The McClane Apocalypse Book Three (30 page)

"Yeah?"

"You still didn't say what you wanted Sam to
do for you? Do you need something?" Reagan asks before the two teen
boys start rolling around in the dirt trying to kill one another.
Cory wears a pistol on his hip, but she's not sure how experienced
he is with using one. They sure don't need it getting into Bobby's
hands.

"Yeah, I need something. You could help me
out with that, Dr.," Bobby jeers.

This comment and this young man make
Reagan's skin crawl. He grabs at his crotch with further
implication.

"I think I'm a little old for you," she
replies snidely, trying to shut him down.

"I'm nineteen. How the hell old are you? You
don't even look nineteen to me. You look young… and hot, just like
Sam there. She's my girl—Sam. Isn't that right?" Bobby says.

For this lewd insinuation alone Reagan wants
to shoot him before Cory gets the chance to. Sam does not look to
agree with Bobby's assessment of their supposed relationship.

"Don't be a dick. Just go on back up to your
camp with your friends," Reagan scolds him.

"Why don't you come with me?" Bobby leers.
"We can have some fun up there. Maybe you should check out my dick.
We always got something going on that's fun. Isn't that right,
Sam?"

Now Reagan wants to retch. Her nurse is
staring at the ground with humiliation and fear. Cory unfastens the
buckle to his pistol and withdraws it from the holster, slowly, out
of Bobby's line of vision.

"As much as I'd like to examine your… tiny
dick, I don't have a microscope big enough to do the job. Now run
along, little dick, and join the others before my friend Cory here
puts some lead between your eyes," Reagan says in an overly
cheerful voice and even gives a smile.

Bobby finally notices Cory's drawn pistol
and visibly startles. He takes a cautious step back.

"You do what I told you to do, bitch," he
says to Sam.

The petite teen has come to stand next to
Reagan. She is literally cowering in fear.

"Get the hell out of here," Cory says more
loudly, and the offensive, psychotic teen leaves.

"You ok, Sam?" Cory asks when the jerk is
gone.

Reagan peers into the distance and discovers
that Derek has been observing the confrontation from the cattle
barn. He is looking down the scope of his rifle at them. Reagan
gives him a thumbs up, and he nods once before going back to
working on whatever it was that he was doing. It feels good to know
that the men on the farm are always looking out for them, although
Derek and John should be sleeping at this early hour. Neither of
them seem to sleep much, or at least none of them have since the
visitors had descended on the farm. And they never let their guards
down, not even for a second.

"Yes, I'm ok. Thanks for that," Sam finally
answers.

"Cory, why don't you hang out around here
for a while till things settle down? Sam and I need to work in here
on some sanitizing," Reagan asks, and the young man nods and takes
a seat on the stoop. "Come on, Sam."

Once they are in the med shed farther from
the door and out of earshot, she tries to talk to Sam who usually
clams up. Reagan observes a dark purple bruise on her upper arm and
a small, fresh cut on her upper lip. She'd like to tell Derek to
snipe everyone out at that damn camp!

This girl knows so much about her traveling
companions, but she sure as hell isn't forthcoming with very much
information. Hannah had tried to speak with her the other day but
hadn't really gleaned anything new or useful. She also knows that
Simon is the same way from what Cory has related. After the girl
has put on her safety gear and Reagan has put on a fresh pair of
latex gloves, Reagan hands her stethoscope to Sam.

"How'd you get those bruises, Sam?" she asks
bluntly, the only way she knows.

"Oh… um, I just tripped. I'm really clumsy,
Dr. McClane," she lies badly and looks away.

This is bound to be a dead end street.
Reagan is frustrated and angry but not at this poor kid.

"What was that about out there with Bobby?"
she asks, but Sam looks away very fast. The young waif uses a cool,
wet cloth to wipe Jennifer's forehead. "Won't you tell me?"

Sam shrugs. "He just wanted me to… take
stuff."

"Take stuff like what? From us? Like steal
from us?" Reagan asks in shock.

"Yeah. I guess so," Sam comes clean with
defeat.

"What did he want you to steal? Food?"

The girl shakes her head as she records the
patient's blood pressure on the chart.

