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

Several of us ran over to help him, though he shrugged us off and began to hobble aggressively towards the cabin, holding onto the crutch with both hands. It sunk into the ground here and there, and he ended up hopping a lot on one foot out of impatience.

“Where’s Jake?” he barked. “I need to see him.”

“He’s in his cabin; we can get him now. Who… who are those guys?” I asked, pointing back at the line of very military-ish looking people climbing out of tan and olive drab trucks to stretch their legs and backs.

“Drinking buddies. You’ll like ’em.”

“Um, okay. Where’s Wang?”

“Long story. Jake first; I don’t want to repeat myself. We have a lot of shit to talk about.”

I looked back over my shoulder at Gibs’s drinking buddies, all of them conspicuously unarmed, all of them very conspicuously at pains to keep their hands visible, and said, “Well, yeah. I guess we do.”

Gibs hobbled a few steps further towards the cabin, nearly losing balance as the greedy earth pulled at the crutch. I pulled on his arm to stop him and said, “Quit it; you’re going to hurt yourself. Just wait here. I’ll run and get him.”

He nodded curtly as I brushed past, thundered up the steps of the porch, and let myself into the cabin.

“Jake! Gibs is back!” I called as I plunged down the side hallway towards the library. I rounded the corner into the room and found him sitting at Billy’s desk (now his desk) with his back to me.

He was nearly reclined in the leather rolling chair, framed in the window behind him, and I could just see the top of his head over the high back. His right elbow was propped up on the armrest, and he held his hand in front of his face, as though he were inspecting his fingernails. In the cupped center of his palm and shrouded by the roof of his fingers, a bright, white light flashed in the low rays of the sun as they cut through the un-shuttered window, brilliant enough that I had to squint and shield my eyes. With my hand held out in front of me, the glare hurt less; he dropped his arm out of sight, and the sun filled the void it left, now unhindered by his hand, forcing me to close my eyes completely.

Through my closed lids, I felt the brilliance of the light pass; a sense of darkening fell across my face. I opened my eyes again and saw that he had turned in his chair to face me.

His hands were clenched together on the desk in front of him, his face a mask devoid of all expression.

Ronald had eventually lost track of time but, after the smoke cleared, he guessed it must have been a good twenty minutes of relative silence before he’d been able to will his head up off the floor of the battered T-100. Once he did lift his head up, it was as though he had thrown off a malignant spell, his appendages suddenly free to do his bidding. For the moment, his bidding was only to pat himself down and look for bullet wounds. He carried out this activity quickly with shaking hands, not quite willing to believe what his senses were telling him. Heartbeat quickening, he checked again over the same areas a second and third time. Eventually, Ronald was forced to conclude that he had been unharmed.

“Thank fucking Christ!” he croaked and rolled to his side to reach up for the door handle.

His hand rattled against the panel uselessly for a few moments before he managed to hook his fingers through the appropriate lever. He pulled, and the door popped audibly before swinging out on a creaking hinge. He began to pull towards the opening, but a weight on his legs kept him in place. Looking back, he saw what was left of Deuce piled atop his shins; his eyes were glassed over, staring lifelessly at the ceiling of the truck’s cab. Gritting his teeth, Ronald freed one leg and braced it against Deuce’s shoulder, pushing hard with his heel. With a groan, his trapped foot came loose, and he spilled out of the truck’s rear seat onto the unforgiving asphalt of the road, as though the vehicle had birthed him.

Ronald Crowder, who had only ever been able to think of himself as just “Ronny,” lay there panting on the pavement and, eventually, began to hear sounds not originating from his own person. Human sounds that did not sound human.

Once upon a time, when he had been little more than a child, Ronny had gone on a field trip to a real working dairy farm out in Southern California; one of the last such farms straddling the borders of Ontario and Chino, before the suburban sprawl had forced most of them out into areas like Norco and beyond. During his class’s tour of the facility, they’d happened upon an injured cow laid over on its side in the mud. Her leg had been broken somehow and was bent around violently in an unnatural angle, with a white shock of bone punched out through the skin. Three ranch hands were piled over the top of her to hold her still. As a child, Ronny had wondered about the kind of cast that could be used to set the leg of such an animal, not realizing until he had grown older that such a creature would have just been put down. His teacher and her aid had rushed the class away from the scene quickly, herding them just like the cattle they were there to view, but not before Ronny heard the awful, low, repetitive moan of that doomed creature. It was an ignorant, insistent sound; the kind of noise an animal makes when it is hurt dreadfully but does not understand what has happened, calling for help instinctively without understanding what the fundamental definition of “help” actually is.

Ronny heard that same sound again as he lay there on the pavement and idly wondered about that old cow. He knew, of course, that it was no farm animal producing the sound he heard as he lay in the middle of the road. He had heard other animals wail in such a way long since that field trip had begun to fade from memory. He sighed, rolled over onto his stomach, braced, and pushed up to a standing position.

He was surrounded on all sides by total ruin. The remaining vehicles in his convoy (those that had made it this far) were piled atop each other, bound up nose to tail, having been trapped in their haste to escape. The worst of the fires had died down to a smolder; some of the wrecks out in front continued to cook sullenly, the worst portion of any stored violence having been expended. Shattered glass was everywhere, sparkling blue-green in the light of the low sun on dashboards, in truck beds, on bodies, in the dirt, and along the road.

Bodies laid out along the road as well, once known but now unrecognizable. In ones and twos, some of them burned black and smoking while others sprawled out inhumanly with spatters of red blood painted down their lengths. One or two twitched; shuddered in place. Some of them moaned mindlessly, like that old, broke-leg cow out of memory.

Ronny passed his hand over the T-100’s fender, fingertips skipping across a line of bullet holes.

“Cock… suckers !” he spat.

He reached into the driver seat and retrieved a pistol. Checking the chamber, he walked out among the bodies, putting an end to any still moving. None of them had been in any sort of salvageable condition, having been ruined just as thoroughly as the vehicles in which they had traveled. Ronny shook his head in anger and wondered how such a thing could have come to pass.

Every precaution had been taken to stack the deck in their favor. They had used the most reliable of the vehicles, attacked with overwhelming force. His team had left camp with an initial fifty-odd people eager and capable to get out there on the road but, as the column had driven away, even more had scurried into the beds of several of the trucks, intent on contributing. He realized as he stood looking over the dead that he would be unable to determine how many had actually come with him on the run until he returned to camp (if such a thing was still possible) and took a head count. He was not looking forward to that final tally.