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

“Right,” Oscar said, “gimme a gun.”

“Whoa, whoa, hang on!” Edgar yelped. “We’re just going straight to murder, here? We don’t want to talk this over?”

“Murder, nothin’,” Oscar growled. “I’m puttin’ a dog to sleep. That ain’t murder.”

“Now just wait a goddamned minute,” George said, thumping his cane into a floorboard. “Edgar’s right. This isn’t good. We can’t just—”

“Maria’s not your daughter, old man!” Oscar shouted. “You got no position, here!”

Some of the people in the circle gasped at the venom carried in Oscar’s voice; I believe he scared some of the other women, but his reaction seemed reasonable to me, honestly.

“That’s a hell of a thing to say, Oscar,” George shot back. “We all live here together; every one of us has a stake in this. And your daughter means as much to me as my own children did, damn you.”

The fire behind Oscar’s eyes died down a little at that remark, but he didn’t apologize or retract his statement. Instead, he addressed the rest of us, saying, “I’m not arguing over this. I shouldn’t have to. He needs to be handled. There at least needs to be justice.”

Edgar said, “From whom, Oscar? You? That’s just vengeance.” He held up his hands at the black look from Oscar and said, “Hey, I understand how you feel. If I’m honest with everyone, I could go either way on this. But we want to think really hard about what we’re considering here. This is big. It’s going to change what’s normal around here. Is everyone completely comfortable going down this road?”

“I’m good with it,” Alish said in a matter of fact tone. “A pig like that… I’ve seen such as him. What are our other options? Let him go? We would only be inflicting him on the next child he encounters.”

“Are we actually taking votes on a murder now?” George asked in dismay.

“Vote all you want,” Oscar said. “This all ends up the same way, irregardless.”

“No, Oscar,” Jake said. “The group may decide that execution is warranted and if it does, the group will decide the best way in which to carry that out. But we will decide as a group.”

“But if we go there, should Oscar be the one?” Fred asked, drawing a scandalized look from the other man. He looked in Oscar’s direction and said, “Sorry, man, but just hear me out. They used to do this with firing squads, you know? One man got a real bullet, and everyone else got blanks so they wouldn’t know who’d actually killed the criminal. If folks’re worried about being vengeful, maybe we do something like that? Might make it easier to stomach.”

“I’ll do it,” I said, pulling attention back my way. “No one else has to be involved. I’ll drive him out a ways and shoot him in the back of the head. He won’t even feel it, and we can be done with the whole thing.”

Barbara drew in a shaking breath and said, “Oh, no, Amanda… for God’s sake…”

“Don’t give me that, Barbara. You don’t know where I’ve been or what I’ve done.”

Tears spilled over her eyes as she whispered, “You don’t have to keep doing it, Honey.”

I felt a burning in my eyes as I heard Elizabeth’s small voice in my mind: I wish I could kill someone…

“Barbara,” I whispered, “shut up.”

George leaned forward towards Jake and said, “Jake… you can’t allow—”

“Can’t allow what, George?” Jake asked suddenly, standing up. “What will I tell these people? Huh? That I forbid this? That they must not? What good is that, if I force the decision on them?”

All of us had gone silent at this point. Jake was clearly agitated, eyes widened and searching.

“You people are going to have to decide what you’ll allow, now,” he said, looking out among us all. He stopped himself a moment, took a deep breath, and slowly pulled himself back into line. In a calm voice, he said, “Listen, all of you. Killing isn’t the dangerous thing anymore. Most of us have killed people by now, haven’t we?” He looked from face to face, and when no one responded, he emphasized, “Well, haven’t we?”

There were several nods; no one was willing to speak.

Jake nodded in return. “We have. This is normal now, in this world. It’s an easy thing to do… easy as breathing. And, one must admit, problems do get solved in the act.”

He descended the steps slowly and came to a stop in the dirt patch in the center of the circle we had formed but neglected to look at any of us as he continued.

“Certain of us have solved problems in this way. It’s without consequence, we say. The police won’t come and take you away anymore. There are no repercussions anymore, certainly. Only, that’s not entirely true.”

He took a few more steps away from the cabin until he stood outside of our circle and turned around to face us. His eyes were exhausted but unblinking.

“Every time you kill someone, you pay a price. At first, you might kill someone that’s trying to kill you, which is fair. Nobody would fault you for that, would they? They’d have to be nuts. And after that, maybe you kill someone who’s beating a friend of yours, and you can’t get them to stop. Again: reasonable, yes?”

He looked from face to face, sighed, and said, “Maybe later still you kill someone for their food. You feel bad about it, but you were starving, of course. You were either going to get that food or die. And, when weighed against your own survival… or your family’s, you do what you must do, don’t you? And after that? Someone out there in the world, some stranger, has an item that you want. It’s… it’s not that far a stretch, really.”

None of us spoke, hanging instead on every word he said. Oscar, who now had his back to me because he was facing Jake, slumped visibly. A deep anger rose up in my heart as I listened; anger at the possibility that Jake might be right.

“We’ve all lost so much since the world died but honestly, not everything left behind has to be something that hurts. It doesn’t all have to be bad.” He pointed a finger at the ground. “This is where we rebuild; it’s the whole idea behind what we’re trying to do, here in the valley. Or at least, it’s what I had in mind that day when I called out to Gibs. I know I took a chance on him. I was rewarded for it, though.”

Jake pushed his hair out of his eyes impatiently and looked away from us towards the teardrop camper that held Jeff. His face smoothed over momentarily, just a brief flash before his brow furrowed again. Still looking away, he said, “There’s a chance here. Everything is a chance… or a choice, I guess, is a better word. You all have a choice here. You get to decide what you want your world to be. There’s no one else coming in from the outside to tell us how to be anymore, so it’s all up to us now. Rebuild the world in our own image.”

He looked back toward us, eyes on fire. “Part of that choice is whether life will be cheap or precious. Do you want killing to be hard or do you want it to get easy? What kind of world do you want to make? What kind of world do you want Ben, Elizabeth, Rose, Maria, and-”

He coughed and looked away. Glancing down, he shook his head abruptly and continued, “What kind of world do you want them growing up in? Because here’s the problem, see; the real challenge.” He extended a finger to point at all of us and said, “If life is going to be precious, you all have to decide that it will be so. Everyone has to agree to uphold that ideal. Together.”

The vision of Jake standing out in front of us blurred momentarily; I reached up to wipe my eyes. Never in our time together had I felt closer to him than I did at that moment, never did I feel that I knew him better. I thought of Lizzy and knew that he was right… and was ashamed.