The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 (42 page)

Simon switches weapons,
setting his rifle sling against his back and pulling forward his
sawed-off shotgun. He notices tents and
backpacks
and boxes set up as if
each man has his own small section of this store. Areas have been
cleaned out and reorganized
to
accommodate their “homes” better
. One such
man crawls out of his tent trying to pull up his pants as he goes.
Simon hits him square to the chest with a buckshot round from his
shotgun. For up close contact like this he likes his
shotgun
with the
short barrel better than the M16. John and Kelly still use their
military rifles for almost everything, but that just didn’t feel as
comfortable to Simon. He does all of the reloading of everyone’s
shotgun shells, too. It helps him to relax doing tedious jobs like
that. Plus he likes being able to control the grain
count.

“Shit,” Derek says into the mic.
“Group moving your way.”

Nobody has time to answer, give away
their positions or offer assistance. They all have specific
instructions to follow out on this mission. Straying from the plan
could jeopardize more lives. They make it almost to the back wall
of the store separating it from the warehouse behind it. John holds
up a hand to call a halt halfway down the third aisle as they close
in on the electronics department. Simon hears them talking
frantically, too. Sounds like a group of freaks trying to make
their move on them, likely the group Derek warned them about. The
freaks are attempting to be quiet, but they fail miserably. Simon
signals to the three remaining men in the group and then follows
John. They’ll flank.

Gunfire continues at a
steady pace coming from the other side of the store. Simon hopes
that Kelly’s group is having the same luck so far that they are. He
rounds the corner, and he and John open up
on
the men they find there. The
other three men with Simon and John’s group do the same. The perps
either go down with a scream of pain or try to scatter to the
winds. John takes out the final one with a shot to his center back
as the perp tries to run down the wide middle aisle while shooting
at them over his shoulder.

Suddenly a woman runs at
Simon. She isn’t armed, but he doesn’t want her coming at him so
fast. John has warned him many times not to trust women just
because they are
women
.

“Help me, please,” she cries
frightfully.

Simon shoves her
away,
and John
pushes her down.

“Stay there,” he orders firmly. “Don’t
come back out till we call out an all-clear. Ya’ got me? Stay
down.”

The skinny woman with the
dark, stringy hair nods frantically and ducks lower behind a
shelving display of how-to books. Apparently cooking French cuisine
or hand-crocheting a winter hat isn’t
popular
reading material in the
apocalypse.

Simon circles his right
index finger in the
air,
and they move out again. Derek’s rifle rings out
loud and clear again. Their group has come to the sporting goods
section as he and John cautiously lead down each aisle.
Not only
do they
need to
clear
every aisle in the store, they also have to watch out for the
mini tent cities for movement. A bead of sweat runs down his back.
Someone at their rear takes a shot at them as they move back into
the main aisle leading out of this department and into the next
which used to be grocery items. Another man in their team is hit.
He smacks against the floor with a fatalistic crash.

Simon and John jump to their right,
but the other two men in their team dive left. John squats low and
Simon hunkers over the top of him. His friend and mentor fires on
fully automatic at the band coming toward him as Simon fires off
two rounds straight into the crowd. The other two men in their
group mimic and do the same. The group of thugs dive for cover, but
not before four of them end in a heap of entangled arms and legs
and dead bodies. These men don’t have military experience, Simon’s
sure, but they have numbers that the McClane group doesn’t. Simon
reloads at lightning speed, jamming five more rounds into the
shotgun’s magazine.

John moves
forward,
and Simon
covers him with his rifle this time, providing suppressive fire.
David, one of the men in their group, also moves forward and jumps
back behind cover after about five feet, mirroring John’s smooth
tactic. They both provide fire as Simon and the last man move
forward, this time jumping an aisle ahead of John and his partner.
Simon spots one of the freaks scurrying again and takes a shot but
misses. Damn it! He fires again and misses again because the angle
is too severe. Another stands up, issuing orders to his group, and
Simon takes another shot, hitting this one center mass. An
important rule of battle is
always
to take
out their leadership. If this man
was a leader, he’s not anymore.

Simon jogs to the end of
his short aisle and comes up
behind
John, who’d been expecting him.
Together they go back the same way and start moving against the
cement block rear wall of the building. They’ll flank these punks
if they can. Their two remaining team members keep the freaks
occupied with distracting cover fire while he and John make their
move. They come to the men’s clothing department, still stocked
with items hanging on hangers, surprisingly enough. John indicates
with two fingers that Simon should continue in
a wide
arc while John goes
straight forward. They’ve done this move many times over the years.
It always works. Simon leads with his shotgun again and low
shuffles further east, making a circuit of the men’s clothing and
coming almost to the corner of the building again. He can see them
clearly enough. There are around ten or so.

“At your twelve, Doc,” Kelly says to
John through their headsets, referring to John as Doctor
Death.

“Professor’s in the east corner moving
in,” John alerts their friend.

He’s letting Kelly know
their exact
positions
so they don’t take on friendly cross-fire. For
some
reason,
he’s earned the nickname Professor over the years.

“Roger that,” Kelly returns. “Lead us
off, tiny.”

Even during a firefight
those two make jokes. Simon just shakes his head and
sneaks
even
closer. John fires first and within a minute or so, they have
commenced
in
taking out the last band of men making their stand in the
former ladies’ lingerie department.

