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

Ronny nodded, giggling like an idiot, and Clay shouted, “What makes you say that?”

“I… I blew up one of your guys. S-sorry…”

Ronny grunted. He gestured at Clay; a big “See???” look slapped across his face. Clay grimaced and whispered, “Will you put your dick back in your pants for two seconds?” Ronny flinched, caught between equal amounts of confusion and disgust.

Once again, Clay yelled out, “Those were your mines out there?”

“Yeah…”

“Well, why the hell did you put those mines out there?”

“Well… people were gonna come kill me…”

Clay snorted laughter despite himself. This was really going nowhere.

“Hey, uh… who’s up there? What are your names?”

“Um… Ned…”

“Okay. Ned. Who else?”

“Just… just Ned…”

“ He’s alone ,” Clay thought. “ No wonder the poor idiot’s shooting at us; he must be shitting his pants up there. ”

He wracked his brain a while, trying to figure out what to do next while Ronny fidgeted next to him. Come to think of it, he heard some of his other people muttering out there in the lot. He didn’t have much time to figure this out.

“Hey, Ned, you still there?”

“Yeah…”

Goddamn, but the guy sounded miserable.

“Listen… uh, I just want to talk to you, okay? I’m coming out from this dumpster. Don’t… don’t shoot me, okay? If you don’t, no one’s gonna shoot at you, see? If you do shoot at me, and more importantly if you fucking hit me, I’m not gonna be able to stop what they’ll do to you. Okay? Ned?”

“O-Okay…”

Clay looked at Ronny and said, “Don’t you fucking shoot, Ronny. If you do and I survive, the first thing I’ll do is kill you. You let him kill me first if you have to.”

A look of understanding donned in Ronny’s eyes and Clay grunted a sarcastic laugh, “Yeah, I thought you’d like that, you slippery fuck.”

He set his shotgun down and came out from behind the dumpster, moving slowly, anticipating a gunshot with every fiber of his being. Pap shouted out frantically as he moved, causing his muscles to tense and surprising a scandalized little fart out of him.

“You shoot at the Baws an’ I’m goan skewer you, you hear me yah crazy sumbitch!”

“Jesus Chri— Hey, can you not, Pap! Can you fucking just…?”

“Sorry, Baws…”

Clay rolled his eyes, groaning. He stood up straight and came out into the open, hands out to his sides. “Hey, you see me, Ned? Have a look! Come on out, man, nobody’s gonna shoot at you.”

“You… you mean it?”

“Son of a- I’m gonna start begging them to shoot me any fucking second if this goes on much longer, I swear to Christ!”

A small, gray little head poked up from behind the peak of the roof. It was hard to make out specific features at this range, but Clay was reminded distinctly of a little weasel, or maybe a ferret, as soon as he saw him. The spectacles he wore glinted loudly in the sunlight.

“You see?” shouted Clay. “Now you’ve put your head out and no one’s shooting at you, are they?”

“I guess not…”

“Good. Now, why don’t you come down here and talk to me, huh? Come on, I’ve had enough, already. I gotta bury two—no—three people as it is. I’m not trying to dig any more than I have to.”

“O-Okay…”

The head disappeared again. Clay stood there in the center of the lot, waiting. He sensed his people beginning to come out from hiding. He wondered idly if the other stragglers had shown up yet.

Ned eventually came around into the open from the side of the building, looking even smaller and more lost than Clay had originally imagined. He carried a rifle clutched in front of his chest, shielding himself with it like an old lady might shield herself with a handbag. He had a hunched and hunted look. Clay felt pity for the poor fuck just looking at him, suspected he would have felt pity even if he’d determined to be pissed off at him.

He nodded at the man and said, “Howdy, Ned. You wanna put that shooter down so we can talk a bit?”

The man looked down at his rifle and jerked, almost as if it startled him. He nodded shakily, leaned it up against the building, and then came further out into the yard. Clay heard footsteps approaching rapidly from behind. He glanced over his shoulder to see Ronny coming at them with a full head of steam, smiling hungrily. Clay suffered a moment of sick panic and froze completely. He had just enough time to think “ You dirty fucking…” before Pap calmly stepped up behind the charging man and pistol-whipped him in the back of the head with his old Model 29. Ronny took a nosedive into the dirt and slid about five feet on his face before he came to a stop. Clay looked down at him a bit, wondering what would come next, but Ronny only lay there motionless.

“Did you kill him?” he asked.

“Hope so,” Pap grumbled.

Clay sighed. “See if he’s still breathing, will you?”

Pap holstered his pistol and toed the man over, drawing some angry mutters from a few of Ronny’s lackeys. The man settled onto his back with his head laid over at a funny angle across his arm and began to snore.

“He’ll live I guess,” Pap said with little interest.

Clay turned around and looked at Ned, who stood before him pale-faced and just about ready to be blown over by a light breeze. He extended his hand to the man and said, “Come on, relax, huh? No one’s gonna hurt you. We’re not savages in my group… well, most of us aren’t anyway.”

“B-but the mines…”

“I understand about those. I know why you put ’em out there. I don’t hold it against you.”

Ned looked down at his hand and, seeming to draw on some hidden reserve of courage, swallowed hard. He took it and said, “Well, I’m… I’m really sorry about them anyway. I d-don’t wanna kill anyone…” His voice cracked on the last word, and he looked away.

“Well, okay,” Clay said softly. “We’ll start there.”

The first thing they worked out with Ned was where he’d positioned all the mines. There were six of them, it seemed, constructed using the reclaimed internals of some grenades found on the property (Clay experienced an uncomfortable puckering of ass when Ned pointed out the two mines his people had failed to flag). Ned lifted one of these out of the dirt and dusted it off carefully, showing them how they were safe to move since he hadn’t troubled to put any kind of anti-tamper circuitry in them. Clay looked at the thing and scratched his head; it just looked like an old coffee can to him, although it obviously had some sort of switch on top of it and was quite a bit heavier than just a can of coffee, judging from the way Ned cradled it in his hands. He said as much, and Ned nodded happily, having apparently forgotten about the two people his little devices had obliterated that day.

He ushered Clay, Pap, and Elton over to a concrete patio outside of the main office, where he sat down. He set the explosive between his legs, carefully pinched the pushbutton switch between his fingers, and lifted so that the two wires beneath it were exposed. He then pulled a small set of wire cutters from his front pocket and clipped these, pinching them both carefully to ensure that the ends couldn’t touch (though they appeared to be well covered with insulation), and peeled the lid off the can.

Clay leaned in to look into the can, but his vision was obscured immediately by Ned’s hand diving into the exposed cavity like a little pink spider. A second later, the muscles in his scrawny forearm flexed, and he pulled out a 9-volt battery. He set it on the pavement, dusted his hands off, and sighed happily.