Chapter Four

Simon

A week later, Cory’s friends from the armory in Ohio finally arrive in Pleasant View. The new sheriff of their town calls over the radio to let them know of the arrival. Since Simon doesn’t have a patient, he and Cory jog over to the new entrance gate to greet his friends from up north. This is Cory’s first trip to town since coming home, and they’ve been working all day on the wall. He and Cory had gone across town to check Paige’s drawing to study an area that could be a potential breach spot for intruders. Before they even got to Simon’s sister, they were interrupted by the new guests. Paige and Sam also follow along with them.

An older man standing near the big Army truck extends his hand to Simon in greeting. A young, attractive blonde comes forward and hugs Cory. He returns the greeting but stands back immediately after. A few of the children run over and hug his thick leg. Apparently these people really like his best friend. Simon sure does, and he’s glad to have him home.

Cory introduces them to everyone in the vicinity, which is mostly McClane family representatives and a couple of the men from town. The family had informed the town of Cory’s impending arrival of friends. For the past two days, he’d been getting increasingly anxious about whether or not they’d make it. He was planning on going out tomorrow to look for them. Now he doesn’t have to.

“We have two empty homes a couple streets over ready for you guys,” Cory informs the blonde.

She smiles widely at him before saying, “Sounds great, Cory. Lead the way!”

They will have roughly four adults in each home with a small number of children, too. They don’t seem to care. As a matter of fact, they seem in awe of the small, efficient town and the minor amount of improvements that they’ve been able to make. Simon, on the other hand, is highly frustrated at the slow pace of progress they’ve made. There are simply just not enough hours in the day to get it all done. He has so many ideas for even more projects and improvements they could be doing. But before long, winter will be upon them again, which will make getting projects done more difficult.

They get the group settled in, introduced to their new neighbors and leave them to do their unpacking. They didn’t have much, Simon noticed. It hadn’t taken long to haul their meager possessions into the furnished homes. The one house belonged to the local butcher, a single man who’d been killed right at the beginning of the apocalypse. The other home belonged to a retired school teacher in her eighties who’d passed away less than a year ago. The people in town left the former owners’ belongings and furnishings in the homes. Simon’s glad that someone will be occupying the lonely, desolate homes. They have quite a few others in this town.

The remaining residents of Pleasant View, especially the new sheriff, hadn’t been very open to the idea of having new people coming into their tiny town. Once they’d heard about the ammo and guns they were bringing, it had gone more smoothly, the medicine easier to swallow.

“I almost didn’t recognize you, Cory,” the blonde, Jackie, comments as the five of them including her young son walk to the clinic.

Cory chuffs through his nose, “Well, had to clean up. The family doesn’t like it when I go full-on caveman.”

She giggles, a light, high-pitched sound. This woman seems awfully fond of Cory. Simon takes a second to look at her more closely. She’s very pretty, not very old, but likely older than Cory. She also walks closely next to Cory instead of walking ahead of them with Paige and Sam.

Simon says, “Yeah, we thought maybe a Cro-Magnon man was comin’ out of the woods.”

Jackie giggles again. She’s a short, thin woman, her hair a pale blonde with matching eyebrows. Her brown eyes are warm with longing as she regards Cory.

“I like this look on you,” she says. “You look rather handsome.”

Up ahead of them, Paige snorts rather rudely. She has talked to him repeatedly about how much she doesn’t like Cory and would like it if he moved back to the big house and out of “their” cabin. Simon has had to explain many times that the cabin belongs to him and Cory. He hates to hurt her feelings, but Cory was at the farm before her. It’s not really a seniority thing, but Cory and the rest of them built the cabin by hand. It would be like evicting him out of his own house. Simon can’t ask that of him. She will just have to get used to Cory living with them.

“Yeah, he just about killed Paige when he first got here!” Sam tosses over her shoulder.

Simon frowns unhappily.

“Well, I don’t know if I’d put it that way, Sam,” Simon tries to correct her.

Paige, of course, jumps in, “Yes, he did!”

“Beanpole doesn’t like me too well,” Cory says with a cocky smirk to his friend, Jackie. “In case you couldn’t tell.”

