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

“What was the status of the camp when you were last out there? I mean exactly ?” I asked.

He considered my question for a moment and shrugged slightly before saying, “I could tell it’d been picked over a bit, if that’s what you mean. They was some areas all torn up, and such… others not so bad.”

“Did you see any field kitchens?”

“Not sure,” Otis said. “Saw a lot of tents and trucks.”

“It would have looked like a basic mess kitchen; stainless steel boxes, rolling racks with food… possibly inside a really large tent. It would be big enough to house several rows of tables and chairs.”

He perked up at the mention of the large tent. “We did see something like that. We just never went in it.”

“Amanda, did you ever eat in anything like that while you were there? Did you see such a tent?” asked Jake. Otis and I both looked at him confused; those tents would have been used by the military staff, but the people under quarantine wouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near that area. They would have been kept in the sealed medical tents with their meals brought to them, as I had been during my own time in quarantine.

Amanda saw the confusion on our faces and explained, “Jake never stayed in a tent city.”

“How the hell did you avoid that?” I asked.

“Things fell apart pretty fast in my area,” he said without looking up from the map.

“The point is: there’s probably something like that out there, so keep an eye out,” said Amanda. “I kept to the outskirts with Lizzy. I was terrified that we’d be stopped and locked down if we got too deep toward the center. I wasn’t really myself then, either. I don’t remember a lot from then…”

“That’s fair enough,” I said, not wanting to work her up. She looked uncomfortable just thinking about it.

“Okay,” Jake said while pointing further south on the map, “your next stop is here. It’s just off the side of the 15 in the middle of nowhere with big, red letters on the front that say: Barnes. They were an ammo supplier of some note from before. We loaded a vehicle full the last time we were there a few months ago and didn’t even scratch the surface. There’s so much in there, I don’t think you could get it all out, even with the truck and trailer together. Or, at least, there was.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Davidson. “Are there specific calibers that you want more of?”

“Everything,” Jake emphasized. “Grab everything. As much as you can. I suggest you use the entire truck bed for food and use the entire area of that trailer for ammo and weaponry.”

“Jesus, Jake,” whispered Otis. “You fixin’ to go to war with… who? Russia?”

“I’d like to avoid future trips like this for as long as possible,” Jake said. “Every time we send someone out, it’s a risk… a risk that seems to increase with the amount of distance traveled. You guys need to get out there, grab what you can as fast as you can, and get home.”

“What’s the total distance?” George asked.

“Well, that brings me to my next point,” Jake said. “If you guys cut the trip off here, that hundred-gallon reserve tank will be enough to get the job done.”

“ If we cut it off there,” I said. “You said you had designs on Vegas, though.”

Jake nodded and moved along to the more detailed Vegas city map. “I do. At this location… here, is a warehouse that was owned by a company called Botach. They had just about everything you could imagine there. Every kind of rifle, pistol, self-defense gear, you name it. It’s where we got those body armor vests you guys use. They even served law enforcement, so you’ll find riot gear there as well.”

“Won’t the place have been emptied out? That doesn’t sound like the kind of stuff that just gets left lying around,” Wang said.

“It’s off the beaten path in a nondescript warehouse,” Jake said. “It was the reason Billy made such a point of stopping by when we passed through that area. All the obvious places like outdoors outlets and such had been cleaned out, but he theorized that a place like this,” he pointed at the map with his index card, “would have been relatively unknown. He was right too; we had to break the lock to get in.”

He leaned back from the table and crossed two thick arms across his chest. “It’s a risk versus reward thing. It’s quite a drive, and there’s a real possibility that the place is empty when you arrive. On the other hand, it’s safe to assume that not many people knew about it before the world fell. Now, given the percentage of people who are gone, that number of people in the know becomes exceptionally small. There’s a good chance that place bears fruit.”

“Right. So we go to Vegas,” I said.

“Not necessarily,” Amanda interjected. Jake looked to be on the verge of saying something but held his silence. “You guys get to Barnes and then evaluate the situation at that time. If you’ve had a good run and you’re feeling okay about things, maybe you decide to head south. But if things have gotten bad out there…” She hesitated, looking down at an undetermined spot on the map. A hard-line formed between her eyebrows and I was shocked to realize that she had become enraged. “Just come home if it looks bad.”

Jake let out a breath and said, “Absolutely. That’ll be your call.”

“So the Vegas trip is why we’ll load up the fifty-five-gallon drum, I take it?” George asked.

“That’s right,” nodded Jake. Directing his attention to me, he said, “I want you guys to refuel from the drum first before tapping the reserve tank. When the drum is empty, leave it on the side of the road. That will get you more cargo space for the return trip.”

“Drive in shifts,” said Amanda. “You guys are never idle at any point. You’re either driving, refueling, or scavenging, understood?”

“Crap,” Wang said, sounding annoyed. “I’d hoped that was an exaggeration. We can’t stop to rest at any point? Like, at all?”

Jake and Amanda only stared at him, Jake’s expression flat while hers said, “ You’re shitting me, right? ”

“We don’t want to spare the space for a tent, anyway,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. You can rest all you want when we get home.”

Wang twirled his finger in the air and offered an unenthusiastic, “Hooray.”

“Gibs, I understand you’ve been looking into some things with Fred, is that right?” asked Jake.

“That’s affirmed. I was looking into armoring the truck.”

“Oh, shit. Nice!” Davidson laughed.

I continued on without slowing down, “We took some heavy fire getting out of Colorado. I’d say we got out lucky except for the fact that two of us were killed in the process. If we were lucky, it was only in the fact that our bus was shot full of holes and yet the only casualty taken was a minor crease to my arm. It happened once so it can obviously happen again. I’d like to hang some armor off that truck.”

“What would something like that take,” asked Jake.

“Some high-grade steel plate, mostly,” I said. “Unfortunately, you can’t find a lot of that just laying around. The metal sheets that you can find up at Ace and some of those other hardware stores are no good. Even if you sandwich them together, a high powered round will punch right through.”

“There may be some other areas around here that we could check,” George said thoughtfully.

“No time,” I said. “Like we’ve all been saying; snows are just around the corner. We have a week to get ready.”

“Well, you wouldn’t bring this up if you didn’t have some idea, so…?” prompted Jake.

“That school bus has leaf springs,” I said, gesturing in the general direction where we left it out in the field. “We’ll jack it up, disassemble the axle, and pull them right off. Each leaf looks to be about a half inch thick or so. We can drill holes in the ends and mount them along the rear window of the truck on a frame that Fred will fabricate and bolt into the body.”