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

They’d all hustled to just get on with it, all of them feeling some measure of pride at being hand-selected for the job, each of them anticipating the end of the race just over the next rise. They’d all been discussing this place for months now, the mythical Lead Devil Museum out in Colorado, and the place had become cemented in many of their minds as a kind of talisman, some wondrous land of fabled power and doom. They wouldn’t admit as much to each other, of course; they were adults, after all. But on that day in March, as they drove up the dirt road to the compound, they all sensed a kind of weight in their actions. There was an undercurrent of momentousness in the air.

A thing that Pap had said to him, now several months back, bubbled up to the forefront of Clay’s conscious mind:

“In that old Youtube video I saw, he kept saying how everything worked; he seemed super proud of that. He said that all them gover’ment museums had to disable their exhibits in some way—turn ’em to cold iron, like. But his stuff was all a private collection. All-a his toys was hot, oily, and ready to go…”

Now approaching the property, they skirted a double-row of chain-link fences on their left, spaced twenty yards apart, both rows of which had big, lazy loops of razor wire threaded through the tops. They looked solid as hell to Clay and must have stood some twenty feet high. There were sandbag bunkers set up at regular intervals along the barrier, guard towers, old burned-out spotlights. They crested a shallow rise and saw a deceased half-track off in the distance.

“Son of a bitch…” whispered Pap. “Weren’t kiddin’, were they?”

“Uh,” confirmed Clay. It certainly seemed that Uncle Sam had not been fucking around out here. He struggled to tamp down his excitement, but it sure was getting hard to do. Looking at the Army presence along the perimeter, he thought they’d be able to outfit just based on those leftovers alone, even if the museum and front store had been completely cleared out.

They eventually came to a front gate, which was basically just more of the same of what they’d already passed, only dialed up to eleven, as the old Rock N Roll relics from the 70’s used to say. The opening itself was really just a giant segment of fence on wheels that slid back like a pocket door, wide enough to admit three deuce-and-a-half’s traveling side by side. Clay noted a thick rope of chain tying the gate to its adjoining fence and, just beyond that, a similar setup on the inner fence. Looking closer, he noticed that the double-row of fences were also gated off to each side of the sliding entries, only these looked like barred doors that opened regularly instead of sliding along on a wheeled track. More sandbag bunkers all around this, which stood empty, though there were matching bunkers behind the wire. These contained both the decaying remains of soldiers as well as what looked like a couple of rifles and a machinegun.

The main gate was ahead of them on their left. To the right of the gate, down the dirt road about a hundred yards, were more collections of sandbags, snarls of razor wire, and an almighty shit-pile of bodies strewn throughout the whole works. Clay estimated they must have numbered somewhere around two or three hundred. There were burned-out vehicle wrecks interspersed among the bodies, hung up on the obstacles, nosed-down into ditches, or just blown over on their sides.

“Nope,” Clay muttered, taking it all in. “They weren’t fucking around at all.” He keyed the CB and said, “Let’s get out there with some cutters.”

One of Elton’s guys (again nameless as far as it went with Clay) hoofed over to the gate carrying heavy-duty bolt cutters. Clay hopped out of the GMC with his Mossberg, earning an unhappy squawk from Pap. The larger man stumbled out of the driver’s side, tugging angrily at his old .45-70 lever gun, which had hung up in the seatbelt. He finally got the damned thing extracted, grunting out an uncharacteristic string of bitter curses, and rushed stiff-legged over to the fence.

“What the hell, Baws!”

“Back-up, Pap. Feels nervy, out here.”

There was a grunt followed by a loud clack, and they soon heard the rapid rattle-clank of chain cascading into the dirt. Pap grabbed onto the gate and pulled, face reddening as he strained under the weight of it.

Clay said, “Alright, nicely done, there… uh… fella.”

“It’s Paul,” offered the man with the bolt-cutters.

“Sure, Paul, I knew… Nah, you know what? Fuck it. I didn’t know. Sorry. Good to meet you, Paul. Shit.”

Paul’s shoulders shook slightly as he laughed. He said, “No worries, Clay. Uh, can I call you Clay, is that cool?”

“Well, you’d better not call me your fuckin’ sweetheart.”

Paul laughed again and said, “Heh, well, good to meet you, too.”

He clipped through the chain on the secondary gate and spilled it out into the dirt as well. Pap and another of his boys tugged the gate open and Paul, who felt pretty decently about the whole situation, turned to offer a little bow to the men and women behind him. Some of them laughed, and a few pumped their fists at him, calling out encouragement. Paul smiled serenely, settled the heavy cutters on his shoulder, and strolled into the compound in total satisfaction, imagining that the first man to walk on the moon (whatever the hell his name had been) must have felt something pretty similar. He made it in some two hundred feet before the ground exploded violently beneath him, belching up a black gout of dirt and bits of Paul high into the air; what was left of him cartwheeled through space like some kind of special effects dummy. The body fell back to earth unceremoniously, as lifeless as the clods of dirt that rained down around it.

There were hands on Clay before he had a chance to process what had happened, pulling on him, stuffing him down into a low crouch. He realized it was Pap, who had somehow managed to jam Clay under his ass and hold him there like he was some kind of human footstool. He tried to stand back up, but the bigass hillbilly’s ass was just too fucking big.

“Get the fuck off me, Pap, before I gut you!” he grunted. It felt like his ribs would come squirting out from his asshole any moment.

Pap was unimpressed. He said, “Shut up, a minute, Baws. Ain’t safe outch’ere…”

Vision blackening around the edges, Clay wheezed, “It was… a landmine… you… fuckin’… ox!” He decided to reverse directions, opting to collapse to the ground rather than push up against Pap’s weight; the man probably had sixty pounds on Clay. Not expecting this, the other tipped back over Clay’s retreating form, landing on his back with a grunt. His ridiculous, floppy cowboy hat fell from his head, and this seemed to outrage him more than anything else, moronically.

Clay stood over him, arms rested on his knees and panting. He said, “I… appreciate the sentiment… Pap… ugh!” He straightened up and pulled in the biggest breath of air he could manage. He pointed down at his friend and said, “But you are going on a fucking diet, big boy. Either that or you stop wiping me with your ass every time something happens!”

Pap stood up and dusted himself off indignantly. “Reckon you’ll change yer tune if’n you get shot…”

“Pap, I’d prefer getting shot to having the life slowly crushed out of me. You fucking buffalo!”

He looked around at the others, who were crouched in various positions of readiness behind trucks or piles of sandbags, scanning the area. He rolled his eyes heavenward and moaned, “Awe, Jesus Chri— it was a fucking mine , you tits! Will you come outta there?”

They did so, looking jumpy as all hell, and Clay turned around to get a look at the damage. He stepped forward but was stopped by Pap’s hand. “Might be more, Baws,” he whispered.