The McClane Apocalypse Book Five (58 page)

She stands behind Cory, who is lined up
behind her brother. Paige pants lightly from their run and probably
from adrenaline. She’s scared to death that they will find Samantha
dead, or worse yet, not find her at all, ever. Her brother uses two
fingers to indicate a particular area in front of them.

“There’s a man standing guard over there,
Paige,” Cory whispers. “We’ll need to take him out. Simon will go
in through the back. Looks like a warehouse or something.”

“Do you think he took Sam?” she asks.

“That’s them,” her brother says, looking
through binoculars. “Their muddy footprints lead over there. It’s
them. They’ve got her.”

They haven’t gone even a mile if she was to
guess. Whoever took Sam didn’t get far with her. They just
zigzagged around the city. Perhaps she’s still alive in there.

“I don’t see anyone else,” Simon notes.

“We’ll come in
through
the front, brother,” Cory tells her
brother. “We’ll cover you.”

Simon’s dark blue eyes are worried and
impatient. They have a feral intensity in them as if he
is barely containing
the animal within.
She is afraid
for
him. She
doesn’t want her brother to do something reckless and get himself
killed because of his concern for Sam.

“Got it,” Simon says as he brushes past her.
“Stay with Cory, Paige. Stay together.”

He grasps the back of her skull and pulls her
quickly forward, kissing her forehead before taking off back down
the same street. He’s going to need a few minutes to circle the
area to come in behind the other large building.

“We’ll come in over there, see?” Cory asks,
pointing toward a cluster of heavy equipment left abandoned.
“You’ll wait and cover me while I take out the guard. Got it?”

She nods jerkily. Her hands are shaking like
crazy. She hopes nothing has happened to Sam. She’s only been out
of their sight for perhaps an hour. And a good portion of that
time, her captors would’ve used up getting to the warehouse with
her. Paige likes her new friend so much. She feels paralyzed by
guilt. If anything happens to Sam, she’ll never forgive
herself.

Cory’s warm hand stays her own. “Easy
now.
Stay
calm.”

He flicks the selector switch on her rifle to
fire in single rounds instead of fully automatic.

“Let me lead. You’re my cover. Just think
about that. Remember your training. Just like plinking groundhogs.
Don’t let the rest of it get in your head, all right?” he asks, his
dark eyes penetrating into hers.

“Yes,” she answers with more courage than she
feels.

“Let’s move out now,” he says, nods curtly to
her and takes the lead.

They jog quietly through the area until they
have come to the faded yellow bulldozer where he indicates she
should squat on one knee and hide while also watching his back.
Paige gives him another nod, and he leaves her. She watches in
amazement as he sneaks ever so silently with his back against the
wall of the building where the man is standing guard in an open
doorway. The guard has a hunting rifle held in both hands out in
front of him. He’s smoking what looks like marijuana. He is
unshaven, dirty and unkempt. Now she feels even worse that men like
him would have Sam. She prays they find her unharmed.

Cory creeps along the wall until he is within
fifty feet of the man but still hidden in a recess. Then he cups
his hand and makes a strange sound, like that of an animal in
distress. The man falls for the bait and moves toward Cory. Paige
takes a deep breath and raises her rifle to offer assistance should
he need it. What she doesn’t expect to see is Cory sling his rifle
behind his back and unsheathe his dagger. The man walks right past
Cory in the dark corner and doesn’t even see it coming. Her lover
from the previous evening comes up behind the man and cuts his
throat. Paige has to look away. The scene is gruesome. The blood
sprays the brick wall of the old building. When she looks up, Cory
has dragged his body into the corner and is signaling for her to
come forward.

They move quickly, going inside the
building and sweeping left and right. Her brother should already be
to the rear and hopefully also inside. The
small distinctive
voice of a woman in distress
assails her ears. They sprint toward the sound, coming to a wide
open room with a gravel floor and an
antique,
rusted out pick-up truck in the corner.
The room is surrounded by broken and cloudy windows. Most of the
roof is just plain gone. She glances forward and sees her brother
at the other end of the large space as he bursts through the other
open door with his rifle raised.

