The McClane Apocalypse Book Five (45 page)

“Really?” Paige asks dryly. “Duct tape?”

Cory shrugs and replies, “I am a man, aren’t
I. Thanks for the concern, but it’ll be fine.”

He’s still holding her by the shoulders, and
she regards him with a confused stare. Her eyes drop from his eyes
to his mouth. They become hooded, her cheeks flushed. He’s seen
this look from women before.

“We need to go,” Cory says abruptly and sets
her away from him so he can tuck in his shirt again. Then he zips
his black jacket.

Paige stammers, “Right, right. We should keep
moving.”

“There’s a university hospital close
by. It’s small but could be useful,” he tells her. “We’ve never
raided it yet, but the area is
good
.”

“What about those guys? Aren’t they at the
university?”

“It’s not that close to the hospital,
different campus. It’s a big place. We’ll be safe,” Cory tries to
assure her, but Paige frowns hard and looks upset enough to cry
again. Cory touches her arm lightly and says, “They won’t find us.
It’s spread out enough
between
the hospital grounds and the school that they won’t find
us.”

“Ok, let’s hit it,” Paige says firmly, but
she’s still standing in front of him with a dazed expression.

“Stay close,” he tells her and heads to the
door.

They make it to Vanderbilt Hospital
without problems. Cory avoids the front and decides to go in
tactical from the side. From this angle, he can still see the tall
brick buildings of Vanderbilt University, which is good because he
can spy on their enemy once he takes a high position in the
hospital. It seems like a safer bet in light of current events. On
the hospital grounds, they wade through the
tall
grass, uncontrolled foliage, and the hedges
which haven’t been trimmed in four years. Cory finds a door on the
side of the building, an emergency exit. He presses in, and the
door surprisingly opens with some gentle persuasion. They creep
inside, and Cory is overly cautious after their issues with the
Roid Kappa Beta Gang.

The pharmacy on the first floor is
completely trashed; not a trace of medicine is left. He points up,
and they take the non-moving escalator. He has no idea how
grass
is growing here and there through
the metal slats. The former hospital is so humid that it’s like a
damn terrarium. They move slowly, him in the lead.

Cory doesn’t mention the long, black snake he
saw slithering around a corner at the other end of the hall from
the pharmacy. He figures that Paige isn’t a fan of snakes. Most
women aren’t, at least not the ones he’s ever known.

A high-pitched shriek rains down upon them as
they ascend the escalator. They both freeze in their tracks. Cory
glances around, causing Paige to bump into his back. He’s not sure
if it was a bird, perhaps an owl. The screeching comes again.

“What the…” Paige exclaims on a sharp
inhale. “Are you
freagin
’ kidding
me?”

There is a black monkey perched on the
handrail at the top of the escalator. It is nearly all black except
for a small white patch on its face, and Cory thinks he saw a group
of them at a zoo once with Em. It’s not as big as a baboon, but the
next time it screeches, there are some seriously sharp looking
teeth exposed. He thinks they might be called a howler something or
other.

“Careful, we’ll go slowly. Let’s not piss it
off if we can help it,” Cory says. “I don’t want to have to shoot
it.”

“I don’t care if you have to shoot it,” Paige
says softly. “That thing is freaking me out.”

The animal hisses angrily. They make it up to
the second floor without incident from the monkey. It jumps down
and scuttles away when they get within ten stairs from it, but not
before sending another blaring scream at them. It must be trying to
intimidate them. Cory steps onto the second floor and ushers Paige
toward a wall. The monkey is less than fifty feet away. He’s not
sure if it is afraid of humans. He’s not even sure if it has ever
seen a human before. Then Cory spots the other ones. There must be
ten of them. Cory waves his rifle at them and shouts loudly. They
all take off on all fours down the hall and disappear from his line
of sight. Beside him, Paige shivers.

“That wins the
prize
for the weirdest shit I’ve seen since the
fall,” she remarks.

“Yeah, that was strange,” Cory agrees. “Let’s
keep moving.”

