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

The doors on both our truck and the one in front of us had opened in the meantime, people fallin’ out of both vehicles with weapons firin’ at the rooftops. I noticed the driver of our truck wasn’t movin’, and then realized the whole back window and windshield was webbed out with cracks, and there was blood all up in the cab. Robert grabbed onto my shoulder and hauled me off the back of the truck, causin’ me to land awkwardly and wrench my knee a bit. He didn’t slow down and kept pullin’ on me as he drug us both over to the alley where Mike had holed up. As we closed the distance, the two men sittin’ in the front seat of our suv spilled out and ran up to the head of our column to join the fight.

“Wise choice, you guys,” Mike panted when we rounded the corner. “I don’t think they’re doing a lot of discriminating between red armbands and random-ass people.”

“What the hell is this?” I yelled, tryin’ to be heard over the gunfire.

“Army leftovers,” Mike yelled back. “They have a base of some sort set up at the Portland International Airport. I don’t think they have much of a command structure left, though; they seem to be pretty disorganized. They’ve been trying to take our section of the city back for weeks.”

“You assholes are at war with the Army?” shouted a disbelieving Robert.

“Eh, I don’t know if I’d call it a war. We just sort of disagree on a few key points, you know?”

A bullet whined and snapped as it flew by a few inches overhead, and we all ducked in reflex. I said, “Look, Mike, this is all beyond us. Just let us go. You guys got your hands full. We don’t want a damned thing to do with any of this!”

Mike was already shaking his head before I’d finished speakin’. “No can do, my man. The rules are absolute; you gotta see Raul. Just chill here a bit; we’ll get this all figured out soon enough.”

“Hell with this!” growled Robert. He reached out, wrapped both his hands around the stock of Mike’s rifle and yanked hard enough to pull the man off the wall and across the whole damned alley. They rolled all around with the weapon locked between them, lookin’ like a couple of ’coons fighting over a hotdog.

“Jee-zus… the fuck’re you doin’!” snarled Mike while arching his back and writhin’ all around in the trash of the alley. Robert didn’t bother to answer, instead lettin’ go of the rifle with one of his hands to start hammerin’ Mike repeatedly in the face. He got in ’bout five or six solid shots, splittin’ Mike’s lips, breakin’ his nose, and causin’ all kinds of mayhem in general.

It was a mistake, though. With only one of Robert’s hands holdin’ the rifle, Mike had the leverage to angle it back into the boy’s chest and fire.

The shot surprised me; sounded somehow louder than all of the other gunfire goin’ on around the corner, which was beginnin’ to taper off a bit, even though the shot had been muffled due to the muzzle bein’ jammed into Robert’s body. Robert didn’t seem to react at all, outside of shiftin’ his body slightly, adjustin’ the grip of his left hand closer to the muzzle so he could push it away, and continuin’ to hammer punches down on Mike’s head. I stood there, horrified; watchin’ a patch of red bloom over the boy’s left shoulder.

Mike eventually lost all sense and his grip loosened to the point that Robert could yank the rifle from his hand. Robert stood up, leveled the weapon, and fired three rounds into Mike’s chest, point blank. He turned to look at me and panted, “We gotta get the fuck outta here.” You ever hear someone say, “Such and such a thing turned my bowels to water”? I never really understood the phrase until that moment when Robert spoke to me. I’d been scared and excited in my life before that, but the physical experience of it was always more like a flush of heat runnin’ through me or my heart a-jackhammerin’ in my chest. This time, the sound of Robert’s voice honest to God made my insides churn like they was all liquid an’ gettin’ stirred up by a paddle.

The boy’s voice was all wrong; had gone all croupy and wheezy. There was this clickin’ deep in his throat when he breathed, almost like what you’d hear when you put a playin’ card in some bicycle spokes, only slow, like. And he was breathin’ hard, breathin’ like he was trying to suck down e’ry last bit of oxygen in the area and still couldn’t get enough.

I looked down at his body and saw the matchin’ red bloom in his shirt over his right chest. I said, “You hit, son,” and was shocked at how hard my voice shook.

It only seemed to make him angry. He said, “Damn it, Otis, did you hear me? Come on!” He grabbed me by the collar and pulled me along after him. I did my best to keep up with the one gimp leg but had to hobble pretty fast, takin’ a couple of steps for each one of his.

He poked his head out to see what was happening up the street only to yank it back out of sight when a bullet exploded a brick on the wall close by. He fanned dust out of his hair, and I heard Pete’s voice call out from across the street, “Mike, what the hell’s going on over there? Get your ass out here and fight! Frank’s dead! Albert’s dead! We gotta get the fuck out of here!”

“He doesn’t know what happened. He still thinks he has a buddy back here,” Robert wheezed just before launchin’ into a coughing fit. He coughed a long time, body doubling over, while the gunfire kept rolling up the street and Pete kept yellin’ for his friend Mike to help stir the pot. When he got control of himself, he said, “I’m going to step out and give you some cover. You get your ass over to the suv. Get it started up and ready to roll.”

“You’re gonna get hit,” I said. “There’s another way. We can circle back around this building, come out ’round the other side and work our way up from behind—”

He was shakin’ his head impatiently. “I can’t walk that far.” He was leanin’ hard into the wall like he was tryin’ to keep the building from fallin’ over.

“There’s not a lot of time,” he wheezed. His face got really serious before he said, “Don’t you fucking waste this, Otis!”

He swung out around the corner and commenced to light up the entire street. I didn’t see what all he was firin’ at; I was already hobble-skipping at full speed over to the driver’s side of the suv. I just saw Pete go down out of the corner of my eye as I slammed the door behind me. Samantha and Ben was both screaming from their huddled position in the back seat, but I either didn’t understand or don’t remember what they was shouting.

I had the engine runnin’ and the transmission thrown into reverse. I almost stomped on the gas but looked up to Robert instead. He was on his knees by that point. He was still shootin’, but the red patch over his shoulder was a lot bigger, and there were new patches of red all over the rest of him as well. He fanned out behind himself with his left hand, shooin’ me away like I was some kind of annoyance he was just too tired to deal with. He keeled over onto his side, lifted the rifle up, and kept firing.

I hit the gas.

Otis had gone quiet, not bothering to indicate that he was done speaking. He just stared into the flames licking up out of the barrel, lost in his own head, playing back what had happened and no doubt seeing all the things he could have done differently to save his friend. Children laughed from across the way, and I realized Jeff was still over there doing his thing; keeping them all entertained and out of our conversation. I saw that the girl Samantha sat silently, looking troubled, and I wondered if she had heard anything, or how much she’d heard.