Together the group finishes
the sweep of the
area
since they’d
been
interrupted by being shot at from
the rear.

“We’ve got company,” Condo Paul comes
across their headsets.

This statement is followed
by Derek’s rifle and likely Paul’s silenced
rifle
, as well. Their group jogs to
the front of the store again where they assist with disabling a
truck with three men in it that was heading in as
back-up
,
presumably. It ends with the
truck
on fire and three more dead
creeps.

They finally give an all-clear after a
thorough search of the area. A small group of women has huddled
together near the front entrance with them. One of the younger ones
doesn’t even have on shoes.

“Roy’s down but alive. Dennis isn’t,”
John states to Kelly.

“I’ll get him,” Kelly
offers.

Simon’s glad for the
offer
. Roy’s
almost as big as Kelly. He isn’t exactly going to be easy to move.
Kelly takes two of his men with him, and they jog away.

“Pack it up?” Simon
inquires.

“Roger that. Do a clean sweep, mop up.
Make sure we don’t have stragglers,” Derek explains. “We need to
get back to the farm.”

“Wait. Something’s not right,” John
says as he raises his night vision gear to rest on top of his
head.

“What is it?” Derek asks.

They are traversing toward the
Starbuck’s kiosk. Two of the women trail after them as if they are
too afraid not to.

“I didn’t count fifty men,” John
says.

“Kelly, what’s your k.c.?” Derek calls
over his headset to the Hulk for his group’s kill count.

“Think it was nine,” comes the
return.

“Where are the rest of your men?” John
barks angrily at one of the women.

“They left!” one of the younger women
says quickly.

“When?” Simon demands.

“About an hour ago,”
another answers
.

“Where’d they go?” Simon petitions and
can’t stop the tension from entering his voice.

Another woman steps forward from the
crowd and says, “The man that had me said that they went to get
revenge on the people of Pleasant View, the ones from that
clinic.”

John demands, “Were they going to the
clinic?”

She answers quickly with a
flash of fear in her dark eyes, “I don’t
think
so. I heard him say that they
found out about some farm or something.”

It only takes a nanosecond
for that to sink in. Kelly, who’d just
joined
them again with Roy, shouts
orders.

“You three stay here and get our dead
and injured to a vehicle.”

“Let’s roll!” John shouts
with
definite
worry in his voice.

Sprinting in the pitch
dark, headless of being cautious, they run for their truck. Derek
jumps in the driver’s door. Kelly hits the passenger side, and he
and John literally jump over the bed’s sides. Paul and two other
men grab the truck from the condo
village,
and they speed away.

The
cool
edge of apprehension that
Simon had felt earlier about their mission has now given way to an
icy cold hand of dread.

Chapter Twenty

Paige

They’ve been on pins and
needles all night waiting for the men to return. They haven’t been
gone all that long, but it feels like hours. This is way worse than
when they’d gone to the creep’s cabin in the woods last night. That
was one guy they were after, the snitch. This is a small battalion
of armed men. Paige paces from room to room restlessly while
intermittently biting her nails. Sam and Sue do the same, but
Reagan seems calm as she spies through binoculars. Doc is on the
back porch doing the same thing. Hannah is in the basement with the
children. They’d
sent
her downstairs to sleep with the children, but
Paige highly doubts that she is doing so. She’d
been
just as worried about the
men. Talia is hanging out in the kitchen brewing a pot of tea on
the stove for everyone. Paige is a nervous wreck over Simon being
gone. Gavin is standing on the front porch with a shotgun. The two
women from the neighbor’s farm are trying to play a hand of cards
to pass the time.

Paige strides down the long hall from
the back porch door to the front entrance. Then she takes the same
path again. The pistol that she wears on her hip feels awkward and
slightly uncomfortable, but they’ve all been relegated to the task
of being the farm’s militia while the men are gone. She’s not too
worried about the McClane compound, but her nerves are fried over
Simon’s absence.

“Here,” Talia says to her. “Have a cup
of tea. It might help. Something warm’s always good for nerves
according to my Nana. She used to say stuff like that all the time.
She was full of old wives’ tales and mostly just, well, her own
tall tales.”

Paige grins and takes the proffered
mug of hot tea.

“Thanks, Tal,” Paige says. “Did you
have any trouble getting Maddie to bed?”

“No way,” her friend says. “She sleeps
so hard here. Sometimes I get up to check on her in the middle of
the night just to make sure she’s still breathing.”

They both smile.

“I think all four of us
sleep like that now. Been a long time since we could,” Paige says
as she blows on her tea and adds a smidgen of honey. She’d gone
last week with Sue to check on the bees. That had been interesting,
to say the least. She’s never been too fond of bees. She also
hasn’t had anything sweet for a long
time,
so the honey is appreciated. Sue
was very patient while explaining the bees, even as most of it went
in one ear and out the other. Paige has only ever swatted at the
nasty buggers, not tried to co-exist with them as if she needed
anything from them. The McClane family lives like pioneers. Thank
God the bees aren’t producing yet and are just in their hives
surviving the remainder of the winter until spring when they can
fly out and about and collect pollen and
produce
nectar and breed and work
and sting people. This honey collecting thing is one chore she’s
not looking forward to at all.