What she spots in the bright mid-day
sun in the middle of the room is something she would never wish
upon her enemies to have to view. Samantha is sitting on a man on
the gravel and dirt floor. She is straddled over him. The arc of
her blade slicing through the air, the sound
whishing
as she stabs again and again into his
chest. The soft, frantic sounds coming from Sam are frightening to
Paige’s ears. Sam’s shirt is gone, her bra is half off, one strap
hanging down her arm. Her right breast is exposed. However, it is
also mostly concealed with the dead man’s blood. The man is dead,
long dead. She is in a rage filled state of mind, not
herself.

“Sam, Samantha,” Simon calls gently as he
closes in on her.

Sam’s eyes dart to Simon and she raises her
knife at him as if she is preparing to use it on him, as well. Her
lovely blue eyes aren’t even seeing him. They aren’t focusing
correctly. The side of her face is plastered in the man’s blood,
and it streams down her chin and neck. It’s even in her long hair.
Her small, delicate hands are covered in it. Those same graceful
fingers that draw such lovely art and play so nimbly on her violin
are blood soaked.

“Sam, it’s ok. We’re here,” Cory
says softly
and starts toward
her.

Sam jumps off of the man, crouches and jabs
her knife defensively toward Cory.

“Stay back,” Simon warns and holds out his
hand to them.

Her brother steps toward Samantha again and
sets his rifle on the floor. His hands come up in front of him in a
gesture of appeasement. He is able to sling his backpack to the
ground next to her where he squats and pulls out a medical pack of
some kind. He removes a bottle of water along with a rag. Sam
allows him to take her dagger. Simon tosses it to the ground in
front of Cory, who promptly picks it up, wipes it with a rag from
his pocket and stashes it in his boot. Then he drags the corpse
away into a far corner.

She finally speaks, softly, “He was going
to…”

Paige winces. She understands what was about
to happen. They all do.

“I know, honey,” Simon tells her gently as he
begins wiping at some of the blood on her face. “It’s ok now.
You’re safe, Sam.”

Her little hands begin shaking, and tears
trickle down her pale cheeks. Paige wishes there was some way to
comfort her, but she doesn’t think Sam wants anyone else trying to
touch or approach her. Just Simon. Paige knew all along that they
share a special bond, but she had no idea it was this deep. Sam
doesn’t trust anyone but him.

“Was there anyone else, kiddo?” Cory asks,
averting his eyes from her figure.

She watches as Cory strips out of his jacket,
removes his cream-colored thermal shirt and hands it to Simon, who
promptly pulls it down over Sam’s head. Her eyes are showing more
pupil than the beautiful blue of her irises. Paige has to look away
for a moment. When she looks back, her brother is adjusting Sam’s
bra under her shirt. Sam doesn’t seem embarrassed or uncomfortable
having him do so, either. She just sits there in a kneeling
position.

“No, just the two men,” she whispers.

Simon pulls her other boot from his backpack
and puts it on for her, even tying the laces into a bow. Sam just
sits there numbly, staring at nothing, wiping at the drying blood
on her hands roughly against her black pants.

“There are others,” her soft voice
elicits.

Cory’s head whips to the side as he regards
Samantha, “What do you mean, kiddo? What others?”

“They were talking about taking me down by
the river. They said that they were going to sell me to the boss
down there. But the one, the one I… he suggested they stop here
first and…”

Cory and Simon look at each other above her
head as she speaks in monotones about the men.

“What do you think they meant by taking you
down to the river, honey?” Simon asks as he shrugs out of his
jacket and pulls it around her shaking shoulders.

“He said something about a camp down
there. I think he meant there are other girls down by the river.
His boss has them bring girls to the river. I think the way they
were talking was that men go there and trade things
for girls
.”

Paige feels like she’s going to vomit. It
sounds like a sex slave trade business has sprung up there. How
could something like that have happened? Aren’t people just
concerned about surviving? She runs a hand over her sick stomach.
Cory sees it and takes her hand into his. He squeezes it and holds
onto her for a few moments, interlacing his strong fingers with
hers.