They begin raiding rooms and nurses’
stations for anything they can salvage. He uses the butt of his
rifle to break the lock on a steel door behind the third
such
station
they come to. Once
inside, he doesn’t find as much as he’d hoped they would. Perhaps
the nursing staff that used to work in this hospital had taken the
supplies with them when they put in their
two-week’s
apocalypse notice. They do
take
some bandaging, some sort of
antibiotic
salves
in tubes, a box
of needles to which Paige grimaces, some random bottles of
medicines that are mostly expired, a box of plastic gloves, a
couple rubber bags that look like they are used for some sort of
procedure he probably doesn’t want to understand, a few packages of
scalpel-style tools, medical tape and a stethoscope.

In the hallway again, Cory leads Paige around
a tipped over wheelchair on their way to a stairwell. He needs
higher ground. He decides to take her to the top floor so that he
can overlook the hospital grounds and hopefully some of the
college. They cross to the farthest southwest corner on the top
floor, and Cory peers through binoculars out the dirty, cloudy
window.

“What are you doing?” Paige inquires
quietly.

“Watching for our friends,” Cory answers
honestly.

“See anyone?”

“No, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t
out there somewhere looking for us,” Cory tells her as a bolt of
lightning streaks across the gray, dusk sky. “Let’s raid a few more
floors for the same stuff and head out of here. We might not make
it to the Parthenon before this storm hits. It’s a little over a
mile or so northwest of here, but we would need to find a
way
around
the school so we don’t
run into the Roid gang. It might make the run over there a little
longer, so we’ll leave before dark. Looks like we’re still gonna
get soaked.”

“Really?” Paige asks as if she’s too tired to
make the trek.

Cory hadn’t anticipated this from her. Of
course, maybe hanging on for dear life and straining her muscles
and then running with him to get away from creeps has exhausted
her.

“The Parthenon’s close to a big park,
but we’ll go out around it if we can in case anyone’s loitering
there. It’s also close to a lake, but the last time your brother
and I came to this district, it was
completely
abandoned and safe. That’s why we picked
it with John and Kelly the other day as the meeting
place.”

“Oh, ok,” she says on a fatigued sigh.

“Let’s just finish here in this hospital and
I’ll decide what we’re gonna do. Maybe if we can catch Simon and
Sam before they drive over there, we’ll hitch a ride. We’ve got
some time, though so let’s not waste it.”

“Right,” Paige agrees.

“Wait,” he says, considering her. “Are you
hungry or anything?”

She shakes her head with a frown, “No.
Not at all. I think my stomach sank permanently when I fell
in
that trap. It’s a little sick
actually, so I’m good. No food for me for a while. Maybe for a
couple days.”

Cory grins at her humor, but wonders if he
should call Simon now and stop for the day. Maybe this is too much
for her. He scowls hard at her, thinking about stopping for the
night with her now instead of a few hours from now.

“I’
m all
right,
” she says, reading his indecision. “I don’t
want to eat and I don’t want to stop, either. We need to find more
supplies for the clinic and the farm. I don’t
want
to waste this trip.”

Cory doesn’t answer but gives her a simple
nod. He leads Paige through the hospital and ends up on some sort
of maternity ward floor. Cory is completely out of his league, so
he lets her lead. He also lets her decide what to take from the
nurses’ station and the surgical rooms they find. He follows her
slim hips down a dark hallway, trying not to stare at her figure as
they go. They come to a baby birthing room, or at least that’s what
he figures it is by the looks of it.

“What the fuck is this thing?” Cory asks as
he picks up a stainless steel device from a drawer with a look of
horror on his face.

“You don’t even want to know,” Paige answers
with a smile and shakes her head, sending her loose red waves over
her shoulder. Her braid is more undone than neat and tidy.

Cory scowls and sets the instrument
back down. He hopes the
shoe horn
mechanism was never used. He subconsciously wipes his palm on
his pants, getting a chuckle from Paige. She picks up a few other
items and stashes them in her pack.

