The McClane Apocalypse Book Five (59 page)

“Hang a left at the next street,” Simon
orders from the back seat.

Cory does as he says and starts heading west
of the city until they are in an older residential
neighborhood.

“Up ahead,” Simon instructs. “There’s a YMCA
building. We can go around back. There’s a big field there that
leads to city-owned property and parks. Once we get the truck
pulled into the woods out there, then it’s only about a two mile
hike to the cabin.”

“How’d you know about this place? We don’t
usually leave the SUV over here,” Cory remarks as he swerves around
a parked, torched car.

Some of the stately homes have graffiti
marring their lovely brick facades. Others have been partially
or
totally
burned to the ground.
It’s a sad testament to the times in which they live when people
could just go into such
a nice
neighborhood and spray-paint gang symbols on homes that were
all protected by home security service companies. She’s not sure
where the residents have gone, but the
neighborhood
seems very empty.

“The last time I came to the city with
Derek and Kelly, we found this shortcut that takes a lot of
time
off
the trek to the cabin,”
her brother answers.

Cory finds the community club
easily
enough and pulls past the
building. Chain-link fencing surrounds the property. Vines and
weeds grow up through the links here and there. He actually smashes
through the fence without batting an eye. Paige grabs the dashboard
for support as he careens over a small hill and then into the city
park. He slows down, weaves around a
swingset
, a
slide,
and a wooden play structure before stopping at the edge of
the forest.

“Let me check it out,” Cory says, jumps out
and jogs into the woods.

He comes back a few minutes later and drives
the vehicle into the forest, going slowly and steering around the
thick, broken branches of trees. Cory drives as far as he can
before they must stop because of a fallen, rotting tree.

“We’ll hoof it from here,” he announces.

Paige looks over at him and smiles
complacently as he puts the vehicle in park. He glances her way,
nods with a pained grin. Their uncomfortable situation this morning
has been replaced with concern for their mutual friend. Knowing
Cory, he’s probably preoccupied with thinking about the evening’s
coming festivities. He hands her the keys to the vehicle.

“You’ll keep them now,” he says as Simon
helps Sam from the SUV. “Pocket them. Keep them safe. Don’t lose
them. If the shit hits the fan tonight while we’re gone, try to get
to the Suburban. It’ll get you out of the city faster. If you can’t
get to the vehicle, then you hide out in the woods somewhere with
Sam. I’ll track you down and find you.”

“What about you guys?” she asks as her
brother shuts his door. She is alone with Cory. “What if we take
the Suburban like you’re saying? What about you and Simon?”

He smirks with that usual cocky attitude he’s
always putting off and says, “Then we’ll be hoofing it around the
city and then back to the farm, too.”

“Seriously?” Paige asks, thinking he’s
messing with her. “That’s like twenty miles or so. Are you screwing
with me?”

“Not yet today, but the day’s still young,”
he replies with too much sexual implication and a wink.

Her cheeks redden and she frowns at him for
the crude remark before turning away.

“I think it’s actually twenty-five
miles to the farm from here,” he says
with
a sigh.

“You can’t walk twenty miles back to
the farm after what you’re going to be doing tonight. You’ll get
too tired,” Paige
retorts
and
musters enough courage to look at him again. He’s staring at her
hair. His stare is intense and thoughtful. Then he smirks again and
the humor is back.

“Well, like Kelly says, ‘when you get tired
of walking, you can always run’,” he jokes.

Paige laughs once. “That’s not nice.”

Cory grins and shrugs. “Let’s go. We’ve got
to get Sam to the cabin. You’ll look after her while we’re gone,
right?”

“Of course,” Paige says vehemently.

Simon is already covering the vehicle with
branches and leaves. Most of the trees have lost their leaves, but
some still sport their fall colors. For the most part, their leaves
are brown and dead, though. It’ll help the dark tan Suburban blend
right into the surroundings. Within a few minutes, the guys have
the vehicle covered over. She helps some, too.

They meet Sam at the trunk and grab their
extra guns and backpacks. Cory grabs the crate full of food.
Without even verbalizing a plan, Simon hands his pack and Sam’s to
Cory along with his sniper rifle and her military rifle.