"Drugs. He wants me to steal drugs. I think
he used to do a lot of drugs or something, and now he wants me to
steal drugs from you," Sam says rather openly.

"Hm, interesting. I guess I was right then,"
Reagan says.

"About what, Dr. McClane?"

"He really is a little dick," Reagan jokes,
and Sam actually laughs once and nods. A few minutes later, though,
Reagan goes at it again as she sanitizes the sink and back
counter.

"What kind of drugs did he want you to get?"
she asks Sam.

"Um, I don't even remember what the names
were. I think painkillers or something. He sure knew a lot of their
names. I've seen him smoking grass and cigarettes and drinking
alcohol and once, last month, they found cocaine and all got high,"
Sam offers up.

"Nice. He's also a Mensa student, I see,"
Reagan gets another sad chuckle from the girl.

"I only know that because I went to a few
parties when… well, before and some of the kids there were doing
drugs. I don't do drugs. I swear," Sam says fervently.

Reagan believes her. The girl does not show
any of the typical signs of drug abuse, malnourishment maybe, but
not drug usage.

"Don't worry about it. I believe you. I'm a
doctor, remember? I can tell users when I see them. It usually
takes about four seconds to figure out a tweaker. I'll see if you
can stay here tonight. Do you want to?"

The girl regards Reagan with so much bald,
blatant hope and longing in her eyes that it almost hurts to look
at her. Sam nods lightning fast.

"Yes, please," Sam says.

"Fine, it's settled. What are you going to
do when it's time to leave with them?" Reagan asks frankly.

Sam shrugs and shakes her head. "Run away?
Run into the woods?"

"Well, I don't think you'd get far. We have
bear in these woods, you know. And what the hell would you eat? You
gonna catch a chipmunk and skin it and eat it? I don't think so.
You need to think about what you want to do. You have options now,"
Reagan says and doesn't make eye contact for fear of making the
girl too nervous to talk.

"I don't have any options, Dr. McClane. My
family is dead, and I can't abandon Huntley," Sam says
pitifully.

Reagan finds it strange that a fifteen year
old girl would feel such a strong sense of responsibility for a kid
who isn't her actual sibling. She has more honor in her pinkie
finger than the whole lot of the visitors out at their camp, which
appears dead silent as most of them must still be sleeping. No
wonder they don't get anything done.

"Sure you do. You can stay with us. Or you
can go with those idiots out there when they leave," she offers and
waits to see what her response will be. She's quiet for a long
pause. When Reagan looks up, there are tears in Sam's bright blue
eyes. Grams has fixed her choppy cut, and her dark hair is in a
more comely, smooth bob style, trimmed short up to her chin. It
makes her already large eyes seem huge set in her tiny face.

"Really? I could… stay here? On this farm?
With you and your family? They would let me?" she asks
tentatively.

"Yeah, if you want to. The family talked
about it last night. We were planning on discussing it with each of
you individually…"

"Wait. Who do you mean?" Sam interrupts
which is rare from her.

"You and Simon and Huntley. Maybe Bobby
about an hour ago, but he's for sure out now," Reagan says
insensitively but doesn't care. She suspects this girl is suffering
physical abuse at the hands of that punk. "We have a fairly strict
no-dickheads-allowed policy on the farm." Sam smiles and then
throws her arms around Reagan's shoulders.

"Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Thank-you, Dr. McClane. I
know Simon and Huntley will want to stay, too. Thank-you,
thank-you," she babbles.

Reagan's arms are at her sides.

"Sam? I'm not a hugger. Let go," she says
firmly, and the girl drops her arms and steps back awkwardly.

"I'm sorry, Dr. McClane" Sam apologizes. "We
won't be any trouble. We'll do whatever work you want us to.
We'll…"

"Sam, we're not asking you to stay on to be
our slaves. For shit's sake! Relax on the servitude thing. And just
call me Reagan. Look, talk to Simon today if you see him alone.
Don't discuss this with the creeps out there, though. We're not
sure how this is gonna work yet, and they aren't getting the same
deal. I mean, Huntley is Frank's kid. And Simon is that hag's
nephew. So this may be hard for us to work out with them."

"Yes, ma'am," Sam agrees.

"Come on. Let's check on Jennifer again.
She's not getting any better. I kind of figured you knew that
already," Reagan tells her, and Sam nods slowly.

