The McClane Apocalypse Book Ten

by Kate Morris

  “Does this look like her?”

  “Absolutely it does,” he answers. “This is great.”

  “She’s very pretty,” she comments, wanting to know if she has drawn someone who is competition. Then she feels like an idiot because she doesn’t care if Simon thinks she is pretty. Sort of.

  “Yes, she’s attractive,” he says absentmindedly in typical Simon fashion. In non-typical Simon fashion, he adds, “Not as pretty as you, though. Of course. Nobody is.”

  “What are you going to do with it?” she questions, changing the subject.

  “Ask our prisoner some questions,” he answers.

  “Like what?”

  When he doesn’t answer, Sam turns her head to regard him squarely. He isn’t looking at the drawing anymore. He’s staring at her. His eyes travel down to her mouth and stay there.

  “Simon, don’t do that,” she reprimands.

  “Do what?” he asks, although his slight smirk belies his innocence. “I’m not doing anything.”

  “You know what,” she returns more testily this time. “Don’t act dumb.”

  He chuckles and says, “It’s not an act. It comes quite naturally, I assure you.”

  “Ha, I know!”

  He reaches out and runs a thumb over the crest of her cheekbone, which causes a shiver to course through her.

  “Simon!” little Mary cries out from the doorway and runs into her room. “Simon, up!”

  He grabs her tiny outstretched hands and pulls her onto the bed with them. Then she climbs onto his lap.

  “What’s up, tiny human?” he asks. Then turns and says to Sam, “See? Too big of a family. Interrupters.”

  “Read!” Mary demands and hands him her book. It’s an Eric Carle book, one that Sam herself has read to some of the children in this house many, many times until she had it and others in the collection memorized. Normally, Mary is more reserved, though.

  “This is new,” Sam states in a questioning manner.

  He takes a deep breath and sighs, “Yes, yes, it is. It would seem that I’m the newly assigned and designated narrator put on this earth for the sole purpose of Mary’s entertainment.”

  Sam smiles at his pain. “What do you have there, Mary?”

  “Brown Bear,” she says with more ‘w’ sounds than the appropriate ‘r’ annunciation.

  “Oh, that’s a good one,” Sam says, also trying to trap Simon into story hour. “We should definitely read this.”

  “Read, Sam?” Mary asks, pronouncing it ‘wead.’

  “Yeah, Sam should read, Mary,” Simon says, throwing her under the bus.

  “But Simon’s so much better,” she jeers right back, watching him shoot a scowl at her over Mary’s darling, dark head.

  “’Tay,” Mary reconciles and curls against Sam’s side and rests her tiny head against her chest. Then she pokes her small index finger, tapping the book twice. “Wead, Simon.”

  “Read, right,” Simon gives in. “As you wish, milady.”

  Something about the way his eyes soften when he looks at Mary twists something new in her stomach regarding him. Instead of being rude and upsetting Mary by getting up and leaving the room, Sam holds the toddler against her while Simon reads Brown Bear to her. The reading takes much longer than it should because Mary has to stop him to look at each brightly colored animal on the page and repeat its species. It’s so cute neither of them has the heart to stop her. She is so alive with curiosity and wonderment, her bright eyes drawn to the dazzling array of colors in the artwork.

  “Hey, you!” Huntley blurts from the door. “I’ve been looking for you, Miss Mary. It’s bedtime, little one. Are you hiding up here with Simon?”

  “Nooo!” she screeches, to which Huntley sweeps in and chases her around the room until he snatches and tickles her. She finally gives in but runs back to Simon and takes her book from his outstretched hand lest he should lose it. “’Tay, Huntley,” which she also pronounces with a ‘w’ instead of an ‘l.’ “You can wead.”

  “Oh, no,” he says. “I know Simon already read that one. I’m not reading it, Mary.”

  Her little face falls, and she says with her head tilted as if she is rejected and also a little disappointed in him, “Huntwey.”

