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

The Seal cocked his head and cracked a grin; a craggy, uneven break at the bottom of his face. “We’ve had one already, remember? Your position seemed rather clear.”

“Yes. It still is. There might be a path that doesn’t end there for us, though. Maybe.”

“I’m listening.”

Jake glanced around the area, taking in the many interested faces floating around them. “You want to do this here?”

Warren sighed. He lifted the flap of his tent, jerked his head toward the opening, and waited for Jake to enter. He let the flap fall once they were inside, shrouding the interior in a hazy, sluggish gloom. Warren popped the top on a lantern to brighten things up. Jake looked at this and grunted softly. “We have ones like that back in the valley,” he observed.

“You can take a seat on the cot if you like.”

Jake obliged, leaning forward slightly after he sat due to his hands being trussed up at the small of his back. Warren eased himself into an old folding chair directly across from him and said, “Well. Here we are again.”

“Yes…”

Warren scratched his chin and then spread his hands out to either side, the heavy muscles in his arms causing the chair to creak in distress beneath him. “Make your case, then.”

Jake tipped his head to one side. “I thought I’d invite you over for dinner.”

Despite himself, Warren laughed. “You what?”

“Well, you and some other folks, anyway. Not the entire company, though, sadly. We don’t have enough to feed everyone. I’d say we can accommodate thirty of your people. You’d choose who comes, of course, but I’d like to ask you to consider bringing along fifteen of your civilians.”

“You want half of the people I bring to be non-military.”

“That’s right.”

“And why the hell would I do that?”

Jake sighed. “I’m still trying to come up with that answer myself.”

Warren leaned back in the chair. Eyebrows raised, he said, “You see the problems I might have with that, I take it?”

“Of course.”

“State them, please. I’d like to ensure we’re tracking, here.”

Jake shifted to alleviate some of the torque on his shoulders—he was by no means a flexible man—and said, “Well, you’re thinking a hostage situation, or some sort of human shields, of course. Perhaps some other angle as well; I don’t know. Maybe we think we have a better chance against fifteen of you, though I think we established in our last meeting that we most likely wouldn’t have any chance at all. Then, of course, there’s the consideration that if you were to come and we were to successfully kill you, that would leave your people back here without their commander. Does that cover it all?”

Warren’s eyes darted briefly to the left and centered back on Jake. He crossed his arms and said, “It’ll do.”

“Okay. Well, we’re not going to do any of that…”

Warren squinted his eyes. He smiled, almost unconsciously, and said, “Well, gee. That sure is a relief. I’m so glad that could be cleared up.”

Jake nodded, arched his back to give his vertebrae a stretch, and settled back into his hunched-over position. “I get it. But let me ask you to consider the following: your men. Jeffries, Pablo, Ortega, Jessop—”

“Yes, yes, Tarlow, Kilmer, and Dawkins. I can recite names as well.”

“Fine… fine. But those guys have lived with us for half a year now. I suspect you’ve talked to them about us… about me specifically, but why don’t you run this by them? All that double-dealing and hostage taking? Human shields? How well do you trust your men? Ask them if all that sounds like something we’d be likely to perpetrate.”

“It doesn’t add up,” Warren said. “Your big plan is that we come have a potluck? How does that change anything, Jake? At the end of the day, so far as I can see, we still have opposing positions.”

“It goes deeper than that.”

“Well, I need to understand.”

Jake rolled his eyes and sighed again. “Yeah, I was afraid of that. Look, the problem is that you can’t understand if I just tell you. I get it. I get that it sounds nuts; that this sounds like a used car salesman asking you to sign a blank contract. I’m not an idiot. But the problem is that if I just lay it all out…”

Warren tilted his head, heavy brow furrowed down, making cave-dwelling creatures of his eyes. “You doubt my ability to understand.”

“No,” scoffed Jake, shaking his head wearily, “I just doubt my ability to express it. I’m not an eloquent man, Otter, not really. I know a multitude of words, sure, but this is a thing beyond words. I need to find some kind of way to communicate with you that doesn’t rely on such a flawed mechanism. Because really, when it comes down to it, I’ve only got the one chance to get this right. For the both of us. That or I fuck it up, and then God knows what’ll happen next.”

“ Otter now, huh?”

Jake shrugged. “It’s transparent, I’ll admit, but that’s really all I can do at this point, isn’t it? Be transparent. Look, I don’t know what I can do or say to convince you how important this is to me… to the both of us… outside of what I’ve already said. If we’re going to see eye to eye, we’ll have to start sharing a few things. Ideas. Experiences. Sharing food is, at the very least, a place to start, the way I see it. If I take it any further than that, I’ll have to lay it all out with a bunch of meaningless noise. The thing we’re trying to do here, you and I? It’s a fragile thing, like a soap bubble. You can’t just grab at it; it’ll burst. These things have to be approached carefully. From the side. Tentatively.”

Warren scratched his chin again and heaved a sigh, shoulders as large as Jake’s rolling ponderously under his Jacket. “Martin, I feel as though I can say this with complete and total certainty: I haven’t the foggiest flying fuck what it is you’re actually telling me right now.”

Jake’s head dropped in exasperation. “Yeah, I figured that. Look, stack the deck in your favor however you like. Don’t take these cuffs off me at any point; I’ll sleep like this. Don’t feed me for a while so that I become weak. Put a gun to my head when we go back, and keep it there. I told them to expect as much if I return. Roll in with armored trucks and keep your weapons leveled until every one of my people line up and demonstrate that they’re unarmed. Search the property to your satisfaction. When it’s time to eat, let us take the first bites. Just whatever you do: fifteen of your staff and fifteen of the civilians. It’s all I ask.”

Otter’s eyes were narrowed down to slits now. He leaned forward, leveling his face only a few inches away from Jake’s. His breath smelled of burnt coffee. “Why would you allow all that?”

“Because it’s really, really important.”

“Why the fifteen civilians?”

“Same answer. This only works if everyone who has a stake in the outcome plays their part.”

The Seal exhaled heavily through his nose, eyes unwavering. His expression suggested that he’d like either to chew Jake’s head clean off from his body or else just throw him down a steep, rocky, hill.

“Otter… I haven’t given you any reason to trust me so far, except to point out the treatment and condition of your men and the report they’ll make about my people. Talk with them. Use me as your collateral. Please.”

Warren sat back in his chair, mildly shocked. He’d not expected that Jake was the kind of man that said “please” and meant it, especially not to one such as him. He thought about that a moment and then said, “What happens when we go through all of this but still come out disagreeing on the other side?”