The McClane Apocalypse Book Ten

by Kate Morris

  “Damn it,” she swears to the empty room and nearly jumps out of her skin when she hears a noise out in the hallway. “Simon?” she whispers again into the mic. And again, no answer.

  “Crap,” she says under her breath and creeps cautiously toward the door. He must be back. His coms must be broken. Maybe his earpiece was lost on the trip out there. That happened once to John. Maybe he fell and doesn’t even realize yet that he lost it.

  Another noise, a shuffling or awkward stumbling jog of someone sounds off in the hallway again, this time closer. A man’s voice cries out, and he sounds like he has run into or fallen over something. It causes a tremendous crashing sound like it would if someone were stumbling into a medical cart or a hotel maid’s cart. Then silence. Her heart beats so hard she can feel it pounding in her ears. Is Simon out there hurt? Is he injured? Knocked out? Lost blood and has passed out? Was he shot?

  “Simon?” she tries her throat mic again to no avail. He needs her.

  This thought causes her to rush to the door and open it. She takes one step into the hall and freezes. Sam peers out just in time to see a flash of movement near the same door they came through from the service stairs. It is someone in a long black coat that swirls and billows as the person moves. It’s definitely not Simon; he wore a short, black jacket. Sam sucks in a breath of surprised terror and holds it trying to be silent and still so the person doesn’t spin around and spot her.

  “Hey!” someone else yells from the other end of the hall.

  Too late. The person in the long coat is not alone.

  “Behind you!” the man screams, causing the trench coat man to swing her way.

  Sam jumps back and slams the door. They’ve both seen her. There’s no sense in being quiet now. She locks the door and also sets the deadbolt and jams the kitchen chair back under the knob again. Then she sprints to the window and grabs her rifle and pack. She pulls on her backpack and clips the front snaps to hold it still against her back. She slams her 9 mill back into her hip holster and brings the rifle up in front of her and flicks off the safety. Then she pulls back the charging handle and allows it to snap forward, chambering a round. She’s not worried about noise. She also slings Simon’s M16. Thank God he took his sniper rifle. That thing is so heavy.

  “Simon, where are you?” she asks, pressing her throat mic and trying not to acknowledge the fact that she hears fear in her voice.

  When she doesn’t get an answer, Sam runs to the other end of the apartment and locks the door. It’s the utility room with a washer and dryer, water heater, and electrical panel. An access door leads to an exit, and she slides the deadbolt to the left to disengage it right as she hears pounding on the main door. She has to get out of this apartment and find somewhere to hide and wait for Simon.

  Just as she is about to turn the knob and make a sneaky escape, Sam hears several sets of feet running toward her. Quickly, she re-engages the lock and takes a step back as someone crashes into the door on the other side, heedless of injury. She has to hold down a yelp. At the base of the door is a rubber, flip down doorstop, so she uses her foot and engages it, as well. It will definitely help keep them out. Another crash of a person’s body against the door proves her right, and it holds.

  Sam turns and sprints out of the utility room, shutting and locking the door to the small room from the kitchen space. The pounding at the main door has stopped, but she knows they won’t leave. They’ve spotted her. They definitely intend to rob or hurt her. When the men in the family encounter people, they either leave them be or try to offer help. They don’t do this at all. They don’t try to break down the door, not unless they are after someone.

  She jogs to the other end of the apartment again and into the master bedroom. Once inside the long room, she locks the door. It’s not much of a lock. It won’t hold anyone out for long. She tries to ignore the fact that her hands are shaking.

  “Simon!” she hisses again, hoping he’ll hear her this time.

  She remembers there is a balcony off the bedroom, so she jogs over to it. The sliding glass door is stuck, but she manages to push hard enough to get it to move. Once out on the balcony, Sam realizes there’s no escape to be made here. However, when she goes back inside, she leaves the slider door open in the hopes that they’ll think she went this way. She calls him again.

