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

He hid the bike in much the same fashion as he had his bag, extracting his jacket from the hollow of a trunk and shrugging into it after he finished his act of camouflage. He passed easily through the cleft and delved into the mountains. Those creatures that were still out and active at that time of season and night quieted at his passage, sensing some alien presence that did not belong. They waited a long time for him to be gone before they resumed their activity; their chittering in the early morning, their digging in the roots that had twisted through the cold dirt.

The sky was already beginning to run from black to dark blue; he knew as he traveled that the mountains around him obscured the first hints of pink and red on the horizon. Another hour, perhaps two, and the caps surrounding him on all sides would be bathed in those same rose-colored fingertips. He felt pleased at that thought. It was a thought that tickled a memory.

When he came upon the stream, he followed it. When it joined into the little river, he diverted along that course and continued on his way. When the river plunged into the crack in the rock wall of the mountain, he turned his shoulders sideways and slipped in between the jagged chips of granite that pulled at his jacket and jeans.

He had taken this path enough times that he was almost capable of doing it in the perfect dark; almost but not quite. There were still low-hanging hunks of rock reaching out to split his head, still plenty of treacherous potholes and cracks for him to tumble into. He produced a little flashlight, a thing just big enough to fill his palm, and turned it on. The narrow passage coalesced out of the darkness before him, and he saw how he had indeed been about to walk headlong into a very nasty looking spear of rock jutting out from the side, just waiting to reach out and change his plans for the remaining evening (now morning, he reminded himself). He crouched low, just shy of going down to his hands and knees, and continued on for a spell, always keeping the coursing water on his left.

Time proceeded oddly deep under the mountain. The man never carried any kind of timekeeping device on his person (he had received many watches as gifts over his lifetime but had always fallen out of the habit of wearing them), so he was unsure how long it took to traverse this portion of his route. There was no sky to view from down there; only the changing rock surface and the rushing water. He had once tried to count the seconds during one of his excursions; he lost interest at two thousand and abandoned the project.

He knew he was getting close when he saw the bladed, stainless steel contraption pulled up onto the rocky bank. It was fairly large; the diameter of the drum on which the blades rode was at least three feet, and the top of it protruded from the water surface when it was placed into the river. There was a little gearbox mounted on the side of the drum’s axle, out of which a thick, black cable ran, over the ground and up the shaft in the direction he was traveling. He supposed that the cable must have been resistant to the water and elements but wondered how long it would function in the damp environment before it required a replacement from the backup spool. He idly gave the drum a spin with his left hand as he passed it (reminding him, as it always did, of an old riverboat paddlewheel), wondering how much energy he generated as he did. He wondered if such a thing was even measurable back at the battery pack.

He followed the cable back along the shaft, leaving the little engineering curiosity behind, and noted how the ground went from rocky to smooth and regular as he traveled. Finally, he came to a wall of rock barring any further progress; set into its face was a heavy, metal door with a round wheel and a push-button combination key. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He opened it up and stared at it for a very long time with his flashlight. He had done this many times before, but some curiosity regarding the inner workings of his mind required that he must always review the combination before punching it in. All attempts to commit the numbers to memory had failed, just as attempts to memorize phone numbers in a world that still featured a working telephone network had failed. Such limitations did not alarm him; there were always adaptations that one could make. Wasn’t that all life was in the end, anyway? Just one endless adaptation?

He clamped his flashlight in his teeth before holding the paper up next to the keypad, which helped him to keep the numbers straight. He entered the sequence, noting the mechanical clicks and clanks sounding just under the door’s surface as he did so. When he was done, he folded the paper back up, stuck it in his pocket, and spun the wheel. A heavy, muted clang sounded down the shaft, transferring up the soles of his boots into his skeleton. He pulled the heavy door open, stepped through, and shut it behind him.

The space in which he found himself was as unlike the cave as fire is unlike water; a uniform cylinder laid on its side, with smooth steel walls and clearance between the ceiling and the man’s head measuring just over a foot. It ran nearly six feet from door to door and had a flat, drop-in floor. A line of low-power LED lights had activated when he opened the outer door, bathing the little room in a milky-blue light. There were racks on either side of the room bolted into the round walls holding rows of what resembled black car batteries, though he suspected they wouldn’t actually work in a car; there were many more wires coming out of these, connecting them all together in a daisy-chain with complex locking connectors. A small LCD readout showed the number “63”. He made a mental note to drop the paddlewheel back in the river the next time he was down that way.

Confirming that the outer door was locked, he slapped the red button mounted next to the inner door, thus killing the lighting system. He was now in familiar territory; the use of his sight was no longer required. He passed into the adjoining room, another cylinder, like a wraith, fluttering his fingers lightly over surfaces, hard angles, and dividers as he went. Eventually, he found the rolling chair and settled down into it to relax his aching hips a while.

Closing his eyes, he breathed in deeply, reveling in the total dark, in the knowledge that down here, he was truly alone. There was no need to be anyone at all. No need to be a certain way, to be on guard. He could simply exist, and that would be enough for anyone because the only anyone in the deep down dark… was him.

He stayed like that a long time, letting himself adjust to the total silence, made imperfect by the flow of blood he could now hear inside his own body, the reserved thump of his heart in its cage. Eventually, he began to hear other things, things he well knew were not in the room with him; sounds out of memory. When he thought the conditions were just right (he would not have been able to explain how he knew they were; it was the same feeling of rightness you got when you knew you were ready to jump off a diving board or shoot for the eight-ball over the vast, green expanse of a pool table) he began to speak.

He spoke to Emma and Christine, both now long dead; ghosts from the past. He told them how he was and what he’d been doing since the last time they talked. He told them about the dreams he’d been having (his sleep had suffered somewhat of late), and about the little projects to which he applied himself. He asked for their thoughts and opinions on certain matters, neither expecting nor receiving any answer, though continuing to ask on the off-chance that this time, maybe this time, there could be an answer, if only he could strain hard enough to hear.

There were moments in which his throat constricted down and his chest seized painfully, robbing him of all ability to speak or even take a breath. The muscles in his face and spine would flex convulsively during these periods; he would double over in his chair until his chest rested on his knees. All he could do was rock gently in place and groan, waiting for the episode to pass, grateful for the darkness. He knew the interplay of twitching, throbbing muscle across his face and neck must have looked horrifying and hated to think that either of the girls might see such a display if they were there.