The McClane Apocalypse Book Five (47 page)

Simon laughs. She’s the only person that
could make him laugh after such a traumatic event. He’s never seen
a movie with Steve McQueen, but he knows of the actor and his
reputation for being an all-around badass.

“Of course, I did run over that street sign
and hit that parked car,” she admits with a jaunty frown.

Simon laughs again and says, “All
right, so you’re not ready to be a Hollywood stunt driver
any time
soon, but you did
all right
.”

She laughs at herself and says, “I hope I
didn’t mess up Grandpa’s car. That street sign snuck up on me.”

“Snuck isn’t a word,” he corrects and gets a
wide-eyed, irritated look from her. “Sorry. You did very well.”

“Do you think we should check the
damage?”

“Not right now. It’s running. That’s all that
matters,” he says. “Let’s hurry back over to the hospital and hit
it again before we have to meet my sister and Cory. We’ve got maybe
an hour or so.”

“Ok, Simon,” Sam says
with
a nod. “Let’s go.”

He maneuvers the giant SUV back to the
hospital, after he figures out where they are on the map. It seemed
like their chase scene through the streets lasted for an hour, when
in fact it probably only lasted a few minutes and didn’t throw them
too far off their schedule.

This time, Simon parks behind the
hospital under an overhang meant for an ambulance or perhaps a
funeral home hearse. They sneak through the ER, find nothing there
and head upstairs. Simon is more alert than he was earlier. And
earlier he’d been on edge. Sam goes ahead of him down a darkened
hallway. He watches their backs. Simon lets her go because the
hospital is deserted. He’s sure of it. The only things they’ve run
into during their search of the basement and first two floors have
been a flock of swallows like the ones that hang out in the barn
rafters at the farm, and then a stray cat with a litter of
kittens
under
an empty bed in a
patient room. Sam had wanted to take them with her. Simon had put
his foot down, but he’d allowed her to leave the cat the remainder
of her sandwich. Then he’d felt
bad
and left the extra slice of ham from his own sack.

Simon takes the folded rucksack out of his
bag. He predicts they’ll need it for additional storage. So far,
they’ve found some items that will be helpful at the clinic. Sam
calls him over to inspect a tipped over nurse’s cart that she’s
found.

He squats, and they rummage through it. Most
of the items are still inside. They find some syringes and rubber
tourniquets, three bottles of antibiotics, one bottle of
painkilling medicine, a blood pressure cuff, a few bottles of
liquid calcium chloride, a small glass bottle of nitrates, and a
few other heart meds. This was likely a post-op ward for heart
patients.

“These pills should help with some of the
older patients, right? I recognize some of the names on these
bottles,” Sam comments as she helps him dump the contents into the
sack.

“Yes, I think so,” he agrees. “Let’s check
the other side of this floor. It may have been a post-op floor, so
let’s see if there are other meds or supplies in the other
wing.”

“Sounds good,” Sam says, following him after
they’ve cleaned out the nurses’ stations, as well.

“Do you think those people knew we were in
the hospital, Simon?”

He shakes his head and says, “No, I don’t
think so. I’ve been thinking about it.”

She interrupts with a snarky, “I have no
doubt.”

“Anyways, I think they probably had a lot of
the parking decks and lots memorized. If they noticed new cars,
they probably figured they were going to yield a good find or gas
or supplies.”

“Maybe,” Sam considers. “What do you think
they wanted? Our car?”

“Could be, but their
car
seemed fine, nice even,” he remembers. “They
may have wanted to rob us for the gas or for food.”

“We’ll never know now,” she replies. “Oh
well. They were obviously bad. I mean I feel terrible and all, but
they were gonna kill us for sure. If they weren’t, then they
would’ve approached us peacefully and asked for help.”

“Yeah, that’s what I think, too,” he agrees
with a nod. “I still feel like crap about it.”

“Don’t,” she demands softly. “They were
evil. It’s that simple now. There’s no middle. It’s just bad or
good. People that will kill us for our stuff or
nice
people who either want to join us or need our
help.”