To prove his point, Paige sneers over her shoulder at them. Simon doesn’t really like it when Cory calls his sister a beanpole. In Cory’s defense, Simon’s heard Paige call him far worse. They clearly don’t like each other, which makes it difficult for him. He’d definitely called that one wrong. He’d thought many times that those two would get along and that he couldn’t wait for Cory to come home and meet her. He always assumed they’d be fast friends.

“Cory, don’t call her that,” Simon tells him

“Sorry, bro,” Cory says, although he doesn’t say it with any truly genuine feeling. “It’s true, though. She hates my guts!”

“And don’t forget it, either,” Paige says without turning around.

“Ok, you two,” Sam scolds.

“Let it go already, beanpole,” Cory remarks with sarcasm.

“You threatened to kill me!” she hisses angrily.

“Oh, my!” Jackie remarks with unconcealed surprise.

“Minor misunderstanding,” Cory antagonizes with a nonchalant shrug and waves his hand, dismissing the charge.

“Misunderstanding my ass! You tried to kill me,” Paige continues her argument.

Luckily Jackie’s son has skipped ahead and is running and chasing Cory’s dog. The kids at the farm finally named her Shadow. It was better than Damn Dog, which is what Cory had confided to Simon was her real name. She sleeps most nights out in their cabin.

“What ass?” Cory asks. “You don’t have an ass, ya’ skinny beanpole.”

“Cory,” Simon warns. He hardly means it, though. Policing these two could be a full-time job if he wanted it, which he does not.

“Well, she doesn’t,” Cory remarks on a smart-aleck smirk.

Great, now Simon is looking at his own sister’s butt. Gross. He groans. Her butt is narrow and lean just like the rest of her. His sister is built like a lithe gazelle, all long limbs and sleek muscle tone. Her body is completely different from Sam’s. She is short and curvy and soft. Everything about her is petite, including her delicate bone structure and tiny face.

He has tuned out the usual jabbing by his sister and Cory and is instead staring at Sam in front of him. Her black ponytail swishes back and forth in time with her hips. She’s still in her beige riding pants from their morning patrol at the farm. He wishes she wouldn’t wear those when they come to town. They are way too snug and outline her every curve. Luckily her t-shirt is too big on her and is baggy and shapeless. He believes that her shirt used to belong to her older brother. It has the name of some church youth group she’d mentioned to him once. She has a few of her brother’s shirts that she likes to wear to keep her dead family fresher in her memory. He knows what lies under that shirt that is too big. They’ve been swimming in the lake at the farm quite a few times over the last four years. He’d walked in on her when she was changing. She’d been pressed up against him in the hayloft when they’d slept there after the Target group’s attack on the farm. He knows what hides under there, and the image of her burns behind his closed eyelids at night when he crashes at the end of the day.

Sam glances over her shoulder at him and smiles, rolls her bright blue eyes and turns back. He doesn’t return it but scowls instead. He knows she is only smiling conspiratorially at him over the two combatants in their group, but he can’t even manage a grin. His thoughts about her have turned lewd and inappropriate on every level. He can’t afford to have these thoughts about her. It’s not right.

They arrive at the clinic where Cory introduces Jackie to Reagan and Doc. She is amiable and sweet. She’s also incredibly grateful to have been invited into their small community. She chats with Doc about her background as a dental hygienist, offering her services. They are none too happy to take her up on her offer since they have not been able to provide dental services yet. With the winter season fast approaching, it’s hard telling what they’ll see this year as far as sickness goes and adding to that is the lack of dental care people are receiving which isn’t going to help. He’s just glad he got his braces removed a few months before the fall. Pulling those suckers off with a pair of pliers would’ve been painful.

“Hey, Simon,” Reagan says, taking him to the side. “Will you and Sam clean up the last two exam rooms and pack up our gear? I still have one more patient and so does Grandpa. Paige can help, too, if you want. You don’t mind, do you?”

“No, that’s no problem, Reagan,” he tells her. “I don’t need help, though. I can probably do it myself.”

