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

“Oh, God,” said Davidson. “Man, that really sucks.”

“So now this guy is fucking enraged and screaming back at Brandt. None of us needed a radio at that point; we could all hear what he was screaming. He was wiping his dripping face off after he’d closed the ramp back up and was just going on about it. ‘You planned that. I’m going to talk to your CO and have you NJP’d until your fucking head caves in, blah, blah, blah’.”

“NJP?” asked Wang.

“Non-judicial punishment,” I explained. “The younger guys called it a Ninja Punch. It’s basically what they do to you if you’ve fucked up, but the fuck-up wasn’t bad enough for a court-martial. They can suck a little or a lot. Usually a lot.”

“So what did this guy Brandt say?” Greg asked.

“This was the best part,” I laughed. “Now, you have to picture this: Sergeant Brandt was a little fucker. Like, he was all of five-foot-seven or so. And on top of that, the Flight Surgeon was an officer; that outranks a Sergeant, see? Regardless of that, if he thought you were an asshole or that you’d done something stupid… and if you’d managed to piss him off enough, Sergeant Brandt absolutely would lay into you, and no threat of punishment or personal injury could stop him. While still laughing, he points right at the guy’s dripping face and screams, ‘You stupid motherfucker! I told you to piss on the ramp not off it! How the fuck are you even a doctor? How is it even possible that you didn’t realize what would happen if you pissed into that kind of wind? Jesus Christ, you’re so fucking dumb if you fell into a barrel of tits, you’d still come out sucking your thumb!”

The rest of the guys in the truck laughed along with me at the mental image; your average, working-class Marine too amused by a horrible situation to have even the slightest concern over any possible repercussions that might have awaited him on landing, finger extended and screaming in glee.

“So did he get in trouble?” Wang asked.

“No,” I sighed, finally coming back under control. “I think the Doc must have realized how much of a douche he would have looked like if he’d followed through on his threat. I think he also knew that me and the guys would have spread the story far and wide in retaliation, too. We all liked that Crew Chief; he was a good guy.”

“So you kept it under wraps, then,” Davidson said.

“Oh, hell no, fuck that guy,” I said. “We told everyone who’d listen. It was too good to keep to ourselves.”

“Oh, geez…” Wang laughed. “Nice.”

“What?” I asked in my most aggrieved voice.

“Hey,” Greg interrupted. “Do you guys see that up there? On the side of the road?”

“Huh?” I grunted and focused my attention ahead. Maybe a half mile ahead was a person on the side of the road standing in front of the hulk of a burned out wreck. Whoever it was, he (or she) was waving frantically.

“What do you think that’s about?” asked Wang.

Biting my lip, I said nothing in response. I gazed far out into the distance, willing my old eyes to take in any kind of detail around the wreckage. There appeared to be some sort of debris around the person, knee high and nondescript; maybe boxes or bags.

“Looks pretty worked up,” Davidson said quietly from behind me.

I tore my eyes off the person in the distance and looked around in all directions, seeing only desert stretching on for miles with rolling hills in the distance behind us. There were no buildings for as far as I could see and the road was mostly clear, but for that one blemish ahead of us.

“What the hell?” I whispered.

It was a woman, jumping in place and flailing her hand around. She was dressed in clothes falling nearly to tatters; her other hand was clutched to her chest, holding a bundle. With her free hand, she reached down to the bundle at her chest, struggled with it a moment, and finally pulled a tiny, pink fist into view. She continued to jump and scream as she did so, then dropped the little hand back into the bundle and resumed waving her hand high in the air.

“Holy shit,” Wang whined. “Are we stopping for her? We’re gonna stop for her, right?”

I don’t care if it’s a woman screaming for help or anything else. You keep driving. Got me?

Amanda’s voice had come uninvited to my mind, and I shook my head violently to knock it away. My hands clenched on the wheel as I tried to decide what the fuck I was going to do. A woman screaming for help, I thought. How the Christ had Amanda known to say that? Intuition? Goddamned Spider Sense?

“Gibs?” Wang prodded.

“Hey, Gibs, we need to stop, okay?” Greg insisted from the back.

The woman walked out into the road as we approached, screaming and waving like we were her last hope.

I thought of the people back home waiting for us; depending on us for their survival. Don’t stop driving. Work in shifts. Get back, no matter what. Keep… Driving!

“Gibs!” Wang cried.

“No,” I said calmly and pulled the wheel to the right to veer around her.

The others shouted out in anger and dismay, slapping the dashboard, wanting to know what in the hell was wrong with me. I looked out the side view mirror (as the armor plating we’d installed over the back window rendered the rear view mirror totally useless) and said, “Shut up! What the fuck’s she doing back there?”

Everyone leaned forward and peered into the side view mirrors now. In the distance behind us, we saw the miniature image of the woman throw the bundle in her arms to the pavement, which bounced unnaturally and rolled away.

“No shit?” asked Greg. “It was a doll—”

From her waistband, she extracted what appeared to be a pistol, but instead of pointing it at us she elevated the barrel high into the air and pulled the trigger. A flare launched high up into the sky and exploded into a small, bright red flame that began to descend slowly back to the ground.

“What the fuck?” muttered Wang.

I knew what was coming next, of course. I put the gas down and started pulling on my vest and helmet with one hand even as the others squawked at my blatant disregard for fuel economy.

“Yo, Gibs, what’s the deal, man?” Davidson asked, sounding panicked.

Instead of answering him, I returned to scanning the horizon. There were no hills or mountains out ahead of us or to the side, but there were plenty behind, stretching forwards toward us from the rear as we drove. Looking in the side mirror, I saw a large dust cloud begin to emerge from behind a low stretch of foothills. My gut clenched involuntarily as I hissed, “Fu-uck…”

“What is that?” Wang asked in a flat voice.

Before I had the chance to answer, a black line of vehicles of all shapes and sizes spilled out from behind the hills, kicking up an ungodly dust cloud as they came. I couldn’t count their number at that distance, but I could see several cars, trucks, and motorcycles coming from behind that hill; and they just kept coming, stretching out in a long, mechanized serpent. The tip of the convoy reached the 15 before the tail had come out from behind the hillside.

The mass of vehicles turned north up the highway to pursue us.

Jake emerged from the cabin with Maria in tow some time later. All the rest of us loitered around outside, sitting around on the porch or leaning on the rails, silently. A few of us sat around Oscar, just trying to keep him sane by means of being physically close.

They came through the front door without comment, Maria hiding just a little bit behind Jake’s leg. From his seated position on the front steps, Oscar had to look back over his shoulder to see them. He whimpered, “Maria? Baby?”