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

“Nuthin’ noways. Fig’re the Humvee makes uh almighty racket. Whoever’s out’chere probly just ducks low till we’ve moved on.”

Silence a few moments, then: “Amanda advises keeping eyes open. She’s clocked some people out in her jeep. The city isn’t swarming, but it isn’t empty, either.”

“Yeah, copy all.”

He thought idly of the other things they’d found so far—the fistfuls of potato and kale seed packets strewn across the backseat of the truck—and wondered when they might expect their first yield. He knew from experience that the Arsh Potatoes of his youth wanted a good hundred days or so until harvest but that had been up in the mountains when they were planted in the late-March/early April timeframe. They were staring down the barrel of May, now, and the damned weather wasn’t behaving in any kind of logical fashion, so he supposed they’d just have to wait and see. Come to think of it, his planting had always started at the tuber; he didn’t have any experience one way or the other with a packet of seeds, and he didn’t have the first damned clue about kale, either. Yes, indeed. A great deal of “wait and see” was in their imminent future.

The others still hadn’t emerged from the warehouse and, becoming a little fidgety, Lum keyed and asked, “You’ns all set in thar? Need anoth’r set uh hands?”

He released and waited. He was met with a crackle of static, followed by the sultry purring of a voice at once familiar and removed from recent memory: “Sergeant Pendejo . Come in, Sergeant Pen- daaaay -jo…”

This was followed immediately after by Tarlow, who said, “What the fuck?”

The voice answered, this time more brusque. “Hey, cállate , Dogface. Nobody’s talkin’ to you yet. I want to speak…” that slow, purring growl again, “…to my little Sergeant Pendejo .”

Lum’s mouth, which had been hanging slack, began to pull back into a slow, unguarded grin. He said, “P… Peggy? Is that you?”

“Holy shit!” Dawkins crowed over the channel. “Montezuma! Is that you, man?”

“ Que pasa , bitchachos ! I have come for your women and your beer!”

Lum laughed happily, his breath billowing out into grey clouds that swirled and dissipated quickly, and shouted, “You crazy sumbitch! Where the hell’re you at?”

“We are literally rolling up the highway that time forgot right now. You should see this thing; it looks like some kinda retarded kangaroo rode a jackhammer up it like a fuckin’ pogo-stick.”

“Yeah, took a beatin’ on account uh the weath’r. What hahway? Gimme uh numb’r.”

“191,” Montez responded. “We’re just passing South Park. Hey, trip out, you think this is, like, ‘South Park’ South Park? I didn’t think it was a real place.”

“Ain’t the same one,” Lum said. “You brung ever’one with you?”

“Yup. Otter packed everyone up, man. I’m out ahead of the column with my team by about 20 klicks.”

“Okay, wherev’r y’are, just stop right on thar. Radio back an’ tell ’em to catch you up an’ then just wait. We’ll be back yer way in a bit an’ meet up.”

“Roger that.”

“Hey, Peggy?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s… it’s awful goddamned good to hear yer voice, boy.”

Lum heard the thin sound of Montez’s laughter come in over his earpiece, sounding amazingly close after so many months of not hearing it at all. The other man said, “You too, brotha. But you’re still a pendejo .”

Amanda rode along in the passenger seat of the Super Duty, a vehicle whose paint job consisted more of vast, meandering splotches of green-grey Bondo than anything else. Fred drove, rattling his left hand (his driving hand) against the curve of the wheel, picking out a nervous drumbeat with his thumb. Oscar sat in the center of the backseat, scooted all the way forward on its edge with each hand anchored to the backs of the front seats. All three of them divided their attention between the Humvee out ahead by some three hundred feet, which contained Lum, Tarlow, and Dawkins, and the team radio Lum had given them, which sat ominously silent on the dashboard.

They were creeping up the Humvee’s backend again, slowly closing the distance. Amanda shifted in her seat, resisting the urge to caution Fred yet again on his tailgating; she was beginning to sound like a nag in her own hearing, and she could only imagine what it was like to be on the receiving end of that. She was saved the trouble when Fred pumped the brake and muttered, “Sorry…” The drive must really be taking its toll on him. All three of them knew they’d find Wang at its termination; Fred had made it a point to confirm as much with Lum over the radio. She counted briefly on her fingers and realized they were coming up on seven months since they’d last seen him.

They traveled easily down the 191, having cleared it of nearly all wreckage long ago, but proceeded slowly owing to the last remnants of snow that still clung to the highway, not to mention the fact that the surface of the road itself was becoming pitted with holes and other absences. All around them was grey; grey sky, the southern edge of the grey city, and the grey, sleeping earth engaged in the process of transitioning from unbroken expanses of snow to lingering snow patches peppered with newly-birthed mud pits. Amanda shook her head in wonder. Wyoming in the summertime had been one of the loveliest sights she’d ever encountered, and winter was likewise amazing when the winds weren’t all riled and blowing clumps of snow up into her face like stinging, ice cold swarms of fat insects. This transitional period on the way to Spring, on the other hand, with its standing mud wallows, bitter, sleeting wind, and sullen, grey canopy was about as depressingly ugly as it could be, so far as she was concerned. She felt homesick for the clean Utah desert.

She glanced at the speedometer, noted that it was pinned at thirty-five, and rested her chin on her hand, sighing. Between the town and the highway itself, their travel time thus far had only been some ten minutes, but it was already feeling insufferably long.

They eventually came to a lazy bend in the road that would direct them along more of a southeast trajectory as opposed to their current heading; an encroachment of trees to either side of the road obscured their view of what might be out beyond that bend. It was, therefore, a shock to all three of them when they came around the corner and found themselves face to face with a huge column of military vehicles parked out in the middle of the pavement.

“Jesus Christ…” Amanda whispered. From his position behind the wheel, Fred nodded silently.

She was unable to name half of what she saw, noting only that the line of tan vehicles stretched back very far, much farther than she would have imagined, and they consisted of all shapes and sizes. There were the now familiar Humvees out in front as well as to the side, a few of what looked to her like Army jeeps (though these were few and far between), followed by great, almighty behemoths that she couldn’t even begin to name. To Amanda’s mind, they simply looked enormous, blocky, and dangerous.

Up ahead of the Ford, Lum was having his own reaction as they approached the convoy. His mind quickly cataloged what had been deemed worthy of the journey north; the gun trucks, the classic Deuce and a Half’s, a couple of PLS units, and several rows of covered M934’s. He lifted up in his seat, straining, but saw no evidence of his baby anywhere along the line. He settled back down, suppressing a sigh. He didn’t know what the hell he was expecting; he knew they’d burned up the last of the fuel. A helicopter that couldn’t fly was about as useless as its crew chief, he figured.