“What are you doing?” Paige stammers.

“Come, Sam,” Simon says to his friend. “Up
you go, kiddo.”

“I’ll walk,” Samantha says weakly.

Paige notices that Simon has wrapped white
gauze around her hands. Blood is seeping through. Her pants are
torn at the left knee where blood stains the material. Her legs are
quaking. She’s barely on her feet.

Cory and Simon don’t argue with her,
though. Cory
simply
sets
everything down, walks over to her, and lifts her onto Simon’s
back. Apparently her brother, who used to be a skinny rail, is
going to hike Sam the whole two miles to the cabin on his back. She
seems content to allow him. She rests her dirty cheek against his
shoulder blade. Her eyes still
seem
unfocused.

Cory retrieves all of the items, including
the crate full of their food. Then he grabs Paige’s arm and pulls
her forward through the woods with him. Another unspoken plan must
be that he will lead and Simon will bring up the rear. It makes
sense.

“Need me to get your pack for you?” he asks
after ten minutes of walking.

“Are you crazy?” she asks as the sun glints
through the trees onto his bare shoulders. He’s removed his jacket
and is only wearing a tattered wife-beater. She remembers those
broad shoulders so well. The feel of them under her fingertips, his
skin so silky, yet rough in places is simply too much to dwell on.
There is a two-inch scratch on his right shoulder blade. She hopes
it’s from a branch poking him and not her fingernails last night.
“You’re already carrying so much. I feel like I should be offering
you the help.”

“Nah, I’m good. This is nothing.”

She trots a few steps to catch up beside
him.

“Do you think Simon’s ok? I mean Sam is
small, but that’s still a lot to carry for two miles of hills and
woods,” she says with concern for her brother.

“Doesn’t matter. She wasn’t gonna let
me touch her like that. When she gets…
bad
, she doesn’t like being around people,
especially men,” Cory tells her.

“Oh,” Paige says in a whisper. “That’s
terrible. I mean for you and her. I know how much you like
her.”

“Yeah, it’s cool. We’re all used to it. We
don’t bring it up or make a big deal of it. Reagan used to be
worse. We just know when to back off. This is just gonna take her
some time to come out of. She’ll snap out of it and realize I’m
still her big bro,” Cory says, holding a branch out of the way for
her. “She just needs some space.”

“Do you think she’ll let me take care of her
while you’re gone?”

“I don’t remember you having a penis last
night, so, yeah, I’d say she’ll let you help her,” he teases
quietly.

“Shh,” Paige reprimands and slaps his
shoulder. He just grins.

“Just be there for her. Do girl-talk or
something. She’ll do better with you than us anyway.”

“I don’t know about that. She is so close
with Simon.”

“True,” Cory admits with a nod and
brushes his long hair back. It’s slick with his sweat. “Your
brother is the only person she connects with when
she’s having
a bad spell. They’ve been
through some shit. I think it made her trust him and basically only
him.”

“She trusts you, too,” Paige tells him.

“Not like him. She doesn’t trust anyone like
she does Simon,” Cory says, glancing over his shoulder to ascertain
that Simon’s still with them. He raises his chin a notch at her
brother. They have a lot of unspoken communication.

“I guess it’s hard to trust anyone nowadays,”
Paige confides as they wade through tall weeds. The giant trees
around her make her feel a little safer somehow. Walking beside
Cory has the same effect.

“Do you trust me?” Cory asks, his gaze
sliding onto her face.

His tone is serious, but Paige detects a
certain amount of hope in it, too.

“You tried to kill me,” she says with wide
eyes.

“One little attempted murder…”

“And the threat of rape, don’t forget!” she
teases.

“Well, after the way you were last night, I
should’ve been more worried about you raping me, woman,” he
jokes.

Paige’s eye widen further, and she slugs him
again, “Stop talking about that!”

“What? I’m just saying. You weren’t exactly
resisting too hard,” he reminds her with a grin.

She shakes her head and glares at him. “Don’t
make me shoot you.”

“Just pointing out some facts, ma’am,” he
teases.

“Stop,” she warns. “You’re forgetting our
deal.”

