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

“C’mon, I know the dude’s not racist,” Oscar laughed.

“You missed it, Amanda,” I said. “He got me with that early on when we first met. I made some stupid comment or other—”

“It wasn’t that stupid, man,” said Oscar.

“—and he ribbed me a bit.”

Amanda smiled. “What did you say?”

“He asked me if I spoke ‘Mexican,’” Oscar said.

“Oh, shit,” laughed Amanda.

“So right away, the little jerk launches into a whole routine,” I said. “Why I gotta be a Mexican? Why is it all the brown people south of the border only come from Mexico with you people? So I start trying to smooth things over and tell him, ‘oh, man, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to assume, where did your family originate from,’ and all that.”

“I told him we came from Mexico,” Oscar hooted. “He got all pissed off. Fuckin’ priceless.”

“Hey,” I said to Oscar. “Language, man.”

Amanda scoffed from behind the wheel. “Gibs, we talked about this already. I absolve you of any need to watch your language around me. It’s fine. I don’t care.”

“Huh,” I grunted. “Well, fair enough, I guess.”

We circled back down the 191 to return to the RV park. As we drove onto the premises, I had a nasty thought and asked, “Hey, did you guys check out these campers you found? We’re not gonna have to clear out bodies, are we?”

“Both abandoned,” Oscar assured me. “We’re good.”

The RV and camper were located at different ends of the park, so they dropped me off at the RV along with my rifle and the gas cans. I decided to pour only one five gallon can into the tank, reasoning that I could always add in more along the way if I needed to. I doubted that I’d burn five gallons’ worth of gas on the way back, but I wasn’t entirely sure. No matter; I didn’t want to put in all ten gallons only to have to siphon out what I didn’t use when we got the RV parked back at home. Wherever we parked it back in the valley was likely to be permanent.

The RV itself was of decent size. It wasn’t palatial like a lot of the luxury buses you’d see on the road or on TV promos; it looked like a solid, affordable family RV that had been loved and well taken care of. It was the variety of vehicle that had started life as a large utility truck only to be surrounded by a metal frame and plywood living enclosure. There was a full sized bed in the back as well as another large bed up over the cab that was accessed by a little ladder behind the front passenger’s seat. There was also a small dinette area that would obviously convert into a bed. It looked like it could house five people reasonably; six if we put Maria and Rose in the dinette bed together. It wasn’t the answer to everything, but it was certainly a nice little start.

I set the gas cans down in the cramped excuse for a head at the rear of the living area and closed them in behind the door. Pulling out my multi-tool, I advanced on the driver’s seat, only to find the keys sitting in a pile on the center console. I had mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I was happy that I wouldn’t have to fuck around with the ignition to get the engine started. On the other, I had been interested to see if I could hotwire the thing on my own and was bizarrely disappointed to miss an opportunity to try out my new skill.

The engine started up after a few moments of the starter bitching; it finally caught and turned over after I pumped the gas pedal a bit. I let it run for a while and listened for any sounds that might indicate a problem, hearing none. I shrugged, threw it into drive, and rolled over to the camper, which Oscar had just finished connecting to the Ford’s trailer hitch. I noted Amanda stood close by, scanning the area while hugging her ever-present bullpup.

“We gotta take it really slow on the way back,” Oscar was saying. “I think this’ll be okay, but once we get onto dirt, one good dip in the road could pop this right off the hitch.”

Amanda nodded up at me. “How’s that thing look?”

“Seems to run okay once you get it going,” I said. “Battery seems iffy, but it’s nothing we couldn’t jump if we had to.”

“Good,” she said. “Do you want to lead the way back?”

“Let me follow you,” I said. “None of those roads are marked very well once you get into the mountains. I’m not sure I can find the way without a little more practice.”

Things got moving fast, a lot faster than I’d imagined they could, that first week after Gibs and his people arrived. There was a constant flurry of activity and, if you took a moment to just stand back and watch everyone running from place to place, the valley looked a little like a kicked anthill. I didn’t notice it too much, for the most part, because I was usually out there running alongside of them. Every so often, though, I would stand back to watch it all from the porch of the cabin and just… see.

I remember being nervous a lot back then. There were all these new faces to get used to, different personalities to deal with and so on. And throughout the whole time, there was the constant worry over not having enough of anything. Sometimes Jake would be on the porch next to me, planning his plans, making adjustments as needed.

I asked him once, “What the hell are we doing? The first snows are probably a month away. What chance do we have of collecting enough food to pull nineteen people through a winter season?”

He smiled out of the corner of his mouth while continuing to look out over the field and said, “We have exactly as much chance as we choose to create.” He rested his hand on my shoulder for the slightest moment and then stepped off the deck to meet Oscar, Gibs, Fred, and Wang, who were all just returning with the second phase of Oscar’s shelter project.

When it became clear that we wouldn’t be able to set everyone up in their own private camper, Oscar immediately started working on Plan B with Jake. Watching the two of them discuss it was kind of fun; Oscar was enthusiastic from the start when he explained what he wanted to do while Jake went from reserved to animated (well, animated for Jake) during the discussion. For lack of a better word, it was “cute” to see the two of them feed each other’s excitement as they planned out how the whole thing would work.

To me, housing people in shipping containers seemed crazy but Oscar was absolutely certain he could make it work, and Jake apparently had more imagination than I did because he got all the way on board after asking a few questions regarding how they were going to do it.

The boys returned to the valley driving the Dodge, blasting the horn in triumph as they came. Behind the Dodge lumbered a giant Mac truck, growling (and sometimes grinding) angrily as it plowed through the dirt on the way up to the cabin. I noticed as they came that the driver (who appeared to be Fred, though it was hard to tell from so far away) made it a point to keep within the compacted ruts of the existing track that had been carved into the valley’s center, having evolved after months of near constant excursions out into Jackson. As he came closer to the cabin, I could see why; he swung out wide to the north of the road and turned in a lazy arc back towards the cabin, such that the two, forty-foot containers he was hauling lined up perpendicular to the track when he came to a stop—as he entered into the softer soil, his progress slowed noticeably and the truck’s tires began to spin alarmingly in places, causing me to wonder if he would get stuck and never be able to move from that position again.

Some more grinding came from the giant, idling truck followed by an outraged, mechanical fart accompanied by a cloud of black smoke rising up into the air. The engine itself finally died just before the driver’s side door opened and a shaky, grey Fred Moses climbed carefully down to the ground. Once both of his feet were set in the dirt, he took a deep breath and shook out his hands.