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

“Come on, Willy,” Clay coaxed gently. “Step up, and it’ll all be over quick as we can make it.”

“Th-th-this is gonna hurt…”

“No, son, your neck’ll snap. You won’t feel a thing. Swear to baby Christ.”

“Sh… shoot me. I-In the h-h-head…”

“No, Willy. Bullets are precious. Rope’s free. Now get the fuck up there, already.”

“Clay, listen… maybe there’s some way we can—”

Clay looked up sharply, glancing around the back of the shop. “Who said that? Who the fuck said that, huh?”

A man stepped forward out of the darkness; someone from Pap’s crew, so far as Clay could remember.

“It was me, Clay.”

“What’s your fuckin’ name?”

“It’s Charlie.”

“Uh. Well, no we fucking can’t, Charlie. What happens if we let it ride?”

Charlie shrugged, glanced at Willy’s back. His gaze lingered a moment as the man sobbed uncontrollably before Charlie looked away miserably.

“Anyone have any guesses?” Clay asked. “No? Okay, let me fill everyone in. The rest of the community—that’s anyone, not a biker that got picked up in the sweep… that’s something like three-hundred-eighty… fucking… people—gets it into their heads that we’re lawless around here. That murders go unanswered. What happens after that? Fucking anyone? No? Okay: more… fucking… murders happen. How many people do you have in your crew, now, Pap? How about you, Ronny?”

Both men began to stutter as they tried to produce a headcount on the spot.

“Shut the fuck up, I was being rhetorical! It doesn’t matter what the number is; they don’t stand up to the fucking mob if the fucking mob takes it into its head to plow us under!”

Clay rose from his chair and pushed a curl of grey-black hair from his eye in frustration. Through snarled lips, he said, “I see an ocean of fucking chaos in front of us boys, as clearly as the clairvoyant sees the gullible man’s future, and I’m telling you all right fucking now: that storm is calmed at the hanging of Willy Dingle!”

He walked around to Willy’s side; stood only inches away from the pale, quivering face. The face that looked up to the rafters in terror as the mouth continued to babble softly along.

“Now get the fuck out of here, Charlie,” Clay whispered. He stood in place staring at Willy, refusing to take his eyes off the man until Charlie was gone. A bright bar of light stretched across the concrete floor and disappeared soon after. Clay purred, “Now. Climb the fucking steps, Willy, or I’ll have Pap pull you up off the ground and then it won’t be quick at all.”

Crying even harder, Willy gasped, “Oh, God help me… Mammaaaaaa…”

“Hold him as he climbs up. Don’t let the poor bastard fall, huh?”

Standing at the top of the stepladder looking down, looking down at the polished concrete floor only a short distance below, an impossible distance below, a few feet between him and the great deep black, between him and absolutely nothing at all.

“Tie the end off.”

Feeling the rope tightening around his neck now. When had they even slipped it over his head? He couldn’t remember. The knot was digging into the soft flesh just below his ear. He wondered if he’d have enough time to be hurt by the rope when it dug in there, into the tender bundle of nerves just behind the jaw. Oh, Jesus Christ God, please help me!

“Move over, Baws. I’ll kick it out. You shouldn’t have to—”

“Bullshit, Pap. This isn’t a thing you delegate.”

Clay placed his foot against the stepstool’s handle and kicked out sharply, knocking it from under Willy Dingle’s body and across the garage shop’s floor. Willy had enough of a delay to scream out for his “Mamma” one last time before he jerked up against the noose, his feet a good six inches off the floor. They’d failed to account for the rope’s inherent elasticity, and the two or three good bounces Willy got were enough to send his body swinging wildly in lazy, sweeping arcs.

He choked and gagged horribly, fat tongue jutting from his mouth, while his legs kicked out again and again, as though he was trying to jump in midair.

“Goddamn it!” Clay bellowed. “What did I fucking say? Not high enough!”

“Sweet merciful Jesus, look at his face!” someone whimpered.

“Cut him down! Just cut him the fuck down, fucking morons!”

Someone yanked an old boot-dagger (a seven-inch blade as illegal as the Devil’s own dreams, once upon a time) and sliced through the rope in a single cut. Willy dropped to the floor, flopping over to his side. He began to cough and gag immediately, gasping and sobbing frantically.

“Remind me to nominate you assholes for an award from the Humane Society,” Clay rumbled, circling around Willy’s jerking body. “Gimme that fucking knife!”

Someone held it out to him by the blade; he grabbed the handle, reached out with his free hand, and grabbed Willy by the forelock.

“Clay, Jesus Christ!” someone moaned.

“Shut the fuck up,” he grunted, and thrust the tip of the blade up into Willy’s skull, right in between the point where the cervical spine joined with the occipital lobe. He buried it up to the hilt and stirred the tip around like he was whipping up cake batter. As he did so, Willy gasped, and his body arched into an impossibly stiff back-bow. He quivered like that until Clay yanked out the dagger, after which his body fell limp.

Clay stood, threw the dagger at the feet of the man who’d handed it over, and shouted, “Now haul him out of here and bury him, fucking incompetents!”

There was a round of shuffling as a few men came to collect Willy up. Someone gagged and muttered, “Oh, Christ, Willy’s shit himself.”

“Shut the fuck up and grab him,” another hissed, “before you end up joining him!”

Clay smoothed away his hair with a shaking hand and asked, “What was his name, huh?”

“Hwhy… it was Willie Dingle, Baws.”

“Yes, I know that, fucking Pap. I mean his real name. What was his real fucking surname?”

Pap’s head darted around the room, looking at some of the other men in shock.

Ronny said, “The guys just knew him as Willy Dingle, Clay.”

“Jesus Christ, what a name. Fine. Dingle it is. Put it on his marker and give him a proper send off.”

He began to drift toward the exit. As his hand closed around the doorknob, Ronny said, “You did the right thing, Clay. That’s how it’s done.”

“Shut up…” he said. He left.

Pap glowered murder at Ronny, running his thumb absently along the edge of the bloody dagger Clay had thrown aside. Ronny smiled, nodded, and let himself out of the shop.

Riley Hall leaned back in his chair, threw a leg up on the weathered café table, and interlaced his fingers over a stomach gone slim from careful rationing. He smiled thoughtfully as he watched the bustle of nighttime activity across the way; the small line of people that ran up to the security wall of the power plant, and the man stationed at a small desk to the left of the entry. Riley knew that the man’s name was Stacy Morris—he was one of the Minni-Johnnies. There were also a few things Riley suspected about the man as well.

Stacy spent a great deal of time with his head down in his notebook, scribbling away, looking up only to get the name of the next person in line before penning another entry. The people in line held various items, clutched either in their hands or rolled along in a cart. Most items were batteries of some sort; people coming by to charge simple devices had become somewhat of a rarity by that time. They’d figured out that it made more sense to juice up a battery and drag it back home to power whatever they liked, rather than paying good credits to charge only a single item.