The McClane Apocalypse Book Five (22 page)

“We have so much put up, it’s crazy to think
that we’ll go through all of it,” Paige comments.

Her light eyes squint with indecision. The
kitchen is hot, causing all of them to have flushed cheeks. They’ve
already processed three canners full of lima beans just today, and
Reagan hopes that this will be the final one.

“We will,” Sam tells her. “Trust me, we’ll go
through all of it and more. That’s why we can and put up cold
storage vegetables. If we didn’t, then the men would be happy. They
could just eat meat all winter and not be bothered with the
vegetables.”

“Oh, yes, Chet and Wayne are the same
way,” Talia says
with
a
laugh.

Reagan smirks, “No kidding. Jacob’s such a
little carnivore already.”

Her son is currently tagging along with his
dad working on the wheat grinding process. He’s John’s little
minion. He never minds, though and never tries to ditch Jacob. He’s
always attentive and giving of himself.

“Yeah, I’ve noticed,” Paige says. “So is
Maddie. I think it comes from eating wild game on the road. She
still isn’t used to eating carbs and flour products.”

“I’m sure,” Reagan agrees.

Talia scoffs and says in her thick
Louisiana accent, “Chet brought home a turtle the other day. A
turtle! And then he thought I’d kill it and cook it or something. I
just looked at him like, ‘
Boy
,
have you lost your mind?’”

Everyone laughs at her story of woe. She
keeps right on going with the head bobbing and finger wagging.

“I don’t think he’s used to anyone talking
back to him, but let me tell you I was not butchering a turtle. I
helped Paige and Gavin skin squirrels and rabbits but no turtles.
No thanks. That’s disgusting. What the hell?”

The word hell when Talia says it comes
off more like
hail
.
She keeps them laughing
with her tale of turtle horror.

“What’d you do?” Paige asks.

“Chet and his brother brought in a
platter of cut up and cleaned meat later on, and
me and Bertie
cooked it. Mostly I just watched. But
it wasn’t too bad. She deep fried it in lard. My
nana
used to cook everything in lard like that. My
dad’s mom. Man, she was a good cook.”

Her hazel eyes take on a haunted look
as she remembers family members who
are
probably dead.

“You used to be a vegetarian, right, Paige?”
Reagan asks as she screws on a hot lid while trying to bring the
conversation around again.

“Yeah, well, a vegan, so I didn’t eat
meat
or
dairy products. I was
very much against killing animals and wearing leather, all that
jazz,” she says
with
a nod and
wipes the sweat from her forehead with the shoulder of her
shirt.

“Well, you’re a meat eater now, girl,” Talia
teases.

She gets a big smile from Simon’s
sister before Paige replies, “Heck, when I get cold, I’ve
considered wearing that gross bearskin Cory brought home and gave
to your grandpa. I’d definitely eat one of the horses now. I hate
those stupid things
anyways
.”

Reagan laughs out loud, as do the other
women. Talia slaps her friend on the shoulder and laughs, too.
Reagan can tell how close these two women are, and she’s glad they
both survived together.

“Yeah, I got over my affinity for that
not harming animals thing once I realized that vegan pizza and tofu
weren’t on the menu anymore,” Paige says
with
a smirk.

“I’m sure you did,” Reagan agrees as she
lowers the last jar into the canner.

“The food at the rescue camps was the
worst,” she tells them. “They had some pretty nasty stuff. A lot of
powdered
food
, water with
electrolytes. But I guess when you’re hungry you’ll eat just about
anything.”

“You know it, sister,” Talia says and
places a protective arm around Paige’s shoulders for a moment.
“That was some
gruel
if I ever
had any. Nothing like my nana’s cooking. She could make something
outta nothing. She’d make fried okra, French beignets, crawfish
chowder. Yum. Hannah’s cooking reminds me of hers. Plus, my nana
always
put
up a garden,
too.”

“Our farm is a lot of work, but it keeps us
alive,” Reagan says in agreement.

“It’s like a Shangri-La here, trust me,”
Paige notes.