“You’re probably right,” he says as they pass
a long row of foggy glass windows that overlook a garden area on
the ground level complete with a fountain. The area looks like a
jungle.

“I’m always right. When are you gonna learn?
For a smart guy, you sure don’t seem to be getting this,” Sam says
with pluck.

Simon
chuffs
and grins down at the top of her head. She’s
not kidding, either. She’s entirely serious, which just makes
her
adorably
rotten.

“That fountain down there must run on solar
power,” he says, pointing to the garden. The water is green and
likely slimy, too.

Sam grimaces and says, “Awesome, wanna’
swim?”

“I don’t even think the chickens would drink
out of that,” he says with a frown. “Come on.”

They walk quickly to the other wing
where it proves just as fortuitous. Most of the
obvious
places like the medicine supply rooms are
raided, the doors crashed in and the rooms emptied. But other
supplies that their clinic could use are still available. This side
of the floor is also a step-down wing. They find clamps, forceps,
bite blocks, Lidocaine, alcohol pads, Dopamine, Epinephrine and
quite a few other medicines in cabinets and carts. He also grabs an
entire box of saline flush syringes, which is an important find for
the clinic. Sam finds intubation supplies in another area. Simon
lastly grabs a stack of new, sterile- yet rather dusty- scrubs and
surgical gowns for the clinic.

“What about one more floor?” Sam
suggests.

“No, let’s get moving again,” he says as they
walk quickly to the rear of the building, intent on using the
stairs there to take them back toward the ER and the hidden and
hopefully undisturbed SUV. “The sun has almost set, so we should
head over to the Parthenon. I don’t want Cory to worry about us. We
need to be on time.”

“Right, we should get going,” she agrees with
a grin.

“Let me see the map. I’m not entirely sure
which route I want to take there. We’re not far from it, maybe a
few blocks or so.”

They pause going down the stairs and squat to
give their legs a break. They’ve been on the move all day.

Sam chuckles as she hands him the map from
her bag and says, “Sometimes it’s ok to get a little lost, Simon.
Take the road less traveled and all.”

“No thanks. That’s not something we can
afford to do anymore. The roads less traveled tend to end up being
dangerous, not mystical and adventurous.”

“Who knows? Maybe we’ll have to explore some
of those roads for ourselves someday,” she says.

“Thanks, but I like the road back to the farm
best,” he admits.

“Yes,” she says
with
a demure smile, “that’s a good
one.”

Simon is taken away by her smile, as usual.
Her dark hair is still slightly damp from the rain, but it does
nothing to detract from her beauty. She’s pulled it loose of its
ponytail holder and now it hangs around her shoulders in waves of
ebony disarray.

“Ok, I know which way we’ll go,” he tells
her, folds the map and tucks it into her backpack for her.

“What if I choose another way?” she asks with
a lift of her chin.

“We’ll still go the way I choose,” he says
decisively, earning an impudent stare from her.

They both rise, but Sam just stands there
with her fisted hands on her hips.

“What?” Simon asks with confusion.

“Really, Simon?” Sam say angrily. “Don’t be
such a dictator.”

“I’m not being a dictator,” he replies. “What
are you talking about?”

Sam just rolls her eyes at him and says,
“Never mind.”

Then she brushes past him and tries to take
the lead down the dark stairwell. Simon grabs her shoulder before
she gets more than a few stairs ahead of him and halts her. He
flicks on his dim flashlight and squeezes past her. His light jumps
around as he goes, catching a dead and decayed corpse a few steps
further down. Sam gasps with horror. Then she edges closer and
takes his hand. Maybe she isn’t so angry with the dictator, after
all.

Chapter Twenty

Sam

By the time they get to the Parthenon, a
light snow has mixed with the cold rain. The wind has picked up,
and she hopes Cory and Paige are already there.

“Alpha Dog to PeeWee Little Fella’, come in,
over,” Cory teases across the radio.

Simon shakes his head and scowls at his
friend’s humor.

“Professor here, go ahead,” Simon returns,
not feeling the love for the new handles that Cory has just
assigned them.

“We’re not gonna make the rendezvous point,”
Cory tells them. “Are you there yet, over?”

