The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (34 page)

“Right,” Sam agrees.

“What was that all about?”
Paige inquires. “I mean the shooting? Does anyone know anything
yet?”
“John said that there were three vehicles. Two trucks and a car.
Maybe ten or twelve men total. He and Chet took out four or five of
them I think. Simon got two. John said he
thinks
they were here to raid for
drugs. Or hell, who knows what they came here for….” Reagan states
with a frown.

“Oh my,” Sam says on an inhale of
surprise. “I didn’t know it was that many people.”

“Where’d they even get gas for their
vehicles?” Paige asks, still reeling from the comment about her
brother shooting two men.

“Probably the same damn place they
were gonna get their drugs or whatever the hell they came here to
raid for,” Reagan answers with her usual fondness for
swearing.

“Reagan,” Chet comes over and is
followed by Talia.

Paige smiles at her friend,
who also looks very put out by this whole situation. Hanging around
for gun fights and sewing people back together isn’t exactly their
thing. If it had been the three of them with Maddie, they would’ve
run
for
a
nearby house and
hid
out. Then they would’ve got the hell out of this
town. It isn’t that they don’t feel charitable or obligated to help
their fellow man, but they have learned to flee when danger
strikes. They are
simple
survivors with little to no skill other than
staying alive another day.

“There’s a sick kid out
there.
He doesn’t look so
hot.
I mean he’s not shot. He’s just really
sick,” Chet Reynolds tells her.

“Thanks, Chet,” Reagan replies. “You
better get back out of here, though. You don’t even have a face
mask on. You, too, Talia.”

They both nod and go out the front
door again. Paige notices the shotgun that Talia carries. Other men
loiter around outside with guns and bravery. She recognizes one of
them as the son of the Johnson family, Zach. The other two must be
with them, as well, but she doesn’t remember meeting them. She
notices that Talia stays close to Chet.

A tapping
on
her shoulder
causes her to swing around. Simon, still in
head
to toe protective gear,
gestures.

“You ready to come back and help
again?” he asks.

Paige nods. Yeah, it’s going to be a
long day.

Chapter Sixteen

Reagan

“There’s a guy hog-tied
out back
, babe,”
John tells her as their day is coming to a close.

“What?” she asks with a bit of
hysteria. They’ve been working all day at the
clinic,
and the sun is nearly
set. They don’t
typically
linger this many hours in town, but with so many
extra patients needing attention, they had no choice. “What the
hell do you mean that someone’s tied up out back?”

“One of the men that I shot,” her husband says.
“Kelly and I took him next door to the feed mill so we can
interrogate him.”

“What the fuck?” she asks as she removes her
protective gown. “When were you planning on telling me
this?”

“Now,” he says with a silly grin.

Reagan rolls her eyes at him. Then she can’t
help the smile that creeps onto her mouth. It quickly gets replaced
with a frown. She’s still a doctor, after all. “He’s
shot?”

“Yeah, not fatally. Well, it could
be if he didn’t treat it,” he says
with
a shrug.

“Do you want me to treat him or bandage it
or…?” Reagan asks and gets a raised eyebrow in return. She nods.
Although she doesn’t like this side of her husband, she knows that
it’s what keeps them all alive. “I’ll come with you.”

John’s hand shoots up to her arm
with lightning speed. She’d like
just to collapse
into his strong arms
from fatigue. When she’d planned on coming to the clinic today, she
had thought they’d only be working a few hours, not all
day.

“Look, boss, I don’t think that’s too good of
an idea. You don’t need to see this,” he says, the corners of his
blue eyes crease with worry.

“I’ll be
fine
,” Reagan argues and shakes her
head.

John sighs loudly and with great
over-animation. “Why do I even bother?”

“I don’t know,” Reagan replies. “You’d think
that you’d have learned by now.”

John pulls her in for a quick kiss and adds,
“Oh, I know, woman. I know.”

Twenty minutes later while the rest
of the family cleans, sanitizes and locks up the medical clinic,
and others repair the broken windows with pieces of salvaged
plywood, Reagan walks to the feed mill with John to observe and
possibly help with the interrogation of the prisoner. She’s
exhausted. She’s sweating profusely from the
exertion
, although she has no
intention of telling her husband. Kelly is already waiting at the
mill. The hostage is tied to a chair, his arms and
legs
bound. There
is a wound in his side which continues to drip blood onto the old
hardwood floor of the grain store.

“Hey, little Doc,” Kelly greets her.

“Who’s this?” Reagan asks.

“This is our new friend,” Kelly says
with a
false
cordiality. “He was just about to tell me where his other
friends are camped.”

“Fuck you!” the man shouts.

Kelly punches him to the side of his face,
sending a spray of blood onto the wall near them. The Hulk has on
short, black leather gloves for the job, and he’s hung his winter
coat on a hook. His shirt sleeves are pushed up to his elbows.
Reagan doesn’t envy this dirtbag. Kelly’s fists are huge. That had
to hurt. He’s lucky Kelly’s punch didn’t break his jaw or knock out
a few teeth.

“You’ll talk, dude,” John clarifies
with confidence and bends over to speak directly into the man’s now
bloody face. “This ain’t our first interrogation. No, way. Not us.
We’ve had some experience with
interrogations
. Right, bro?”

“Yep,” Kelly agrees and moves to stand behind
the man.