  He rolls his eyes with immediately known defeat and says, “Alright, but only once!”

  “’Tay, one. Just one, ‘tay?”

  “Yeah, right,” he mutters under his breath making Sam and Simon laugh at his hardship. Then he leaves with her on his hip.

  “These little monsters around here sure do get their way a lot,” Simon complains.

  “Isn’t that what they’re for? Spoiling?”

  He chuckles. “Yeah, I guess so. How many kids do you want to have?”

  This about makes her choke. “What?”

  He grins and says, “I’d like a big family. Someday. Not right away, of course.”

  Sam can’t stop her eyes from growing wide, “Well, that sounds like a good plan for you. Good luck with that.”

  He reaches over her and picks up both drawings. As he’s leaning back toward his spot again, Simon pauses close to her face and gives a wicked grin. Then he stands, and she follows and clears her voice. It sounds too loud for the room. Simon looks down at her, and before Sam can stop him, Simon steals a quick, chaste kiss against her closed mouth.

  “G’night, Samantha.”

  And her insides melt again as he leaves her room.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Reagan

  “Reagan, you better come with us,” Kelly says at the door to the med shed the next morning.

  “What’s going on?”

  “The prisoner’s sick,” he relays. “We need to question him, but he looks pretty bad.”

  “I’m coming,” she states and hops down from her stool, following him from the building and shutting the door behind her. “When was the last time you guys gave him food?”

  “Three days,” Kelly tells her.

  “Water?”

  “Two days ago.”

  “That’s probably what it is,” she says.

  He frowns before saying, “I think he’s actually sick.”

  “Probably pneumonia,” she says. “It’s not exactly warm in there.”

  “And getting waterboarded for the last week straight every day probably isn’t helping.”

  “No, there is that,” she says, feeling no sympathy for the scumbag who killed so many thousands of innocent people. She’d feel about the same remorse or guilt for Stalin or Hitler.

  “We need him alive if we’re gonna question him,” he states the obvious.

  “That usually does help,” she quips. “Let me grab my bag.”

  She jogs to the house and collects her medical bag. If all else fails, she’ll give him a dose of vitamins that will boost him up long enough to make him feel slightly better just so that the men can accomplish their end goal, which is questioning him until he cracks and gives them what they need. The vitamins probably won’t be enough to heal him, but that doesn’t exactly matter anyway.

  After she has her bag and a cotton mask to keep him from coughing on her, Kelly escorts her to the milk house where she finds Simon and Cory waiting outside with her husband.

  “We need him to talk, babe,” John tells her.

  “Is he conscious?” she asks.

  “Barely,” he answers. “He’s in and out. I think he has some really high fevers burning or something. He seems a little delirious.”

  “Hm,” she ponders. “Let me see him.”

  John goes first followed by herself and then Kelly and Simon. The man is lying on his side with his back to her near the tiled wall with nothing but the single, wool, surplus Army store blanket he was afforded when they locked him in here.

  “Hey, car dealer, wake up,” Cory says and kicks the man’s bare foot. He barely stirs. “You want the water again?”

  This causes him to moan and roll onto his back. Kelly flips on the overhead lights, which wer
e temporarily replaced with brilliant floodlights meant to cause sleep deprivation. For the most part, he hasn’t been allowed to sleep for more than a few hours at a time since he was put in here. John explained that it is a valid interrogation tactic. When they first took him prisoner, he weighed probably twenty to twenty-five pounds more. His clothing, what little he was allowed to keep, hang on him.

  Beside her, John inclines his head to Cory, who somehow knows what her husband is trying to convey. He grabs the guy by the scruff of his collar and easily hauls him to his feet. Then he drags the metal folding chair over with the other hand and slams the man down onto it. The car dealer begins coughing and has mucus running from his nose, which he does not attempt to wipe away.

  “Do what you can,” John says. “We only need him to answer a few more questions. You hear that, car dealer? A few more questions and you’re free to go, so be nice and do whatever my wife says.”

