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

I set up the charging dock on the table, fished the little AC adaptor out of a pocket in my cargo pants, held my breath, and hooked the whole thing up. To my relief, a little red led lit up on the dock. I wasn’t ready to deal with the possibility that the gear wouldn’t work.

Grabbing one of the little radios (they were the size of a small cellphone rather than the big, black brick of a team radio I used to lug on deployments) and turned it over in my hands to inspect it. It had round edges and a decent sized lcd screen which appeared as though it might be backlit, which meant they’d need to be concealed in some way. It was just as well, really. It was clear that they weren’t anything close to being ruggedized; putting them inside of something might help to keep them protected in a firefight. About the only thing the little radios had going for them was that they were made by Motorola, which at least suggested that they wouldn’t stop functioning after a couple of weeks. I seated the radio into the first slot of the charging dock, noting that the lcd screen did, in fact, illuminate in muted orange. By this point, I was just relieved to see that the thing was taking a charge and quickly seated the other unit.

They both lit up and began to report percentage complete statuses on their screens. I leaned back in the little rolling chair I occupied and wondered about their service life and who might have carried them. I wondered if there was some sort of logging procedure that might have been in place for the bank’s security staff to first check the units out at the start of their day and then check them back in before they could leave. Or was it perhaps possible that said radios had been the property of the security guys rather than being provided by the bank? I didn’t know how any of that stuff used to work when the world made sense, but I was pretty sure that banks just outsourced their security to other outfits; I guessed gear responsibilities might have been handled by the security contractor instead. I wondered what action, if any, these little radios might have seen. That bank branch had been a pretty good size; maybe had to cover the interests of the surrounding farms and ranches as well. Even so, Jackson was pretty small and remote. I had to imagine they hadn’t been used a great deal.

“Well, you guys are gonna see some action now, anyway,” I said to the little, yellow devices and got up to leave.

When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I stopped and took a breath. To my left was the palletized food supply that we all managed to build up in the few weeks we’d been scavenging thus far. I don’t remember how long we had been living in the valley by that time; three or four weeks maybe, but I could be off.

As an individual, that pallet looked like a near-infinite supply of food. Living in a group of nineteen people, I knew how long it was all likely to last. We might make it halfway into the worst part of winter before it was all gone if we started rationing immediately, which we weren’t. Everyone was working their asses off every day, just burning up calories like they were cheap and easily replaceable. This whole plan involving scavenging food from the nearby area simply wasn’t getting it done. Food was only trickling in with this approach, and we needed to start hitting on some serious caches really soon.

At some point, maybe within the next month, we were going to have to arrive at a go-no-go decision. If we couldn’t get enough food to carry us through the winter, we were going to have to pick up and leave for a warmer climate before we got snowed in, nuclear power plants or not. The nebulous threat of possibly being irradiated kind of took a back seat to the guaranteed outcome of starving to death.

I stood motionless, looking at the group’s food, our food, and thought about the people back at Wells Fargo. Before I even knew what I was doing, I was going through the stack pulling out cans, whether it was fruit, beef stew, hash, or whatever. I figured at least two cans per person, or about seventeen hundred calories assuming the can contained some sort of meat. There were four people left, so eight cans. That oughta do it. Seventeen hundred calories per person was enough to make a difference. It could get those people back on their feet. It wouldn’t save them; they were starving to death—you could see it in their sunken eyes and too tight faces. But this could put some strength back in them. It could get them back in the fight.

“You okay, Gibs?”

Jake stood in the entryway of the garage, silhouetted by the light outside, made unmistakable by his stillness, his long, shaggy hair, and the meat around his shoulders, which seemed larger since the time we first met, if that was even possible.

“We ran into some people,” I said in answer.

“I know. I spoke with Amanda.”

“How’s she doing?” I asked.

“She’s coping. She’s with her daughter right now, either reminding herself what she fights for or that she’s still human. She’s been through some horrible things, but I believe this is the first time she’s killed someone that may not have had it coming.”

I scoffed. “Her reaction was the right one.”

“Well. You and I know that, anyway,” he said.

We stood quietly a while, not moving. I waited to be called out on what I was doing, a can of food in each hand, but Jake said nothing further. His silhouette remained planted in the center of the half-opened roll-up door, ape arms just hanging there. Not wanting to burn up a bunch of daylight waffling around, I said, “I’m gonna take some food back to those people… the ones at the bank.” My voice sounded defensive even to me, and I hated the momentary weakness. I knew I was doing the right thing.

I also knew what the food situation was. I squared it personally by understanding that I was just going to have to collect more than anyone else the next time I was out; more than I had ever collected before. I’d stay out well past dark if I had to, if that’s what it took to make up the debt. I prepared to explain this to Jake; squared my own shoulders (higher off the ground than Jake’s but nowhere near as wide or dense) to argue it out.

“I’ll get a bag to carry those,” said Jake. “Grab a couple of gallons of water and a first-aid kit as well. We can take the Dodge.”

Edgar, George, and Barbara came along to intercept us on the way out to the truck. Well, they came to intercept Jake; I just happened to be out there with him at the time. We’d packed the food into a canvas bag, and I suppose I may have hoped that it would be concealed enough that none of them noticed, but things rarely work out just the way you’d like. I guess the outline of the cans in the bag was pretty obvious.

“Fellas,” George said. “Where you off to?”

“What’s with the cans?” Edgar asked.

Before I could say anything, Jake said, “Care package. Some new friends out in Jackson could use a little help, I think.”

“New friends?” asked George. “They coming around our way?”

“I don’t think so,” Jake said. “They’re more of the independent type.”

“You’re… taking them some of our food?” asked Edgar.

I answered before Jake could this time. “Yeah, I’m taking them some of our food. They’re in bad shape and could use a hand. Is that a problem?”

“I, uh… well…” Edgar sputtered, running a hand through his hair and looking at the ground.

“It just seems a little off, hon,” Barbara said helpfully. “Everyone’s been busting their humps for weeks building that supply up, including you as well, of course. How are we going to make any headway if we give it all away?”