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

“‘This’ what? Don’t find ‘that’ what? Be fucking specific, Ronny.”

“I don’t remember anymore! That shit happened something like a year ago!”

Clay put a finger in the man’s face. “Eight… fucking… months at the very most, Ronny. You’ve got all the accuracy of a retiree pissing through a ripe prostate.”

“Fuck it! Eight months, then, and fuck you too! We were all hopped up, goddamn you! You weren’t there!” He was shouting now. They were facing each other on the hill by this point, having long forgotten the lovely view. Pap emerged from the camp, down at the bottom of the hill, the heel of his hand pushing the grip of his revolver out from his hip suggestively.

“It’s nothing, Pap!” called Clay. “Just Ronny pissing in my ear again. It’s his favorite fucking pastime, don’t you remember? You go on, now. We’re fine.”

The man retreated reluctantly, his big, floppy cowboy hat eventually disappearing around the main building.

“Fucking guard dog’s never too far away, is he?” Ronny sneered.

“You can disparage all you like. I’ve learned to favor loyalty in my time. It’s part of the wisdom that comes with age. I suppose I’ll have to describe how that shit works to you, seeing as how you’re so unlikely to get here.”

“You said we’d head up to Jackson, goddamn it. That was the deal.”

Clay shook his head, obviously confused at the man. “What is your fucking hard-on for that town? After what we’ve found here? Ronny, we have a goddamned tank! Well, we have one if we can ever figure out how to get the engine running again, but there it sits! Just over on the other side of that building! We’re pulling more supplies out of this town than we’ve seen in months from anywhere else—”

“Yeah, and we’re finding dry pockets too, aren’t we? I’ve listened to the reports. That whole area around the King Soopers was dried out for blocks and blocks, wasn’t it? You have no way of knowing just how much is left out there.”

“Prove to me that this isn’t some sort of revenge bullshit for you, Ronny, can you do that? Is there anything you can say at all that convinces me otherwise? Because, given what we have here, I’m not seeing much reason to just pick up and leave.”

Ronny tilted his head back in frustration, looking up into the clouds. “Clay, this is really easy. Gas is dead now. The shit we’re pulling out of cars might as well be water at this point, and the stuff we still have stashed in barrels is causing the engines to knock. How long’re you gonna put it off? Until we’re all out of diesel as well? Then we really will be stuck.”

“Won’t be stuck as long as we can find wood…”

Ronny smiled hungrily. “Have you even looked at Ned’s numbers? He’s got them written up all over those boards of his. That big-ass water tank of his will drive a generator just fine, but as far as a vehicle’s concerned, you’d better make sure you’re running a bunch of four-bangers. A hundred cubic meters of woodgas per hour just to drive fifty horsepower? Two pounds of wood to generate one cubic meter of woodgas. Are you starting to get the picture, Clay?”

Clay winced involuntarily. He hadn’t seen those numbers. He recovered quickly, though he knew Ronny had seen the point was made. “Ned’ll refine it. We’ll get it figured out.”

“Clay… you’ve got a man standing in front of you, right fucking now, telling you he knows how to solve your biggest problem. I know where the farming is. What’s the issue, here?”

Clay rolled his head along over his shoulders. The damned headache was back again.

“You have two issues as I see it, Ronny.” He advanced a step, such that they stood inches away from each other. “I don’t trust you, and I’m the guy in charge. You figure out how to solve either one of those, and I guess you’ll get your fucking trip to Wyoming.”

He left Ronny standing up on the hill.

The motorcycle gang came back to Colorado Springs a few days later. It was around midday, with the sun hanging in the center of the sky off the southern horizon, and Clay was out with Johnny and some of his people going over the latest haul of supplies. He was trying to give them his attention and hear everything they told him—succeeding half as well as he would have liked—when the distant scream of engines and the muted, rapid pop-gun report of small arms fire crept out over the long stretch of flatlands into their camp. Clay and a few others craned their necks in the city’s general direction, resembling a clan of prairie dogs.

“Those’ll be Ned’s bandits, I suppose,” said Johnny, rather sadly. The tone of his voice suggested the party was over.

“Yeah, someone go get Ned, huh?” Clay muttered absently. His eyes were still pulled in the direction of the city.

He arrived a few moments later. The little man looked agitated, and Clay presumed he’d been told of the situation. Ned approached quickly, like a darting sparrow, and stopped so that he was standing within Clay’s shadow. He did not say or ask anything; just came up beside the other man and looked off in the same direction. A few moments later, the revving of engines and more gunfire could be heard, thin and incredibly distant. Ned exhaled heavily, as though he’d been holding his breath, and nodded once in response.

“Jesus,” whispered Johnny. “How are we even hearing that? How far away is it? Fifteen miles?”

“Edge of town is something like seven,” said a woman.

“Sound carries different now,” said another. “World’s a lot emptier.”

“They must be close to the eastern edge,” Ned mused softly, his high-pitched Piglet voice barely a squeak. “We’d probably not hear them towards the center; too many buildings between us and them. The soundwaves would be blocked.”

Clay noted absently that the man didn’t stutter once as he spoke. He could get like that sometimes when he forgot to be terrified of every little thing.

“Did they make diesel motorcycles?” someone asked.

“I don’t think so,” Johnny said. “Not as more than a curiosity, at least.”

“Well, how the hell are their bikes still running? All of our gas is going tits-up!”

“Found a better way to store it, obviously…”

“That’s your gang, huh?” Clay asked Ned.

Ned nodded. “I guess they’ll start moving between here and Denver again since the roads have cleared up.”

“Why always Colorado Springs and Denver?” asked Johnny. “What’s the point of it?”

Ned shrugged. He looked at the man and said, “I couldn’t say. I-I’ve never asked them, ha-ha… uh. Maybe… maybe they’re just on autopilot? Or they need somewhere to be heading to but can’t come up with a b-better destination?”

“They’ll come out this way, do you think?” Clay asked.

“D-don’t know, sorry… People have wa-wandered out before, but I d-don’t know who they were with…”

“Uh,” Clay mused.

“What are you thinking?” Johnny asked. “I’ve seen that look before.”

Clay didn’t answer. He continued to stare out in the direction of the city, drilling into the distance with his eyes as though he’d be able to cut through the haze and see the people on the other side if only he could stare hard enough. He realized he was grinding his teeth and forced his jaw to relax.

“Johnny, keep up with what you’re doing, huh? Let’s get all this shit duly cataloged and stashed into the coffers. Ned, let’s you and me go find Pap.”

Beau pulled out from under the hood of a Chevy Colorado, having torqued on his last oil filter of the day, and settled back into his chair. He wiped his hands off on a greasy rag, flipped the truck his middle finger, and twisted the cap off a bottle of whatever the hell he happened to have on hand that day. He took a swig, absently noting how the rim naturally settled into the gap of his missing teeth and burped almost immediately.