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

“No, I just…”

“Not a fucking mark on you, Willy.”

Sputtering. Indignant. “Goddamn it, you weren’t there, you pompous son of a bitch! You can’t tell me what happened! I know what fuckin’ happened! I’ll tell you!”

Pap advanced on him angrily, but Clay reached out and caught his wrist. The giant of a Texan glanced a question back at him, and he only shook his head. Pap retreated back to his position at Clay’s right hand, his jowled face a dark shade of red.

“That’s right,” Clay whispered. “I wasn’t there. Nobody was, save you and Albert, huh?”

Willy fell silent, having run out of things to say. Clay smoothed his mustache with a finger as he regarded the man. He finally fluttered his hand and said, “Okay, wheel him the fuck outta here while we chew it over.”

When he was gone, Clay looked around at the others. Leaning forward, he asked, “Okay, what’s this guy’s standing in the community, huh? He have a lot of friends?”

“Not so much,” Ronny said. “The scooter gang never did such a great job of integrating once we brought ’em in. Kind of kept to themselves and all of ours kept a distrustful eye on ’em. I guess we never got over the fact that they shot a few of ours up when we cleaned out the city.”

“Well, they kept to themselves, mostly!” Pap interjected. “Always moving in the same group; it was always ‘us an’ them’ with those people!” He sounded a little frantic.

“Pap, why… why are you repeating all the shit that Ronny’s already said? Knock it the fuck off, will you? It’s aggravating.”

Pap looked down at the floor, his face an even deeper shade of red than before, and Ronny wiped away a smile before Clay could turn around to see him.

“Well, Pap has it right, anyway,” Ronny said. “Willy’s not really well liked.”

“Okay, but then neither was Albert, huh?”

“No, you got that right Baws!” Pap laughed. “I reckon he done screwed one too many people ’round here!”

Clay glanced back at him, slightly confused. “Are you okay, Pap?”

“Well, sure, Baws. Hwhy?”

Shaking his head slightly, Clay muttered, “Uh,” and rested his chin on his fist. He blew a gust of air through his lips as he thought.

“Well… he’ll still be an outsider with the main group, I guess, and more than a few fucking people will take it amiss if we don’t do something. You don’t wanna let a thing like this fester, is the main thing. It’s liable to fuck up the whole operation. And then, I guess doing something’ll piss off Willy’s buddies, huh?”

He drummed the fingers of his left hand on his knee while the others around him waited.

“His group is pretty small, though.” Another gust of blown air through pursed lips. “Hell with it. Let’s fucking hang him, I guess.”

Pap jumped in place, pointed at a man standing over by the shop’s rear exit, and barked, “Wheel ’im back in here!”

They rolled Willy back in a few moments later. His hands were still cuffed just as they’d been before and his eyes darted suspiciously around the shop, working overtime to peer into all of the shadows. His chair was positioned before Clay’s half-circle, and he appeared to shrink into himself by a small degree when a few more of Ronny’s men closed in from behind.

Clay regarded him quietly; his lined face a study in tired dissatisfaction as he continued to drum his fingertips along his kneecap. At first glance, Willy thought the man was staring at him but, after peering a little closer, he realized those aged, dark eyes were unfocused and slightly off center.

Unable to take the silence, Willy grunted, “Well?”

Clay’s eyes flicked up by a hair and focused. He drew a deep breath and said, “Willy Dingle, I find you guilty of murder, committed against one of our own people. The punishment for this crime will be carried out immediately, according to those customs that have yet to be established for the simple fact that this is the first fucking time we’ve had to deal with such a thing. So thanks for that…”

“Son of a… you have got to be kidding,” Willy groused.

“Hell if I am.”

Willy sighed, looked off to some point in the distance, and shook his head in annoyance. “Fine. So what now? Turn me out? Do I at least get to keep my shit?”

“’Fraid not, Willy.”

A heavy grunt issued from somewhere behind them and Willy startled in his seat when some unknown thing brushed against his shoulder. He jerked toward it, saw that it was a rope with a slipknot tied at the end, and looked up slowly to find that it was hanging from the rafters. The other end came back down to the floor, where it terminated in someone’s hands. Willy did not see who the hands belonged to; he saw only the rope. He shouted and tried to bolt from the chair, but his legs had gone so weak that he stumbled down to a knee almost immediately. Hands were suddenly on him, lifting him gently back up into his chair, and he heard the giant hick say, “Take ’er easy, hoss. She’ll only be worse if’n you fight ’er.”

He began to babble in a shaking voice. “Jesusfuckingchrist, you guys! I didn’t kill him! I didn’t! It was self-defense, can’t you see that? He pulled a knife! He pulled a knife! Hey! Stop it; just let go! I’ll go, okay? Just let me out of here I’ll never come back. Come on, just… I… pulled a kni—No! He pulled a knife! He did, not me! Oh, fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck…”

Somebody brought over a stepstool and placed it behind the terrified man. The highest step was something like three feet off the ground. Glimpsing it as it was brought out, Clay leaned far over to the right to see around Willy so he could get a better look at it.

“Is that gonna be a high enough drop?”

“…sweet Jesus, oh my god, this is a joke, right? You guys aren’t serious. He attacked me! He attacked me, I’m telling you! Listen to me! God damn it! Fuck… fuck…”

“Sure, I think so,” Ronny said.

“Oh, for Chris- He’s fucking pissed himself!”

“…lemmegojustlemmego, you can have all my shit justfuckingletmego…”

“You’re sure? Don’t let’s shove him off there only to find out it doesn’t get the job done, Ronny. I know we have a six-foot ladder around here somewhere.”

“I’m not cleaning this fucking chair up, you guys. We’ll just burn it or something. Jesus, he soaked the damned thing through! What the fuck did you drink, Willy? A Big Gulp?”

“…oh, my fucking god I can’t go like this please don’t let me go like this Hey! You guys like my old lady, don’tcha! How about a little time with Rita! I can set it right up for you. Swear to fucking god, she’ll suck you dry! Just call this off, okay! Okay? Guys? Please! Fuck! PLEASE! Fuckfuckfuckfuck…”

“Ugh, who the hell knows where that ladder is? We got this right here, Clay. I’m sure this is fine. Let’s just get it over, can’t we? I’m sick of listening to this asshole.”

“Hey!” Pap barked. “If’n he says a ladder’s called for, just go get the sumbitch! Ain’t no call to be arguin’; we’ll spend all damn day arguin’! Just send a runner already!”

“Easy, Pap, easy,” said Clay. “I’m finding I agree with Ronny here—soonest ended is soonest fucking mended, huh? I don’t think I wanna listen to Willy any longer than I have to. Come on let’s… let’s stand him the fuck up, then.”

Men took Willy by each arm and lifted, holding him out gingerly to avoid stepping in the puddle spreading along the floor. The entire front of his pants down to the shins was stained dark, though he didn’t seem to care at all; he only continued to babble on and on. They brought him carefully around to the stepstool and nudged him toward it. As soon as his shins came into contact with the first aluminum step, the continuous string of noise spilling from his mouth terminated. He looked down at the step, tears spilling from both eyes, and a long, giddy wheeze hissed out from his throat, continuing on and on until his lungs had finally expelled the very last bit of air. He breathed in immediately after, chin quivering, and quietly moaned, “…noooooooo…”