“We can go to the floor where they offer
proctology exams,” she quips.

“No thanks,” Cory jests. “I don’t think I’m
ready for one of those.”

She chuckles, which is nice to hear from her.
At least she isn’t crying anymore. She seems sad a lot, even back
at the farm. She doesn’t mope around or feel sorry for herself, but
she just seems unhappy. Perhaps it is because her friend was killed
or the other one moved to the next farm over. Maybe it’s because
her parents are gone and she sees the McClane family and their love
and joy and it’s just too much for her. He’s not sure. Hannah would
probably know better than anyone else. He has no idea how to cheer
up a woman or, more importantly, how their brains operate.

“You wanna’ hop up on here for an
exam?” he jokes and
pats
the
stainless steel table. “We could play doctor.”

In a strange and unexpected turn, Paige
climbs onto the table and regards him with a plucky
stare
. The eyebrow has arched
again.

“Doctor, I have this terrible ache,”
Paige
teases
with a sexy pout
and
drawl
. She even coyly chews
her thumbnail.

Cory clears his voice and grinds his teeth
together. She pulls her new lip balm from her pants pocket and
spreads it on her lips. Then she puckers her mouth and makes a
smacking sound with her lips.

“I’m ready when you are, Doctor,” she further
instigates.

Cory shifts to his other foot, his grip on
his rifle tightens, and he gives her a stern glare. He hadn’t
anticipated her calling him out. He was just trying to make her
laugh and now he’s chuckling nervously.

“Quit foolin’ around,” he reprimands in a
more austere tone.

Paige cocks her head to the side and
hits him with those gray-blue eyes of hers, “I thought you
wanted
to fool around.”

She raises her pale red brows in two quick
jerks to taunt him further. His patience is wearing thin. So is his
resistance. He’d like to push her down on this cold table and show
her how serious he really is.

“All talk and no play, huh?” she jeers and
hops back down.

“Playing is for children,” Cory informs her.
She takes a few steps closer and raises her chin defiantly. “I
wouldn’t be playing.”

Her chest rises and falls at a faster
rate, and her full red mouth parts just slightly. Then she makes
the mistake of letting her gaze fall
to
his mouth. Cory’s no fool. He knows she wants him to kiss
her. Her eyes start to fall shut, and she sways closer. Out of
respect for Simon, he tugs her hand and whips around to leave the
surgical suite, the place where babies were delivered. He has no
desire to procreate one.

“Let’s move,” he orders forcefully as a bead
of sweat runs down his left temple.

They take what they can from the last few
floors as the rain starts coming down outside. It begins as a light
sprinkle and quickly turns to a torrential downpour. They
definitely aren’t going to make it to the other side of the
city.

Chapter Nineteen

Simon

The
four-door
, sleek black sedan drives slowly by,
pauses for a long time at the rear of Doc’s SUV. Simon slows his
breathing and places his hand over Sam’s to keep her still. She’s
afraid. He can read the fear in her eyes. He’s not too thrilled
with the idea of being caught like sitting ducks in the vehicle,
but he’s not afraid. He has enough firepower to disable anyone who
wants to fight. He’d rather not do it with Sam in the car with him,
but there’s no helping it now. They’re stuck in a bad
place.

The black car keeps going past them. It
stops every so often at different vehicles and
pauses like
it had at the rear of theirs. Simon
watches from his concealed position. He can’t see inside the darkly
tinted windows to discern if there is just one person or five or
ten crammed in there. The basement floor of the parking deck being
so dark isn’t helping him size up his potential competition. The
car stops in the next aisle, backs up and comes toward them. Sam
inhales sharply.

“Easy, Sam,” he reassures her. “Don’t
move.”

He can just barely make out her blue
eyes in the dimly lit vehicle. But he can hear her fast breathing.
She’s scared and worried. He’d like to tell her that everything
will be
fine
, but he can’t bring
himself to do so. He doesn’t like this fighting
position.