Chapter Seventeen

Reagan

She breathes her usual sigh of relief at the sight of her husband returning safely from a trip. John and Kelly park the stolen gas company trucks near the equipment shed and get out. Derek is already up there, but she and Grandpa need to make the hike. Reagan would like to jog up the driveway to greet her husband but will walk at a much slower pace with her grandfather. Just recently, she’s noticed that he doesn’t get around as fast as he used to.

“They’re back, Hannie!” she calls into the kitchen before leaving the house with her grandfather.

“I know,” Hannah replies in her normal, strange way.

“Basset hound,” Grandpa remarks as they go down the back stairs.

Reagan laughs and pulls her jacket collar higher. A wind gust whips through the valley, turning what’s left of the leaves over on the big oak trees. The branches rustle and clink together like nature’s wind chimes.

“It seems like we’re in for a storm,” she tells her grandfather.

He sighs and replies, “I think so. Looks like we’d better get the chores done early tonight. Might be a real gusher.”

“I hope the kids are ok,” Reagan frets.

“Reagan, they aren’t kids anymore,” Grandpa says with a chuckle. “I thought your grandmother and me were bad about the worrying.”

“You were,” she says with a smile as three of the children run past them, probably engaged in a game of tag.

“I think you might be worse,” he teases.

Reagan loops her arm through her grandfather’s, relieved the need to cringe from the touch of her family is nearly gone. She doesn’t like touching other people, patients maybe, but not strangers. They still give her the willies and probably always will. Sam has the same issues. Hers just go much deeper than Reagan’s. Samantha has a tendency to be open and kind, giving and sweet, but she sure as hell doesn’t like strangers, especially men.

“Maybe,” Reagan agrees. “I’m new to this parenting shit. I didn’t know it came with so much stress.”

“You’re just getting started,” Grandpa reminds her.

“Oh, I know. Trust me, John’s better at this. He was meant to be a dad,” Reagan says.

“Yes, I think you’re right about that. But you are turning out to be a pretty damn good mother, little missy. Don’t you forget it. You’re even trying to parent the kids that aren’t kids anymore.”

“It’s kind of hard to look at Sam like an adult. She still has a little girl face,” she says with a roll of her eyes. Her hand naturally rises to the scar on her right cheek.

Grandpa chuckles again and says, “Yes, that’s true. I’ll give you that much. She is a precious little thing.”

“I hope they have time to get to shelter if this storm rolls in,” Reagan worries. She gets another laugh from Herb McClane.

“Don’t worry so much. It’s not good for you. Don’t you know anything about the mind-body relationship?”

“Good grief,” Reagan says with a smirk. “Here we go. Are you gonna try and sell me on some Eastern Indian or Chinese medicine hippy shit again? I get enough of that from the Professor.”

“He’s right, ya’ know. That young man is an intelligent person. Reminds me of someone I used to know,” Grandpa teases.

“And who would that be?”

“Hm, let me think. He was witty, good-looking, strong, extremely intelligent.”

“Do you mean you?” Reagan asks with a wry smile.

“Oh, yes. It was me I was thinking of,” he jokes with a chuckle.

“Oh brother,” she jokes.

“Simon’s going to be a brilliant doctor someday, just like you. And the two of you will help put this country back to right. You’ll run the clinic together and maybe even add other doctors eventually.”

She doesn’t like thinking of her grandfather dying and leaving the practice to her and Simon or anyone else. It makes her instantly depressed.

“I can barely hold my own shit together. I don’t think I’m ready to run your practice. Besides, you and I are doing fine there.”

“Hey, Mom!” Jacob shouts as he jogs closer to them.

He’s yelling in his usual blaring decibel tone. Now Reagan understands why parents cringe when their children yell so much.

“Can we have a campfire tonight?” he calls out.

He’s being followed by other co-conspirators Arianna, Justin, and Huntley, who normally hangs out more with the men now than the younger kids. Reagan can’t believe Huntley’s almost fourteen already.

“I don’t know, bud,” Reagan answers. “It’s going to rain. We could have a campfire in the fireplace, though.”

“Ok, cool,” he answers.

Reagan frowns at his choice of words as he runs away with his adopted cousins. He’s growing too fast. For a five year old boy, he sure seems to be sounding more every day like the pre-teens on the farm.

They arrive at the equipment shed where Grandpa lights his pipe. The three men are already unloading oil company equipment, also looted, from the bed of the one truck.

