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

In response to Edgar’s grunting, Gibs peeled back his lips to reveal two rows of sharp, coffee-stained teeth. He began to mimic the sounds issuing from Edgar’s throat.

“Oooo… Oooo… Oooo! What is that noise? Goddamned pathetic; you sound like a bunch of retards fucking!”

Finally, at the end of his wits, Edgar turned his head and jammed his eyes shut, just waiting for it all to be over. Tears spilled down his cheeks, and he grimaced as he bit against his cheek to hold back a sob, fearing that anything further from him would incite the thing assaulting him into sudden, uncontrolled violence.

From the giddy pressure drilling into his head, Edgar heard the thing before him hiss, “That was your one fuck-up, boy . Just see what happens if you ever intentionally endanger my people again.” The pressure at his head disappeared suddenly, and Edgar was forced to bite back another sob, this time for pure relief. He did not open his eyes.

“I suggest you make yourself scarce if you see me coming from here on out.”

Edgar heard the door of the camper slam shut. Only then did he allow himself the luxury of letting go. The sound coming from his mouth—the utterly defeated, panic-driven, gasping expulsions—was by far the most horrifying he’d yet encountered.

Clay Barton looked around at the faces surrounding him—the long line of people waiting for him to produce yet another idea, some other solution—and shook his head, eyebrow cocked in bemusement. There was a certain humor to it if one didn’t apply too much thought to the situation. He felt like a ghetto king presiding over a comedy of errors.

He regarded the man sitting before him; hands cuffed at the wrists, wary face inadequately covered by a patchy, red beard. His eyebrows were a reddish-blonde so light that he appeared not to have any at all, rendering all of his expressions as some variety of confusion. Everything looked confused on that face of his. The open mouth looked confused; the twitching cheeks looked profoundly confused… Clay wondered sometimes if he was dealing with a simpleton.

Willy Dingle. Christ, what a fucking name.

Clay spread his hands. “Well, someone tell me what the fuck happened, huh, before the whole town forgets to be pissed off anymore and our purpose here is rendered redundant?”

“Well, he done killt Albert Rooney, Baws,” Pap said.

Clay glanced off in a random direction, rolled his eyes, and nodded to himself. “Yes, we know that, Pap. What I’m tryin’ to discern here is fucking why.”

“Lemme speak?” Willy tried.

“Shut the fuck up, a minute. Witnesses? Anyone?”

“None to the act,” said Ronny. He stood on Clay’s left side. Pap, who stood off to Clay’s right, scowled when he spoke. “We had some people that heard the yell. They came running, but none of them know a damned thing. Albert was dead before anybody got there.”

“Uh. Making them about as useful as a condom in a convent. Fine.” Clay looked back at Willy. “Well? Speak.”

Willy looked furtively around the darkened machine shop, at the mass of people gathered before him. Some of them, like Ronny or Elton, had been people he’d interacted with on a fairly regular basis, whereas those like Clay or Pap had only ever said a handful of words to him. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. There was the speech Clay had delivered, those months before, when his army had swept through the Springs and kindly wiped out his gang. He’d used a lot of words in that speech, delivered as it was to Willy and the rest of the crew that hadn’t been shot up; Willy and the rest of the crew who hunkered on their knees, expecting to be lined up against the wall and shot any moment. A lot of fancy words that all said the same thing: join, vacate, or die. Like the others, Willy had joined. What the hell else was he going to do?

How long ago had that been, now? Four months? Six?

He supposed it didn’t matter.

“Well, Albert screwed me out of some credits. That’s how it started.”

“How?”

Willy sighed. “He had this iPod that was supposed to have been loaded with hours and hours of music. He said he didn’t know what all was loaded, there was so damned much of it. So, I checked it out. ‘Let’s see it run,’ I says, so he hits the button, and the screen lights up like you’d expect. He hands it to me, and I mess around with it a while, find the music, have a look through. There’s some fucking trash on there but also some good shit, too. I played one of the songs, and yep, there it was; the son of a bitch played. He even threw in a set of headphones. So we made the transfer clean.”

Clay glanced over at Big Johnny DeMaio, who nodded.

“So I take it back to my place, load up a song, and start to listen to it. A couple of minutes in and the music stops, so I look at it and the screen’s black. Well, it just needs a charge, I think, so I take it down to the generator and pay yet another fucking half just to juice it back up. I sat around like an asshole waiting until it finished up, took it back up to my place, and tried to listen to the same song again. And just like before, a couple of minutes in and the fucking thing dies on me. I turn it back on, and of course, the charge reads something like one percent.

“‘Bullshit,’ I think, and take it back to Albert. ‘Give me back my credits,’ I says, plus I told him he owed me the additional half I spent at the jenny. He tells me to take a hike. I told him I wasn’t going anywhere until he made it right, so he gets in my face, starts telling me to get the fuck out of his house before shit got real. Well, then shit got real. We spilled out of his shack into the dirt and rolled around a while before he pulled a knife, so I took it from him and stuck him a few times.”

“And nobody saw this?” asked Clay.

Pap shook his head and shrugged. “It’s one of the drawbacks of lettin’ people spread out so damned much, Baws.”

It was true. Once generated electricity became more readily available, people had begun to spread out from the initial village up at the Lead Devil’s, even knocking down the property fence in a lot of cases and spilling out into the surrounding land. The last Clay heard they had community members living as far out as three miles away. Keeping track of everyone was becoming a hell of a challenge.

Looking back at Willy, Clay thrust his chin forward. “Why didn’t you take this up with one of Pap’s people?”

Willy scoffed through his nose and shrugged. “Well shit, sir, I didn’t think I’d have to, did I? Hell, this was just a small thing as far as I was concerned. I was just gonna go get back what was mine; figured we could handle the situation like men. I didn’t expect the shithead to pull a knife on me.”

Clay settled into his chair, eyes hooded under the light. His jaw pulled to the right as he rubbed his teeth together, thinking. “Why didn’t you take one of the Mini-Johnnies?”

“Do what?”

“You said you were going back over there to get your credits. You would’ve needed a Mini-Johnny for that. There were no witnesses, so you didn’t have one with you. Why not?”

“I… well—”

“You just wanted to go over and start a fucking fight, or…?”

“Well, I was pissed, goddamn it! I wasn’t thinking straight; I just wanted my money back!”

Eyes unwavering, Clay saw a bead of sweat running down the man’s temple.

“You don’t seem to have any cuts on you, Willy.”

His face went white.

“I’ve never tried to ‘take away’ a knife from someone else but I imagine it’d be a challenge, them holding the fucking handle and all and nothing for me to grab but the blade, huh? You must be some kind of artist. Bruce fucking Lee.”