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

“I don’t want to be rude, sir, but how is that useful?” asked Ben. “It seems like a mechanic or someone like that would be really good to have around right now if you see what I mean.”

George smiled and nodded. “That’s absolutely correct!” He looked at Otis and raised his glass. “Nice job, Dad. That’s a perceptive young man.” Turning to address Ben, he said, “So what happens is a certain set of skills and abilities come along with being a teacher, if you’re any good at it, at least. Basically: you know how to teach people, which is a lot harder than you might guess. And there are a lot of things that we all need to learn here, especially forgotten things that you can only find in books. As you can see, there are more than a few children here now, all of whom need to continue their education in reading, writing, and math at the very least. These basic abilities are critical because many of the skills we need to survive can now only be learned from reading books. For example, could you make a vessel to carry water over a long distance right now, knowing what you know?”

Ben looked a little surprised. “Well, I suppose I’d just find a water bottle and fill it up.“

“Okay, that’s fair,” interrupted George. “But we’re not always going to be able to rely on finding things. What happens when all of the food lying around runs out? How are we going to get more?”

“Grow it or kill it, I guess.”

“Correct. Do you know how to do that?”

Ben began to nod his head but then stopped and thought about the question. After a moment, he said, “Yeah, I guess I don’t. It’s easy to say you should just go kill a deer or plant some food, but there must be more to it than that.”

“That’s right,” agreed George. “And most of us here don’t know how to do a lot of what we need to know how to do. So we’ll have to learn from reading books and experimenting. You kids will need to learn how to teach yourselves in this way as well, and that’s where people like me, Alish, Edgar, and Jeff can help.” He pointed at himself and the others in turn as he said their names. “We were all teachers in one way or another at one time; it’s the thing we’re good at that we can give to the group. We can teach you kids how to teach yourselves.”

“I wasn’t a teacher,” Edgar said. Everyone looked at him, and he held his hands up to the group. “I just don’t want you guys to get the wrong idea. We were going to talk with Jake about this when he got back, remember? I didn’t think that meant I instantly got my teaching credential. I was just an accountant, guys. It’s not that I don’t want to do my part. I’m just worried about not doing a good enough job.”

A few people around the circle looked surprised to hear him say this; I know I certainly was. Edgar was typically the kind of guy that saw to his own comfort before worrying about others, or at least, that was the aura he usually projected. Listening to him express concern over his ability to help adequately made me second guess my initial impressions of him.

“Besides,” he continued, “I’m not exactly great with kids. I didn’t have any of my own for a reason. I liked my Porsche a lot more.”

On second thought…

“Man,” groaned Ben. “I was really happy without math.”

“Sorry, bro, but you need math. You can’t build anything better than a shack without it,” Oscar said.

“That’s Oscar,” said George. “He and Fred take on all of the building projects.”

“And even if you don’t have a really useful skill you can always pick one up,” Barbara offered. “I never really did anything but putt around in my garden; my husband Lyle worked while I stayed home to… to run the house.” She seemed to have stumbled at the end of her statement. She shook her head, coughed nervously, and pressed on. “Well, now Jake has me working with him to put together a crop schedule for next year when spring hits. I guess I’ll be the resident farmer.”

“A lot of us are kind of in a wait-and-see place right now, too,” Monica said. “I was a prison guard myself, back in the day, which you may or may not be surprised to learn has jack to do with surviving in the wilderness.” There was some laughter at this; Monica had a no-nonsense attitude that a lot of us enjoyed. “So right now, I help out by going out with the scavenging teams and finding as much food for the group as I can. We think, or at least hope that we’ll be living off the land by this time next year and my thoughts are that I have that much time to fall into a new role by then.”

“There hasn’t been a lot of time to really plan any of this out,” Edgar admitted. “Mostly it’s just been a lot of scrambling to put away enough food to last us through the winter.”

“Well, I can definitely help with that,” Otis said. “Scavenging, I mean. I have several months’ worth of practice built up by now.”

“What did you do for a living before the fall?” asked George. His question surprised me; I realized I didn’t know the answer and yet felt as though I should have. Otis seemed to me like this old friend that I’d had for years, and I knew virtually nothing about the guy.

He seemed to swell up a bit as he said, “I owned a barbecue joint. Best damned Southern barbecue in New Mexico; I was even featured on some TV shows in my time. Called it The Smoke Pit. ”

“ Only Southern barbecue in New Mexico, you mean,” Ben muttered.

“Now, that ain’t true, boy, we had competition,” Otis laughed. “Maybe the only authentic Southern barbecue; I’ll let you get away with that.”

“I had no idea, Otis,” I said smiling.

“It’s a long story,” he said. “We had a joint back in Atlanta that was family-owned; I kinda broke away to go do my own thing. I used to butt heads with my dad a lot.” Ben snorted, nodding to himself as he drew in the dirt with a stick. Otis smiled at his son and struck him lightly on the shoulder.

“Could you butcher an animal, Otis?” asked George thoughtfully.

Otis’s expression was mildly surprised. “Well, I s’pose I could try. I’ve never done the job before, though. The meat always came to the restaurant all carved up and ready to go. I mean, I know where the cuts come from and all; that was my whole business, but my guess is I’d probably be an embarrassment to a real butcher. Probably take me three times as long and screw it up a bit, besides.”

“Okay, that’s fair,” said George. “What about preserving the meat? Long term storage, and such. Do you know about that?”

“Oh, sure. Shoot, I learned a lot of that just from my mamma. Main thing is: we’ll need a lot of salt and a smokehouse for that. Vinegar, too, if we want to pickle anything.”

“You don’t know how to hunt, do you?” asked Wang, mild excitement showing in his eyes.

“’Fraid I can’t help you there. Bought my meat, like I said.”

“Crap,” said Wang, deflating. “Well, it’s a start, at least.”

“I can’t imagine it’ll be that hard to hunt down some game,” Tom began but was interrupted by Rebecca when she pointed out to the valley entrance and said, “Hey, they’re back, you guys.”

I turned to see the Dodge coming toward us at a comfortable pace, either Jake or Gibs extending a hand out the driver’s side window to wave and let us know all was well. From the corner of my eye, I saw Wang light a match and drop it into the oil drum. The contents began to smolder not long after.

Iknew things were gonna be different when Jake and I returned. A new and unfamiliar suv parked out in the middle of your front yard in the exact spot you’d expect to see nothing at all tends to clue you in on shit like that.