moving,
John slides his hand onto her leg and gives it a gentle, reassuring
squeeze. So much has happened in the past twenty-four hours. The
biggest event was the return of her father. Grandpa hadn’t pressed
him for information about his family or his whereabouts for the
past four
years
but had offered
Cory and Simon’s cabin to him and his wife. Reagan thought it was
bullshit but had held her tongue.
Now
Cory,
Simon
and Paige will
have to move their belongings to the house to accommodate a man who
abandoned his own family during so many of their darkest hours of
need. The two children of her father are sleeping in one of the
bedrooms in the basement of the big house. They seemed very out of
sorts and uncomfortable and had retired to their shared bedroom
after dinner and hadn’t come back out. Her father told them that
there was so much he needed to discuss but that he was tired. When
Sue asked him about the bruises and scrapes on his face and
knuckles, he’d said they had journeyed a long way to come home and
that the trip had been difficult and dangerous. Reagan had snidely
informed him that his situation was no different than anyone else
at the dinner table. His son also had the same matching scuffed
knuckles. The wife and daughter had mostly remained silent
throughout the meal. The mother just seemed exhausted. They were
happy for the hot meal and very appreciative and
thankful.

The girl was awkward around the family
and had kept her head bowed throughout most of the meal. Her short
black pixie hair, silver rings on multiple fingers, and the three
ear piercings in each ear weren’t something their father would’ve
been happy about before or after the apocalypse. He’d always
demanded that his girls dress and act conservatively so as not to
reflect
badly
on him. Her father
and his new family all showered and changed in the basement and had
come to dinner clean and slightly refreshed. But Gretchen was
wearing the same similar clothing style of grunge punk in the form
of skinny jeans, a brown flannel shirt and matching hoodie. That is
also not the tidy appearance their father would’ve approved before
the fall. G has a definite sharp keenness in her pale hazel eyes
and a very
significant
mutual
disdain of their shared father.

The son, Lucas, had been slightly more
vocal and
obviously
harbored
respect
for their
father. Robert finally got the son he’d wanted to replace her dead,
older brother. It was indicative in their relationship. There was
still the missing element of fatherly affection, and it showed on
Lucas’s face. Reagan could tell that the young man had probably
spent most of his young life trying to please the man. There was a
desperation in his eyes for their father’s approval. She’d like to
inform him that it’s probably never going to happen.

She’d also like an explanation about the new
family, but it hadn’t come last night. She’s not done yet. She
wants answers. She and her sisters deserve them.

After dinner they’d adjourned to
Grandpa’s office, but it was apparent that everyone was weary. Once
he’d found out from her grandfather privately in his
office
that his mother was dead,
Robert’s demeanor had changed rather significantly. He hadn’t shown
it, but Reagan knows the loss of Grams hit him hard. The rest of
the family had joined them after their meeting, but Reagan could
see the defeat in his slumped shoulders. He’d told them
very little
, but what he did say before
taking his wife to Simon’s cabin was a confusing blend of
information. What Reagan mostly got out of it was that her father
had somehow managed to elevate his position within the government
and had gone from being a mere colonel to an exalted general. She
hadn’t really been paying attention when he’d mentioned his
elevation in rank because she isn’t going to invest time and effort
into the man who’d abandoned them. Reagan couldn’t care less other
than he may know more about the radio transmission that only Sam
had witnessed in its entirety. His ambition is nothing new to her.
He’d left the Navy to join the Marines and had given up his career
as a doctor for what he’d correctly believed would be a more easily
advantageous career in another branch of the military. Her father
had been willing to sacrifice anything for his political ambitions.
Even his family. Apparently someone has promoted him yet
again.

She also knows that something is wrong with
Robert. He seems ill. Grandpa offered to look at him and tried to
discuss his health, but her father said they’d talk more in the
morning, that he and his family were in need of rest. That isn’t
like the Colonel. He despised weakness of any kind and had demanded
perfection in everything. Even admitting to fatigue would’ve been
taboo when she was growing up under his heavy criticisms. She just
hopes he hasn’t brought some contagious disease to the farm.

His new wife had sat meekly, which is
nothing short of what she’d expect
from
any wife Robert took, and again the woman said nothing during
their brief discussion. She is an attractive lady but has seen her
fair share of hard times. It showed in the wrinkles around her eyes
and the pinched lines of her forehead. She doesn’t seem old enough
to have wrinkles. The new wife actually
seems
at least a decade younger than her
father.

Later today when she and Grandpa have caught
up on their sleep, she fully intends on finding out more about
what’s going on out West where her father had been living. He knows
something. She could see it in his eyes when he’d evaded the
questions coming at him from John and Derek.

“John, what would you do if the acting
President called in the military?”

“What President? We don’t even know for sure
who the President is right now.”

“I think my father does.”

“Yeah
, I
think
you’re right about that. He’s definitely got
some intel the rest of us need to know.”

“He wasn’t a general before, so something has
to have happened. Of course, this is my father we’re talking about.
For all we know, he could’ve appointed himself to a new position.
His ego has never known restraint.”

“He seemed pretty humble last night,” John
argues.

Reagan
chuffs
and frowns.

“You don’t know my father, John,” she
retorts. “He’s a real piece of work. I told you what he was like
growing up. Hell, he was probably living up in the northwest
somewhere running his own town or some shit. Control freak doesn’t
even come close to describing him.”

“We’ll find out more info soon enough,
honey,” John says with his usual optimism. “Don’t worry about stuff
we don’t know yet.”

“What if that radio message was about calling
up all active duty soldiers to do something? Would you go?”

She doesn’t like that he takes such a lengthy
period of time to answer. He pauses to look out the window, slows
the vehicle down to swerve around a fallen branch in the road. He
sighs long and hard.

“Let’s not worry about anything like that,
ok, babe? I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me.”

She nods but feels a certain dread building
in the pit of her stomach. Reagan knows with absolute certainty
that she made the right decision in not telling her husband about
the entire transmission that Sam confided. She could never let him
go, let him leave the farm and her and Jake. She’d rather die a
slow, agonizing death than to say such a good-bye to her
husband.