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

They were several hours and seven miles into their morning when Clay grumbled, “You know, it would just be typical for those cocksuckers to light out of here before we had the chance to find them…”

“No, they’re out here,” Ronny muttered. “It’s a big city; bigger than we’d realized, I think. Let’s just stick with the plan and see what shakes loose.”

“Uh,” Clay grunted, voice absent any real sign of commitment. They were up in Northeast Colorado Springs by that point, just about to run into the 25.

All the various teams began to check in to signal they’d reached their next rally point. Pap looked over to Clay, an obvious expression of inquiry on his face. Clay only shrugged and said, “Yeah, push fucking south then, I guess. We might as well go for the full embarrassment.”

They continued on for another couple of hours past innumerable houses, most of which were intact though they kept coming across evidence of the madness. The streets were becoming more of a problem now; they were driving over sidewalks and medians as often as regular pavement and reports were starting to come in from the other teams that they’d been stopped temporarily while a small collection of people cleared out jams. At some point past noon, a disheartened Clay climbed back into the bed of their own truck, behind the gunner crew, and settled into a reclined position against the tailgate. He looked back at Pap and said, “Wake me up if it looks like anything outside of me keeling over to die from fucking decrepitude, huh?”

Pap considered these words a moment, apparently wrestling with their meaning, before nodding his head.

Clay looked dispassionately out into the distance and muttered, “Maybe they know we’re out here looking for them. Maybe that’s their strategy; to just fucking bore us to death.” He sighed. “Not every sally is a glorious goddamned battle, I suppose…”

At precisely 3:28, roughly two hundred pounds of shit hit a thirty-five thousand RPM turbofan traveling at three hundred miles per hour, a fact they were all made privy to when Pap’s radio first crackled and then proceeded to lose its goddamned mind.

“Yo, hey… I got someone. It looks like—”

Rapid gunfire erupted somewhere in the south of the city. At the same time, Pap’s and some of the other guys’ radios belched into frantic, screaming chatter.

“ JESUS CHRIST, WE’RE TAKING FIRE! ”

“— OT US PINNED DOWN, HERE, SOMEONE GET THE FUCK OUT—”

“ —TWO CASUALTIES! REPEAT: WE HAVE TWO CASUALTIES! MAYDAY, MOTHERFUCKER! MAYDAY! ”

Pap stood bent over his own radio, hands clamped together as though he was trying to squeeze the life out of it, and bellowing into the mic. “Calm down! Where are you? Hello? Hello! Hey! Just shut the fuck up a minute and tell me yer position!”

Ronny stood a few feet away from him, staring with his mouth hanging open.

“Don’t stand around, goddamn it, get in the fucking trucks!” Clay yelled. As people began to pile in, he slung himself across the bed and leaned out to where he could see into the driver’s side window. “Start heading toward that gunfire!” he barked and slapped the roof repeatedly. The truck jumped to life, slaloming down the street in between all the debris strewn across it. The guy on the M60 nearly fell over on his ass when they took off.

Clay spun around to look at Pap as they traveled. “Get cross streets from them, if you can!”

Pap shot a thumbs-up and began to shout into his radio, cupping his left hand around it. He then held it up to his ear and squinted, glaring frantically out into nothingness as he struggled to hear a response. He nodded into the radio like a true scholar and then yelled at Clay, “They’re downtown! On Tejon and Boulder!”

“Right!” Clay shouted. He leaned out over the fast-scrolling ground and bellowed in through the driver’s side window, “Get us downtown! Tejon and Boulder!”

“Tejon and Boulder, got it! Where the fuck is that?”

Hanging out in the open as he was, grey-streaked black hair whipping around in the wind, Clay pulled a double-take and shouted, “What!”

“How the fuck do I get there? What do you think I got up here? Waze?”

Clay settled back into the bed, eyes wide and mouth agape. He laughed; a sharp hyena cackle, and said, “Well, fuck me…”

“Baws! What’s happenin’?”

The insistent rattle of machine gun fire echoed out, louder than the rumble of the truck’s diesel engine or the buffeting of the wind around them.

“Fuck me…” Clay repeated.

“Baws!”

Clay shook his head and looked at him. “Pap, get the fuck up into that cab with your radio and work the location out with the driver! Talk to whoever it is at our destination that isn’t busy getting shot full of holes and find us a way in!”

Pap was moving before Clay had finished his instructions. He yanked the passenger door of the truck open from the side and grabbed the man in the seat by the front of his shirt, hauling him out and into the truck bed. The man was white-faced and screaming, obviously not understanding what the hell had just happened to him. Pap yanked the cowboy hat off his own head, thrust it into the man’s chest, and shouted, “Don’t dare fuckin’ loose that!” before he leaned dangerously far out over the pavement, bracing his right hand up on the open door’s frame while grabbing the pull-handle attached to the truck’s ceiling with his left. He swung his legs out into the open air, threw them into the passenger seat, and slammed the door behind him. The man he’d traded places with continued to lie in the bed of the truck, gasping for breath and clutching Pap’s hat to his chest in claw-like hands.

They got things figured out shortly after, presumably, as the truck lurched forward under renewed speed. Clay glanced back behind them, looking past Ronny’s face to see two other trucks following close behind. He nodded, and Ronny nodded back at him, mistaking the fact that Clay was actually nodding at the presence of the trucks. He figured it out a moment later when Clay rolled his eyes and looked away. He sighed and glanced down at his hand. He made a fist with it and willed it not to shake.

They were forced to abandon the trucks several blocks out and run the rest of the way in, owing to the traffic pile up. They pounded the pavement, threading their way through all the different vehicles, chests heaving mightily as they sucked air and hauled their heavy weapons along. One of the guys lugging the M249 suggested he just leave the machinegun behind, but Clay responded, in his own unique way, that this would be a very grievous error on his part, indeed. The man grumbled and clutched the weapon to his chest like a newborn infant, its belt-filled nutsack swinging around to slap him in the left shoulder on every alternate stride.

The report of gunfire was distressingly loud at this point, not only echoing all around them but hurting their ears physically. Clay thought he could feel his eardrums stretching at each shot, though over time the pain became less, and he soon realized he might be suffering some sort of hearing loss in all the racket. It was hard to tell with the screaming and stutter-blast of bullets coming down on top of his goddamned head.

They rounded a corner into a wall of smoke. Ahead of them and shrouded in the haze were several dozen people, all of whom were crouched down behind various cover; most of which were derelict vehicles and the edges of building walls. Clay had just a moment to stand there and stare at it all like an idiot before Pap grabbed him by the belt and threw him bodily into the nearest sedan. The pavement chipped and erupted in a small cloud of dust where his feet had been only a few moments before, and he realized absently that whoever was shooting at them must have some sort of elevation, based on where and how the bullet had hit. Pap plowed into the car body alongside of him, struggling to cram every inch of his giant frame behind it.