“That’s why we have to fight to preserve it,”
Reagan says. “Not just for us but for these kids. We don’t want
them to go through what you’ve been through, what any of us has
been through.”

She feels bad when Sam’s face falls. Reagan
knows that she doesn’t like to talk about her past. She really
doesn’t even like to acknowledge it at all. As far as Reagan’s
concerned, Samantha doesn’t have to utter a peep about it for the
rest of her life if she doesn’t want to. If it wasn’t for John,
Reagan’s not sure she would’ve come through her own dark past, so
she can understand not wanting to relive it with a good
old-fashioned story hour session. She can’t blame Sam at all.

“Even if Cory does live here,” Paige
mumbles.

“Oh, you’ll come to love Cory, Paige!” Sam
scolds. “We all do.”

“Yep, he’s as fucked up as the rest of us,”
Reagan swears.

“Reagan!” Sam says on a hiss. “If Hannah
hears you talking like that, she’ll flip her lid.”

“Then you’d better give me a heads up
if you see her coming,” Reagan says
with
a wink. “Anyway, Cory is screwed up. Maybe a
little more than most, but we still love that crazy
kid.”

“Hm,” Paige says disbelievingly.

Talia says, “He doesn’t seem that bad to
me.”

“He is,” Paige insists through gritted teeth
and a frown as if she finds something confusing.

“There are worse men out there than Cory,”
Sam says with melancholy.

“Let’s get working on the soap
now,
since the beans are cooking,”
Reagan suggests, trying to change the topic so that Sam doesn’t
become depressed.

Sam takes Talia to retrieve the lye water
from the mud room while she and Paige clean up the kitchen and
prepare it for another project. Sam comes back with the bucket and
places it on the counter. Then she disappears and comes back again
with the scale and another bucket full of solid lard. Talia comes
in holding two small glass containers of Sue’s essential oils and a
long stirring spoon. Reagan retrieves a jar of liquid animal fat
from the pantry along with a glass jar of Sue’s dried herbs.

“Paige, grab the soap pot from the mud room.
It’s up on top of the cabinet in there,” Reagan orders as she comes
back. “You’re the only one of us tall enough to reach it.”

When the ingredients are laid out on
the counter, they start the soap-making process. Soon the house
will smell like lavender and thyme-scented soap with undertones
of
lemony
cleanliness. Even
though it won’t be ready to use for a few weeks, they needed to get
a jump on it with making the soap because their supply is almost
depleted. Reagan knows that Sue has been drying wild mint in the
barn to be placed in the next batch of soap in a month or so. That
particular scent is Reagan’s favorite. Or maybe it’s her preference
because it smells so damn sexy on John’s skin.

Sam measures the liquid oils in a glass
measuring cup and sets them one at a time on the small scale. Paige
uses the pestle and mortar to grind the dried herbs to a super fine
consistency. Talia begins scooping out the solid lard into a
measuring cup for weighing. This reminds Reagan of the time she
used to spend with Grams. Making soap was one of the few kitchen
chores she used to do with her grandmother, and it makes Reagan
pine for her companionship and guidance. She even misses being
reprimanded for swearing and the occasional thump to the back of
her head.

“Cory’s not a bad person, Paige,” Sam says,
reverting back to their earlier conversation. “He’s been through a
lot, just like you.”

“I guess he’s not a total beast,” Paige
allows, which is a big concession for her.

Reagan’s noticed that they don’t get along.
Actually not getting along would be an improvement in their
relationship. Whatever else transpired between those two out in the
woods on the day that Cory came home must’ve been pretty damn bad
for Paige to hate him like she obviously does. Although she seems
to be coming around, slightly.

They get the solid fats melting in the large,
stainless steel pot while preparing other ingredients. Reagan
leaves Talia at the stove to watch the thermometer for the right
temperature.

“He kept his little sister alive for like
four days or something when their parents were killed,” Sam reveals
as she wipes the counter with a wet towel.

“Really?” Paige asks. “How were they
killed?”

