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

The only thing that had changed about the place since I’d been there earlier that day was the position of the sun in the sky and the direction of the shadows along the ground. I asked Jake to grab the food and water, which he did without comment and approached the building lobby.

Sighing, I called into the blackness, “Uh, hey, everyone. I know I said I’d just leave you alone and all but I’ve brought you guys some food and water. I’ve got a first-aid kit here, too. I’m gonna bring it all in right now. Please… just, please don’t try anything, okay? I’m just bringing some food. Okay?”

I stood there outside the main door, waiting. I must have waited thirty seconds with Jake standing patiently behind me, hoping for some kind of response.

I jerked my head forward to let Jake know I was proceeding into the building. I clicked on my weapon light, throwing the interior into sharp relief, and made a straight line for the cafeteria. It was empty. There was no sign at all that anything had happened there outside of a bloodstain on the floor.

I exited and went another door down the hallway into the tiny cubicle area, only to find it cleared out as well. There had been some blankets, sleeping bags, and a small pile of supplies on the floor the last time I’d been there. Now, there was nothing.

Being unable to think of anything useful to say, I instead landed on the obvious. “They’re gone.”

“It was a possibility,” Jake said from behind me. “I’m sorry, Gibs.”

“Fuck,” I said. “ Fuck .”

Jake nudged past me and set the water and bag of supplies down in the middle of the room. “We’ll leave this here,” he said. “There’s always the chance that they come back. If we see them again—”

“Yeah, right,” I scoffed.

“If we see them again,” he pressed on, “we can do more. That’s about the best we have right now.”

I shook my head, looking at the meager offering in the center of the floor; things that would go to waste just sitting there. Also, things that I couldn’t bring myself to collect and take back to the truck. Not wanting to be an ungrateful asshole, I said, “Hey, Jake. Thanks. Thanks for coming out here with me. You could have done different. Just… thanks for not arguing with me.”

He nodded. “Don’t worry about it. There are things we all have to do to get to sleep at night. Things we have to do in order to live with ourselves. I understand.”

He made to pass by me but stopped just before he did. Standing next to me but facing the opposite direction, he raised a fist and bumped it lightly against my shoulder without looking at me. He exited the building, and I followed him.

Imoved a bishop across the board, not paying a lot of attention to where it ended up. Sitting in a low-slung wooden chair on the cabin porch, I cupped my chin and looked out across the field in the valley. From somewhere off to my right, Lizzy said, “Are you okay, Mom?”

“Hmm?” I asked.

“I asked if you’re okay.”

“Why?”

She gestured to the side of the chess board on the little wooden table between us where a small army of my captured pieces stood huddled together. In comparison, only one of her pawns stood in my own little prison camp. “You’re making some pretty bad moves.”

“Oh, you always beat me at Chess, Mija.”

“But not this bad,” Lizzy said and captured the bishop.

“Crap,” I muttered and moved a knight to try and fill in the hole.

“You can’t do that, Mom.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because knights don’t move that way. They move two-by-one or one-by-two. They can’t move two-by-two.”

I sighed and examined the board. Based on her instruction, it turned out that I couldn’t legally move my knight anywhere near the vicinity of where I intended due to my other pieces getting in the way. I reached out to move it back to where I originally had it only to realize that I no longer remembered where it was.

“Mija, I’m sorry, can we do this another time? My head’s just not in it.”

“Okay,” she said, clearly disappointed. “I can ask if Jake wants to play when he gets back.”

“You could ask one of the other kids to play,” I suggested. “You could teach them if they don’t know.”

“I tried. None of them like it.”

I tsked and nodded. “That is a problem.”

“Did something bad happen when you went out with Gibs and Wang?” asked Lizzy.

I looked at her, small in her chair with her dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her face had thinned out; lost some of its baby fat. She was too young to be losing baby fat. She had always been a smart child, but she had matured quickly in the previous months. Her perception had become more adult, more penetrating. I decided it was best to be upfront with her. If I fibbed, she would know.

“I got in a fight,” I hedged.

“Did you kill them?”

I sighed. “I’m afraid so.”

“Good.”

I jerked and looked at her, shocked. “What?”

“Good,” she repeated. “You wouldn’t have done it unless you had to. They must have deserved it.”

I didn’t know what to say to that or even how to approach it, so I stayed silent.

“I wish I could kill someone,” she said quietly.

“What?” I sat up and turned in my chair, so I could look straight at her. “What did you say?”

She hesitated, clearly trying to decide if she wanted to admit to what she said when something inside of her seemed to harden. Defiantly, she said, “I wish I could kill someone.”

“Baby,” I whispered. “Why… why would you want that?”

“Because it’s what we do now. It’s what we have to do. It makes us stro—”

She was interrupted by my hand shooting out toward her face. I honestly don’t know what I intended; if I was going to slap her or not. The action was almost out of instinct. My hand was definitely on a path to slap her but what she had begun to say had made my arm weak and shaky. I only knew I had to stop her from saying it; that she wasn’t going to be able to take any of it back. Rather than hitting her, my fingertips only fluttered across her lips, interrupting her long enough for me to say, “Mija, no. Don’t say that. You don’t know what you’re saying. Killing someone is horrible. You don’t ever want to do it. It isn’t a good thing.”

A wall went up and locked into place between us. I could see it in her eyes as the passion that had been there just before muted, then died. No, that’s not right. It hadn’t died. It was masked but not hidden. There were many things she had learned from Jake, but the ability to hide all emotion wasn’t one of them. Her look was sly and calculating.

“Okay, mom. I understand,” she said. Her eyes said: This is a thing I need to keep to myself, something I need to hide from the world .

I grabbed her arm and pulled her out of her chair into my lap; wrapped my arms around her and buried her head under my chin. I rocked her like I did when she was a baby while I frantically tried to decide what I should do. I had never anticipated having a problem anything like this as a mother. Elizabeth was eight years old at the time.

“Yo, Amanda!” Fred’s voice hollered out from the line of container homes.

“Goddamnit,” I whispered over the top of Lizzy’s head. I shouted, “What?”

“Look!” he called back.

I craned my head around to see him waving back at me with one hand; his other was pointed across the valley towards the cleft entrance where a dark, unfamiliar suv lumbered slowly into the open.

“Shit,” I hissed. “Get everyone who can fight out here with firearms and everyone else locked down!” I stood and threw open the door of the cabin. Shoving Elizabeth over the threshold, I said, “You know what to do. Get low.”