“What is that?” Reagan asks, pointing to a metal box that her husband is unloading.

“Compressor kit,” he answers as he sets it on the gravel floor.

Then John comes over directly in front of her and leans down for a quick peck on her mouth. Reagan tries not to blush in front of Kelly and Derek, who seem oblivious as they discuss the new gear.

“What’s it for?” Reagan inquires when her husband pulls back. She swipes the lock of his blonde hair that has fallen across his forehead to the back again.

“It converts the natural gas for the trucks. We needed to have this thing to make the whole system work,” he answers before returning to the others.

Kelly says, “We’ll mount it to the inside wall over here, little Doc.”

Reagan joins them near the edge of the shed where Derek has already cut a small hole in the wall earlier in anticipation of this find. Apparently he is a clairvoyant because Reagan wasn’t so sure that they’d find anything. Of course, maybe John called on the radio to let his brother know of their fortuitous trip.

“Did you guys run into any trouble? Are the kids all right?” Reagan asks because she can’t manage to stop herself.

“They’re fine, babe,” John reassures her as he works distractedly alongside his brother.

“We did run into some of our old friends from our outfit,” Kelly offers amiably.

He is leaning against the new pick-up truck casually as the others work.

Grandpa asks, “Really? That’s very interesting.”

“Yeah, they’re holed up near a town called Hendersonville. Guess they’ve got a similar setup.”

“Good. We could always use more allies,” Grandpa says.

Kelly laughs as he lights a cigarette, something he must’ve come across in the city.

“Oh yeah,” he says. “Dave the Mechanic is quite the badass. His group is all tricked out. We’ll make a trip over there soon and see if we can’t set up some trade. John told him about our clinic, so don’t be surprised if some hillbilly lookin’ bastard carrying a military rifle comes in someday cussin’ and spittin’ chew.”

Grandpa smiles and nods.

“Mechanic?” Reagan asks. “Was he a mechanic in your unit? You mean he was a Ranger or… you know.”

She doesn’t want to say Delta Force, but they know what she means just the same. They don’t talk very often about their pasts. This new soldier entering the scene is unusual.

John and Kelly laugh as if they find her comment humorous.

“Nah, not a mechanic,” Kelly explains as he blows cigarette smoke skyward. “Well, technically he could tear just about anything apart and fix it, which in the Army used to be a pretty handy trade to have because you never knew when some shit vehicle or something was gonna take a full-fledged dump. I guess he was in college before the shit started in the Middle East again. After the country got attacked, he joined up. Probably about the same time John and I got in. He’s our age.”

“Wow, he’s really old then?” Reagan teases.

Kelly chuckles and explains, “You’d better be nice to me or I’ll tell your sister.”

“I’m not scared of her,” Reagan lies.

Kelly looks off into the distance and doesn’t laugh at her joke which is unusual for him. They normally razz each other endlessly.

“What are you thinking?” she asks as Grandpa wanders over to inspect the new compressor system. She knew it wouldn’t take long. His brain doesn’t stop. He’s going to want to know everything there is to know about this CNG system and how it operates.

“Aw, I was just remembering some of the funny shit we got into over the years.”

“Tell me,” Reagan asks of him. “John never talks about any of it.”

“Most of it isn’t worth talkin’ about, little Doc. But there were some funny moments.”

Reagan nods, indicating that she’d like to hear. She climbs onto the open tailgate of the truck where she can dangle her legs.

“We were doing a raid up in Pakistan- off the record, of course.”

Reagan laughs. It’s not as if it matters anymore, but Kelly winks.

“This dick leader of some newly-formed radical Muslim group that was starting to stir up the shit again was holed up in the area. We found him easily enough. Weren’t supposed to be in Pakistan. Didn’t have the authority to be there, but that’s mostly what our unit did. And we found that little turd and took him out. Then we… disabled his small following of dipshits. Dave the Mechanic hacked into the dickhead’s computer. He was good at the computer stuff like I’ve never seen. That’s how he got the nickname. It wasn’t because he was a car mechanic. The shit he could do with computers made him the mechanic. He stole all the info he needed off of it, then he…well, he was pretty good at making funny videos and stuff, too. So he cropped a pic of this dickhead leader in a funny video. It was pretty inappropriate. I’ll spare you the details, but there were goats involved.”

