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

A single truck. Just a single truck with four… cancerous fucks … had completely dismantled his crew. He ran a shaking hand through his greasy blonde hair, struggling to contain the hateful frustration welling up in his guts.

They were not all dead, though, he was sure of that. Several of the vehicles in the column had only been disabled early on. They rolled out of the way to a stop on the side of the highway and Ronny was certain they would still be out there. He just had to find a way to connect with them.

He strode back to his truck and yanked open the door, causing the deceased driver (Abram had been his name) to flop out into the open, held in place by his seatbelt. Ronny reached across his body to hit the belt release, and he tumbled out of the vehicle like a sack of rocks. Abram’s legs trailed behind, lying up the side of the truck with the toes of his boots still in the cab; Ronny kicked them aside and climbed in. He began to rummage around the cab, knocking debris and shredded pieces of airbag out of the way as he searched.

A few moments later, he found the walkie-talkie.

He held it up so that he could view the LCD readout, seeing only a line of flashing dashes. “Oh, you son of a bitch,” he groaned and slapped it angrily against his thigh. This did nothing to alleviate the problem, so he turned the unit off, counted to ten, and turned it back on again. The screen fluttered briefly with the normal startup routine and finished by displaying its default starting channel. Ronny scoffed and began to hit the scroll button until he saw the channel selection that his team always used.

He hit the talk button and said, “Hey… this is Ronny. Is anyone still out there?” He released the button and waited. He waited a long time without a response, listening to the crackle of the dying flames and the wind blowing through the pass.

“Probably just these mountains,” he mumbled, hooking the radio on his belt. He reached into the cab of the truck, dug around until he found a backpack, and stuffed it full of whatever food and water he could find around the area, moving from vehicle to vehicle methodically. He found a couple of magazines that would fit his pistol (a .40 caliber H&K) and took a rifle from one of the dead. He shrugged into the backpack, slung the rifle over his shoulder, and paused a moment to look at the damage.

They beat us ’cause they were prepared , he thought . We thought we were prepared, sure, but we didn’t know. Those motherfuckers were no-shit prepared.

Ronny turned on his heel and began to walk back the way they had come, right hand holding lightly to the rifle sling. He promised himself that he would have another go at those twats in the armored Ford, especially the loud one… Gibs.

The radio erupted with static from its position on his hip. Without stopping, he pulled it from his belt and looked at the screen. It again displayed a row of flashing dashes.

“Fuck me,” he said and turned it off. He would try it again when he emerged from the pass into the wide open spaces of the flatlands. He smiled to himself as he walked, thinking of his earlier urge to just throw the fucking thing away during their long chase up the 15, so infuriating was its tendency to malfunction right when he needed it the most. He remembered how he had mastered himself just at the brink of utmost anger, taking a deep breath to pull it all back together before simply power cycling the unit. It had performed the old, remembered routine, displaying the default start-up channel, after which he began scrolling through the list to get back into communication with his team.

He remembered hearing unfamiliar, shouting voices over the handset before reaching the channel he desired. People he didn’t know, obviously agitated, screaming about the army of assholes on their tail. He remembered how they chittered at each other frantically, trying to work out how in the hell they were going to get all the way back home.

All the way home to Jackson.

He continued to smile as he settled the radio back onto his hip. He gave it a friendly pat, returned his hand to the rifle sling, and began to whistle. There were probably many places called Jackson, he knew, but he was at least certain they were headed north and had to travel through Utah to get to it; he felt confident in his ability to sniff out a bit of juicy trim given a good map and enough motivation. And he was very motivated. He could not remember the last time he had such a powerful drive to do anything.

His mouth tightened around its smile, corrupting the whistled tune into a high-pitched blow, and he giggled to himself as he stretched out his jaw to loosen it all up again. He would continue to walk, and he would find some survivors… or not. At some point, he would find a car… or not. It really didn’t matter as far as he was concerned; eventually, he would get back to Clay, they would have a bit of a meeting, and then they would see.

They would god damned well see.

As he climbed the short roof access ladder of the little ice cream shop, Hunter had to remind himself for what felt like the hundredth time to slow down and savor the moment. He lessened his pace, forced himself to stop taking the rungs two at a time, and took a deep breath, letting it out carefully. This would be only his second time; the first had gone by far too fast for his liking, both because the fire had gone out too quickly and because he had become so caught up in the moment that it had all ended well before he was ready for the event to be finished. There were whole periods of that first… release… that he simply failed to recall later due to his initial excitement at the spectacle of it all. In his mad rush to see everything at once, he had missed much and felt hollow in the aftermath.

He promised himself that he would not make the same mistake again.

He gained the access hatch, wrenched the lever over to let himself through, and entered into a top-side world which he suspected few normal people had ever seen in the before-time. He approached the side of the building looking down onto Center Street, where the facade wall only came up to his waist and looked out across what he could see of Jackson’s town center. On the opposite side of the street, a two-level blue and white building stood, nearly unspoiled except that the windows had been smashed and some of the banisters from the wrap around porch railing had clearly been ripped out, perhaps for firewood. Hunter couldn’t imagine why someone would go to such trouble for firewood when a large portion of the surrounding area was carpeted in trees, but then, people rarely ever made sense to him. He looked at the sign on the front corner of the building, which said “Dali’s Jewelry Design” but also said, “Gone to Salt Lake” in black spray paint and wondered about Dali. He wondered who Dali had been and if Dali still was.

He adjusted his view to the right, taking in the small park in the center of the town square. Beyond the large arch of deer antlers at the corner, he could see a grid of temporary easy-ups and a few tents, some of which still looked usable, spread randomly in the grass among the stumps of felled trees. Most looked weather-beaten; Hunter imagined they must have been standing out there in the elements for close to a year by that point. Some of them had left their positions in the park to wander sadly across the streets, no doubt articulated by wind. They looked forlorn, those little baby sunshades, cut off from their mamas and papas out in the badlands of the open street. He pictured a mayor and other official looking people, perhaps a Treasurer, standing out there with police officers and bullhorns, trying to convince a crowd of townsfolk that they actually knew what was happening; that they knew what would happen next. Hunter scoffed to himself.