Sam is upset by this news. Simon also seems
to be so because his jaw clenches with distress.

“We made it and are almost set,” Simon says
calmly.

“We’re too far out, over,” Cory tells
them.

“We’ll come to you,” Simon offers. “What’s
your position?”

She knows he is looking for some sort of
information that will let him know of their exact location in the
city without forcing Cory to just blurt it over the radio. They
never know if someone could be on the same channel as them. They
must take precautions against unsafe radio chatter.

“Nah, too far. Don’t go to the
nerdville
, either. Hotspot,” Cory
informs them.

She assumes he means Vanderbilt University.
That’s a shame if vandals and vagrants have taken it over. It used
to be such a lovely old school full of beautiful brick buildings
and landscaped lawns.

“Are you in trouble, over?” Simon asks with
worry.

“Negative. We’re all good. Gonna lock it down
for the night somewhere else, over.”

“New rendezvous point?”

There is a long pause and then static
and another
pause
.

“We’ll meet at Dick’s, over,” Cory
suggests.

Simon looks over at Sam and shakes his head
confusedly. Sam offers a shrug. They aren’t sure where Cory means
for the meeting place.

“Repeat,” Simon tells him.

“Hunt, fish, camp, over,” Cory says.

“Oh!” Sam exclaims, catching on. “He
means Dick’s Sporting Goods. I think there’s one over east of
the
college
, Vanderbilt where
they were. He must’ve gone there with Paige or passed it today
sometime.”

“Got it,” Simon says into the receiver of the
walkie-talkie. “Oh-nine-hundred. We’ll meet you at your
namesake.”

Sam’s mouth falls open. She can’t believe
that Simon’s making a joke, first of all; and two, she can’t
believe that he’d say something so crude.

“Later, dude,” Cory says. “Don’t do anything
I wouldn’t do.”

Simon replies, “That doesn’t leave much.
Later.”

He maneuvers the big SUV onto the overgrown
lawn of the Parthenon and drives around toward the back. They’ve
already driven by it twice to ascertain that nobody was squatting
there. It seems safe, but like so many places they’ve been over the
years, it could be a cesspool of criminals who would harm them.

“I hope they’ve found somewhere warm to stay
tonight,” Sam comments. “We’ve got the only heater, so I don’t know
what they’ll do.”

“They’ll be fine,” Simon tells her as he
pulls the car close to the building and a rear exit. “I’m sure
he’ll build them a fire or something.”

Sam sniffs hard, her nose running from
the
low
temperature outside the
vehicle and her hair being wet through. Then she
sneezes.

“Great, now you’re getting sick,” Simon says
angrily. “I knew you should’ve stayed home.”

“I
’m fine,
Simon. I’m just a little chilly. We’ll get warmed up soon
enough,” she assures him.

“You’re probably gonna have pneumonia,” he
says with fervor and cuts the engine.

They both look around at their dark
surroundings. They are late getting to the meeting spot. They were
supposed to be here sooner to make sure nobody was around. She’s
thinking it’s probably a good thing Cory and Paige didn’t beat them
to the Parthenon in case danger awaits them inside.

“I’m not getting sick. Stop,” Sam insists. “I
don’t need a father, Simon.”

The look he sends her lets Sam know that she
has definitely irritated him and that he strongly disagrees with
her.

“Let’s go,” she says impatiently and gets out
of the vehicle.

Simon meets her around back and snatches her
arm.

“Hey, I’m in charge here, young lady,” he
scolds. “I say when it’s safe to go in. I wanted to wait out here a
while longer to make sure nobody comes out.”

“Too bad,” Sam argues. She’s watching tiny
snowflakes land on his deep cheekbones and eyelashes. “And nobody
told me that you’re in charge anyways, so I think you’re just
making that up to lord it over me.”

Simon frowns hard at her. “Your defiance
lately is starting to wear thin, Samantha.”

Sam just snorts through her nose and ignores
him.

“Let’s go in and check it out first. We’ll
come back for our gear once it’s clear inside,” he reluctantly
agrees. “Just stay close. You never know.”