by Kate Morris
The McClane Apocalypse
Book Ten
Kate Morris
2018
Ranger Publishing
Copyright © 2018 by Ranger Publishing
Note to Readers: This publication contains the opinions and ideas of its author. It is not intended to provide helpful or informative material on the subjects addressed in the publication. The author and publisher specifically disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss or risk personal or otherwise.
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Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file
ISBN 13: 978-1790494019
ISBN 10: 978-1790494019X
Acknowledgments
I want to thank the fans of The McClane Apocalypse for supporting the series and following this family. I just hope they have touched your lives in some small, positive way. Thank you so much for making it what it has become. In the spring, I’ll be launching a new apocalypse series, as well as book three in my detective series. I look forward to your feedback and hope you love the new characters as much as you have our beloved McClanes.
Kate
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Epilogue
Chapter One
Sam
“That’s it, Dr. Brown,” Sam praises from the middle of the riding arena as she instructs a group of women who’d wanted to learn how to ride. Dave said anyone making short runs just to their town or to neighbors should be doing so on horseback. Gas won’t last forever, and he fears like Grandpa that neither will the natural gas for the CNG converted vehicles. “Heels down.”
“Right,” Dr. Brown says with a laugh. “I always forget that part.”
Sam returned to Dave’s compound last night after taking care of the remaining sick children in town. Immediately following the wedding of Cory and Paige, she’d stayed on in the McClane house in town with her uncle until it was time for him to leave for Fort Knox with Grandpa and Simon and General McClane’s doctors. She’d hugged her uncle goodbye in the house and had skipped seeing Grandpa for fear she’d also have to see Simon. After what he’d confessed at the reception, Sam wasn’t sure she could face him. There is so much to sort out in her mind. She’s actually been wondering if Simon was drunk that night. She hadn’t smelled alcohol on his breath, and he certainly never imbibed before. However, he was behaving so unusual and strange. His guard was down; he was supposedly talking about his feelings openly, feelings he declared for her, feelings of love. She could not believe her ears and has since tried to wipe the memory from her brain. That was not like Simon. Simon never talks about his feelings. There were spirits at the reception, homemade wine and beer and other liquor of which she wasn’t familiar all made locally by friends of theirs who know about such things. Perhaps Simon tried a few too many. He’s usually so uptight, Sam can’t imagine him doing anything like that.
Sam smiles and says, “Yes, that’s it. Heels down! That’s the part that will keep your butt in the saddle and not in the dirt when he spooks or jolts or just starts moving faster than you anticipate.”
“Good to know!”
She’s instructing eight women in the outdoor riding paddock, and the snow that was so pretty and picturesque the other day has melted as the temperature climbed to the low forties. It just turned everything into a muddy, mucky mess on the farm. Henry and his friends had gone back to that outlet mall where she’d foolishly fallen down the stairs and collected two more trucks full of supplies, including the riding apparel from that equestrian store. Her leg has finally healed fully, but she’ll have two, tiny scars from that piece of steel poking through it. If it weren’t for Simon’s stitching skills, her scarring might’ve been worse. At least she’d found the clothing and boots at the riding apparel store for their new friends, survivors of the highwaymen. She’d kept a pair of light tan riding breeches with suede knee patches, a wool dressage jacket, and a pair of black leather dressage boots. She didn’t think anyone would want the boots or the show jacket. Plus, she takes a smaller shoe size than most of them anyway. Henry told her it was the least she deserved for being stabbed by a piece of steel through the thigh while foraging for them. They’d even found some riding breeches for about a dozen young girls in the group. Sam is pretty sure they were just happy to have any clothing.
When they have ridden for about an hour, Sam calls them in to dismount. Then she goes over ways to improve and tells everyone to take their horses to the barn to untack. She’d also found an English saddle at the equestrian store, but she’ll reserve that for herself since nobody has the level of riding experience to use such a saddle as that one yet.
“Alright, everyone,” she loudly states so that they can all hear her, “let’s get them untacked and turned back out.”
She leads them into the long barn where she has rigged up a picket line for the horses using heavy duty jute rope and a few pieces of hardware bolted into the barn walls. Henry’s friend, Perry, helped her make it. Now, when she’s giving lessons, each rider can hook their horses onto the line and tack up their mount safely. Finding and acquiring more saddles, more than the two he previously had, was a bit more difficult. It had taken Dave’s men many months to raid abandoned barns and a few stores, as well. Perry had collected enough bull snaps and a few hundred feet of cotton roping that he’d used to make her lead lines. Walking a horse with just a halter on can be somewhat of a challenge depending on the spirit of each horse. All it takes is for one to be a head tosser and he’d be free in an instant.
