Joshua Gayou - Commune - The Complete Series - A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Box Set (Books 1-4)

“Not an outdoor type?”

“Not really. Most of my life has been spent with my head in a book, like my parents. They spent their whole lives in books. My mom was a copy editor, see? My dad, well, he was something else.”

Jake looked at me (and I mean really looked at me for probably the first time) and said, “Tell me.” He rested his chin on his right fist.

I chewed a lip while mentally composing the most efficient way to explain. “My dad was an architect. Mostly, that means he spent all of his time buried in paperwork. He was either reviewing proposals, going over plans, meeting with clients, reviewing cost estimates, or off in a meeting somewhere. And, because he was an architect, it means I was studying to be one as well. Like I said: lots of books.”

“Oh, really?” he said, perking up. “How far along in your studies were you?”

“I was about a year out from graduating. I was far enough along that I was interning at a firm.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

His question pulled me up short. Before, when all was still normal, people always sounded impressed if I told them what I was studying in college. There was this initial reaction of “Oh, wow! That must be really cool!” and then they’d spend the next several minutes asking me what an architect actually does. No one had ever asked me if I enjoyed it before. I had to think about it.

“Well,” I finally said, “my dad would have told you ‘yes.’ Then again, he also would have confidently listed my four favorite foods and gotten all of them wrong. He was a lot better at drinking and demanding silence than he was at knowing things about me.”

“I see.”

“Maybe you see, but I’m not sure.” I sighed. “I don’t know, man. It was okay, I guess. I seemed to be good at it, what little of it I actually got to do before being an architect became obsolete.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say it’s obsolete,” Jake said, shifting in his seat. “I’m sure there’re all kinds of ways to put a specialized skill like that to use these days.”

“Doing what?” I laughed. “Designing a new shopping mall? Organizing client meetings and submitting plans to the city? Hey, I know!” I pointed out in front of us at a spot on the ground some thirty feet away. “We’ll put a giant exterior water feature right over there; it’ll really class the place up.”

I leaned back in my chair and sighed. “I’ll get on the phone after lunch and start lining up subcontractors. Can I use your landline or is that, like, a thing?”

Jake took everything I said passively, which I suppose I was happy for. If he’d been annoyed at my outburst, it wouldn’t have been the first time my mouth got me in trouble.

Finally, he said, “Everyone has to adapt, Wang. Even architects. There are new requirements, now, certainly, but there are things we can all do to be useful. You’ll learn to handle a weapon soon, if you haven’t already, and you’ll contribute at the least with scavenging and protecting your people. But don’t completely throw away your skills from the old world. One day, we’ll need to build something bigger than a wooden box, and you’ll be there to help us figure out how. More importantly, you’ll be there to pass on what you know and what you learn to the children so that the knowledge we took for granted doesn’t become a lost secret.”

He stood up from his seat, stretched his arms out to either side, triceps bunching up and twitching as he did, and growled. “And now, speaking of adaptation,” he said, “I have my own to see to.”

He nodded to me and trotted off the front porch.

“Where you going?” I called after him.

“Garage. I have some heavy things to move around.”

I stood up and moved to follow. “Do you need a hand?”

He stopped, turned back to me, looked me up and down, and smiled. “Sure,” he said. “Come on. I’ll teach you how to squat.”

“What?”

Idon’t rightly know how the rest of the folks I was traveling with felt about staying at Jake’s place on that first night, but for me? I was sold on the whole thing. I had just woke up from the first good night’s sleep that I could remember in I don’t know how long and, for once, my knees and my hips weren’t hurting me. Remember, now, that I had gone from sleeping on a hard, linoleum supermarket floor that I had tried (and failed) to soften up with scraps of clothing and other shit, to sleeping on the nasty ass floor of that school bus. I’d tried at first to stretch across the rows of seats, but it just didn’t work out. I was too wide to lie on the seat properly, and the bench rows on those buses are staggered, so I couldn’t get my legs across the aisle right. I always ended up on the floor.

I was on the floor again in Jake’s house as well, only this time, they put me on a large air mattress. And even if my feet did hang off and my ass was starting to rest on the floor by the time I woke up, it was still a night of sleep with no pressure on my spine or any of my joints. I woke up happy.

I noticed everyone else was awake already when I sat up and started moving around. Tom and Jeff were talking quietly, and Gibs was over on my right poking around in the kitchen. Wang was gone already, I noticed, along with Edgar.

“Mornin’,” I said. “How long’s everyone been up?”

“Forever, Sunshine,” Gibs said from the kitchen. “We couldn’t sleep through all your snoring.”

“Yeah, least I wasn’t fartin’ all night, asshole,” I said. “What the hell, Tom? We need to get you to see a doctor, or what?”

“That wasn’t me, man! That was Wang!”

“Wang?” I laughed. “Wang ain’t big enough to bust ass as nasty as what I smelled.”

“Whatever, man,” Tom said. “Wasn’t me.”

I tried to sit up out of my bed, but it was so low on air that the damned thing just spooned me back into the ground every time I tried. I struggled around on my back like some kind of drunk turtle when Gibs approached from the side, laughing, the bastard.

“Hey, can I give you a hand, Fred?”

“You mean can you stop laughing long enough to help me up? Yes, please.”

He took one of my hands in both of his and pulled me around to at least a kneeling position; I made it up the rest of the way after that. My back popped in all the right places as I got up, and I groaned happily. I hadn’t been able to take deep, real chest-expanding breaths in weeks but I was beginning to feel like everything might be settling back into its right place that morning.

I pulled a deep stretch and held it just long enough for a muscle in my back to cramp up before shaking everything out and groaning happily. Tensing everything up like that woke my bladder up as well, so I said, “Just a minute, boys. Gotta see a man about a horse,” and went down the hallway to find the bathroom.

Using the facilities was its own little treat as well, being as how the toilet was clean and all. I finished up my business, flushed, and enjoyed the sound of working, running water for a moment before walking back out to return to the kitchen.

The only complaint I can really come up with from that morning was how tight and uncomfortable those damned shorts were. I was grateful to have something clean to wear, but I couldn’t do much more than shuffle around without danger of detaching something important or busting loose. I began to shift my balls around with my right hand while scratching my ass with my left as I came through the entryway to the dining area and said, “So what’s a man have to do around here to get some breakfast?”

I was met with Amanda staring back at me while I just stood there like an idiot holding my boys and Gibs started laughing so hard from his spot by the sink that, if anyone in that house was still asleep, they had sure woken the fuck up by that point.