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

She saw her father.

Something flared within her then, some molten thing that threatened to scorch a hole straight through her core. She lost track of time, lost track of herself, and was mightily disoriented when she realized that the heavy bag was no longer in front of her. Her wrists were held in Jake’s hands, though not painfully; her bones were cushioned in the thickness of his palms. His lips were moving, but she couldn’t hear him. She couldn’t hear anything, really, but an insistent, high-pitched keening. After a moment she was out of breath and sucking in more air. That high ringing stopped when she did so, and she realized that inhuman sound had actually been her. Her face was wet and incredibly hot. She stood there a while, panting heavily while her throat throbbed and her knees began to shake violently.

“ It’s the adrenaline, just like Jake says ,” she thought.

“Elizabeth!” Jake barked.

“Yeah. I’m… I’m okay now. You can let me go.”

He lowered her hands slowly before releasing them. He had a cloth in his hand; looking at it, she realized it was a scrap of old t-shirt from the bag o’ rags on the wall. He began to dab at her cheeks with it.

He lifted her from the ground and set her up on a workbench so they could be on the level without his having to squat. As he began to remove the gloves from her hands, he asked, “Where’d you go, Lizzy?”

“I… I… you said… because I was angry, I tried… I tried picturing someone… because I wasn’t mad enough. Or I thought I should be madder. I tried to think of faces but… but… none of the ones I wanted were staying…”

She sniffed loudly and wiped at her eyes.

Jake handed her the scrap to wipe her face and posted his hands on the bench, each locked into place on the outside of her knobby child’s knees.

“You eventually found a face, though.”

She nodded, looking down at the rag. She couldn’t meet his gaze.

“Your mother?”

She shook her head slowly, chin quivering.

“Oh. Your father…”

Her eyes pinched shut, more tears running down her cheeks. She nodded through her agonized grimace and began to hitch sobs, sounding almost as though she was laughing, just before she fell into his chest and wailed.

His hands were on her again, one warm, thick hand wrapped around the base of her neck while the other rubbed her back. Pressed against his chest as she was, she felt the vibration of his mellow voice, though she couldn’t hear what he said through her crying. In time she came back under control as he rocked her, and the vibration of his chest resolved into mantra.

“It’s okay, baby, I got you. I got you, it’s okay. You’re okay, baby. My baby…”

She pulled back from him, now utterly drained, and looked up into his eyes. She asked, “Am I wrong? Am I bad?”

He shook his head, expression dismissive, and said, “No. I can’t explain it in a way that doesn’t require a lot of meaningless words. The best I can do, I think, is to say that when we’re children, we need our parents to be there for us. To be strong and indestructible. It’s a hell of a letdown when we learn differently, and the younger we are when we learn it, the harder it is to handle. I’ll say that if he was here right now, he’d understand.”

She looked down at her hands and nodded sadly. She sighed deeply and began, “I just don’t know why—”

“Jake?” It was Gibs, calling from the garage entrance.

“Yeah,” he grunted, not looking away from the girl.

“Amanda’s back with the crew. They’re rolling up right now, but she radioed ahead. She says we need to meet right now. She says we’re apparently about to have some company.”

Still looking intently at Elizabeth, Jake raised his eyebrows.

She nodded and said, “Go on. I’ll close up here.”

He gave her a light pat on the knees and left.

“How many are ‘a lot?’” demanded Edgar in an alarmed voice.

They all stood in a loose circle on the cabin’s front porch, some of them overflowing down the steps and leaning on the railing, very similar in fashion to their arrangement when they’d been locked into deciding Jeff Durand’s fate half a year ago. The children were all in the cabin itself playing together in the front room—Sorry or some such—under Rose’s watchful eye. All of the others, from Jake and Amanda to Otis and Samantha, Gibs’s collection of misfits out of Colorado and other states besides; all of them put their heads together on that porch and chewed the issue over, combined breath puffing out in the frigid air. The only persons absent from the meeting were Jeffries and his crew of Soldiers, who felt as though they’d better give their neighbors some space; they all reposed on the old school bus in varying states of concern.

“A pretty big amount,” Amanda said. “Lum estimates around two hundred people.”

The faces of the others standing around her were stricken, several of them showing outright horror, Edgar’s most of all. He said, “And will they all be coming at once?”

Amanda shook her head. “No. He said he’d be coming up with a small group first to make some introductions. He said Wang would lead them up.”

“Well, that don’t sound so bad,” Otis said hopefully. “Sounds like he’s makin’ his manners, leastwise…”

“Manners…” Edgar scoffed. “With a force that large behind him, he can afford to be polite. I’ll bet he can politely roll us under his tanks, as well!”

“He didn’t have no tanks out there, man,” Oscar said.

“Just hang on a minute,” interrupted Gibs. “Two hundred people? How many are civilians?”

“How’s that?” Fred asked.

“I saw their tent city; so did Greg and Davidson,” he nodded to both men in turn as he said this. “There weren’t a tremendous number of military running around out there, and we saw a limited number of civvies moving around as well. He didn’t haul his force all the way up here and leave those people—”

“No, he didn’t,” Amanda cut in. “I saw a lot of them climbing out of the trucks along the road.”

“Okay,” said Gibs. “So how many were Warren’s actual people and how many were just cargo?”

Fred and Oscar shook their heads at Amanda’s questioning gaze. She finally said, “I’d only be guessing if I told you.”

“That’s a fairly easy problem to solve,” Jake said. “I’ll ask Lum and his men to join us.”

Several people spoke up at this; among them were Edgar, Alish, Samantha, Barbara, and George. The most vocal among them, Edgar, nearly shouted, “Just how the hell is that even remotely a good idea!”

“Why isn’t it?” Jake asked. He seemed genuinely confused.

“Those are Warren’s men,” George said. “Maybe it’s not the best idea to include them in our concerns until we get a better understanding of the man’s intentions?”

“Did he indicate at any point that his intentions were for ill?”

There was a moment of silence at his question. Finally, Amanda said, “I… didn’t want to mention this at first because… well, it’s just a feeling. Or a vibe, I guess.”

“Go ahead,” Gibs urged. “Intuition is powerful juju. Usually, it’s your smarter, underlying instincts trying to protect you from doing stupid sh— …things.”

She shifted her weight to her other foot as she collected her thoughts. “Before we parted, I asked him if he was bringing everyone he had straight to our doorstep, and he blew my question off. It was like he knew such a thing would have freaked us out and he was quick to let me know he wouldn’t be starting off that way.”

“Starting off…?” Edgar prodded.