Since the family eliminated the compounds in the woods where the cowardly car dealer had run and hidden after the battle, they have also inherited six new horses. The rest were donated to Hendersonville and Pleasant View. Most of the people in those towns don’t have natural gas vehicles or any way to ge
t around other than horses. All told, they’d taken eighteen horses from the senator’s mansion compound, seven beef cows, a good-sized flock of chickens, and three sheep. They were all domesticated animals, so nobody wanted to leave any of them behind, although she is quite sure that some escaped and fled for the woods or open farmland during the chaos and the fires.
The family, Dave’s group, and some of their volunteers went back a few days after the battle to scout the place. Since the fires were apparently too out of control to be anywhere near the Cheekwood Estate, they’d been forced to wait until it had burned itself out. Sam had gone along with Henry, who hadn’t fought in the battle because Dave wanted him behind on the compound since he was taking his best fighters and leaving the compound short. What seemed like a beautiful estate at one time is now the ruined, smoldering, blackened skeleton of one. It had made her a little sad. When she’d found out about the art gallery, she was even sadder.
Once they have the horses untacked, she instructs the women to put away the tack, brush down the horses, and turn them out. Then she shows them how to wipe down the leather saddles and bridles and what to use to clean the different metal bits.
“So, what’s the deal with you and that cute doctor in Pleasant View?” Dr. Brown asks with a sly smile as they sit in the newly constructed tack room in the back of the barn. Some of the women have finished and gone, but there are still five left.
It takes Sam a moment to realize the doctor is talking to her. She glances up with surprise, “What? Me?”
“Yes, you. That shy, good-looking doctor. Simon is it?”
Her stomach drops. “Yes, Dr. Murphy. Simon.”
“So? Are you guys a thing or something?”
“What? No!” Sam exclaims, hoping it comes off as believable.
“Really?” one of the other ladies named Marie asks. “That’s kind of surprising actually. I figured you were together, too.”
“Really? Why?”
“Just the way he looks at you,” she comments.
Sam shakes her head and tries to appear nonchalant, tries even harder not to blush. “Nah, I don’t think so.”
A younger woman closer to her and Simon’s age pipes up and says, “Dr. Murphy? Oh, he’s so cute. I’d like to fake an injury just to be treated by him.”
The women laugh in a moment of conspiratorial girl-talk. Sam does not join in. Her cheeks are burning. There’s no stopping the pink from blooming now.
“But she’s with Henry,” another says. “I’m confused. Is it the cute doctor or our sexy host?”
“No, I’m not with him, either!” Sam vehemently corrects her. “Henry and I are just friends.”
“Funny,” she comes back with. “Seems to me like he’s staked his claim.”
“Nobody is staking their claim on anyone, including me,” she informs them, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from getting angry. They don’t know about her situation with Simon, and Sam is certainly not going to get into it with them.
They continue to speculate about herself and Simon until she veers them off in another direction about Perry, who is also single and very handsome, although he is thirty-two and quite a bit older than Sam. It doesn’t take them long before the conversation comes around to her uncle, too. Many of the women from the highwaymen’s group have inquired after her uncle. She was quite sure he was interested in Melora from town, but he told her after the wedding reception that he only sees her as a friend. She wants her uncle to find someone who could make him happy and had told him as much, but he’d turned the tables on her and said he only cares about her happiness and that he was just focusing on keeping them together and safe. Why can’t he also have a happily ever after?
“Knock, knock, girls,” Henry says from the doorway. “I need to steal Sam away.”
“Oh, sure, Henry,” she says over the not so subtle giggling from the women. She only rolls her eyes and follows him from the room.
“Sorry to drag you away,” he states as he leads her through the barn.
“No, I…I needed a break,” she states with honesty and gets a strange look from him. “What did you want?”
“The guys just brought back a shipment of medical supplies from a firehouse down below Nashville. Figured you’d want to sort through it.”
“Great, yes, absolutely,” she says with way more enthusiasm than someone should have over sorting boxes of medical supplies. Anything is better than the stares and comments and smiles from the women while they speculate about her and Simon.
“Cool,” he says, offering up another confused expression.
They spend quite a few hours going through the assorted boxes, bins, and crates until Sam and Henry and three of his men have it all organized and separated into their correct cabinets and boxes in the barn. It’s a good distraction. Her mind already wanders often enough where it doesn’t belong, usually to Simon.
When they finish unloading and sorting, Sam tells him that she needs to replenish their supplies out at the clinic where she and her uncle work and live. He helps her transport boxes there using an ATV so she can unpack them.