“I can help!” Sam offers with a bright smile.

She’s obviously overheard their conversation, as usual. He should’ve known. She’s never far from him. Simon grimaces and walks away.

“I’m going over to the wall where John and Kelly are working. I want to check on an area where I think we can make an improvement,” Paige says.

“Ok, well, you guys work it out,” Reagan says. “I’m headed back in to get my last patient.”

Doc also leaves, Jackie hangs around with Cory, and Simon prepares to clean rooms.
“I’ll walk you over to the build site,” Cory says to Paige.

She retorts with, “No thanks.”

Simon barks testily, “Paige! Just let him. Good grief, we don’t have the wall done yet. You know the rules. None of the women in our group just go bee-bopping around town without one of us. You don’t even have a weapon today.”

His sister looks offended, which makes Simon feel like crap. He’s not as frustrated with her as he is with himself.

“Fine,” she mumbles.

“Can you guys drop me back at my new house?” Jackie asks kindly.

“Sure thing,” Cory says to her, grinning down into her brown eyes. “Then I’ll escort the beanpole over to the work site.”

“Ugh,” Paige complains and storms out the front door.

Cory and Jackie follow after her, also taking her son and Damn Dog.

“I’ll take room three. You can have room two,” he grumbles.

“Ok,” Sam perks up and bounces off to clean the exam room.

As he sanitizes and re-organizes the room, stacking equipment and storing things away, he has time to reflect on his friend. Cory has been leaving every night after dark and not returning until nearly dawn each morning. When he’d questioned him, Cory had told him not to worry about it. He doesn’t know where his friend is going at night when he leaves, but soon he plans to follow him and find out for himself.

“Need help? I’m all done,” Sam offers from the open door a short while later. She’s usually faster than him at sanitizing the rooms.

“No, I’ve got this,” Simon tells her.

She ignores him, comes into the small exam room and helps anyway. When they finish, they go to the storage room to collect the basketsful of items that get taken back to the farm for safe keeping. The light is the dimmest back in this space, and they usually need to use flashlights to better see. The solar power at the clinic is not as powerful as the system that fuels the big house back at the farm.

Sam bumps into him occasionally, which does nothing to calm his nerves around her. He reaches over her head to a shelf above her and pulls down a basket of syringes.

“Excuse me,” he tells her cordially. Simon has been trying his best to keep things light and emotionless around Sam ever since she’d drawn that picture of him in the woods. That had been too intimate, too much of a personal examination of him. He has no idea why Sam would draw pictures like that of him, but he hopes it doesn’t happen again.

She just chuckles at him, “No problem, Dr. Murphy.”

Sam uses his last name and this ridiculous title when she’s behaving impertinently. She knows that it irritates him.

“Sam,” he reproaches. “You know I’m not a doctor. Don’t call me that.”

“Close enough,” she argues and tugs her ponytail free of its rubber band. “Phew, that was giving me a headache. I try to wear my hair pulled back when we’re at the clinic, but it makes my head sore after a while, ya’ know?”

Simon just shakes his head at her with the usual amount of confusion and frustration he has where she is concerned. Her head gets sore because she has a thin little neck and too much hair. No wonder she gets headaches. Her thick, lush locks have grown completely out again after the butchering she’d given herself four years ago to make herself unattractive. She could shave her head bald and she’d still be just as demure and appealing although she doesn’t know it. He places the emptied basket back above her head on a shelf and tries not to think of her soft hair that had brushed against his bare bicep when she’d pulled it free of its snare.

“Simon’s new friends seem nice, especially Jackie,” Sam remarks.

“Yeah, sure,” Simon agrees.

“Where are the trays?” she asks, mostly of herself. “Oh, found them.”

“They don’t have very many young people with them, though,” Sam says as she places sterilized surgical instruments back into the metal tray.

“Why would you care about that?”

She shrugs and says, “I don’t know. Maybe I was hoping they would’ve brought a truck full of cute boys!”

Simon stops dead in his tracks.

“What? Is that supposed to be funny?” he demands.

Sam chuckles at him arrogantly.

