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

Ned took another one of those steadying breaths of his and nodded to himself.

“Let’s have a look,” he said softly. “I’m nearly done…”

In the blackness, Ronny heard his own name floating down towards him, oscillating and somersaulting over on itself like a feather caught up in a breeze. It had a plodding, wobbly quality like it was being played in slow motion through the spinning blades of a fan. As he thought about this, the insides of his head began to pound violently against his skull, originating from a focal point towards the rear, right above where his neck attached. He groaned miserably, thinking he might be sick. From far away, the sound of his name uncoiled out through space to brush over his ears again.

“What the fuggin… what ?”

“I said to wake up, Ronny. Clay wants you.” It was Elton.

Ronny skinned his eyes just wide enough to look out, or rather up, as it seemed he was reclined on an old couch. He was in some sort of dimly lit room or waiting area. He sensed rather than saw a door somewhere off to his left; it was the source of the limited light. The blurry, washed-out form of Elton stood towards his feet, hands on his hips. The man was surrounded by several people, all standing at rigid attention; they all wore clear plastic rain slickers and, just visible underneath the slickers, what appeared to be military uniforms. All of them stood patiently without speaking.

“What the hell do you guys want?”

“ You guys ? Hey, man, how many of me do you see?”

“Cut the crap, Elton. I mean everyone else. I know there’s only…” He trailed off as he looked closer at the others. They weren’t wearing slickers; those were laundry bags pulled over their heads. Ronny swiped at his eyes and focused in the dim light. He was looking at a collection of manikins.

“Where the hell am I, Elton?”

“Vietnam museum, I think. Can you get up? Clay’s pretty hot to see you.”

“Yeah… yeah, I think I can. Give me a hand up, will you?”

Elton did, and they exited through the door out into the dying light of the evening. The others from the advance team were out and about, mostly just moving from place to place in quick, little stuttering trots, lighting the way ahead with flashlights. Most of them seemed to be carrying sheets of paper and Ronny thought he might have seen scrawls of writing on some of them. Elton had moved out ahead to lead the way towards the machine shop; seeing it well off in the distance, Ronny suffered a hard turn of disorientation. It was the last place he could remember being and now, coming to consciousness a good three hundred yards away from that place, he thought he might be able to understand what the characters in some of those old science fiction shows experienced the first time they took a ride in a teleporter.

“Where they all running to, Elton?” he asked as he shuffled along.

“Makin’ lists.”

“Lists? That much is still here?”

Elton’s head nodded, though he kept his attention on the ground as he walked, and said, “You can’t believe it, man. About half the racks in the store are still filled with all the legal stuff, but it’s just like Pap said. All that hardware in the museum? It looks like it all works. There’s M60’s, SAWs, M240’s… we’re talkin’ belt-fed, you know? I even think the tanks still run! It’s just crazy!”

Ronny smiled despite his headache. “Anyone know how to drive those tanks?”

“You got me, but we’re gonna ask around, for damned sure…”

Ronny kept his eyes open as they approached the machine shop, looking to see who was out there. Most of their people were back over by the store and museum; he didn’t see much of anything out here, except that the machine shop itself had its roll-up door pulled open.

“It was Pap that clocked me, wasn’t it?”

This time Elton did stop to turn around. He looked at Ronny and grunted, “Yep” with an expression that said, “So what, now what?”

“Thought so,” Ronny muttered, rubbing the back of his head. “I figure Clay and that shit-kicker are the only ones with the balls enough try.”

Elton snorted. “Hah, you ain’t half as bad as you think you are, Ronny…”

“You just fucking try me some time,” called Ronny angrily.

Elton had already turned his back again; he waved at the other man and said, “Oh, just give it a rest. Come on in here. He’s waiting on you.”

Ronny found the inside of the shop’s main building unsettling. There was a high roof, and the floor stretched well back into the distance to accommodate the large machines and tools housed by the building, all of them things beyond his understanding. It all looked like so many blocky hunks of metal to him, joined together by chains, belts, wheels, and pistons jutting out at every angle. The whole thing made him feel very small and very stupid, feelings which he despised intensely.

There were workbenches strewn throughout the room, composed of both wood and steel; in the center was a large apparatus that looked to Ronny like a couple of water heaters that had been joined together through a series of pipes and valves, which turned out to be exactly what it was. Clay crouched before the contraption while a much smaller rodent of a man (Ronny realized it was that asshole they’d been shooting at) pointed at some sort of fitting extending from the bottom of the right-hand heater’s tank like a stunted metal penis, and prattled on like a gossiping old maid.

“I got him, Clay.”

Clay motioned for the little man next to him to hang on a while and, looking back over his shoulder, nodded at Ronny. He said, “How we feeling, Slugger?”

Ronny made sure he had his hands out where they were visible; he didn’t know if Pap was hiding somewhere in the shadows just waiting to jump out and whack him again, the fucking coward.

“Head hurts.”

Clay tsked and stood up, groaning as he pressed into his cracking knees with both hands. He walked over to Ronny, hobbling a bit as he came, and asked, “You under control now? I told Pap to be scarce a while until we knew for sure.”

Ronny grimaced, feeling a dull kind of rage pounding in time with his aching head at being so anticipated, and said, “Yeah, I think I’m done starting shit for the day.”

Clay raised his eyebrows and softly said, “Well, thank fuck, then.” He gestured over at a workbench and, in a louder conversational voice, said, “Come over here and look at this, Ronny, I want you to see something…”

The bench held yet more shit that Ronny failed to comprehend, which only served to sour his mood even further. It looked like one of those old mad scientist laboratories he used to see in cartoons as a kid, with glass jars, canisters, and copper tubes running everywhere in big looping spirals. There appeared to be a fire running in the canister on the right; he could see the red-hot glow of embers through a small port at its base. One of the copper tubes, the big one that had the most loops in it, ran from the lid of the burning can down to a glass jar filled with brownish-yellow water, which bubbled along happily. As he stared at it, Clay laughed out loud and said, “Now is that not the craziest shit you’ve ever seen?”

“It’s great. What the fuck am I looking at?”

To this, Clay said, “Explain it, please, Ned.”

Ned approached cautiously, remembering the look Ronny’s face had held when the man charged at him. He began to clean his glasses against his filthy shirt and said, “Well it’s j-just a prototype, really… a-a proof of concept? What you’re looking at is a scaled-down model of a wood gasifier.”