The McClane Apocalypse Book 4 Read Online Free PDF Page B

water as they can from the buckets they’d filled
from a nearby stream. Water conservation is one of their daily
struggles and something they are constantly working to improve upon . They’ve learned how
to collect water in cisterns, store water in sanitized jugs and
even how to find it when they are traveling in the
forest.
    There are so many things that Paige is
thankful for every day, but there is a truckload of regret that she
also carries with her. She regrets arguing with her mother about
going to Georgia Tech instead of a college closer to home. She
regrets being rebellious with her father, who worked as a senator
for their state. She regrets not leaving college and going home
when the situation overseas had started escalating. And most of all she regrets not being there for her brother and
that he was all alone in Arizona when their mother was killed, and
he was forced to leave the state with their aunt, who their mother
had disliked so intensely.
    “I think we’re getting close,” Gavin states
when they are finished eating and sitting around the table
again.
    Even though it’s only seven o’clock in the
evening, the sun set almost two hours ago,
which usually leaves them in near darkness. Sometimes if they find
extra oil for their lanterns, they’ll play a hand or two of cards.
But most nights they turn in immediately after dinner and get
moving again, weather permitting, at first light.
    “Me, too, Gavin,” Paige returns.
    Talia pulls out the wrinkled,
tattered map of Tennessee that they found almost a year ago
and opens it, spreading it out on the smooth surface of the
table.
    “Look here,” she states as she points to a
section near the west. “We passed through Franklin last week. We’re
getting close. This looks like we’re almost to
Springfield.”
    “Right,” Paige agrees. “Maybe another ten
miles or so to Springfield and then another twenty or less to
Pleasant View.”
    “We could maybe be there in a few weeks,”
Gavin offers with hope .
    “I think so, too,” Talia states.
    Moving with a four-year-old child on foot isn’t exactly the fastest
mode of travel. They haven’t had a vehicle for almost a
year.
    “Let’s stay here another night till this bad
weather passes through, and then we’ll move,” Paige
suggests.
    “Right. Sounds good, Paige,” Gavin agrees.
“This weather’s horrible. I don’t want Maddie to get sick or catch
pneumonia or something.”
    “Well, now that that ’s
settled , wanna’ play a round of poker?” Talia asks with a
grin.
    “Only if you don’t cheat this time, ya’
sneak,” Gavin jokes with her.
    Paige offers her friends a soft smile that
belies her underlying state of edgy apprehension. This is a last ditch effort they are making to find
someone, anyone that they’d known before the fall. Paige’s brother
is literally the only person left on their
list of relatives who might still be alive. They’ve already
exhausted searches trying to find Talia’s parents, and Gavin’s
family was simply gone . His entire
neighborhood was destroyed when they’d arrived there three years ago.
Some of it was flooded; some simply destroyed by intense fires that had resulted from the earthquake
aftershocks of the tsunami, which had struck over eighty miles
south. The aftershocks had taken down electrical lines, causing
sparks that didn’t mix well with the broken natural gas lines.
Paige has seen enormous cracks in streets and freeways big enough
to swallow semi-trucks. Massive fires had swept through the coastal
states of the U.S. within days of the initial tsunami. Whole towns
had burned to charred rubble. Large metropolitan areas had followed
suit. Fire and rescue crews had not been able to slow the fires down. Paige remembered studying in high
school the great San Francisco earthquake that had caused similar,
devastating catastrophes, but she’d never imagined witnessing
anything like it for herself. And little did she know at the time,
that was only