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

He looked at those crutches and suppressed a grimace. He wanted to ignite a diesel fire and throw them in.

Olivia had explained to him earlier (when he asked) about the likelihood of fitting him with a prosthetic. She explained that such appliances had always required a custom fit and specialized manufacture, down to taking a cast of the remaining limb. The facilities and know how to do such a thing just didn’t exist anymore. The likelihood of happening upon such a prosthesis was also next to impossible (Wang’s variety of amputation had been rare), meaning that the potential selection out in the world was already extremely limited and, because whatever they did find would have been built for another person’s morphology, would have been intensely uncomfortable for Wang to wear, probably doing more harm than good in the long run. Sadly, his options had been narrowed down to crutches or hopping.

Hop-Along , he thought. There’s an applicable nickname.

On the fifth day, Olivia declared that it was time to get him out into some fresh air; that he needed a change of scenery as well as smells other than his own bed farts. He sat up on his cot, a task that got a bit easier each day but which also disgusted him mildly for the simple triumph he felt at such a mundane accomplishment, and reached for the walker but Olivia stopped him before he could pull it over.

“I don’t think we’re there just yet,” she said. “It’s pretty uneven ground outside, so I think we’ll make this outing in a chair.”

He settled back wordlessly and waited for the wheelchair. She brought it over and made to help him up, which he waved away impatiently. Olivia pursed her lips at this but stood back, deciding that a flash of anger was a good thing. It promised that some of his fight was returning, a characteristic of which she had been told but had yet to really see. He levered himself up to a standing position using the chair’s armrests as an anchor while Olivia held it in place by the handles, not trusting its handbrake in the slightest. She noted with approval that the majority of the work had been accomplished with his right leg in a kind of assisted pistol squat. She liked seeing that he was using his remaining leg to take up a lot of the slack but also knew that he had some thickening up to do in his arms and shoulders. Such things would happen naturally over time, but it was also true that he would benefit from as much strength as he could build in this region. As he spun carefully and lowered into the chair with shaking elbows, she made a note to start him on seated shoulder pressing exercises.

Emerging back out into the world had been something of a shock for Wang for a few reasons. For one, he had not been prepared for the chill in the air. The sun’s position in the sky told him it was something like midday, so this nippy weather was as warm as it was apt to get. He realized only then how cozy it was inside his tent. The brightness threw him a bit as well. They kept a couple of propane lanterns going in the tent, which provided all of the light he needed, but that bright blue sky overhead and the dull ache in his eyes told him just how dim things had actually been.

Finally, the frenetic, preoccupied activity of people hustling from place to place brought on a feeling of homesickness for his valley that he didn’t even realize he possessed. The tents of the Forward Surgical Team were positioned upon a small rise in the center of the encampment and Wang could see tents of all shape, color, and size stretching on for what he thought must have been miles.

Well, here I am again, back in one of these fucking places , he thought.

Oblivious, his caretaker began to roll him forward down the gentle slope, towards a collection of what Wang soon began to think of as “activity pockets,” groupings of people carrying out tasks at once familiar and unknown; some portion of Wang’s internal workings understood that these people were preparing meals, maintaining gear, cleaning weapons, washing clothes or utensils, cataloging supplies, and so forth, but the particulars of these activities were lost to him. The people were foreign… alien. The gear that passed from hand to hand fell into a riot of clicking, clacking, jangling parts; a nonsensical jumble of critical items he couldn’t begin to identify. He rotated his head quickly to one side, a kind of self-test he had developed over the past few days to determine if he was functioning in an impaired state—he felt that familiar balloon-head detachment; an indication that they had him well medicated and probably not firing on all eight cylinders. Consequently, any concerns over his inability to categorize discrete actions took a backseat. He found it easier to take in the bigger picture as a result.

Beyond the outermost edges of the tents was a vast expanse of red-brown flatness under a bright blue sky, paradoxically cold despite the presence of the shining sun. He felt its rays on the back of his neck and realized that the chill was just a con; a person could stay out in this cold air and develop a sunburn just as fast as could be done at the beach in July. This realization added weight to his inclination that this place should be disliked; he mistrusted any location that made you feel safe and then reached out to bite as you took your ease, such as a safe zone that burned your skin as the season plunged headlong towards Winter. He classified such behavior as duplicitous and irredeemably shitty.

“Where is this?” he asked as Olivia carefully nudged his chair through the rutted dirt.

“We’re out in the flat wilderness between Cane Beds and Rock Crossing,” she answered. “It’s toward the northern territory of Arizona.”

“Seems to be a whole lot of nothing out here. Kind of an odd location for a camp. Most of them were outside of major cities or by airports. Close by to large populations, in other words.”

Olivia said, “That’s true, but this camp was a consolidation. Towards the end, when it was clear that we were no-shit going down, Otter made the call to displace to this location. He chose it as a midway point between the Vegas, Phoenix, Albuquerque, and Salt Lake quarantine camps. He brought what was left of the Phoenix survivors here, and then sent envoys out to each of the other locations I mentioned. In the following months, folks started to trickle in. Drips and drabs, mostly.”

“Not many left to get the message?”

“That was a lot of the reason, yeah. Also, a lot of people didn’t stay in the camps at the end, even if they were infected. I think some of them wanted to go off and die in peace, and then a lot of the people that left ended up being immune through some random chance of nature; looking for surviving family, I guess. There weren’t enough of us to keep them from leaving, so we all kind of… sat back, you know? Sat back and waved at them as they left. Wished them luck.”

Wang rotated in his seat to look back at her; the tone of her voice concerned him, and he forgot momentarily to be angry at everything. She was looking off in the distance, though, and seemed not to notice.

“Here we ended up with those people who decided not to walk away, for whatever reason. Maybe they knew they wouldn’t find anyone out in the world or maybe they didn’t even have anyone to go looking for; I don’t know. They’re here with us now.”

“How many?” asked Wang.

“About a hundred and fifty civilians, give or take, and another forty or so military from various branches. Most of us are Army or National Guard… again, assorted divisions. Then there are a handful of Marines and even four MARSOC guys. Finally, there’s the Otter, the last living Seal, as far as any of us can tell.”

Wang sagged in his chair, and Olivia abruptly stopped pushing so she could come around and look at him. “What is it,” she asked.