“Why would you care?” she asks as she stacks more items on the shelf beside them.

“Stop trying to antagonize me, Samantha,” he reprimands.

Sam just laughs at him again.

He’s moved to the shelving unit behind them and is taking gauze and bottles of herbs and placing them in the basket at his feet. Sam scoots around him and drops more bandaging and syringes into it. They both reach for a package of sterilized instruments at the same time. Her small hand lands on top of his. Her soft touch leaves a burning sensation on the back of his hand. He can’t believe she would actually want a truck full of cute boys to come to their town. That’s not like her at all. She’s afraid of most men. But something about her saucy attitude and insinuation grinds at his nerves.

“Oh, you’ve got that one? Sorry,” she needlessly apologizes.

Before she can remove her hand, Simon flips his over and holds onto her fragile wrist. The intensely sweet smell of her rushes at him in a wave. It is likely from her recently freed hair that is perfumed with the scent of the clean, herb-tinged soap from the farm. Maybe it’s the poor lighting or the contrast of her black hair and pale skin, but when her eyes meet his, they seem on fire. The bright blue color of her eyes positively glows in the dark, bleak room. Long strands of her black hair have fallen forward and cover her shoulder and hang down almost to her breast.

Simon takes a deep breath and tries to keep himself in check. It doesn’t help when she’s staring at him with that puzzled, innocent look and parted, dewy lips.

“What is it?” she inquires so unknowingly.

He swallows hard and shakes his head. His resolve is gone, long gone. The beating of his heart is as loud as a group of tribal drummers on a deserted island. Very slowly, very calmly, Simon releases her hand, placing it for some absurd reason back down at her side as if she couldn’t have managed to do so on her own.

“Simon?” Sam asks.

Then she wets her bottom lip with her tongue, not suggestively, not in a way that would be lascivious because he knows that she does not think that way. But it’s more than he can take because he does think that way. He thinks that way about Sam all the time. Lately, that’s all he does. He thinks about Sam when he’s studying medical journals. He ponders her soft curves when he’s supposed to be on patrol in the middle of the night at the farm. He examines the soft shapes of her delicate face while he’s milking a cow and she’s yammering away beside him about who knows what. When they ride together, he finds himself staring at her thighs gripping the horse’s sides or her small hands that are so soft yet firm on the reins. He can’t even let himself think about the flirty arch of her black eyebrows or the dark pink of her small mouth.

“What is it, Simon? Is something wrong?” she asks again and bites her lower lip.

“Damn it,” he swears under his breath, earning a startled expression from Sam.

Simon sinks his hands into the hair at either side of her face and snatches her to him. Her surprised yelp gets smothered as his mouth covers hers in a kiss that nearly buckles his knees. Hers do, though, and he has to hold her up. He’s not sure if he’s frightened her, but he also doesn’t know if he could’ve stopped himself from doing this, either. He’s wanted to kiss her for so long, since the first day he’d found her hiding on the floor of her closet. Her fragile, doll face has beckoned him ever since.

He staggers forward, bumping them both into the shelving unit. His dirty leather work-boots scuff against the tile floor. Not wanting her to get hurt by the steel shelf behind her head, or at least that’s what he tells himself, Simon removes his hands from her face and wraps them around her middle. He lifts her clean off the ground and up close to his front, up against his chest like she’d fallen asleep that night in the barn. Her stifled squeal of surprise is brief as his mouth covers hers again. He kisses her thoroughly, letting the need for her that has grown for so long explode from him. His tongue slips past her teeth as he ravages her tiny, Cupid’s bow mouth.

Her arms wrap around his neck, fingers sliding into his hair, which causes him to groan. His hands slide down and cover the tops of her thighs, then under her bottom, that same bottom he’d been staring at during the walk to the clinic. The perfect, heart-shaped bottom that he’s caught himself staring at many, many times in these same stretchy tight riding pants.

“Oh, fuck!” Reagan yells from the door. “Shit! Sorry!”

Simon immediately drops Samantha to the ground, and they separate as fast as humanly possible. Reagan spins and flees from the storage room as if she has spied a snake on the floor. Simon is left standing awkwardly with Sam, but the mood is gone as if a bucket of ice water has been sloshed over his head. And his hormones.

