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

“All that fugly will be hidden once the spring plates are mounted, anyway. It’ll look better.”

He had begun to walk among the different supplies as I spoke; stopping over the boxes of tile I laid out. “What size are these?”

“Something like twelve by twelve. I figured the big ones would be easier to arrange. Why?”

He scratched his chin before answering. “Do you think a large or a small tile would do better in spreading out the shock from a bullet impact?”

I looked down at the box and scratched my ass absentmindedly, feeling slightly shocked at his question. “Well… fuck, I don’t know, man. I’m just making this shit up as I go.”

“Well, do you think it would hurt to have a layer of both?”

Forcing back frustration, I asked, “Do we have a large selection of smaller tile lying around, Jake?”

“No.”

“Well, then yes, it would hurt my fucking feelings quite a bit to have to go back into Jackson and get a few more boxes of the tile.”

Jake raised his hands and said, “Okay, okay. Don’t get worked up. I was just asking. If you’re comfortable that this will be enough, I trust your judgment.” He put his hands in his pockets and ambled back up the path to the garage, presumably to piss in Fred’s ear, while I stood there fuming.

I looked at the first plywood sheet, followed by the epoxy, and finally the boxes of tile, trying to convince myself I was good with it. I almost succeeded before that deep, nagging, little bitch voice inside my head spoke up and said, “Another layer will only make it more effective, you know…”

“Goddamned, cock sucking, shit eating, smarmy little taint chewing, bent legged, knuckle dragging, dog fucking, Democrat, ball fondling…” is just a selection of the philosophical musings that spilled from my mouth as I walked up the hill to retrieve the keys to the Dodge as well as my rifle and rig.

Davidson happened by at the time, face fresh and completely pink from having just been shaved, which was a practice I’d noticed him observing with far greater frequency ever since his little dance with Rebecca; there were little patches of toilet paper stuck to his chin from where he’d cut himself. Seeing me lugging my gear, he said, “Hey, Gibs! Where you off to? I thought you were working the trailer this morning?”

“Damn it, Davidson, did you shave your face with a dick? There’s white everywhere!”

“I… what?” he asked. The poor kid had come to a dead stop and, I suspected, was in the process of mentally rebooting.

I sighed and wrestled myself back under control. “What I meant to say was to grab your shit. We have an unexpected shopping trip to make.”

“More tiles, huh?” he asked.

“What? How the hell did you know that?”

“I heard Jake mention something about it earlier. Said he’d ask you to thicken things… uh, are you okay?”

Realizing I’d been played like a fiddle, I went back to my philosophical musings as I resumed my walk to the truck.

Perhaps miraculously, we finished constructing the sheet that evening. Once completed, it consisted of a three quarter sheet of plywood, a double layer of fiberglass cloth, a layer of large tiles, another double layer of fiberglass cloth, followed by a layer of the small tiles, then (you guessed it) more fiberglass cloth, and finally a few layers of sheet metal and another three quarter sheet of plywood. Each layer was completely smeared in big, sweeping gobs of epoxy before the following layer was applied and, when it was all finally assembled, we clamped the whole thing down by stacking bag after bag of concrete on top of it and just left the thing out overnight to cure.

On the following morning, which was the fourth day, we returned as the sun came up and began to remove the concrete bags. What we saw after the bags were removed was essentially a giant shit sandwich of construction materials with frozen strands of epoxy squeeze-out pooling around the edges. Oscar reached out and tapped one of the squeeze-out puddles with the end of his pocket knife, which resulted in an audible clicking noise.

“That looks pretty good,” he said.

“Great. How the hell are you going to get that up on the trailer?” Edgar asked.

“I think we’ll have to lower the gate of the trailer and just slide this over it,” said Jake. “We can secure it in place while it’s still down and then lift it all up together to lock it into position.”

I crouched down, worked my fingers under a corner of the sheet, and lifted. It moved a few inches and then completely stopped. “Jesus…” I muttered before bracing myself and pulling harder. It came up a little bit more before my lower back began to send signals to my brain that said, “Hey, asshole, what the fuck are you doing? Stop it. Stop it!”

“I may have miscalculated severely,” I said, looking up at the others.

“Heavy, huh?” Fred asked.

“We’re gonna need everyone under fifty to take an edge on this thing when we try to lift it up. Either that or we run the risk of someone projectile-shitting a kidney across the valley. I’m not even exaggerating; this thing is a prolapse begging to happen.”

We did eventually get the thing lifted into place and, as predicted, it did take just about every able-bodied back that we had to safely lift the son of a bitch up into a vertical position. It became pretty easy once we got the gate past a certain angle; maybe seventy degrees. Before that, though, I felt like we were more likely to push the planet away than we were to get the gate up. As soon as we had it at ninety degrees, Ben jumped into the back of the trailer, set the gate’s arm braces into the side rails wrapping around the trailer’s length, and locked it all in place.

We all let go and stepped back gingerly, afraid it might come crashing back down. Without warning, Jake came up from the side and slammed his open palm into the gate, then grabbed the frame with both hands to jolt it violently in all sorts of directions. He shoved and pulled at it so hard that the trailer itself wobbled around on its tires and the whole thing rattled angrily at its mistreatment. When nothing happened, he let go and dusted his hands off. “I think it’ll hold. Don’t lay it back down again to load it; you’ll never get the gate back up again.”

“Oh, gee, do you think?” asked an annoyed Wang.

“Do you think we should make the sides higher?” Jake wondered.

“No, damn it! It’s good!” I barked.

“Very well,” said Jake. His face was completely expressionless, but I swear to Christ I could see a smile behind those eyes. Asshole.

We soon realized that after the trailer’s rear gate was shielded there wasn’t much left to do but load up the truck and be on our way. Everyone came out to see us off that morning; Barbara had wanted to make us a big breakfast before we left, but I think we all agreed that we just wanted to get out on the road. We instead loaded the Ford’s cab up with food that would travel well and be easy to eat on the road without stopping, so basically a lot of stuff that we could choke down cold. We had some crackers and such as well, along with enough water to get us through a week in case we were delayed for any reason.

We stood out by the truck; two groups already feeling separated, with me, Wang, Davidson, and Greg on one side and all of the rest of our people on the other. I stood by my friends looking across at the rest, people that I believe I was beginning to think of as family by that point (I certainly think of them so now) and considered what we had ahead of us. It was a melancholy feeling, looking at them all across that perceived gulf. I felt like we’d already left; like we were out on the road and I was just looking at some sort of afterimage. I saw hope and good wishes in their eyes. Knowing that their survival depended on our success, I sucked in a deep breath and mastered my doubts.