“We need the truck,” Simon says while still
working on Sam’s bloody hands.

“On it,” Cory says, letting go of her.

“Should I go with Cory or stay with you?” she
asks her brother.

“No, I’ll go get it,” Cory
answers
for Simon. “I’ll be back in a
few minutes. Keep a close watch on the doorways for Simon while he
looks after Sam.”

“’
Kay,” Paige agrees
nervously.

He sprints from the building as Paige takes
up a position to better see some of the entry points. Simon has a
lot of the blood and mud cleaned out of Sam’s hair before Cory gets
back less than fifteen minutes later with the SUV. They pile in,
but Sam insists that Simon sit next to her in the back seat, which
leaves Paige sitting next to Cory who is still driving.

“Where are we going?” Paige asks Cory.

“Cabin,” he answers.

“Really? Why? I think we should leave,
go home,” Paige argues softly. She doesn’t want to seem impudent,
but she’s scared shitless of this damn city and
wants
to fly
home
to the nest, to safety and the rest of the family and the
arsenal.

“You’ll be safe at the cabin,” he
insists as he hooks a right on a road and drives at
a relatively
fast pace. “We have work to
do now.”

Paige tries not to let her mouth fall
open, but it still does. Does he mean that he and Simon are going
to go to the river camp to take out the bad people there? She sure
as hell hopes not. They need to run. A moment later, her answer is
given to her as he talks into the radio to John back at the farm.
He explains the “
sit rep
” and
then offers forth an idea to his mentor.

“We need to host a little housecleaning party
on the river tonight, Doc,” Cory says, using John’s call sign of
Doctor Death.

“We’ll be there in an hour,” John’s answer
comes promptly.

“Why don’t you get ahold of your friend, the
Mechanic, instead?” Cory suggests. “His group’s closer and that way
you guys don’t have to leave the old MacDonald unattended.”

Paige grimaces as she listens to this plan
unfold. The silence on the radio just means the men at the farm are
discussing this option.

“That would work,” John says through the
static.

“Have him rendezvous at the King of the Blues
at twenty-three hundred hours, over,” Cory says.

“Roger that,” John agrees. “Call if you need
reinforcements.”

“Sounds like a bunch of chicken-shits,” Cory
says. “We’ve got this one, out.”

John says the same, and they end their
call.

“What’s the
king
of Blues, code for someone’s house or
something?” Paige asks.

“BB King, the singer, the musician,” Cory
says as if he can’t believe she doesn’t know.

“I don’t think I’ve heard of him,” she
admits, feeling stupid.

“He died a long time ago, but he was the
best. There’s a nightclub here still standing. It was his. I knew
Dave the Mechanic’s group would know it, especially if any of them
were from around here,” he tells her.

“Ok, we’ll meet them at eleven o’clock,
right?” she asks, still trying to catch on to the military time
they all use.

“No,
we’ll
meet them,” he corrects her. “You’ll be
staying at the cabin with Samantha. You won’t be going.”

“But I can help,” she argues.

“I’m sure you could, but we need you to stay
with her,” Cory says quietly.

Paige mouths the word,
“
oh
.” He’s right. Samantha
shouldn’t be alone tonight. She’s been through something horrible.
Paige can’t even imagine how she would’ve handled that situation of
being kidnapped and almost raped. In her case, she probably
would’ve been
raped
because she’s
not sure she could’ve stabbed that man to death. Sam is quite
proficient with those knives she’s always playing with, though. And
now Paige understands that she is also very lethal with them, as
well.

In the back seat, Simon is whispering
comforting words to Sam. She isn’t reciprocating the conversation.
A glance over her shoulder and Paige observes Sam just staring
straight forward at nothing. Simon continues to gently wipe at her
hair, her hands and her face. She’s in an almost fugue state. Paige
realizes that staying with her little friend is not only important,
it’s imperative.