“I’m sorry,” he stutters. “That was a mistake.”

“It was?” Sam asks and touches her fingertips to her reddened lips.

Simon rakes a hand through his red hair, tousling it and probably making it stand on end. He is the most disgusting, amoral man alive. He feels like he might vomit.

“I…we should never… I’m…that was disgusting,” he blurts on a single, held breath. He actually meant to say that he is disgusting, but so many thoughts had popped into his idiotic brain at the same time that it came out wrong.

“That was dis…. What?” Sam asks brokenly with tears in her eyes and also flees the room.

Simon can’t respond. It is like his mouth is filled with dried bread crumbs. He feels like either punching something, someone or doing something violent. Crap. He’s a total scumbag, no better than the Target men. No better than… him. He’s no better than him, Bobby, his cousin who’d stolen her youth and so much more. He’d promised himself that he’d always take care of her, protect Sam from men that would hurt her again. And here he is behaving just like those men.

Reagan reappears at the door to the storage room where he is still rooted to the same spot, his muscles shaking with an unrequited need for Sam and an anger and an untapped rage at himself.

“Hey, sorry about that,” Reagan apologizes. “I didn’t know that you…”

“It’s fine,” Simon tells her. “That won’t ever happen again. I’m gonna move into town, leave the farm.”

Simon moves to squeeze past her, but Reagan snatches his arm. Her small hand on his bicep is nothing like what Sam had made him feel with her hand on his. Reagan is like his foul-mouthed, yet intelligent older sister. He loves her like crazy, nearly as much as he loves Paige. He loves all the McClane girls, but Reagan even more because they’ve worked so closely over the years as she’d patiently taught him medicine and anatomy and physiology and about diseases. He can barely even look her in the eye. His guilt is at an all-time high.

“The hell you are,” she argues. “Don’t even say shit like that, Simon. We need you on the farm. You know that. You know better than to even suggest leaving.”

“I can’t be around her,” he confesses. He still feels like he might vomit. His face and neck and chest feel flush and hot. He wishes Reagan would move out of his way.

“Why not, Simon? You obviously care about her.”

“It’s wrong. It’s sick. I’m a disgusting pig,” he says and looks at the doorframe.

“What are you talking about? Why would you say such a thing? I mean, I’m not good with relationship shit and all, but that certainly doesn’t make any sense. You’re a really good person, Simon.”

He shakes his head, “Please, don’t say that.”

“Why not? Hey, talk to me. What’s going on here?”

“Just don’t tell anybody you saw me doing that. They’d all be so disappointed in me, especially your grandfather. I don’t think I could bear it.”

“Why would anybody be disappointed in you? Sam’s eighteen. It’s not like you’re trying to sleep with a married woman or molest a kid, Simon. Sam is an adult and so are you.”

He flinches. Sometimes he wishes Reagan was just a bit less blunt. Or crude.

“Just don’t tell anyone. Please,” he begs.

“Sure, I won’t say anything. But I still don’t understand,” she confides.

“Sam… she… she’s a good girl, ya’ know?”

“Duh, of course she is. So are you, idiot. You’re a good man,” Reagan says impatiently.

“You don’t understand, Reagan,” he returns with a touch of frustration. “I have to take care of her, look out for her.”

“We all do, Simon,” she tells him. “It’s not like that’s your job alone. We all look out for each other. That’s how this works, dummy.”

He grimaces at her insult but is more than used to it.

“I failed her before. I can’t ever do that again. I have to keep her safe, even if that means keeping her safe from me,” he answers, his hands shaking and notices the surprised expression on Reagan’s face.

Simon squeezes past her and rushes from the clinic. He doesn’t know where Sam went, but he jogs down to the wall building site. He knows that he owes her an explanation, but he can’t face her just yet. It doesn’t take long to find Cory at the build. Some hard work alongside his best friend should help to quell his roller coaster emotions. Then he remembers that Sam always calls him her best friend. The vomit feeling comes back.