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

I didn’t come out of the truck switched on and ready to snarl, of course. Everyone was sitting all Kumbaya-style around the camp barrel getting ready to roast marshmallows and whatnot, so I was able to utilize my considerable powers of deduction and reason out that the situation was probably not dire. A quick headcount also told me we were having some guests for dinner. I began to say as much to Jake, but before I could even open my mouth, he was already stepping out of the passenger side of the truck while the damned thing was still rolling.

Startled, I called out, “Hey, shit, Jake, come on…” but he’d already slammed the door and was running back around the bed of the truck. I took it out of gear, set the brake, killed the engine, and hopped out while grumbling to myself the whole time. I was met with enthusiastic laughter from one of the newcomers; a black man about my age or a little older, hair grown out a little bushy and graying at the temples with a beard and mustache that was threatening to graduate to Hobo Status any time. He had Jake’s hand grasped between both of his and was pumping the damned thing like he was trying to get water to spray out of the other man’s ass. They were both yammering at each other, but I missed most of what was said; I had my eyes on who I assumed to be his son, who stood close by, as well as a young girl either in her late teens or early twenties. I started calculating for mouths and calories, thinking glumly about the food I’d just left in the middle of nowhere; it would have easily kept these new people fed for a day. Things were feeling a lot like one step forward and two back these days, and we were running out of time. It was starting to piss me off.

Jake was calling over to me, startling me out of my black thoughts. I walked over to meet the new mouths.

“Gibs, I want to introduce you to Otis, his son Ben, and Samantha. These are good friends of ours met on the road earlier in the year, before Amanda and I had ever set foot in Wyoming.”

I nodded and shook first Otis’s and then Ben’s hand; Samantha kept hers jammed in her pockets, so I passed her a relaxed salute and a smile. She blushed and waved, which served to remind me of my intense powers of animal magnetism, of course. Actually, she made me feel like a dick. I’d just been grousing about the need to feed three new people only seconds ago; her shyness and uncertainty reminded me that I was dealing with more than just mouths. These were people, and they had seen real shit just like the rest of us. I owed them all better. Taking this on board, I straightened up and said, “It’s a pleasure to meet all of you. Welcome.”

“I guess they’ve all had some time to chat while we were out,” Jake said. “We ought to have a sit-down and get up to speed.” He gestured to a collection of chairs at one side of the fire. Some of the others had already coalesced around this point; folks like George, Barbara, Wang, Oscar, and so on. Around the other side of the fire, I saw Jeff surrounded by the kids—Maria, Lizzy, Rose, the new kid Ben walked over to join them, even Greg and Alan, though they tried to hold themselves apart to look cool. Jeff appeared to be telling the children a ghost story that wasn’t much for thrills and chills; the kids were all laughing their asses off at him, which he seemed to encourage and went to lengths to amplify. Rebecca and Monica sat by to watch, laughing along with the kids and clapping, while the new girl Samantha was drawn in like a meteor falling into a planet. I realized that he’d succeeded in segregating the adults off into a private bubble and was impressed.

“He’s so good with those kids,” Barbara said quietly from beside me. “I think we may have found what he was meant to do.”

“Maybe so,” I agreed and looked over to the adult section. Jake sat in the center next to Otis, who was on his left. Amanda was to his right, and the others fanned out from there. There was an empty chair next to Otis, between him and George. Amanda nodded at me and pointed at the seat.

“Christ,” I grumbled under my breath and moved to sit down. I noticed that I was almost directly across from Jeff, who fingered constantly at his wrist whenever he wasn’t gesturing around with his hands.

He wore one of those old ID bracelets; it flashed and shimmered in the firelight, looking more like a darting fish under water than a silver chain. He constantly rotated it with his free hand, creating that fishy illusion.

“What happened to Robert?” asked Jake, drawing my attention back.

“I guess I’d better start with Oregon,” Otis began.

We made the side trips that you folks suggested when we parted ways, skippin’ down to Barnes first and then up to the tent city Amanda told us about. We had fairly good luck in both places, and from what I could tell, it didn’t look like many people had been through to ransack either of them. You could argue that Barnes is kind of isolated—out in the middle of nowhere as it is, even though it has some big, red letters painted along the front—and maybe you could say that the tent city out by Cedar Fort is a bit off the main drag, but I don’t think these explanations tell the whole story. For the most part, I think Utah is just empty land now. Weren’t that many folks living there to begin with and what was there was mostly killed off when e’rything went to hell. I suspect whoever was left just picked up what they had and lit out. Can’t prove any of that, uh’course. I do know that we didn’t see a soul in the whole state after partin’ ways with Jake’s people.

We made our way up toward Oregon through Idaho, taking things easy; never pushin’ too hard. We kept our eyes open for other survivors but never saw any. Maybe they wasn’t any. Or maybe they was, and they just kept they heads down as we passed. You wouldn’t blame them, uh’course. We seen all the good and the bad, out there, and you never could tell which it was gonna be. After a time, it got to feeling like we was the only people left in the world. I recall Ben mentionin’ that he felt like you folks, Jake and Billy and Amanda, even little Lizzy, had all been some kind of dream. He said the only evidence he had that any of that happened was his missin’ deck of cards. We all thought a lot about you folks during this time. We wondered if it hadn’t just been better if we’d followed along with you instead.

The minivan died in Glenns Ferry; a little splat of a town along the 84 in Idaho, surrounded by a bunch of farmland and such. I couldn’t tell you what it was that killed it. I ain’t no mechanic; I can change oil or change a belt, but anything worse than that meant a trip to the shop for me, so we lost ’bout a day and a half finding somethin’ new, getting’ all our things moved over to it, and getting’ it all gassed up. It was that old Suburban we found, and it actually ended up working out for us in the end; we had a hell of a time getting’ that minivan through certain areas. Felt mighty top-heavy and unstable when you took it off the pavement. That Suburban did just fine any time we had to roll off-road. I wanted to kick myself for not getting’ one sooner, once I saw how well it handled that kinda thing.

We took our time gettin’ from A to B, like I said. A drive that woulda taken a day once upon a time took us ’bout a week, I’d guess. We made frequent stops for gas like you guys advised, which always ate up a good portion of the day. We got where we was going in the end, slow but sure.

My in-laws (Ben’s grandparents) lived in a neighborhood in Portland called Woodstock. I don’t know what I expected or hoped to find when we got there. Mainly, I think I wanted to find someone from my wife’s side of the family for Ben because he’d lost his mom at such an early age. I wanted him to have someone besides me that he could ask questions about her; about who she was as a little girl and such. I think… I think I may have wanted them for myself as well. Miss my wife. I was lookin’ forward to being with her for a long time, and even when she got the cancer, I thought we still had some decent years ahead. It just… ripped her away from us so fast; like to take your breath away.