  “Do you understand what he just said?” Cory asks in an aggressive manner and steps closer.

  He quickly nods and cringes at Cory’s imposing stance. Then he hangs his head as if he is too weak to hold it up. Kelly steps outside, and a moment later Reagan sees the telltale flicker of a match being struck. She’s going to have to lecture him on the dangers of smoking again. It won’t matter. If Hannie is awake when he goes in, he’ll be in enough trouble already.

  Reagan pulls on rubber gloves and takes his temperature, which reads a hundred and four degrees. She listens to his chest and hears the unmistakable bubbling that is indicative of pneumonia. It’s pneumonia or really severe bronchitis, either of which he will likely not recover from without the aid of some sort of antibiotic, fever reducers, and decongestant. His heartbeat is slow and weak and not at all holding a steady rhythm. She would guess that he won’t make it through another week, perhaps even sooner. She stands after a cursory examination of the man and shakes her head at her husband to let him know of the gravity of the situation. Then they go to the far corner to discuss it.

  “He’s very ill, probably pneumonia,” she says.

  “What can you do to get him through the next few hours?”

  Reagan frowns and considers this. “I have a vitamin B12 derivative that Grandpa and I have ground from powdered animal organs. It’s something we’ve been experimenting with. If I mix it with some goat’s milk, it should give him the energy he needs to get through a few hours. I don’t think he’s going to give you trouble talking.”

  “He’s a lot more stubborn than you know,” John whispers. “If he wasn’t, we wouldn’t be in this position. We would’ve had all the answers we needed already.”

  “Right. Let me get the mixture. I’ll be back,” she says and leaves.

  Simon goes with her and helps mix the dark brown powder with fresh goat’s milk leftover from yesterday. She also includes a teaspoon of honey to give him a sugar rush of energy, as well. It can’t hurt. After that, he’s on his own. She is not going to treat this man medically. He may live. He may die. Either way, she’s not offering up help with either outcome even if he never gives them the information they need.

  “Think he’ll talk?” Simon asks her.

  She shrugs. “Not sure. John says he’s not been giving them much yet. I don’t think whatever I’m going to give him will help with that.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Unless someone has a vial of pentothal to give him.”

  “What’s that?” he asks, wrinkling his brow.

  She smiles, “Truth serum. Supposedly. Not sure how great any of it or other derivatives worked actually.”

  He stares off into the distance for a moment as if considering something. “Hm.”

  “No, we’re not giving any to Sam, either,” she states.

  Simon chuckles. “Too bad.”

  Reagan isn’t sure what Simon has in mind with the drawings he had Sam do, but she knows he has been talking privately in her grandfather’s office a lot for the past few weeks.

  “What have you got up your sleeve, Dr. Murphy?” she asks, sending him a sidelong glance as they walk back to the barn.

  “You’ll see.”

  Reagan isn’t sure what he’s doing, but she sure as hell hopes he’s onto something big. They need a break in this.

  After the man has been given the supplement and some leftover stew from their dinner yesterday, he perks up just slightly. Reagan orders him to inhale deeply two times on an albuterol steroid inhaler, which she covers first with plastic and sanitizes after he breathes it in. She isn’t wasting an entire inhaler on this dirtbag.

  “Time’s up, car dealer,” John says. “You wanna’ die from sickness?”

  He coughs and shakes his head. The inhaler will also increase his heart rate temporarily, which will make him feel slightly better. Her loving and kind and patient husband also asks him if he wants to die at their hands in a slow and painful way, to which he answers to the negative, as well. It’s so strange seeing John this way.

  “You want us to let you go?” her husband questions next.

  They get a nod that carries a bit more enthusiasm.

  John looks at her before asking him, “Are you going to cooperate then?”

  “Y-y…yes, sir,” he answers with more respect than he’s shown before. John told her that he has spit on them more than once, used foul language, and threatened them.

