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

“We’re sick, Cor.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Sick. The whole fucking world.”

She reached out and rubbed his back with her hand. “We’ll heal.”

“You think so? I just heard a fucking story today like you wouldn’t believe.” She had moved around him a bit in order to have enough room to remove her shoes; his back was to her now, and his head rose and fell slightly as his labored breathing moved him.

“It’s all sesh-fucking concessions, Cor. Every fucking day, we’re making another… fucking… concession. Rattling along from place to place, fucking locusts, eat as much as we can. So what? So we can shit on each other, I suppose. But that’s the way now, that’s how it is. You do what you have to, goddamn it, and you don’t fucking blink or ask for fucking mercy. And you start out with ideals, see, of fu-course you fucking do, but that shit all gets eroded eventually. Start out making a bunch of rules to keep the fucking savages at heel; hope they’ll play along, Christ’s sake, heaven fore-fucking-fend they want to go their own way, press the boundaries, huh? Ain’t any goddamned police, so why not? So, wha? What now, huh? Gotta enforce rules, whether you fucking know how or not, gotta keep ’em enforced or the whole damned mess comes crumbling down. Let things slip, hand out a beating here or there, sure, maybe put a bullet in some of ’em… Jesus fucking Christ. Mutilate ’em. And who fucking says, huh? Who fucking says ‘I’ve gotta be that cocksucker?’”

“Clay…?”

“No one fucking says, that’s who; it just is what it is. You don’t get caught up in it, see, you do what you have to, goddamn it, and you don’t fucking blink or ask for fucking mercy. No… no fucking mercy…”

He wiped at his face and sighed, exhausted.

Quietly, Corina climbed into the bag behind him, adjusted the padding underneath her until she was certain it was as comfortable as she could get it, and then pulled at his shoulders gently. He allowed himself to be drawn in, lying down beside her with his back up against her chest, and she slipped her arm beneath his head like a pillow. She covered him with the flap of the sleeping bag and then pulled another blanket over the both of them. He was snoring before she finished.

“Reckon I’m ’bout plum fed up with all this damned weather.”

Lum shrugged deeper into his upturned collar and scarf, struggling miserably to resist excessive movement in any of his joints. It was a constant losing battle; he could remain warm out there, so long as he didn’t move, but as soon as he shifted to any degree outer layers were disturbed, exposing various under layers, and finally letting in the evil, frigid air to kiss him on his pinkest, most tender parts. It caused a fella to want to lock into position as tight as possible, stiff-necked, and just wait for the time when he could climb back into the blessed truck and head back home. Then, of course, the stiffness held throughout his entire body put kinks in all kinds of muscles, tiring him out sooner than he would have thought possible. He bit back a yawn.

Twenty feet away on the other end of the driveway, Tarlow laughed. Having grown up in Washington State as a young man, he found the current climate homey if a little inconvenient. “What happened to you finding a home in these mountains, Sarge?”

“Ain’t no mountains, right on here. This’s some kinda devil’s bi’ness. No damn bi’ness staying this airish into April. Ain’t natural.”

“Least it’s finally stopped snowing,” said Tarlow.

Lum squinted at him briefly before taking his hand off the guard of his rifle to point up at the thick, grey scum of clouds blotting out the sky from horizon to horizon. “That mess up thar says more’s a-comin’.”

“Oh, you’re just being cranky. There hasn’t been a flurry in two weeks. It’ll be May in a few days, you’ll see. Look, the snow’s starting to melt down again at high noon, even.”

“Goddamned inhumane fiasco…” Lum grumbled precisely and hunched his shoulders up around his ears. He stood there a moment, scanning over the irregular smattering of buildings on the outskirts of the city, taking in the same depressing, flat grey tint everywhere he looked and sighed. He thumbed his radio and said, “Dawkins, how copy?”

“Sup, Sarge?”

“How you’ns lookin’ in thar? Found enough of it, or hwhat?”

“Wait one…”

Lum did his best to wait patiently, sniffing through a nose so numb he could no longer tell if it was running. Eventually, his radio squawked again, but instead of Dawkins’s familiar voice, he heard Amanda. “Yeah, I think we have enough here. There’s plenty of this heavy Solexx lying around, and Fred just found all kinds of rolls of the plastic film stuff. Between that and all the PVC, it should be enough to start on at least one greenhouse… maybe two even.”

Lum grunted. “Start next month, maybe. Couldn’t plow that ground ’thout uh tractor, such as it is.”

Tarlow cleared his throat and said, “Did you see Jake shoveling the snow out of that patch when we left this morning? I… don’t really think he’s interested in waiting any longer.”

Lum bounced his head and blew a raspberry dismissively. “Guess we’ll see how that lays. Maw-nature mayhap has some differn’t plans.”

“Hey, speaking of ‘Maw-nature,’” Tarlow smiled, “what’s up with you and Samantha lately? Did I see you two holding hands the other day?”

Lum scowled at the man rather than saying anything back. The radio belched once again, followed by Dawkins’s voice: “Still there, Sarge?”

Tarlow answered before Lum could respond, “That’s affirmed, Dawkins. I was just launching a trial inquiry with regard to the status of Sarge’s love life.”

“Sumbitch…”

“Roger that,” Dawkins said. “Thought that was old news, though? Or do we now suspect that dispositions have changed since the last recon?”

“Now just a gawddamn—”

“Only insofar as things may have escalated, Private,” answered a smiling Tarlow. “Sarge’s been laying some first-class gripe over the weather, but I’m starting to suspect he’s just anxious to get home to the missus…”

“Hey, how’d you two shit-birds feature see’n what it’s like to get twelve-pointed up the ass?” asked Lum.

“I… I beg your pardon?” came Amanda’s voice over the earpiece, clearly confused. Dawkins must have passed the radio back to her at some point.

Lum rolled his eyes and growled a “Nuthin’” into the mic before kicking a muddy clod of snow at Tarlow, who skipped away cackling gleefully. He readjusted his jacket and asked, “Got a means-uh hawlin’ it out’chere?”

“Yeah, there’s a cart we can use,” said Amanda. “But we could use a hand in here; this crap is heavy!”

Lum nodded to Tarlow, who tossed out a half-assed salute before jogging off toward the back warehouse of the Jackson Farm and Feed Supply Depot. Lum remained close by to the Ford with its chained tires and flatbed trailer, already laden with copious bundles of PVC pipe. He briefly considered climbing up into the turret of the Humvee, which they’d parked close behind the truck, but ultimately rejected the idea in favor of preserving mobility. He sniffed again and rubbed at his nose, failing to register the contact of his gloved finger.

“Move yer asses, folks…” he whispered into the dry air.

He stood out there for perhaps fifteen minutes before the radio crackled again, causing him to startle. It was Tarlow on the other end. “Just about there, Sarge. We got two of these carts loaded up pretty well. Amanda wasn’t bullshitting about the weight, either; it took me, Oscar and Fred, just to get the big ones off the floor. All good out there? See any movement?”