Free The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 by Kate Morris

anything so horrible could ever happen in her own
country. When the second one hit, all hell
broke loose. The news feed wasn’t good at that point, mostly static. But
what she did see, she wished that she could unsee. It went far
beyond nationwide looting of liquor stores. She never dreamed
people were capable of such atrocities. She’d learned a year later
firsthand how intensely cruel they could really be.
    “Stay here,” she tells them, although
she doesn’t need to.
    “Take this,” Gavin says, extending the
small gun toward her.
    Paige frowns, “You know I don’t do
well with these things. I can’t shoot for shit, Gav. Besides, I’ve
got my knife, and you guys might need this more than me. Just keep
it.”
    “Ok, but don’t get too close to them.
Come back when you find out something. We’ll stay here and see if
there’s anything else we can find,” Gavin says.
    “Got it,” she says and gives him a
quick hug. Then Paige hugs Talia and Maddie.
    She takes most of
her heavy things out of her backpack, leaving space in it for anything
useful she might come across. Paige heads out, pulling her stocking
cap low, jogging through the desolate city where a pin could be
heard dropping. She and Gavin take turns doing runs like this. It’s
easier than all of them going, and Talia was sick last fall and
hasn’t had the lung strength she used to. Paige believes that her
damage is permanent, but she’d never tell her friend this. She lets
her hope. It doesn’t make a big difference in the matter of someone
going on runs. One of them would still need to stay with Maddie no
matter what, and Talia is simply better at keeping her quiet than
Paige.
    She takes off at a slow pace, winding
back around to the office building where they’d set up camp last
night. An older woman, bundled in many layers of mismatched
clothing, pushes a metal shopping cart down a side street. Paige
shakes her head and keeps going.
    Her feet are starting to get wet,
soaking through the distressed leather of her ankle boots as she
carefully trudges through three inches of melting snow. That’s the
least of her concerns. It would be nice to find a new pair of shoes
for each of them somewhere in this city. Items like that are even
rarer than microwave popcorn. She hadn’t expected this town to be
as big as it is, or was. She tugs her stocking cap down lower, her
collar up higher and ventures forth.
    Climbing back over the
cement wall to the parking garage’s first floor where important executives would’ve parked, Paige sprints to the entrance
door. After a hasty search of the first floor and back up to where
they’d slept , she realizes that the pre-dawn intruders are gone. Out the
front door and down the street, staying close to the building
fronts, she jogs and hears men’s voices and an engine in the
distance, perhaps three blocks away.
    She keeps to the buildings
but has to cross the street in a rather large intersection. Paige
runs low to the ground and takes cover behind a car that has been tipped
onto its side. Not seeing anyone yet, she runs to another building where she
climbs through the broken window. It’s a medical clinic, an urgent
care perhaps. Looking around briefly, she realizes that there won’t
be any medical supplies left. No point in doing a search of the
place. The back part of the building where supplies like that
would’ve been kept is burned out which exposes the brick wall of
the building behind it. She ducks behind the front window and pulls
out her binoculars. They aren’t that great, but they are better
than nothing.
    She spots them near
a warehouse, a dilapidated two-story with many broken windows. It’s less than a mile
from where Paige and her friends had chosen to camp out last
night. They were so close, and none
of her group even knew those men were out there.
    They have a dark blue sedan
running, waiting out front for them. Two of them seem to be
arguing. One man shoves another, and the fight is broken