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

“And he follows it up with a dig at the name,” Wang said to no one in particular as he climbed back up into the cab. “There’s that twelve-year-old sense of humor we all know and love.”

“Hey,” I said. “I take exception to that. I’m operating at least at a fourteen-year-old’s capacity.”

“And the intelligence to match, obviously.”

“Damned touchy little pissant, ain’tcha?” I said. “If you’re feeling cranky over missing your nap time, I can certainly give you something to suck on.”

“You kiss your sister with that mouth?” he grumbled.

“Never had a sister,” I said. “Had to make do with smearing peanut butter on my balls and chasing the cat around.”

“Wait, cats eat peanut butter?” Davidson asked from the back seat in clear disbelief.

The truck cab erupted into another bout of panicked laughter even louder than before as three of us attempted, and failed, to come to grips with Davidson’s thought process.

“What? What the hell? I didn’t think they’d eat peanut butter!”

“Stop, dude! Just… stop!” Greg grunted through stuttering coughs.

Eventually, it all died down to a dull roar, with a few random coughs and sniffles breaking up the new silence. My cheeks hurt from so much smiling; the last time I could remember going through something like that was…

“I haven’t laughed that hard since Blucifer,” Wang chuckled quietly.

I grunted and said, “Hey, I’m sorry, man. It was fucking dumb. Are we cool?”

He shot me an amused look, “What, back there? I’m over that, man. Mostly I was just having fun winding you up.”

I was too exhausted to laugh anymore. The sound that escaped my mouth was more of a “ Hunf .” “Wiseass,” I said.

We drove on for a few minutes in silence before a dusty, old memory surfaced in my mind; a rusted, unused thing that I hadn’t thought of in years.

“You know, I knew a guy who got it a lot worse than you,” I said to Wang. “This was years and years ago—”

“You’ve been doing this shit to people for years and years?” Wang asked.

“No, damn it, just listen to me. This was years ago when I was still in the Corps; I’d just made E5, in fact. My Staff Sergeant and a few of us Sergeants had to hitch a ride on a Phrog (that’s a CH-46 helicopter) to get from A to B… don’t even ask me where. I can’t remember where we were going anymore, they shipped us around so damned much.

Anyway, it so happened that a Flight Surgeon had to tag along with us to log his required hours-”

“Flight Surgeon?” asked Wang. “You mean like a doctor that has to hang around on an aircraft? Are they fixing up guys who get shot on the helicopter mid-flight or something?”

“No, nothing like that,” I said. “They were basically just doctors who’d been trained to serve as physicians to our pilots and flight crew. Military pilots have to meet higher health and physical standards than your average grunt, so you need a doctor trained to watch out for that kind of thing. Also, different types of flying will affect your physiology differently, so Flight Surgeons have to be familiar with those effects and be able to treat them as well.”

“Uh, okay, but you said he had to get some required hours. I’m assuming that’s flight time? Why do they have to fly if they’re just doctors working in some office or something?”

I nodded and said, “Part tradition, part morale, really. They have to serve a certain amount of time as flight crew because they need to be cognizant of what a flight crew goes through. Additionally, the thinking was that it was good for them to work alongside the guys they had to treat just to build up some level of camaraderie.”

“Well, that sounds pretty smart,” Davidson said from the back.

“Or so you’d hope,” I said. “The one that came along with us was a complete tool. Nobody liked this guy, apparently. I’d never met him before that point, but the flight crew sure knew him.”

“What was his deal?” Wang asked, becoming engrossed in the story.

“From what I saw that day, I’d say he was probably an arrogant prick with an undeservedly high opinion of himself. So anyway, there we all were, airborne, and this flight doc leans over to the Crew Chief and says something. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, you understand; as part of the flight crew, they were all hooked into ics—basically the onboard radio. I had to get filled in later by the Crew Chief… what the fuck was his name again? Brandt, that’s right! Sergeant Brandt. We all laughed our asses off when he explained what happened.”

With a smile creeping slowly across his face, Wang asked, “Well, what did happen?”

“Turns out the flight doc had to take a leak pretty bad, and he was worried about his ability to make it all the way to landing. I suppose it was the first time he’d encountered such a thing. Guy figures he can’t be the only one this has ever happened to, so he asks the Crew Chief, ‘Hey, what do I do?’ you know? Those Phrogs didn’t come equipped with bathrooms.”

“Shit, that’s right,” Davidson said, mildly surprised. “What would you do?”

“So, I’m not sure if you guys know what a CH-46 looks like, but it’s a dual rotorcraft, one up front and one in the rear, right?”

“Oh, you mean like a Chinook?” Davidson asked.

“Exactly,” I said, raising a thumbs-up to him. “A Chinook is really just the larger version; that was the CH-47, see? But among the many things the 46 and 47 had in common was a large loading ramp that dropped out its ass. The whole rear of the thing just opened up wide so you could load whatever you wanted or so you could jump out and get moving really quick; that kind of thing.

“So, Sergeant Brandt the Crew Chief says to the guy, ‘Look, it’s not a big deal. Just go piss on the ramp. We do it all the time.’ The Flight Surgeon looks back and forth between the rear of the plane and the Crew Chief a few times, shrugs, and thinks to himself, ‘Eh, fuck it. Could be worse.’

“My buddies, Brandt, and I then watched as this guy unhooks his helmet from ics, straps into a lanyard, strides to the rear, opens up the goddamned ramp, and proceeds… to piss… to piss off the edge.” I had begun laughing at the end, unable to contain myself as the memory played back in my mind.

“I don’t get it,” Wang said. “What’s the deal?”

After my laughter calmed down a bit, I said, “Remember what happened to you just now when you got exposed to a little wind?”

“Yeah?”

“We were in flight, man. The wind that came back and hit him while he stood on that ramp was ten times worse than what you just caught.”

“Oo-oh no,” Greg laughed from the rear seat.

“This guy covered himself in his own piss!” I said, bawling laughter again. “He turned around to face us, and his fucking visor was completely misted like a car windshield in a rainstorm!”

“That’s rather unfortunate,” Wang laughed. “None of you guys tried to warn him?”

“That’s the thing; the Crew Chief absolutely did try, but the Doc had disconnected his radio to walk aft of the plane; the cable wouldn’t stretch that far. So Brandt’s back there waving his arms and calling out to him the minute the ramp starts to go down, but the guy can’t hear. The wind hit almost immediately, so I think Brandt figured the guy would realize how badly it would go if he persisted. Evidently, he didn’t.”

“But the guy… uh, Brandt, told him to do that,” Wang said. “I’m confused; wouldn’t he have known—”

“No, he didn’t tell him that at all,” I interrupted. “He didn’t say to piss off the ramp. What the Flight Surgeon was supposed to do was piss on the ramp while it was still closed and then open it up after he was finished to clean it off. Christ, they even kept a water bucket in the back for that very reason.”