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

The other guys, Davidson and Greg, stayed in the trailer with me while I fiddled around with the scope mounting on the SRS. I figured there was no way I’d get the thing to zero on a moving truck, but I could get the crosshairs aligned properly, which would allow me to at least use the elevation and windage markers on the crosshair to better estimate where to hold my aim. Before, when the orientation made it look more like an X than a cross, I was basically down to holding my finger up in the air and making a wild-ass guess before pulling the trigger.

“Hey, Wang’s asking what comes next!” Davidson shouted suddenly from my side, fighting to be heard over the rushing wind.

“What comes next? Tell him to keep driving. Just take us home.”

“Well, what about these dicks behind us?”

“What about them?” I yelled.

“Aren’t they just gonna follow us all the way back to Jackson?” Greg asked.

“I’m betting on them running out of gas before we get there. And if they have to stop to refuel, we’ll just leave them behind.”

Davidson was muttering into his mic as he relayed my answer up to Wang. Greg pressed the point by asking, “Are you sure they’ll run out of gas, though?”

“Pretty sure,” I yelled. “We have to drive through the whole state of Utah before we get to Wyoming. Let ’em keep following us if they’re so damned stupid. They’ll be coughing on fumes halfway through the state, and we can just bend over and slap our ass cheeks at them as we sail off into the sunset.”

Davidson repeated everything I said into the mic verbatim, paused a few moments, and then said, “I’ll ask him.” He looked at me and shouted, “Wang wants to know what happens if they make another move.”

“Hah, Gibs’ll just kill their cars,” Greg laughed.

“No, he has a point,” I said. “This rifle only holds five rounds at a time before it needs a reload. If they rush us, they can get on top of us. Then the long reach of the SRS won’t mean a damned thing.”

We rode along silently for a few moments, all of us uneasy about the prospect of that entire column coming down on us all at once. Three men with rifles would likely be overwhelmed in no time at all.

“Grab that roll of duct tape,” I said, pointing to the edge of the trailer bed. “Let’s start hanging that spare Kevlar on the wall, here, while there’s still a wall to use. Let’s make sure they’re all carrying armor plates…”

We spent the next several minutes trying to cover every square inch of perforated board with ballistic body armor, strapping it all down with copious amounts of 100 mph tape. I did my best to help the guys, but with my gimp leg, I spent more time just trying to keep from falling off the trailer than doing anything else and had to settle for holding vests in place for the others while they secured it all.

“You think this’ll do it?” Davidson shouted at me.

“Better than what we had before,” I said. “Pass me those binos,” I said to Greg.

He handed them up to me, and I put my eyes on the column following behind.

“How’s it look?” Greg asked from below me. He had his back propped up against the wall with his rifle in his lap.

“Messy,” I answered. “There’s an awful damned lot of them back there… one, two, three, four… seven… shit, they’re moving all over the place, but I’d guess thirty different vehicles of all types, including the motorcycles. Two or three people to a vehicle, more in the truck beds. I guess there could be fifty people back there? A hundred? Hard to tell the way they’re moving around all over the place.”

“Shit on me,” Davidson moaned. “I wasn’t even sure there were a hundred people left anymore!”

“Oh, they’re out there,” I said. “People are gonna draw together over time, just like we are.” I spit off the back of the trailer into the wind. “Just like they are.”

“Hey, message from Wang,” Davidson interrupted. “Says we’re hitting Mesquite in five.”

“Well, thank God for that!” I shouted. “It’s gotta be only ten or fifteen miles from there to the mountain pass. That crowd back there will bottleneck like a son of a bitch. That’s our best chance to get some distance on them. Once we get on the other side of the mountains, we’ll pull off the road into Atkinville and hide out among the houses there.”

“Hang on, hang on,” Davidson waved at me. He held the mic up to his mouth and relayed everything I’d said to Wang. After he finished, he looked in my direction, but his eyes remained unfocused, clearly listening to Wang’s response. A moment later, his eyes refocused onto mine, and he asked, “Won’t we just run into them again if they pass us? When we get back on the road to go through Utah?”

I nodded and said, “We’ll camp out a couple of days and then take an alternate route… some road that parallels the 15.”

“But the fuel! Won’t we run out of—”

“I don’t know, okay? Holy mother of the falafel eating Christ, can we just first extract that detachment of Mad Max rejects from our assholes, please? Son of a bitch, we’ve made it across country without a guaranteed supply of fuel before. We’ll do it again.”

They both looked down at the deck, uncertain and clearly worried. They looked like a couple of scared kids.

“Hey,” I shouted, pulling their attention back to me. I hooked a thumb over my shoulder and said, “Fuck those guys, alright? Only reason they’re such a pain in our asses is because there’re so many of ’em. One on one, they’re jack shit, right?”

Davidson’s eyes pulled away from mine, looking straight behind us. They widened, and he shouted, “They’re making a move!”

I spun in place, nearly fell over when my bandaged leg screamed in fury and pulled myself back into position using the edge of the barrier and Greg’s shoulder.

They had clearly accelerated, bearing down on us hard, and four trucks as well as a handful of motorcycles pulled out ahead of the group and began to swerve haphazardly across the road.

“What the fuck are they doing?” Davidson shouted.

“They’re driving evasively, of course,” I answered. “They’re trying to nullify my ability to murder their engines.”

Davidson laughed hysterically. “Those morons!”

“Yeah, no, it actually works,” I said. He looked at me in horror, and I shrugged. Pointing at the SRS, I said, “That scope is so far off it might as well be held onto the rifle with bubblegum. I figured out where to hold my aim when they were static at a set distance. With what they’re doing now, I’d be better off just throwing the bullets at them. I can wait for them to get closer, of course, but they’ll be able to shoot back at that point.”

Davidson only stared at me, mouth working silently. Finally, he said, “Well, shit!” and hefted his rifle.

“Here they come!” shouted Greg.

We watched as they came flying toward us, carving wide, sweeping arcs through the dirt, then over the paved road, then back into the dirt on the opposite side. At the last moment, just before I pulled the trigger on my HK, the trucks broke in opposite directions, swinging out to either side of us, while the motorcycles stayed back and peppered the trailer with bullets. The three of us dropped behind the wall and aimed out to the sides of the trailer to try and shoot the trucks as they pulled up alongside, which would have worked great except for the fact that the trucks didn’t pull up alongside; they blasted forward, presenting a brief, multicolored blur as they plowed through our field of view. A fraction of a second later and they were lost from sight, somewhere on the road up ahead of us.

I clawed for the radio clipped over Davidson’s ear to scream at Wang to get the hell out of the way, but it was unnecessary. The Ford slowed down hard, throwing us all a few feet forward before Wang swerved us off the side of the road. At our high rate of speed, the truck pitched up and down violently like a breaching whale, whipping the trailer behind it. The three of us could only hold on for dear life, nearly being thrown from the vehicle as it bucked like an enraged bull.