Reagan laughs. She can only imagine. Kelly takes one last puff on the cigarette and stamps it out with his booted toe.

“You’d better get rid of that smell, or Hannah will know you were smoking,” she warns with a grin.

“I’m not scared of her,” Kelly says, using Reagan’s words.

“Uh huh. Sure you aren’t,” she says.

“I’m not. She’s a little pipsqueak,” Kelly says, sniffs his shirt. “On an unrelated note, would you happen to have some cologne or air freshener spray on you?”

Reagan smiles at her friend. “Are you guys going back to Nashville?”

She’s still worried about the four young people from their family being out there all night or for two nights without the rest of them.

“Nah, they got this,” he reassures her. “They’ll meet up at dusk. So not too long from now, they’ll get together for the night and hunker down somewhere.”

“It’s just hard not worrying,” Reagan admits and kicks a pebble off of the tailgate with her Converse.

“Well don’t,” Kelly tells her, laying a hand on her shoulder for just a second. “They’re fine. They’re trained. And Paige survived for three years with just her friends and hardly any weapons. She may have a few things that she can teach my hard-headed little bro.”

“Yeah? Maybe. I don’t think they get along all that great,” Reagan reminds him.

“I’m not so sure about that one, little Doc,” Kelly tells her.

Reagan furrows her brow and says, “What do you mean?”

Kelly shrugs and says, “I think I’ve seen a spark of interest in my brother where Paige is concerned.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think he’d act on it. I don’t think he’d risk ruining his relationship with Simon by acting on it.”

“Wow, that’s… I don’t know what to say about it. I didn’t notice anything like that.”

Kelly laughs and says, “Little Doc, you didn’t even notice John’s interest in you, and you were personally involved in that one. Don’t feel bad, though. Cory’s a pretty hard person to read.”

“Most people are hard to read,” Reagan admits with a frustrated frown. “What about Simon’s sister? Do you think there is a mutual interest there?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t know her well enough yet to tell.”

Reagan chuckles and says, “I’m sure you will. Better yet, we should be asking Hannie this shit. She is the all-knowing.”

Kelly laughs and nods his head in agreement.

“Hey, Kelly,” Reagan says, “how is she? Is she doing any better?”

“Yeah,” Kelly answers and then looks at his boots. “I think she’s getting there. Having Cory home is helping. I kind of figured it would. Not sure why, but she likes that little bastard.”

Reagan laughs and says, “Yeah, she does. Hell, Hannie likes everyone. It’s not in her nature to dislike anyone.”

“Another reason I don’t ever want her going to town with us when we do the clinic days,” Kelly tells her.

“Me, too. She’s too trusting and kind for her own good. I’m thankful she doesn’t go to town with us. She’d be bringing home strays, and I don’t mean more dogs.”

Kelly just chuckles and nods.

“I’m just glad that she seems to be getting better. I didn’t like seeing her so depressed,” Reagan confesses.

“Me either, little Doc,” Kelly tells her. “I didn’t know how to help her.”

“Grandpa said she just needed time. Maybe he was right. Who knows? It’s not like I’m a shrink. Hannah is so tender and gentle spirited. She had me worried. I didn’t think she’d get over Grams, but when we lost Em, too…” Reagan pauses, aware that she’s just brought up Kelly’s dead sister, probably breaking his heart all over again. She knows how much Kelly loved her.

“I know,” Kelly laments. “I was worried, too, but I think she’s coming out of it. She seems happier lately.”

“She does,” Reagan agrees as cursing comes from the other side of the equipment shed, not from John, of course.

“I’d better go and help. We’re losing daylight, and I think Derek’s trying to get some of it hooked up tonight. No time like the present,” Kelly remarks with sarcasm.

“Sure, I’m heading back down to the house to help with dinner,” Reagan says and gets an incredulous look from Kelly. “Don’t worry, Hulk. I’m mostly going down to raid the kitchen for sweets. I won’t get too involved with the cooking process. It wouldn’t matter; Hannie wouldn’t stand for it. I almost burned the biscuits the other morning, so she’s got me on menial tasks. To think I used to study microbes under a microscope all day long and my annoying little sister won’t even let me near the stove.”

“You’re still needed around here, little Doc,” Kelly assures her. “If one of us fucks ourselves up by getting blown up with this CNG shit, then you can sew us back together.”

Reagan frowns, “Great. Just what I want to think about.”