“Deal? Is that what the cool kids are calling
it now?” he jests and bumps her shoulder.

Then she makes the mistake of looking up into
his devilish brown eyes. The playfulness is gone, replaced with a
hot desire, the same desire she’d seen last night. She hates the
quickening of her breath and the tingling she feels in her
stomach.

He leans close and whispers against her neck,
“I thought it was called fucking.”

“Don’t be vulgar,” she scolds and backs away
to the sound of his soft chuckle. “And don’t talk about it
again.”

“We don’t have to talk about it. You’re
right. We should reenact it instead,” he says huskily.

Paige stutters out, “Wh…what?”

He raises his eyebrows with two quick jerks,
hinting that he is serious about his devious plan. Paige blushes
and turns away again.

“Your loss,” he repeats the same phrase she’d
used on him last night. Paige just swallows hard and tries to
concentrate on not tripping over tree roots or grabbing onto the
long vines of poison ivy clinging to nearly everything.

“So, do you?” he asks a few moments
later.

“Do I what?”

“Trust me?” he says barely above a
whisper.

When she glances up at him, Cory is staring
intently down at her. Words seem to fail Paige, so she just nods
and looks at her feet. She peeks at him again to find him grinning
confidently.

“Good. I trust you, too,” he says.

“You do?”

Cory regards her with a smile, “Yes, and
that’s a lot more important to me than liking someone. I like a lot
of people, but I don’t trust them. I don’t trust most people at
all. The McClanes, your brother, that’s about it. And now you.”

“What about your town wenches?” she
asks because she can’t help the
petty
, female competitive bug from entering her
brain.

He tosses his dark head back and laughs
loudly, oblivious as usual to being quiet.

“Ha, no way. I’d never have a reason to trust
them with my life. They were just… fun distractions for a while,”
he explains patiently. “You’re one of us now, so I have to be able
to entrust my life to you if something happens. It’s pretty simple
really.”

“You… you’d trust me with your life? After
what we’ve been through? I mean, we don’t always get along,
Cory.”

“We did last night,” he says with the eyebrow
motioning again. “I should’ve just thrown you down in the forest
when I first met you and seduced you into liking me. Sex seems to
make you a little nicer.”

Paige groans and grinds her teeth together,
trying not to pay heed to his brazen comment. They come to a narrow
stream that Cory makes sure everyone gets safely across. Then they
pull ahead of Simon again.

“But you trust me that much?” she repeats,
thankful for the new, waterproof leather boots on her feet. There
isn’t much worse than cold, wet feet when traveling in the middle
of nowhere by foot.

He stops, grasps her chin, raising her face
to his and says, “Absolutely.”

Paige blinks hard. He’s deadly serious. He
also seems like he’s about to kiss her. She hopes not. Her brother
isn’t far behind them. She also hopes he does.

“There’s the cabin,” he says, turning away
and walking toward the small building she hadn’t seen before. “We
made it.”

Simon comes up beside her and winks, still
carrying Samantha with what seems is little effort.

“And so did your pussy of a brother,” Cory
calls over his shoulder with an obnoxious laugh.

Paige’s mouth falls open at his
crudeness and the insult of Simon. He truly is like being around a
caveman most of the time. He’s uncouth, crude and
pretty much
uncivilized. Last night he’d
been very uncivilized, but she hadn’t minded that as much. As a
matter of fact, the thought of some of his more
savage
moments last night makes her toes curl in
her boots.

She’d been worried about her brother, but he
seems fine, not even winded or sweating. Sam, however, is still not
talking. Simon walks past Cory and shoots him an angry look for the
bad language, which just gets a laugh from Cory.

She trails after them, marveling at the
concealment job the family has done on the small log cabin. Vines
and overgrown shrubbery and grasses crawl up the sides of the front
porch and onto the floor. It sits nestled in a
small
glen and would seem quaint if it wasn’t for
the fact this cabin isn’t for a romantic, rustic getaway honeymoon
or family summer vacation. It’s shelter
from
the night. It’s a source of safety for a few
short hours. This is her first stay in one of the family cabins.
This one is supposedly larger than the other cabin that is located
closer to Clarksville.