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

When she shut the door, Riley turned back to look at Stacy and said, “I really like her…”

“I recognize you from Corina’s a few days ago. You were out on the patio with someone else, weren’t you? I knew I saw you from somewhere.”

Riley’s smile widened even further; impossibly wide. It looked painful to Stacy. It made him think of a skull. Riley resumed his seat at the table and gestured to the chair across from him. “Please.”

Stacy sat and waited for the other man to speak. Instead of doing so, Riley drummed his fingers on the table top for several seconds before reaching into the pocket of his jeans. He pulled out an old-fashioned gunmetal pocket watch, popped it open, and read the face.

“What is this?” demanded Stacy.

In answer, Riley extended an index finger and, without looking up from the watch, said, “We’re waiting for company, aren’t we?”

“You’d better tell me what this is all about. I don’t mind saying that I’m getting a little pissed off.”

Riley’s eyes flicked up to meet Stacy’s, his eyebrows beetled up as high as the skin would allow. He said, “Be patient, Steve…” before looking back down at the watch.

There was something about the way he’d spoken that clued Stacy into the reality that this was very wrong, never mind the rest of the man’s behavior—never mind the fact that Riley had just referred to him as Steve. That Riley might have come to the wrong house on accident never even occurred to Stacy. Hearing him say that name, “Steve,” the blood in his body seized up like ice.

A soft knock issued from the front door a few minutes later. Riley snapped the pocket watch shut, put it away, and then leaned forward over the table until the tip of his chin touched the surface. Looking up at Stacy through his eyebrows, he giggled, “Exciting!” before getting up and walking to the door. Once there, he took a deep series of breaths and shook his hands out at the ends of his arms; when he was done, the smile had vacated his face entirely. Wearing a visage of intense concentration, he opened the door.

A woman stepped through the entry first; she nodded at Riley, glanced in Stacy’s direction, and walked across the room to the sofa, where she sat down. Immediately after her followed Ronny Crowder, and then Stacy’s blood truly did freeze. His hands felt miserably cold, and he began to shiver through his spine.

“You know who I am?” Ronny asked.

“I… I do…”

He nodded. He approached the table and sat in the chair that Riley had formerly occupied. Riley shut the door and went to sit by the woman on the couch. He crossed his arms and stared at the floor, his expression relaxed in boredom. Any hint of his earlier manic smile was completely gone.

“His woman’s in the back, is she?” Ronny asked.

“That’s correct, right,” said Riley.

Ronny pointed at Stacy with the tip of his chin and whispered, “I’ll keep my voice down; a courtesy, okay? Don’t annoy me.”

Speechless, Stacy nodded. He felt short of breath and struggled to calm his giddy heart.

“You’ve been frequenting the whore tents.”

Oh… sweet Jesus.

Stacy began to shake his head in protest.

“Please don’t, Stacy. Just don’t. We’ve been watching you, okay? We know.”

“It’s not what you…”

Ronny leaned forward in the chair. “Not what? Not what I think? Fine, what is it then? What is it you have going on that has you sneaking over there after dark, spending an hour in… whose tent?” He hissed the last question over his shoulder.

“Heather,” whispered Riley.

Turning back, Ronny cocked an ear towards Stacy. “I’m listening…”

Stacy glanced down at his hands, searching the backs of the knuckles in a red panic. What could he say? What would they possibly believe?

“Wait, I have an idea. Let’s have your old lady come out here and then you can explain it to all of us at once. That way you won’t have to repeat yourself. Then, we’ll all get up and take a stroll over to see Clay, and you can explain it all for him too! You can explain to him why you’re special enough that the rules just don’t apply to you!”

Stacy was panting now. He felt pins and needles running up his face, and it was becoming harder to think straight.

“Stacy? Don’t you fucking pass out on me. Find some water, would you please, Danielle? Can we get him some water?”

Danielle got up and started poking through the cabinets in the kitchen.

“Over the fridge cubby,” Stacy muttered weakly.

“Say again?” she whispered.

“The fridge cubby. Up top,” Ronny said a little louder.

She nodded and discovered a water jug. She grabbed that, found some glasses over by the sink, and brought them back to the table. When Stacy drank a full glass, Ronny asked, “Better?”

He nodded, breathing a little easier.

Shaking his head, Ronny said, “Look, none of us cares who you fuck or how, okay? Piss down the whore’s back, for all I care; whatever gets you off. The only thing is that you’re a little unlucky because you have something I want and now I have leverage on you. See how that works?”

Stacy nodded again; asked, “What do you want?”

“Access.”

“Huh?”

“The food haul’s been on a steady decline for some time now, hasn’t it?”

“Food…?”

Ronny reached below the table top. Stacy saw his arm jerk, and when it came back, it held a long, ugly knife with a serrated blade. “I don’t like repeating myself, Stacy.”

Stacy swallowed hard. He felt a wave of nausea roll over him, and he suppressed a burp. “Okay, okay. Yeah. Food’s been going down, that’s right.”

“Good. It’s all brought back to Distro, right? You gig there certain days and tally it, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Okay, progress. Here’s the thing, Stacy. I know where the fresh stuff is. Real food. Not the canned and bagged shit we’ve been living off out here. I’m talking farmland, okay? But the thing is this: we have to do a bit of traveling to get to it. Now, I’m seeing a lot of things I don’t like. For one, I’m seeing a lot of people settling in around here, only this isn’t the place to settle…”

“We… uh, I’m sorry for interrupting…”

“No, no. Go on. As long as you got something to say, let’s get it the fuck out.”

“We could farm here?”

Ronny shook his head slowly. “If we could, we would have started by now. We’ve been here six months… or as close to six that it doesn’t matter anyway. Long enough for a crop of anything, if we’d found shit to plant or had people who knew how.”

“Right… right,” Stacy poured more water and sucked it down greedily. “But we could learn, right?”

“We should have been at it, already. What it comes down to Stacy? Is we got fucking lazy. We came in, set up shop, got nice and comfortable, and suddenly there was a shitload of food again. Aaand, of course, everyone settles back and relaxes because all that food coming out of the city’ll just last forever, won’t it?”

He scoffed.

“Assholes. We’re back in the same spot, as always. Now look, I nearly have Clay talked into picking up and moving to the Promised Land, okay? But he’s set on waiting until he knows we’ve pulled everything out of Colorado Springs that we can. Only that’s a really bad idea. Know why?”

Stacy shook his head, terrified to say the wrong thing. The tip of the knife was pointed right at his chest.

“The Doc’s been finding a lot of new issues on his rounds, lately. A lot of people are reporting joint pain, canker sores, skin issues. Bleeding gums? White spots on fingernails? Hair loss? You know what that points to? Those are deficiencies, man. Lack of vitamins, bad nutrition. People are starting to get sick. Now, I’ll admit I don’t know what the overall plan is but… if we don’t do something drastic really fucking soon, we might not get out of here.”