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

So fuck it, and fuck you, too, if you got some shit to say about it. You weren’t there.

We kept our routine up for a while… weeks, I guess… and then one day…

One day…

I guess maybe we were followed back to our camp. Or… or maybe not. Not knowing… it’s one of those things I’ll have to learn how to live with at some point, I guess. Haven’t figured out how, yet. I’ll never really know what happened. I’ll never know who it was that did it. And… and I’ll never be able to hunt them down… whoever they were.

We, uh… well, we came back one day, and someone had been at the girls. Clara was… was dead and… um… clothes ripped up… all the way off, in some places. Isaac’s wife, too. They were tied together, hand and foot so that they faced each other. I guess they were done with knives. And, uh… they were bleeding from places… places that hadn’t been stabbed. And then it looked like Emma’d had her head caved in with a rifle butt or some such.

I don’t remember so well what happened after that. Whoever it was had taken everything; our tents, food, water, medicine. Our families. I remember Isaac screaming, screaming louder than anything I’d ever heard in my life; he started coughing up blood at one point, I recall that very clearly. And then he started beating his fists against anything he could get his hands on, you know? Dirt, rocks, the concrete of the overpass. He started flailing at anything, with his hands spraying blood everywhere. I couldn’t move or say anything, I just sat there on the ground holding Clara’s head in my lap, stroking her hair back. Wiping the tears from her eyes.

He started raving, and that’s when I believe that he went truly insane. Crazy fucking rapid-fire, nonstop ranting; just this goddamn avalanche of words spilling out of his mouth. He kept going on and on about how we were cursed, we were going to hell, he’d brought this down on us. He started damning God and then, right after that, claimed there was no God, that the universe was just some dumb animal that was always, uh, course correcting? Yeah. He said that and all kinds of other shit, just that crazy fucking mouth of his constantly running; tatta-tatta-tatta-tatta-tatta…

I got tired of hearing him pretty soon; I just wanted to be there with Clara and have him go the fuck away but he wouldn’t, so I hit him. And, well, the last thing I can remember just after that was the look in his eyes when he came at me. The dead, empty look.

I don’t know how long I was out, but he did a whole lot more than knock me out. He nearly killed me, I guess; I don’t know why he didn’t just go ahead and finish the job. Maybe he thought he had. That was a beating like I’d never had in my life—it was almost a week before I could walk again.

The girls were gone when I came to. I don’t know what he did with them. Buried them, I suspect, but who knows? I do know I have no clue what happened to Clara’s remains, nor our parents. My mom was torn to pieces in the food riots; I saw it with my own eyes. At one point, she was right there, screaming, with a sea of people between us. We were yelling at her to drop the bag, to just let the fucking thing go, but she wouldn’t; she just kept clutching it to her chest and screaming. And then, just like that, she was disassembled and disappeared right before our eyes, like she’d never been there at all.

Then, later on, Dad went, and the fucking Soldiers carted his body off somewhere. They burned him or threw him in a pit, and I have no idea where that was either.

And then Clara. God fucking help me; I don’t know where she is. I don’t know where any of them are. I don’t know.

“Jesus Christ, Ronny…”

Clay sat in his chair, staring at the man, completely horrified. His voice had cracked when he spoke, though he didn’t care just then. He tried to think of something further to say but couldn’t. He poured out another couple of drinks with a shaking hand, and then settled back to look out into the darkness; to look anywhere other than Ronny’s tortured eyes. He repeated himself.

“Jesus Christ…”

Ronny pulled his drink down in one great swallow, hissed, and said, “Yeah…”

They were silent for a time, though Clay couldn’t say for how long. His mind was still reeling from the story. Before long, Ronny filled his cup a final time and threw it back.

He said, “Clay, you’re not ever going to ask me to explain myself again, right on? I’m done explaining. Things are what they are. We can expect people to just be the way they are. It’s one of two things I learned from Isaac: he taught me just how easy killing is, see? It isn’t any big fucking deal. There’s no great struggle, God’s not going to reach down with his fucking finger and stop your heart. Someone gets in front of you; you erase them. Or they’ll erase you. You’ll either wise the fuck up and figure that out or you won’t. And, I guess that if you don’t, you’ll just be a problem that solves itself, eventually.”

Ronny tossed his cup into the dirt, stood from his chair, and walked away unsteadily. Clay watched his back as he went, watched him until he was swallowed up by the darkness.

He began to seriously consider the possibility that Ronny was in need of an accident.

Clay stayed out in that chair drinking until the rest of his people arrived that evening. They came in a long line of bright headlights, some of which were busted out or pointing dimly in off-kilter directions, stretching back down the cracked and pitted road running along the double row of razor wire fence. A handful of men and women stood at the gate holding rifles, transformed into two-dimensional black cutouts in the glare, waving at the approaching column. Trucks of all shape and size trundled slowly onto the uneven ground of the property and, being directed by the waving people on foot, began to arrange themselves into a quasi-orderly grid. From his position on the patio, Clay couldn’t tell if they were making a good job of it or producing a shambles; there simply wasn’t enough light to see. He assumed he’d have a better view of things when the sun came up, at which point he could most likely get a good sense of just what a chaos had been created. He smirked, heavy lids drooping over his eyes like sodden tent flaps, and filled his cup. It didn’t matter how much of a mishmash the lot was come morning; there they would all stay until his people decided they’d taken everything the land could provide, and moved on.

He sensed a presence over his shoulder and suppressed his displeasure—an involuntary narrowing of the left eye while the right remained bright and open. He was testy, he knew; he always became so when he drank too much. He said, “Whoever that is, either declare your business directly or seek shelter in some place other than the shadow of my ass.”

“S-sorry, Clay. I just wanted to see…”

He turned to glance over his shoulder. “Ned, hey. You eat yet?”

“Yes…”

“Well, consider me awash in approbation, then. Come around where I can see you, huh? Have a seat in that chair.”

The small man quietly did as he was instructed, producing hardly a scrape or scuffle as he lowered into the chair.

“Drink?”

“Not rea—”

“You do right now.” Clay pulled a new cup from the bag beside his chair, filled it, and set it down on the cooler. “There. Now take that up. You don’t have to drink out of it, I guess—poor, misguided wretch—but just hold onto it for me all the same.