"She is so nice. Her husband was from
France. She has a picture of him in the RV. He was an actor, stage
stuff mostly. But he was so handsome, blond hair, blue eyes,
Hollywood good-looking. That's where he was when this happened, in
France I mean. And she said she hadn't heard from him in months. Of
course, France is mostly gone now, so…," she trails off sadly.

"And now she's with our loser-drunk,
Great-uncle Peter?" Reagan asks with sarcastic disbelief.

"Um, yeah," she says hesitantly as if she's
afraid someone will hear. Then she shuts down and looks away.

"Sam, if you're staying with us, then you
have to tell us what you know so that we can deal with these
morons," Reagan pressures the girl.

"I'm sorry," she says and then continues.
"Your uncle just said that she was his girlfriend when we got here
so that your grandmother would let us stay. They picked her up a
short time before me. She told me she was from Virginia. She'd gone
home from Los Angeles to visit with her family before the first
tsunami struck while her husband was in France. I don't know much
about her other than that I don't think she was your uncle's real
girlfriend."

"What's that mean? Isn't she pregnant with
his baby?"

Sam shakes her head.

"No, that baby is her husband's, not your
uncle's. He just… made her his girlfriend."

"What the hell's that supposed to mean? You
mean like forced himself on her? Did someone 'make' you their
girlfriend, Sam? Did any of them force themselves on you?" Reagan
is ready to call Cory back with his pistol to go and take care of
business. Sam won't answer her, and Reagan is left to imagine the
worst. Her blue eyes dart around and then tear up.

A knock at the door alerts them both.

"Reagan?" Sue calls from the doorway and
concludes their private conversation.

"Yeah? What is it?"

"Huntley is sick," Sue says with
urgency.

Derek is behind her and carrying Huntley.
Please, God, not again, Reagan prays silently. This is just too
much.

"Shit. Bring him in and lay him on that cot.
What are his symptoms?" Reagan asks, though she's sure she already
knows them. They'd sanitized and re-bedded that bunk with clean
linens and a sterile pillow. Reagan had hoped at the time to never
have use of it again.

"He coughed a couple of times, and I thought
it might just be because he was in the barn with the other kids.
You know, hay dust or something? But then he said he was tired and
when I felt his forehead, he was pretty warm," Sue accounts.

Just looking at Huntley, Reagan can tell
that the boy is sick. His beautiful, caramel-tinted skin has turned
an ashen gray, and he is coughing frequently.

"I'm going to listen to his chest. You guys
get out of here. Sam, show them how to sanitize. Then leave ok,
Sue?" Reagan tells her sister who nods. She repeats what she is
going to do to Huntley so that he isn't afraid.

Reagan presses her stethoscope to the boy's
chest and hears the tell-tale bubbling sounds that come with
pneumonia.

"Am I going to die like my brother?" Huntley
asks her bluntly.

Reagan's gaze jumps to his hazel eyes.
Jesus, why are kids so damned honest? She clears her throat.

"How long have you felt sick, Huntley?"
Reagan answers his morbid question with one of her own that will
hopefully deter him.

"I started not feeling good last night, so
Levon made me go sleep outside. He said he didn't want no sickness
in the RV," Huntley tells her.

"Tell me again which one is Levon, Huntley?"
Derek asks from the sink.

His underlying tone is menacingly dark.
Reagan panics that he is about to do something violent and perhaps
reckless.

"He's the black guy that's really big. He
has messy, freaky hair. He's not a very nice man," the boy
relays.

When Reagan looks over her shoulder at
Derek, he gives her a knowing nod. She wonders if her
brother-in-law is going to go and shoot Levon on the spot for
making a kid, a sick kid, sleep outside when the weather is turning
much cooler at night in this third week of September. She would've
never thought Derek capable of such a thing since she'd only ever
known him as her fun brother-in-law who told her humorous stories
of his military life. But now that she knows his brother and what
John is capable of after their city trip, she isn't so sure about
Derek anymore.

"I noticed they also did a half ass job of
picking the corn, too," Derek remarks quietly to Reagan. "There's
still a bunch of ears still on the stalks like they just didn't
feel like doing it."