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

It all snaked back to a generator, though not in a continuous daisy chain. That had been another Ned idea; don’t run it all in a constant series or you’d only have two options in your town: on or off. He’d worked with a few folks in the Builder Crew to break their home up into districts, running each one separately back to a different outlet on the jenny. Six outlets on the big CAT generator so six districts in total, each with their own dedicated lighting. The lighting itself didn’t demand a terrible amount of wattage, so they could even plug a heavy-duty work light into the end of the strand. Work no longer had to end at sundown, was the main point, and the people in camp had started walking around a little easier—had a bit more of a spring in their step—at the discovery of such a simple convenience.

And right next to that CAT generator was Ned’s gorgeous Mark One wood gas engine; the unit Pap had taken to calling “Woody.” The nickname had stuck, and everyone in the camp started referring to the unit as “Woody the First” or just “Woody One.” That motherfucker would run forever, for so long as you had wood to feed it, and that was the really great thing about that part of the country. In the right places, you had more wood than anything else. There was a whole sub-crew under Elton now, whose whole reason for existing was to harvest lumber. Clay guessed they comported themselves with ax and saw, probably the occasional chainsaw; he didn’t ponder the details overlong. All he knew was that they were lousy with the stuff. They were presently bringing in more of it than they could burn—which was good—but that wouldn’t last for very much longer at all. Ned was currently working on Woodies Two and Three simultaneously, refining as he went, looking for ways to eke out more compression. Greater efficiency and longer running life.

And then there were the smaller mobile units, of course. He had designs for the damned things spilling all over the tables of the shop. Once Ned had figured out that a “carburetor” for these things was actually as simple as a t-pipe with a ball valve linked to a throttle, he dove in headfirst with rabid dreams of mechanized wonder. They had to remind him to eat sometimes, even to sleep. Clay could remember men such as Ned from his earlier life. People like Ned were the power players that shaped entire industries, dragging men like Clay behind in their wake.

Clay had no illusions about Ned; he was the goddamned golden goose. As they walked along the rows and chatted (mostly one-sided chatter coming from Clay) busy people moving through their day would stop whatever it was they were doing to smile and wave. They waved at Ned as often or more as they did at Clay, and this suited Clay just fine. Everyone knew what they had in the engineer, and it was gratifying to see him warm to their attentions.

“We need to start thinking about vegetation,” Clay was saying as they walked along. He didn’t realize it at first but soon noticed they were walking along the north end of the museum, due west to the outskirts of the camp and up to the ridge that overlooked the Colorado flatlands. “Scavenging’s keeping up pretty well right now, but it’ll pinch out, just as it always has everywhere else. I think Elton said they’re starting to find more spoiled cans of food than we’re used to seeing, as well.”

“We… we should organize hunting p-parties. Lots of game out there…”

“Yeah,” Clay nodded. “Real game too, not just the bottom-feeding critters. I imagine there’s… what? Deer out there? Hell. What do you hunt besides dear? Help me out, here.”

“I… I’d have to look it up…”

“Christ,” Clay scoffed amiably. “We’ve no conceivable business having survived this long, have we? Okay, we’ve gotta have something like three-hundred-twenty-fucking-odd people or so, now. One of them hunted the bigger game, once upon a time. We’ll call an assembly, weed them out, and let them know they’ve been promoted.”

They gained the shallow hilltop. They stood together, looking out over the expanse of flatlands and, hidden somewhere out beyond them, Colorado Springs. Clay could feel it out there; a bubble fast deflating.

“Maybe we can still find cattle out there,” he mused. “I think I read somewhere that the cattle trade was alive and well in this state. The land sure is right for it.”

He scratched at his cheek, glanced at Ned, who looked around all wide-eyed and jittery and said, “That’ll take care of protein, anyway. It’s not enough, though. We want to start getting those green leafy veggies, just like Mom always forced on us, or we’ll get fucking encumbered by all manner of ailment perpetrated by vitamin deficiencies and the like. We need to get some level of agriculture going, Ned.”

His eyes roved over the plains for a time as he waited for a response. When none came, he glanced at Ned from the corner of his eye and said, “That’s your cue, Chief.”

Ned shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know the f-first thing about farming, Clay. S-sorry…”

Clay expelled a blast of air through his lips. “Eh, I suppose we’ll ask for farmers at the assembly as well, then. Hopefully, we have a farmer that used to operate in this state. I don’t know much about growing seasons, but I can’t imagine we have a long one up here. That last winter was a cunt.”

Ned giggled nervously to himself. Clay’s choice of language sometimes produced that reaction in him.

“The bitch of it is we have to find the produce to plant. I mean, what do we do, dig up some wild carrots? Find a fucking potato plant somewhere? I don’t even know what the damned things look like above ground, Christ’s sake. Do you?”

Ned shook his head sadly.

“Well, I suppose we better hope to Jesus someone in our little crew of over-educated, under-skilled shitheads knows the appearance of such things, huh?”

“I know where we can find a farm. I told you where.”

It was Ronny’s voice, flittering up to them from the base of the hill.

Clay lifted his chin and sniffed hard into the breeze, as though he was trying to consume all of the usable oxygen in the immediate area. “Knew you were fucking back there,” he lied.

Ronny joined them on the rise, standing at Clay’s right hand.

“We did talk about it, right? Come to Colorado, get organized, and push on to Jackson. I told you about that farming they have going up there.”

Clay didn’t look at the man; only continued to gaze out at the horizon. “Ned, give us a bit, huh?”

“O-okay. Goodbye Mister Barton. Mister Crowder…”

“Can that Mister Barton shit,” Clay called over his shoulder as the engineer left. “Mister Barton…” he muttered.

Ronny waited a few moments and then said, “So?”

Clay squinted thoughtfully into the distance and asked, “Ronny… how is it you know they have a farm running up there?”

“Well, I told you. We’d picked up their radio—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that, fucking Ronny. What I’m trying to reason out is how such a conversation plays out, do you see? How does that go? ‘O, Joseph and Mary and Blessed Baby Jesus’s balls, but we have a murderous crew of sonsabitches on our tails, and they’re shooting us up something fierce. I do so hope they don’t kill us all and steal our shit. And by the way, we have a fucking farm up in Jackson fucking Wyoming, the address of which is 555 Horseshit Alley?’ Is that how it went, Ronny? Or did they also throw in a line about endless quantities of eighteen-year-old snatch and a mountain of cocaine as well?”

Ronny recoiled at this. “No, that ain’t how it fucking went and you goddamned well know it. I told you how it was. Everyone was rattled. They were rambling on about all sorts of shit. ‘We gotta get back to this’ and ‘I sure hope they don’t find that’…”