Reagan jumps in to answer, “They were
shot while they slept. Cory heard it and woke up. He found them
murdered in their bed and overheard men going back downstairs. He
got to Em. He hid
with
her
somewhere in their house. Then when the men left after they were
done stealing everything they could, he hid out in the woods behind
their house. He called Kelly on the satellite phone.”

“Oh my gosh,” Paige says with surprise.

“It took John and Kelly about four days
to get to them. That was one of the main reasons they left their
military base. Kelly couldn’t
leave
his kid brother and sister- even though they’re only
step-siblings- to fend for themselves. Plus, Derek knew he had to
get home to Sue and the kids who were here on the farm. So the
soldiers all left their base. Cory stayed hidden in the woods until
the men got there,” Reagan explains further. “It was up to him to
keep her alive. John told me that when they found him, Cory had
already dragged his parents’ bodies into their back yard and buried
them. He was just seventeen when this all happened, just a kid. And
after that, he and Em were inseparable. She was glued to him all
the time. She was a good-hearted little person, not a mean bone in
her body. He was her big hero.”

“Wow, that’s so… I don’t even know what to
say,” Paige remarks, furrowing her brow.

“We’ve all been through a lot to get here,”
Reagan tells her, hoping to soften Paige’s hard edge of anger
toward Cory. He’s like a kid brother to Reagan, and she wants the
family to live in harmony with one another. “He’s a tough kid.
Well, I guess he’s not really a kid anymore, but he’s still
tough.”

She even goes so far as to slide her hand
onto Paige’s on the counter.

“That part I already understood,” Paige
says
with
a smirk.

“But he’s sweet, too,” Sam says, defending
her adopted big brother. “You just have to get to know him,
Paige.”

“I think it’s probably better if we
just avoid each other. I don’t
think
we
’re ever gonna be besties.”

Reagan laughs at this one. Paige
has
a sarcasm
that matches her
own.

“Never know,” she suggests and gets a snort
from Paige.

“I think I know,” Paige argues. Then she
interjects as if she is surprised by something, “Hey!”

“What?” Reagan asks.

Paige touches the gold bracelet on Reagan’s
wrist, one of the matching five bracelets on the farm that she’d
stolen from the jewelry store for herself and the other women.

“This is the same as the one on Cory’s
necklace,” Paige observes, running her fingers over the design.
“It’s wound around a black cord he always wears.”

“It was his little sister’s,” Sam explains
with great melancholy touching her voice. “It belonged to
Emma.”

Paige’s eyes dart to Sam’s and then
Reagan’s. She doesn’t even verbalize, but her mouth forms a soft,
“
oh
.”

“Ok, Paige, add the liquid oils to the
pan,” Sam instructs,
obviously
not wanting to dwell on the subject of her dead
friend.

Paige wears her signature blue bandana
around her head to hold back her hair. Her used blue-jeans are a
few inches too short and probably a size too big. She’s wearing a
long-sleeved t-shirt in hues of blue and green
tie-dyes
that she has knotted at her slim waist.
She looks like some sort of sixties era flower child, but on Paige,
it
looks
right. Sam is always
saying how natural and earthy Paige
looks,
and Reagan couldn’t agree more.

Paige says, “He was sort of a good guy the
other night, after the wedding. I kind of drank some of that
homemade moonshine he had out in the cabin, a little too much. I
was just upset and made a stupid, rash decision. So there, I said
something nice about him. I puked, and he was considerate enough to
take care of me.”

Talia laughs and says, “I can say
something nice about him. That boy is
fine
. I mean
really
fine
. Not as fine as my hillbilly, Chet,
but he’s a close second.”

Reagan bursts out laughing as she stirs in
the lye water and says, “Yes, he has grown into quite the handsome
young man.”

Talia
grins,
shakes her head and says, “I don’t know so
much about handsome. Chet’s handsome. John’s handsome. Cory’s… I
don’t know. I don’t think I’d call him handsome
exactly
. He reminds me of an Alaskan man. You know,
big and brawny, kind of wild?”