  Again, no answer, so she runs to the bathroom locks the door, goes through the bathroom and into the closet. She looks up at the access panel above the highest shelf of the luxury closet organizer. She’ll never be able to reach it. She’s way too short. But she does spot a bench that the former owners probably used to sit and put on their shoes. She drags it over, but even standing on it, she can’t reach the panel in the ceiling.

  “Crap!” she whispers, her hysteria building as the pounding at the main door begins again. This time it sounds like they are kicking it. “Think, think, think! Nobody’s coming. Get yourself out of this.”

  She rushes to the bathroom and picks up a vanity stool from the small space where the lady of the apartment would’ve sat and applied her makeup and styled her hair before heading out to work. Then she takes a minute to go back to the bedroom and drag a heavy, tufted chair to the door and wedge the back of it under the handle. That should buy her a few extra minutes, too.

  She carries the small vanity stool into the dark closet and lowers her night-vision gear. Without the aid of moonlight from the windows in the living quarters, she can’t see much at all. She turns and looks down at the closet door and finds another lock. It looks sturdier than the bedroom door’s lock surprisingly enough, so she twists it. Then she kicks shoes out of the way and positions the stool on top of the wooden bench under the access panel and stands on it, hoping she doesn’t fall and shoot herself or something else ridiculous and, in all likelihood, plausible. Using the stool to get herself mostly there, she tests the sturdiness of one of the wooden clothing shelves and finds it will hold her weight. She hopes she doesn’t pull the whole thing out of the wall, but she remembers her father installing something similar for her mother in their master walk-in closet, and it was all mounted into studs behind the drywall to hold the weight of shoes, purses, sweaters, and various other items. Stretching hard, she’s able to reach the ceiling. When Sam has found a secure balance with one leg on a shelf and the other foot balanced on the stool, she easily pushes up on the access panel and shines her small flashlight into the space. It’s not just metal ductwork, but it’s also not tall enough to stand completely erect, either. It is definitely a space meant for service workers, though.

  Something in one of the outer rooms crashes loudly, probably the front door. It’s enough to boost her courage and give her enough strength to do what she needs to do. She hefts the rifles into the space and lays them flat and out of her way. Then Sam pulls herself up into the hole, straining from the effort. She doesn’t have the upper body strength of the men on the farm, but fear propels her. It can be a great motivator. Her pack gets caught, but she’s able to yank it free. Once she’s in place, she kneels and slides the panel back into place again. Then she gets moving.

  She has to go slowly at first until she is familiar enough with the narrow tunnel to move more quickly. Within twenty seconds, she’s jogging. The sound of a gun being fired spurs her to move even faster. She really has no idea where she’s going, but she just keeps making forward progress in her stooped over position. There isn’t enough room to sprint, but she manages a strange, shuffling run.

  “Sa…,” Simon’s voice sounds in her ear but cuts out halfway through her name.

  “Simon?” she whispers and gets static in her ear as an answer.

  They must not be able to communicate while she’s in this tunnel. She has to find a way out. The idea of going backward from where she came is out of the question, but the thought of being stuck in this narrow space starts freaking her out, too. She’s not necessarily a claustrophobic person, but she’s also never been tested. This is one test she might not pass if
she doesn’t find an exit soon.

  “Calm down!” she whispers at herself angrily.

  Sam keeps going forward and comes to an intersection. It seems as if she’s on the entire other side of the building, she’s gone so far. So, she turns left, hoping it ends somewhere that puts distance between them. A noise behind her in the distant part of the tunnel scares her, which does elicit a yelp from her this time. She hopes the clatter wasn’t coming from inside the tunnel but from those people ransacking the apartment. It pushes her to turn into the left tunnel too quickly and pick up the pace recklessly. She swings to peek behind her when suddenly, the floor goes out from underneath her. She falls backward landing on her back and simultaneously hitting her head. Then she starts sliding downhill and cannot stop, cannot control her fast descent. Crying out, Sam tries to keep hold of the rifles and her pack and slow herself down. It doesn’t happen, and she ends up crashing to a sudden stop after what seems like forever.

