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

Off to the right of the house and just outside of the tree line, Oscar had worked with Amanda to stake off a rough area for her future cabin. They’d done some preliminary work; setting up batter boards, running mason’s string (what Oscar called dry line) around the perimeter, and so forth. Greg and Alan had been out there to set it up with him along with Amanda. Oscar had appreciated their help on the containers so much that he kind of adopted them both as apprentices and was looking for every opportunity to teach them something new. Each time he could show them a thing, especially something that required a bit of math, he’d tell them, “You pay attention to this, you guys. There weren’t a lot of people who knew how to do a layout like this. This is what separates the journeymen from the laborers.” He was adamant that his boys would learn to be carpenters and not just ditch diggers.

I’m not exaggerating, either. I overheard him say at one point to them both, “There ain’t enough parents to go around anymore, so you boys are gonna be my sons now. I’m looking out for you two now like my little girl. You remember that.”

He reminded me how much growing Greg and Alan both had left to do. I kind of made it a point to get right with those two when I saw how Oscar interacted with them; made it a point to let them know they were still cool with me and invested some one on one time with both of them at the range. I don’t know if I ever told Oscar how I learned from watching him with the boys. I guess I’d better before too much time goes by.

Jake’s voice came from behind me, unexpected: “Were you looking for me, Gibs?”

I about jumped out of my skin; turned on my heel to see him standing in the open doorway of the house. “Where the hell did you come from? Jesus Christ!”

“From the house.”

“Yeah?” I asked. “Why didn’t you answer me when I called? I must have been standing in your doorway for a minute.”

He nodded as he held up a paperback book that looked like it’d been beaten halfway to death and said, “Sorry. I was trying to learn how to build a smokehouse… meat preservation and all. I have to concentrate pretty hard when I read. I tend to tune everything out.” He rolled the book up and mashed it into his back pocket. “What’s up?” he asked.

“I want to organize a trip into town. I’ll take a small team and go looking for radios.”

Jake scratched his chin and looked out into the field. “I suppose you’re not looking for new music…”

“No, two-way radios,” I said. “fm or something like. There are all kinds of places out there where we should be able to find them. I want everyone to be able to stay in communication with each other when we’re out scavenging. It’s essential for coordinating activities or calling in help if we get into some shit. I can think of a few times already where they would have made a pretty big difference for me.”

Jake lowered himself into one of the chairs on the deck and asked, “What’s the effective range on these things? Do you think they’d reach from Jackson back here?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “With an unobstructed line of sight, I suppose we might get four miles or so over uhf. Twice that with vhf. But again, that’s best case with a clear line of sight. There are a lot of mountains around here. I don’t think the signal would make it. I wouldn’t count on anything better than a two-mile range. Good enough for a couple of teams working through an area, though.”

“Yes, I agree. You know, I never thought I’d say this, but I really miss cell phones.”

I laughed and said, “No shit.”

“When will you go?” asked Jake.

“As soon as I can get a team together. I’d like Amanda to come along if that’s alright.”

“Sure, as long as she’s good with it,” Jake said. “Out of curiosity, why her specifically? I would have suggested her anyway, certainly, but I’m interested in what you’re seeing as well.”

“Because she’s a hell of a shot with that ass-backwards rifle of hers. She can hold a group as tight as I can at a hundred yards from a standing position, and I’ve been doing this for decades. And, from what I understand, she keeps her head in a fight. So I want to take her and a less experienced person out when I go. I’ll feel better if there are two people who know their shit.”

“Yes, well, she does seem to have a natural aptitude. You know, her husband wanted to be a Marine, yes?”

“That’s what I hear,” I said.

“Maybe the wrong person wanted to sign up.”

I shrugged and glanced back over my shoulder into the valley. Davidson was hauling water in a couple of buckets over to the four new homes, probably charging the gravity tanks. He stopped long enough to wave at me. I nodded back. “You never can tell,” I said. “I met plenty of people who dreamed about being Marines who made fantastic Marines. Then there were ones who should have excelled but didn’t do so well. There’s just no telling who’ll keep their head when you hand them a rifle and order them to go fight. Trying to guess is typically just a waste of time.”

Ultimately, I took Wang out with Amanda and me. I had a feeling about him. I’d never actually seen him in a serious fight; the ugliest one we’d had so far had him hunkered down in a bus along with everyone else while Davidson and I shot rifles out a back window. There were little things he did, though, that suggested he could be one of the good ones. He was smart and cagey, for one thing, which is always a bonus when combined with other abilities. Additionally, he’d expressed a desire to fight against numerically superior forces in defense of his group’s territory out in Colorado Springs, rather than just bugging out to hide until they went away. I was well aware of the possibility that all of this could have just been Wang talking big, of course, but I had no indication yet that Wang was all talk. One never knew who might end up being a secret hard ass. If I had been pressed to make a bet, I would have put my money down on Wang, despite what I told Jake about the futility of guessing.

We went out in Amanda’s jeep because it was the most agile and capable small vehicle we had. She drove since she knew the area better than either of us; I sat in the front passenger seat trying to clock everything at once, suppressing the urge to call out every little bit of trash in the road, and Wang was in the back. I was feeling pretty good about our loadout. With a small three-man team, there were enough weapons to go around such that we each had a rifle and sidearm. I was carrying my MR556 (the M4/M203 having become Davidson’s weapon after I had the necessary time to get him up to speed on it) along with my Beretta M9.

I equipped Wang with a rifle from Jake’s cabinet o’ goodies; yet another AR variant of some sort. There were so many different manufacturers of these after Colt’s patents expired in ’77 that it became damned near impossible to keep up with all the different brands. There were a few manufacturer names where you just knew you’d be able to trust the weapon with your life, of course, and then there were the ones out in circulation that you learned to run from. The rifle I settled on for Wang was made by pws (or Primary Weapons Systems). I’d never fired one of these personally, but I had read good things about the company in general so I took Wang out to the range and we both ran a few hundred rounds through it. I liked the way it operated, but the manufacturer name wasn’t what drew me to the weapon; it was the barrel length. My rifle, as well as Davidson’s M4, were both outstanding weapons, but they had shorter barrels, having both been designed to function well in cqb scenarios. The issue with a short barrel is that you’re sacrificing a lot of muzzle energy, which becomes a problem when you’re shooting 5.56 rounds.