  “Are you going to tell us who Angelica is?” John asks, stepping back.

  “I don’t know who she is,” he answers weakly. “She’s the President’s lover.”

  “Lovers, you say?” Simon asks and steps forward.

  “Yeah, he’s with her. I know he doesn’t love her, though,” he confesses. “He told me that much. He’s in love with someone else.”

  Strangely enough, the man’s gaze slides to Cory. Is the President homosexual? Why else would he be looking at Cory like that? Reagan is more confused now than ever.

  “And you believe that Angelica loves him and maybe that’s why she does this stuff for him?”

  He blinks for too long, closing his eyes, and John yells, “Wake up!”

  “Yes, sir,” the man says, cowering and recoiling in his uncomfortable chair. He pauses a moment, then finally says, “Yeah, I think she’s in love with him. Plus, she has her reasons for hating people.”

  “She hates people? Who? The innocent people on the roads you assholes have killed?”

  “No,” he answers as if he finds the question crazy.

  “Who does she hate?” Simon asks.

  “You people,” he answers, surprising Reagan.

  The three of them regard each other with confusion. That makes no sense. Why would this Angelica woman hate them when they don’t even know anyone named Angelica in the first place?

  “What reason does she have for hating us and wanting us dead?” Simon asks.

  “You were responsible for the death of her sister,” he answers.

  Reagan has to hold her hand over her mouth to conceal her gasp.

  “How are we responsible?” Simon questions.

  He shrugs. “Not sure. She just said that to me once when I asked why she was working with him, doing his dirty work mostly.”

  Simon steps closer and holds up the picture that Sam drew in the woods of the dead woman, “Is this Angelica?”

  He squints as if he can’t see well. He probably can’t. One of his eyes is nearly closed from swelling. It isn’t swelled from his sickness, either. There is also a fair amount of bruising that matches the swelling.

  “No, no,” he says and repeats it the second time with more certainty. “That’s not her.”

  Simon turns and hands the drawing to Reagan. She takes it without question. Then he turns back and holds in front of his face another drawing for him to inspect. The flicker of recognition is undeniable.

  “Is this her?”

  His eyes jump immediately to Cory, and he visibly flinches, although Cory has stood quietly for the most part in the corner with his leg raised a
nd resting one booted foot against the wall behind him.

  “Um…”

  “Answer,” John states loudly.

  “Uh…,” he stammers and hangs his head.

  “Answer, asshole,” Cory says quietly and with deadly intent. “Don’t make me come over there. You know you don’t want that again.”

  Reagan can’t help the shiver that courses through her at the word ‘again’ in Cory’s statement.

  Without raising his head, the car dealer nods. “Yeah, that’s her.”

  Reagan hits John with a quick expression of shock and hope. This is their most significant breakthrough yet. Reagan doesn’t even know who these women are, but the crack in the cement of secrecy is starting to widen.

  “Are you sure?” Simon asks next.

  He nods again, his chin nearly touching his chest. He obviously knows her well enough that he doesn’t need a second look.

  “That other one,” he says and raises his head, lifting his chin toward Reagan still holding the first drawing of the dead woman, “she came to the Gaylord once or twice running messages for the President. I think that’s Angelica’s sister.”

  He turns to Reagan and also hands her the drawing of who they now know is Angelica and nods. Then he turns back to the car dealer and holds up yet another illustration.

  “Is this the President?” he asks, and Reagan’s breath catches in her chest, where she holds it waiting for him to answer.

  The man’s head jerks up, and he looks away as if becoming angry. His teeth clench, and a muscle in his neck works.

  “I pretty much already know it is,” Simon confesses. “Just answer so you don’t have to get hurt anymore.”

  The man’s head falls to his chest again where it does not rise. Then his body begins shaking. His shoulder bobs up and down. He sniffs hard. He’s crying. She looks at her husband, who gives her three subtle nods. This is his breaking point. Whatever Simon is showing him, this is the end. He knows it’s over.