  Sam cries out again, this time because when she tries to stand, her ankle feels slightly sprained.

  “Damn it,” she swears in a whisper and tries to right her headgear.

  She resets her night-vision goggles and pushes up onto her elbows, using the wall of the tunnel beside her. Looking up, she realizes that she has fallen down some sort of chute.

  “Idiot,” she chastises as static sounds off in her ear again.

  No time to sit and baby herself, Sam rises onto her feet and winces at her stupid ankle. Nothing’s broken, but she’ll probably be sore tomorrow. She has to keep moving. Movement is safe. Movement is staying alive. Sitting in this chute is going to get her killed if it was those men in the tunnel behind her making noise. She spots her handgun a few yards away and retrieves it. Then she keeps going, more mindful this time of chutes.

  Sam comes to another slide chute and this time carefully holds herself against the sides as she shimmies down it. She figures these go between floors, so she has to be down to the fifth floor or lower now. When she comes to the bottom, she keeps moving and takes a right-hand turn at the next intersection. A few feet further and she trips over something. She turns and looks down to find another handle sticking up like the access panel from the closet she found. Above her somewhere a loud bang startles her. She wonders if someone is apprehending her through the tunnels and has also fallen down a chute. Hoping to throw off her pursuers, she slides the panel back and leaves it open. She keeps going.

  When she reaches another chute, Sam goes down it much faster this time. For some reason, she feels as if she needs to get out of this building as soon as possible. Voices below her feet, however, cause her to come to an instant halt. If someone were following closely behind her, they would’ve run into her back. Two men are exchanging words that sound heated. She strains to hear and kneels to press her ear against the floor of the tunnel without clanging the guns against it.

  “It was a woman, jackass!” one says.

  “I didn’t even see anyone,” another says, a woman this time.

  Swearing ensues. Then a man says, “You weren’t even there, so shut the fuck up! The President wants us rounding up anyone we see, so unless you’re going against his orders, shut the fuck up!”

  The woman doesn’t respond. Someone else does, though. “She’s somewhere in this building. She can’t have gotten that far.”

  “I still say she climbed down the balcony. She’s gotta be on the sixth floor.”

  “Fine, you two, go search it again,” the mean one orders. “I’m searching this floor.”

  As soon as she feels it is safe to keep moving, Sam starts out again, this time much faster. Her feet feel like they are keeping pace with her heart. She makes it down two more slides and then turns to the left at a dead-end. It’s not exactly a dead-end, though. It’s a door that reads, “electrical room” on a faded, dusty red sign. She grips the door handle but thinks better of bursting through it and instead waits and listens for a few moments. When she is greeted by silence, she proceeds with great caution. Her hand shakes as she turns the knob.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Simon

  “Sam!” he whispers frantically, still unable to reach her. What the hell is going on? He has been calling her for the last fifteen minutes since heading out of the camp and back into the woods. He can see the apartment complex but is still about a half mile from it. “Sam, damn it. Answer me!”

  Simon picks up the pace and actually starts sprinting as he comes closer to the apartment building. After he crosses the street, he continues on straight and almost gets spotted by a group of men who are yelling to one another from a distance. He slams himself against the façade of a brick building and slinks into a doorway’s overhang. He doesn’t think they saw him. He takes a peek and watches them walking away. They sound angry, but he can’t hear what they are saying. He counts three.

  Simon moves out again, keeping tight against the building with his sniper rifle with the silencer raised and at the ready. When he comes to the parking garage, he goes down the ramp and checks to make sure the Jeep is still in the same place, which it is. Then he picks up the pace and jogs to the same door he went through earlier with Sam. Halfway up the stairs to the second floor, he hears voices above him. Simon stops and raises his rifle. The door to the stairwell slams open, crashing against the wall with a loud clattering of metal against cement blocks.

  “You stupid shit!” someone yells.

  The distinctive sound of radio static comes next before someone answers, “No, I told you she went up to the roof. Did you look there?”

