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

“There was a bit of a case over the affair, and I tried to explain how I hadn’t actually meant to break the kid’s arm, that I’d only stumbled onto it accidentally, but the injury was bad enough—the bone had punched through the skin, unfortunately—that they sent me off to a juvenile facility for a couple of months, plus some probation and community service to be done after. So I went away and did that for a while.

“When I got out, I heard around that this kid was telling everyone how he was going to get me. Jordan was his name. Jordan told everyone who would listen how he was going to get his friends together, wait for me to be alone, and then do to me what I’d done to him.

“I wasn’t terribly interested in this, as you might be able to guess, so I went and found him first. He was actually in a Taco Bell with a few of those friends of his, those that I presume he’d planned to bring to my welcome home party when I found him; knowing, as I did, which were his favorite haunts. I remember this very well. It was Jordan and his two other friends, Art and Rick, and Jordan still had a cast running all the way up over his shoulder. You wouldn’t think someone in such a condition would go around making threats, but I suppose he must have felt safe with his friends around. I gather he didn’t go very far without them.

“I walked into the Taco Bell, straight up to their table. I guess they might have been getting ready to say or do something—I don’t know—but all the color went out of Jordan’s face, alright. He had one of those giant sodas in his hand, so I knocked that across the table into his friends’ laps, grabbed him by the back of his neck, dragged him outside, and broke his other arm on the curb, the same way I’d done the first. Then I went back inside to get his friends, but they’d run off out the other door.”

“Jesus…” muttered Warren.

Jake continued without acknowledging the other man had said anything. “They sent me up again, and I didn’t get out that time until I was eighteen. They said the first time might have been an accident, sure enough, but that second time sure wasn’t and payment was due. And that seems to be one of the funnier things to me about the whole matter because they sent me up for fighting, which I didn’t really know how to do at the time they punished me for it, but I absolutely knew how to do it after that punishment was finished being applied.”

Jake looked out over the field; at Gibs’s home, the container homes, the cook fires burning happily in the ring of the military tents. Warren saw that his face was very still, almost like porcelain, but that his eyes darted from place to place as though he was in a deep REM state.

Jake said: “And here’s your true thing, Otter. It wasn’t any mistake the first time I broke Jordan’s arm. I lied and said it was an accident because I didn’t want to hurt my mother’s heart, but the truth was really that I saw an opportunity and took it. And, if I’m being honest about it, I don’t really feel any great deal of remorse over the whole thing.”

Jake turned to look at Warren, his gaze unflinching, and said, “And now you know a thing about me that no other living person knows. It isn’t very flattering, perhaps, but it’s the truest thing I could think of to share. You do with that what you think is necessary.”

Returning the man’s stare, Warren nodded and said, “It’ll do. I don’t think anything necessarily needs to be done. We’ll clear out within the month, I think. Jeffries has already informed me that he’ll be staying. Informed, I say; there was no discussion allowed on the topic.”

“He’s welcome here for as long as he wishes to stay,” Jake said.

“I’ll leave you Olivia Lee as well if she’ll agree to remain. You folks need someone with a medical background. She’s smart and knows enough to learn a great deal more from books if they can be found. She’ll be able to midwife for you, too; I suspect you’ll need as much before long, given how adamant Jeffries was…”

Jake suppressed a smile at this.

Warren shifted in the low Adirondack chair and sighed. “There is one other thing I need to mention…”

“Yes?”

“Edgar. He came to me offering his help in taking over around here.”

“I see…”

“It should be obvious how that went—but I’ll just say it would be a poor turn of events if—”

“You needn’t mention it,” Jake interrupted. “He’ll continue to enjoy the same position here as always. He’ll be watched a bit, but I don’t intend anything else. I try not to be the retaliating kind. Not anymore.”

Warren nodded. “That’s good, then. I figured as much, but I felt I’d better say something about it just in case.”

“Sure.”

The light started to ebb out of the evening sky. Jake rose from his chair, lit a pot candle sitting on the railing, and placed it on the boards between them.

“Do you know where you’ll go?” asked Jake.

Warren scratched a shoulder absently and nodded. “We’ll head out east. We did a fair job of consolidating camps in Arizona before we came your way, but I know there were more out there, towards Chicago and Louisville; into the Carolinas. I’m going to head out that way and see how much of my country still survives. I’ll go looking for my people, gather them up, and look for some way to keep them safe.”

“Find them a place to build.”

“Yes,” Warren agreed. “As you say, there’s always another problem to solve in this world.”

“You’ll always have a place here,” Jake said. “As I’m sure you must know.”

Warren smiled. “I better find you here when I come back.”

Jake nodded.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Gibs stood on the wraparound porch of a charming old farmhouse, peals of dusty, white paint fluttering in the soft breeze, and regarded the front door’s knob. He felt uneasy and exposed, didn’t understand why, and it seemed to him as though the source of his misgivings radiated out from that knob in waves. It was antique brass, tarnished in the light of the low sun, and had some sort of design or scrollwork along its surface but he couldn’t get his eyes to focus enough to pick up any true detail. He leaned to his left to try and get a better sense of it, seeing that it really resembled a handle more than a knob. He leaned back to center and saw that it was a knob again.

Something important waited on the other side of the door, something he knew he needed to reach. A sane man would have reached out and turned the knob—it was just a fucking knob after all, unsettling or not—walked through the liminal space, and found whatever it was on the other side that needed him. But that knob just sat there, affixed to the door as it was, sucking all the sound of the world into its mass. Gibs reached for it.

His hand felt cold before it made contact, experienced a white-hot shock of ice when he held it in his grasp. Breath hitching in small gasps, he turned the knob and found to his despair that it rotated freely in its housing, never stopping or meeting any resistance. He exhaled in a rush, voice trembling, and jerked his hand away.

Eyes were watching him… or so he thought. Spinning in place, he searched all aspects of the horizon not occupied by the home. Vast, green fields spread out in all directions for as far as he could see; small, white flowers like Baby’s Breath smattering the surface here and there like the halfhearted beginnings of a failed snowfall. Seeing the pocked dustings of the little flowers, Gibs felt a tremendous weight at the center of his chest. He concentrated on not crying, though he didn’t understand why he suddenly felt so miserable.