John continues, “Sure did. We used to do this
with terrorists that didn’t want to tell us
information.”

“I ain’t tellin’ you shit,” the
dirtbag answers and spits blood
on
the floor in front of
John.

The man is maybe in his forties, dark-haired
and tall and skinny. He’s no match physically for the Rangers, but
he may be mentally. They need him to speak. They need to know where
his group is from and if they would come back. Reagan would also
like to know why they attacked them in the first place.

“You’ll talk,” John argues softly.

Her husband nods to Kelly, who
returns it. Then he places a threadbare dusty canvas grain sack
over Dirtbag’s head. Kelly tips him back by tugging
easily
on the
spindles of his wooden chair.

“Hey!” Dirtbag states with surprise. “What
the…?”

Her husband, her loving,
wonderful
husband
who’d healed her wounded spirit, proceeds to
perform a modified water-boarding on Dirtbag. The man coughs and
sputters and gags as John slowly trickles water over his face and
into his mouth and nose through the bag. He’s literally using a
bucket to do the job. Reagan notices that there are six buckets of
dirty creek water lined up against the wall.

Right when the man seems as if he’s
going to drown to death, Kelly tips him upright again. He coughs
and
spurts
water inside of the cloth. Kelly removes the bag from his
head. The man’s face is red from the
strain;
the veins in his forehead and
neck stand out angrily.

“Where are your friends camped out?” John asks
calmly.

Reagan is still surprised at the
tenacity of her husband. He’d certainly
pursued
her with this same
unbridled relentlessness.

Dirtbag coughs two more times and then expels
another expletive at the men. John nods to his best friend again,
and the process starts all over. This time Reagan has to look away.
She hadn’t thought it would be this hard to watch. It also goes on
longer this time. John questions him again and gets nothing. He
gives the signal to Kelly once more. When they sit him upright
again, his shoulders slump in defeat.

“Now, we can do this all day, or we can show
you mercy, my friend,” John says quietly.

Her husband squats in front of the
chair and speaks slowly and with
clear
enunciation. She notices that
Kelly doesn’t
speak
to the man. She highly doubts that this is by
accident. Everything these two soldiers have ever done is
calculated and planned out.

“Where are your friends?”

“Can I get a shot or somethin’ for the pain?
Damn, I’m shot, you know! I’m bleeding to death!”

“That’s not gonna kill you,” John explains.
“You’re fine. It was barely a graze. Now tell me where they
are.”

That’s a total lie, Reagan knows.
But she also knows that her husband has a low tolerance for
sissies. The man’s wound is bleeding at a
fairly
steady rate, however. This
will
undoubtedly
kill him.

“They’ll kill me,” Dirtbag whimpers. “They’ll
kill me if I tell you.”

“No, they won’t. You’re here with us,” John
says. “Where are they?”

“A…about ten miles from here,” Dirtbag
says.

“Where?” John asks.

“Over in
Coopertown
. We’ve got a Target
store over there all to ourselves,” he relays.

“How many?” John asks next.

Dirtbag seems reticent to answer, so John kicks
his shoe.

“There’s twenty-two with me. Well,
‘
cept
you
killed five of our people today,” he says and hangs his
head.

“How many are armed?” John interrogates
further.

Reagan recognizes the intensity in his blue
eyes. This frightens her. Does he mean to go after them? She sure
as hell hopes not.

“Armed? Not everyone. Well, everyone’s armed
but not with guns. Some have clubs, bows, knives,” Dirtbag
explains.

Snot drips from his nose and hits his thigh,
blending into the blood already staining there.

“Why’d you come here?” John asks
next.

“What?” Dirtbag returns with a
question.

He’s not functioning well. Reagan
wonders if it is from blood loss or the trauma of the
water-boardings
.

“Why did your group come here today? Did you
come here for us? For the clinic? Or were you here for something
else?”

“We heard
‘bout
this place,” the man admits
and then shakes his head with regret. “We didn’t know you fuckers
were armed.”

“And?”

“Thought you might have drugs,” he says. “We
ain’t had nothing for almost a month. Found a stash in a house over
in the big city.”

“Why else did you come here?” John
asks.

“We needed medical help. Yeah, someone in our
group was sick,” the man lies.

John nods to Kelly and they
proceed
to nearly drown the
man
again. This time Reagan is sure he
is
dead
until he finally coughs.

“Don’t lie to us,” John says with
grit.

“Sorry, sorry, man,” Dirtbag cries. “Please
don’t do that again. Please.”

“I asked you why you came here. You aren’t
being truthful,” John says decidedly.

“Ok, nobody was sick. We just came
here
for
the drugs,” the man says. “We heard from some people that
there
was
doctors here. Doctors and medicine and drugs and
shit.”

“And?” John asks with impatience as if he’s
after something different.

“And we heard there was women here, too,” he
says.

Dirtbag’s eyes dart to Reagan’s, and she looks
away.

“I wasn’t in on that, man!” he says
nervously.

John regards her with a smirk.
He
clearly
doesn’t believe this man. Neither does she. This isn’t the
first time they’ve had trouble with bastard men who wish to rape
women.

“Hey, you gotta believe me,” he
pleads.

“Who told you about the practice?” John asks
patiently.

“A guy from this town told his cousin who lives
over there with us,” he says, his eyes jumping around between
Reagan and John.