“And here’s the last of it,” Henry says as he enters the cabin with another plastic tub full of gauze and bandaging tape.
“Perfect, thanks,” she replies and shows him where to set it down in the kitchen, or what used to be their kitchen. Now it’s just another exam room in their cabin-home-medical clinic. Having treated so many injured people lately, they needed to replenish their stock, which they still store in the barns on Henry’s farm because they don’t have a lot of extra room in their small cabin.
“Need some help?” he volunteers.
“Um, no thanks. I’ve got it.”
Henry steps closer and Sam backs up. “See you at dinner then?”
“I think I’m just gonna turn in early, Henry,” she tells him and watches his face fall. “Sorry. I’ve got a headache.”
“Oh, sure. Don’t worry about it.”
“Also, and don’t take this wrong way, but I don’t want the guards here with me while my uncle’s gone.”
“What? I don’t know about that, Sam,” he states with concern. “That’s not a good idea.”
“Doesn’t matter. I don’t want them here. I’ll be fine. Post one in the guard shack at the end of the lane if you have to, but I don’t feel comfortable having men sleep here while Uncle Scott’s gone.”
“Yes, I suppose I can understand that,” he says and turns his mouth down. He does this a lot when something has him stressed. “I could stay here until he’s back.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head vigorously. “That wouldn’t be…I don’t know. I don’t think it would be appropriate.”
“Right,” he agrees.
“People do enough speculating about us,” she tells him.
“They do?”
She levels him with a stare, “Of course, and I don’t like it. I don’t want people assuming we’re together. You know, together.”
“I can see how me staying out here with you could be misconstrued. How ‘bout I have guards just walking the beat on the perimeter. They wouldn’t have to come inside.”
“It’s awfully cold out for that.”
He chuckles and smiles, “Nah, they’ll be fine. Here, there, doesn’t matter. They’re still going to be outside on patrol.”
She considers this a moment before reluctantly nodding.
“Ok, well, then I’ll just leave you to it,” he says and leans down to kiss her.
Sam jumps back. “Sorry.”
He sighs but nods. She doesn’t like it when he tries to do that. He’s kissed her a couple of times, but Sam feels uncomfortable because she doesn’t want to lead him on. Reagan had warned her about that, too. It wouldn’t be fair to Henry, either. Instead of getting angry, he gently touches her shoulder and nods again.
“See you tomorrow?” he asks.
Sam says, “Nowhere else to be.”
He smiles and leaves, and Sam is left alone.
She immediately crosses the room and locks the front door. Then she checks the other door in the back. It’s not that she doesn’t trust Dave’s men, but she doesn’t want anyone in the house alone with her without her uncle present. She doesn’t trust most people, especially men, that much. She only trusts the family, Henry, Dave, K-Dog, also Simon. Although with Simon, her heart would be in more danger than anything else.
After stowing away all the new supplies she had Henry bring out to the cabin, which also included boxes and tubs of medicine, herbs in jars, and clean towels, Sam brews a kettle of tea on the wood-burning stove, which he stoked for her and brought in another armload of wood, she proceeds to curl up on the sofa with a book. Her mind will not rest, however, and betrays her by drifting back to that night four days ago, the night Simon had changed everything between them. Again.
She’d been so sure he was dating Dr. Eliza Avery, who coincidentally enough, traveled to Fort Knox with Simon. But, instead, he’d surprised her by declaring his love for her, something she never thought in a million years would happen. She was convinced he only saw her as a friend. For so long he’d pushed her away and sent her mixed signals. He kissed her and then ignored her for weeks on end. He would talk to her and then hide away in the med shed using the excuse of needing to study. The biggest question on her mind about all of it, the thing she doesn’t quite understand is- why?
The whistle of the tea kettle startles her, and Sam jumps at the high-pitched tune. She pours herself a hot mug and adds honey, of which they are now harvesting from their own bees on the compound. It is not a job she volunteers to do and also didn’t like doing on Grandpa’s farm. Bees are untrustworthy, frightening horrible insects.
Instead of trying to read her book, Watchers, which was written by her former favorite author named Dean Koontz, who passed away quite a long time ago. He also loved dogs and had started numerous canine charities that she’d read about. He must’ve been a good man for that reason alone. Most of his books she has memorized, but tonight she cannot find solace in reading, so she decides to work on art instead. The picture she is working on of Cory and Paige on their wedding day is almost complete. She will turn it over to them after Henry’s friend, Jazz, finishes the frame. She thought it would be a nice wedding gift. She doesn’t sew well or cook or can food items all that great, either, other than what Grams and Sue taught her. This was something she could give them.