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

“There’s no one here. It’s just us. Just be who you are.”

Hunter’s hands began to shake; hard enough that he put his can of food down for fear of dropping it. The other man took his hand back and rested it in his lap, a forgotten thing. He sat there next to Hunter, utterly still, and waited.

Several minutes went by while Hunter stared into the dying coals of his little cook fire, struggling to find a place to begin. Before the fire could reduce to smoldering ashes, his guest rose and quietly drifted over to the pile of fuel. He grabbed two great handfuls of sticks and splintered wood and brought it all over to lie beside the fire pit. He began inserting pieces, scratching each one into the coal bed to stir up heat. Before long, flames were again dancing merrily among the rocks.

“My dad took us out camping when I was little,” Hunter said.

The man looked up from his work, frozen in place, and asked, “Yes?”

With effort, Hunter tore his gaze from the flames to look at the man; his furry jaw under flattened nose under deep, brown eyes. Owl’s eyes.

“I don’t remember how old I was anymore, but I think I must have been closer to five than I was to ten. After he’d set up our tent, mom said we needed to eat; we had hotdogs and things like that. My dad took me aside and showed me how to set up a campfire. A real one, too, not just one of those Duraflame logs; he hated those. So he showed me how to grind up dry grass in my hands and lay it down and to put a little building of dry, tiny sticks and stripped bark over it, and then he let me light it.” His voice had begun to flutter down deep in his chest like a trapped bird. He cleared his throat before continuing.

“I think that was when I fell in love with it. No… I don’t think. It was. That was when it happened. I’ve been chasing that feeling since then.”

“Feeling?” the man asked.

“I know you don’t understand.”

“Help me.”

Hunter wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “I never fit anywhere, you know? Even in my own family. I used to say things; ask questions. My brothers and even my parents would look at me like I was an alien or some kind of idiot. I didn’t have any friends. I was never bullied… maybe it would have been better if I had been; I don’t know. I just wasn’t there for people. I was ignored or… disregarded. Do you see?”

“I do.”

“Looking into a flame always helped me to forget all that. When the fire is there, when I can see it, get right up close, all the rest fades. The world around me disappears, and everything feels better. It doesn’t start to make sense; I don’t think anything could help with that. And frankly, I don’t care to understand. It seems to me that all the rest of the world was sick. But it all feels better when it’s just me and the fire.”

Hunter stopped talking and just sat quietly. He did so a long time, and the other man waited. He was sitting back on his bin again, back straight with his hands rested on his knees. He stared into the fire, as unblinking as Hunter, and thought his own hidden thoughts.

“It’s different setting a big fire than it is a small one,” Hunter finally said. “Before everything fell apart, I used to dream of setting giant, city-eating blazes that stretched for miles. I never did. As much as I wanted to, there were people everywhere. It didn’t matter where I went, really. There were always people somewhere. I used to dream of a world where I was the only one left in it just so I wouldn’t have to worry about it.”

“And now…” the man prompted.

A happy grin spread over Hunter’s face; a birthday cake grin. He said, “Yes! I tried my first big one not so long ago. It burned itself out before it could really get going, but I learned a lot from it. It’s a different skill, making something big that can travel the way it should, especially if you’ve spent your whole life agonizing over containing it. You have to think a lot more about wind, what’s in the path, and such. This time of year isn’t the best time either. Wait until summer comes. We’ll see some magic then.”

“You can’t stop,” said the man.

Hunter scoffed, staring into the flames, lost among them, and said, “I’ve been waiting for this world… my entire… life.”

Before Hunter knew what was happening, the other man was on him, behind him, wrapping his arms all around him. He tried to lift his gun, but there was a blur of jacket sleeve over his face and a loud smacking sound; his wrist exploded in pain and the revolver disappeared into the darkness of the night.

Realizing what must be happening, Hunter whimpered. He felt an arm like a stovepipe dig under his chin and encircle his neck. Almost immediately, his vision went black around the edges, rapidly constricting down into a pinprick of firelight. Tears spilled from his eyes as he reached for it; tried to touch it and bring the light back before it could wink out.

From far, far away, a voice said, “I’m so, so sorry. There is no place for you here.”

The light winked out.

He confirmed that Hunter had passed on by placing the cup of his ear to Hunter’s mouth to determine if he could feel or hear breathing. He gave it a good while as he knew that people could sometimes come back from a carotid strangulation. When he was certain that the diaphragm had moved its last breath, he pressed his index and middle fingers into the side of the neck and counted slowly to one hundred. Finally, he rested his ear on the dead man’s chest, closed his eyes, and waited.

He buried Hunter along with his pack in a little clearing out on the edge of Jackson. The ground was not yet frozen, though he expected that it would be very soon, so he only needed the round-nosed shovel to move the earth around. He laid the body into the ground carefully, taking pains that no portion of it should flop or tumble disrespectfully into the hole. He placed the pack at the young man’s head, covered him over with dirt, and returned the shovel to its hiding place in the backyard Rubbermaid toolshed two blocks away.

It was late in the evening when he was done, and he considered finding a vacant room at the Snow King Resort to wait out the morning but ultimately discarded the notion. He didn’t feel like sleeping in a strange place; never did after such encounters. A spell of melancholy always came over him at times like these and experience told him that the best medicine was to go where the territory was familiar. He had to go where all of the barriers could be safely lowered and forgotten, where no eyes could see and where no ears could listen.

He found the old mountain bike where he’d left it, dragged it out from behind the bush, and then checked the bag that had been wedged behind the tire. It still had all of the things he’d placed in it, all of the emergency, just-in-case things. He shuffled each item around in the bag, counting them as his fingers prodded. He then zipped the bag shut, shook it violently, opened it up again, and repeated the process. Convinced that all was well, he zipped it a final time, wedged it back under the bush, and pulled some shredded plastic and other garbage over it. He got on his bike and rode south.

He’d lost all track of time when he finally came to the end of the road, where it first deteriorated into gravel and dirt, and then just dirt. He followed this for a time until he hit the line of trees on the edge of the slope. He noted that he was almost directly lined up with the small cleft that marked the entry into the rear pass; in previous excursions, he’d misjudged the position and had been forced to push the bike along the edge of the trees, sometimes for at least a mile, before finding it. He noted with some species of satisfaction (for he could not remember that last time he had been truly satisfied) that he was improving. Minimally speaking, he was at least improving at finding his way back.