  The person in the stairwell with him replies, “No, asshole. We went outside. I’m out on the street. Vance said to check there.”

  “Fine, I’m coming,” the other one says through the radio.

  “Meet me on the top floor, and we’ll search it again and then go to the roof, over,” the first one orders.

  The other confirms their plan and cuts the transmission. The person above him darts noisily up the stairs getting further and further away from him. He waits another few moments until he hears a door above open and shut, which lets him know the man has gone through it. When it is silent again, Simon moves out.

  “Sam!” he whispers into his throat mic again and doesn’t get an audible response.

  He knows he can’t keep going up the stairs because the other people are also using them, so Simon opens the door to the second floor and peers cautiously around. It’s as silent as the first time he’d come through. Wasting no time, he jogs quietly to the other end of the hall. He has to find another way to get upstairs, another stairwell or even a damn elevator shaft he can climb. He doesn’t know for sure, but he’s pretty certain these people are talking about Samantha.

  Simon rounds a corner to his right at the end of the hallway and catches a flash of movement at the other end. He slows and proceeds more carefully. Whoever it was seemed small but fast, so he’s on high alert of being shot. Getting killed isn’t going to help her. His mind bounces back and forth between pursuing the person and questioning him and heading upstairs to find Sam.

  “Simon? Where are you?” she says into his earpiece as if she is trying to be as quiet as possible. She also sounds scared.

  “I’m in the apartment building,” he says, breathing a small sigh of relief at the sound of her voice. “There are people in here.”

  “No kidding, stupid! I’m trying to hide from them, but I fell and hurt my ankle so I can’t go fast,” she says in a rush.

  “Where are you?”

  A pause before, “I think I’m on the second floor. I just came out of a tunnel.”

  A tunnel? He has no idea what she’s talking about but doesn’t want to take the time to figure it out right now. There are people on this floor. She’s in danger.

  “I’m on the second floor, too. Where are you?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” she whispers as if her fear is escalating.

  He tries to speak in a slow and calm tone to help her, “Go to th
e nearest apartment door and get a number.”

  “’Kay,” she returns in a tiny, frightened voice. “These people are after me, Simon.”

  “It’s ok. I’m here now. Nobody’s getting you. Just stay calm and get me a number so I can find you.”

  “’Kay,” she whispers.

  It’s like every nerve and muscle and tendon in his body is being stretched to its maximum tautness as he waits for her to find a way for him to locate her. A soft clicking sound at the other end of the hall catches his attention, and Simon presses back into an open apartment doorway. With night-vision gear, he can risk taking a peek unless the other person is wearing the same. It doesn’t matter; he has to look because this person could be after her. While he’s worrying about getting her out of this building, he’s also trying to keep track of numbers, their numbers. He’s not sure how many they’re dealing with.

  “Two-twelve,” she whispers, although Simon can hear her without the earpiece. If she’s within earshot, then she’s close.

  “Sam?” he whispers down the hall.

  “Simon?”

  “Yes, it’s me,” he says, revealing himself and rushing toward her. Sam crashes into him and holds tight. She’s shaking like a leaf. She must’ve been the small person he’d just seen sneaking across the hall and disappearing through the door. Simon pulls back and cups her face with both hands. “Are you ok?”

  She nods, but a few tears slip down her face. Simon grabs his extra rifle from her back, takes her hand, and says, “Come on.”

  “Wait,” she pleads and tugs hard. “This way.”

  Simon nods and allows her to lead, but when they come to the door she just went through before, he steps in front of her. Listening first, Simon enters, and Sam allows the door to shut quietly behind her. Then she locks it, which he must admit sounds slightly comforting when it engages home. He looks around at the space and realizes it’s some sort of maintenance tunnel about eight feet wide. Ductwork hangs down, the walls are cement block, some covered with metal grating, and the floors are bare concrete. This is not a part of the building the owner would’ve wanted the inhabitants exploring, which explains why it locks from the inside.