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

“Fuck it,” she spat and stood up straight out of her hole.

Lum threw his hands up in frustration. “Yeah, who wants to eat, anyway? Let’s have a damned far -works show up here while we’re at it. Who’s got the flare gun?”

Between Lum’s bitching, Alan’s shocked “Dude!,” and Amanda’s hissed “What the hell, now?” Rebecca wasn’t quite sure which she would or should address first; decided she didn’t give a shit about that either. Not one of them had said a thing worthy of response, so she did not bother. She turned on her heal and began the easy descent back down the hill, which would lead her around a copse of fir trees jutting out at the bottom of the slope and on to a lower adjoining ridgeline that would take her to their camp just under a mile away. They offered no further challenge as she went.

She had just traveled around the first patch of trees at the bottom of the slope when she realized she’d left her pack behind. She dug her nails into her palms (it was not cold enough, even up high as they were, to require gloves; she had hers stuffed into a coat pocket) and considered, only briefly, the humiliation involved in returning for it. Deciding it was more than she was willing to swallow, she abandoned it to whatever may happen, whether the others hauled it back to the tent or not. Much of what was in it wasn’t actually her gear , anyway; just a bit of lunch, for which she felt no craving, a whole slew of canvas game bags which Lum had amassed together in preparation for their trip, and a rain fly in case the weather turned. All of the truly important gear was back at the camp.

“ Just find a sucker…” repeated her mother’s voice, so deep inside her mind that she didn’t even realize that it was really her own voice that she heard reverberated back at her from the walls of her skull.

And why does he have to be a sucker, huh? Just what the fuck is wrong with me that I’d need to trick a man into taking care of me? I can do… things. I can…

Oh, fuck it.

A hot wetness leaked down the front of her already hot cheeks, remaining liquid in mountain air not cold enough to require gloves, kissing the corners of her mouth in a brief, salty touch, and joining together at the tip of her chin, where she could feel them shudder in time with her steps. She swiped at it hard enough to click her teeth together. Her mother’s tipsy, muted laughter ricocheted around in her mind, a cackle drowning out the whispered promises of whatever new man it was that had followed her home for the week, or evening. Or hour.

Fuck her. She was a drunk. You could dress it up however the hell you chose, but Rebecca knew better. Mom wasn’t a social drinker; she wasn’t full of life or “ earthy .” She didn’t have a vibrant personality, or any of the other excuses she made when someone pointed out (politely, now, always politely) that she’d gotten maybe just a touch too merry for the room.

She was a god damned drunk trying to kill away whatever had troubled her with her cheap Two Buck Chuck and, when that wasn’t available, the emergency box of Franzia.

She found the camp fifteen minutes later, still in the state in which it had been left, grey coals from last night’s fire still in a jumble outside the little ring of tents. She sat down in one of the folding chairs and contemplated starting the hike back to the Jeep. That was a hell of a slog, she well knew, probably taking at least four hours going downhill (it had taken more than half their daylight to hike up to what Lum had called “scouting elevation” two days ago). She didn’t think she was up to making the walk back on her own, not to mention the long return drive to the valley, never mind the fact she would be stranding the others. She wasn’t angry enough to do that to them. Settling back into the chair, she realized Amanda had the keys and began to giggle at her own stupidity, the last of her anger having burned out of her like an oxygen-starved fire.

She laughed a while, sitting in that chair, and thought about nothing at all, especially not about drinking, or the shadows of her past, or of being pretty. Especially not of being pretty.

Lum put the bugle to his lips and sat there a moment in contemplation. He placed it back in his lap, cocked his head, and then returned it to his lips again. He did not blow. He put it back down in his lap yet again, shook his head, and said, “You’ns just crazy’s what it is. Seems the prettier you get, the crazier you get. Or, maybe I’m just lucky, I guess…”

“I beg your pardon?” Amanda asked, eyebrow lifting dangerously.

“Seem to tap dance all over each other’s nerves like you’re tryin’a stomp out a far. You’re both either related, in love, or crazy. Take your pick.”

Amanda grunted and glassed the hill for a bit, just to give her hands something to do. She muttered, “Well, I get mine from my mom; I think she was probably more Shoshone than anything else. My dad said she always had quite a wild streak in her. As far as Rebecca goes… I don’t know. Maybe you’re right, and the pretty ones are crazy.”

“Didn’t mean just her,” Lum said, eyes locked to the top of the hill.

“What?” Amanda asked.

“Dude,” laughed Alan, “you do realize that you’re hot, right?”

Amanda opened her mouth to reply, but there were no words there to let out. She dropped the binoculars to her lap and looked down to a spot a few feet away from her in the snow. She hadn’t thought about being anything more than just “Mom” in the last few months. She hadn’t felt stirrings towards that other role since just after they’d buried Billy… and that was a dangerous time better left behind. She felt that same old flush of excitement mingled with crippling guilt threaten to knock the air from her lungs, to just rob any ability she might have to breathe.

“A lot of times they don’t see it in themselves,” Lum was saying.

“How about the two of you shut up?” Amanda suggested, voice deadly flat.

Alan said nothing as advised. Lum cleared his throat softly, offered a “’Scuse me,” and winded another call on the bugle.

Off in the distance, a ghostly, disembodied answering call floated back to them on the cool morning air. Amanda was shocked at how similar it was to the call Lum had sent off, sounding more like an honest to god echo than an altogether separate entity.

“Aw’right, we’re in business,” Lum hissed, patting the air close to the ground in excitement. “Alan, get that rifle propped up on your knee or somethin’ like. That or lay down on the other side of the cleft so’s your head’s just peeking out over the top. We gotta move as little as possible when they come through, or they’ll see us an’ then that’ll be that.”

“Are you sure they’ll be coming across the slope above us? Couldn’t they come from a different direction?” asked Alan.

“Anything’s possible,” said Lum. “But they been through here a few times now; the sign puts them up by that ridge. Absent any other wisdom, we’ll rely on their habits to place them proper.”

A time of quiet suspense followed; of tense muscles and aching limbs. Unclear on what they should expect to happen, Alan and Amanda had both been waiting for some animal (Lum had insisted they were elk, though how he could tell just from looking at a pile of shit Alan could not guess) to come out into the open almost immediately. Neither of them understood the distances at which the call of a bull carried. Alan sat frozen in place with his left elbow propped awkwardly on his upraised knee, hand holding the Winchester. He had scooted down deep into the little cleft and wedged right into the bottom notch so that his left foot would be planted higher than his hip. This disparity in elevation allowed him to comfortably aim the rifle up along the slope of the mountainside while expending very little strength.