“Well, ya’ see? Now you aren’t worried about the kids in the city anymore,” Kelly says with a slap to her back.

“Kelly,” John reprimands as he comes to stand next to her. Then he helps her down from the truck and wraps an arm around her waist. “Good grief. Don’t worry, babe. Nobody’s getting messed up. It’s safe… relatively.”

“Gee, now I feel totally reassured,” Reagan mocks and gets a laugh from her husband. “Do you even know what you’re doing?”

“Um…” he says with a shrug.

Reagan scowls and asks, “Want to walk me back to the house?”

“You know I do, woman,” John confirms with a sly grin. “Wanna’ go for a walk in the woods?”

“Spare me the details,” Kelly jokes and punches John’s shoulder.

They both chuckle as John leads her away. He immediately snatches her hand into his own, and Reagan takes pleasure from his touch. She never flinches from John or Jacob. Sometimes, she still flinches when other people reach for her. She tries hard not to, but it still happens as a reflexive reaction.

“We have a problem in town,” John tells her quietly as they get further away from the others.

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve noticed a few things missing at the build site. Your grandpa said that he thinks a box of our medical supplies at the clinic was stolen, too, the other day when it was just him and Simon working,” he explains.

A knot tightens in the pit of her stomach. Years ago before the fall, this might be written off as nothing out of the ordinary as far as petty crime goes. But not today.

“What was taken?” Reagan asks him.

The slowly sinking sun sneaks through the dark cloud cover, kissing John’s blonde hair and high cheekbones.

“We had some lumber and a few tools taken. Doc says that the box of stuff stolen from the clinic wasn’t a big deal, mostly bandages and homemade salves.”

“I guess we’ll have to go back to keeping everything at the farm instead,” Reagan says. “Did someone break a window or something like that to get in?”

“No, and that’s the interesting thing. Nobody in town saw anything and there weren’t any signs of a break-in at the clinic. Somebody knew what they were doing.”

A chill runs unbidden down her spine. The idea that someone in town has stolen from them is a frightening proposition. They go to town all the time to help the people with the wall build and at the clinic. She can’t believe that someone would do this.

“I don’t understand. This just sucks,” Reagan says. “Why would anyone do that?”

“We’re not sure who did it,” John admits, the line of his strong mouth tightening, his blue eyes intense. “We have sentries working the wall now and walking the beat at night. It doesn’t add up. The wall is far from finished, but you’d think that someone in town would’ve seen something.”

“What about the new people that Cory invited to our town?”

John shakes his head and says, “We considered that, but most of those people are old or just little kids with their moms. I don’t see that they would have a benefit of doing it, either. They’ve actually been pretty helpful in town. Everyone has good things to say about their group.”

“Yeah, I haven’t heard anything bad about them, either,” Reagan agrees with a frown.

“We’ll root them out,” John says.

For some reason, this statement scares Reagan. She doesn’t want her husband in danger tracking down thieves in town. If someone felt brave enough to steal from them, then perhaps they may get ballsy enough to kill, as well.

“Maybe it was someone passing through the area,” Reagan suggests.

John looks down at her and nods, although Reagan can tell that he doesn’t believe this hypothesis. When they arrive at the back porch, John presses a reassuring kiss to her mouth and hugs her.

“Don’t tell everyone else about this yet,” he requests.

“Ok, why?” Reagan inquires because that kind of dictate is unlike the way they do things on the farm. Everything is shared, especially when the information could entail danger.

“We don’t want Cory to go into town and take care of this on his own. He’s still kind of intense,” John tells her.

“Hopefully he doesn’t show that intensity with Paige on this run. He might scare her,” Reagan suggests, standing on the first step so that she can be eye level with her husband.

John chuckles and says, “Yeah, that might not be good. I’m sure they’ll be fine. His intensity is what will keep them alive if they run into trouble, which is why we sent him.”

“Do you think they will?”

“Nah, don’t even worry about it. They’re not in danger,” John lies badly.

Reagan smirks at him and nods. He presses another kiss to her forehead, squeezes her waist, and turns to go.

A murmur of thunder off in the distance echoes down through their valley, their safe and secure little hideaway from the rest of the violent world. Reagan looks skyward at the storm moving in and sends up a quick prayer to ask for the kids’ safe returns. She hopes the worst thing they run into in the city is finding shelter from this storm.