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

Elton burst through the door of the main office a short time later, a little disheveled and a lot out of breath. Whatever discussion had been in progress died instantly as he stepped in; Clay sitting in his leather rolling chair with coffee cup in hand, long-sleeved shirt under an aged leather vest (the vest having been a gift to him from one of his people), and jeans pulled over heavy shit-kicker boots worn as proof against the town’s network of muddy ruts and passageways. Fanning out to his sides in a rough circle was the usual collection of his top people: Pap, Doc, Johnny, Ronny, and Ned—all of their eyes were trained on Elton. Noting the state of Elton’s attire, Ronny hid a smile by scratching at his nose.

“Hey, sorry I’m late, guys,” Elton offered. He scooted across the floor and threw his ass into a vacant chair. He spent a moment situating himself, noticed that his shirt was on inside out, and rolled his eyes.

“Good?” Clay asked.

“Yeah, sorry.”

“Would you like a fucking cup of coffee?”

“No, I’m… I’m fine.”

“Oh, capital. May we fucking proceed, then, your grace?”

Elton’s face soured. “Yeah, man, let’s go. Again: sorry.”

Clay held his gaze a beat longer, then nodded. “Right, then. Well, as I was saying…” He pointed at Johnny and leaned back in his chair.

Johnny cleared his throat, opened up a notebook, scanned a few pages, and grunted. He passed the notebook to his left and began to speak as it made the rounds.

“Well as we know, the daily take had started to level off not too long after we got here. I’d say, oh, around the time that we swept the main city. The drop off wasn’t horrible at the time, of course, and some days were better than others, but we could see what was happening when we ran it through the models. Once it was all statistically smoothed out, we were looking at a gentle decline, and our projections were showing that the whole operation ceased to be sustainable about a year after day zero.”

There were several nods from the others, but nobody bothered to say anything. They knew that Clay wouldn’t have called the get-together if it was all rosy sunshine and angels dancing on pinheads.

“So the issue we’ve run into is that the take has dropped off considerably in the last month… you can see this on the second table of the sheet I’m passing around. The reports from Distro have consistently been that we’re simply not taking in enough provisions anymore. Other goods like clothing, building materials, and so forth seem to be holding steady, but the food is drying up far faster than we originally thought it would.”

A disgusted snort erupted from Preston “Pap” O’Hearn; his eyes bored into the notebook as though he was trying to burn a hole through the paper by force of will. “Cain’t tell what the hell I’m readin’, here—someone tell me what the hell all these numb’rs mean! What the hell’m I lookin’ at?” He thrust the notebook back in Johnny’s direction. It flapped through the air like a frightened pigeon and belted Johnny right in the chest. “Bunch’a gawt damned Greek…” he groused.

“All right, Pap, all right…” Clay soothed.

Sighing, Johnny took his time in smoothing out the leaves of the abused notebook. When he located the page previously selected, he cleared his throat and continued.

“The summary to all this… gentlemen , is that we have another month and a half here at the very most before we have to start deciding who gets fed and who starves.”

The room became permeated with a stricken silence as the occupants processed what he said. Plenty of them sat there looking completely poleaxed; mouths hanging open, running fingers through tumbling, messy hair, shifting around uncomfortably in their seats. Shortly after, the rest of them—Doc, Ronny, Pap, and even Ned—erupted into a bunch of outraged yammer.

Rather than losing his mind, Elton resolved to hold fast and instead focused his attention on Clay. He hadn’t moved from his earlier relaxed attitude. His legs were crossed at the knees and he leaned on one elbow. His eyebrows were drawn together imperiously and, combined with his drooping lids, gave off the impression of a man locked in a state of boredom.

Except for the fact that he drummed his fingertips rapidly against the armrest of his chair. Clay was not a man given over to fidgeting; impatience, sure, but this always manifested through a verbal outburst. Aside from everyone else in the room running their mouths, Clay’s drumming fingers worried the hell out of Elton.

It was this, more than anything, that inspired him to open his mouth; an action typically at odds with Elton’s usual go-along-to-get-along nature.

He extended his hand and said, “Hey, hey, Hey! I’m hearing a lot of ‘how could this be’ s and ‘why didn’t you tell us’ bullshit… let the man finish what he’s saying and maybe you’ll get an answer!”

The yammer died down as quickly as it had come to life. They turned their heads collectively back to Johnny, who nodded his thanks to Elton before proceeding.

“To answer Elton’s first question— how could this be —the answer is this: take your pick of explanations. We knew the city would dry up eventually; we knew it because each one we roll through has done so. It’s basic cause and effect. If nobody’s making food anymore, you have a limited supply of the stuff left, and you keep eating that supply every day, guess what? Shit runs out, doesn’t it? Complaining about it at this point is childish and doesn’t get us anywhere.”

He must be at his wit’s end , Elton thought. The man rarely ever let his temper get the best of him in the midst of a discussion.

“With regard to the second question—why hasn’t anyone been told—that was under my instruction—”

“Your instruction!” Ronny coughed.

“Ronny: enough,” Clay growled. “Nobody says another fucking thing until Johnny finishes what he’s saying. We’ll be here until my fucking prostate turns into a pumpkin, otherwise, huh?”

“My instruction,” Johnny emphasized. “We needed enough time to gather data sufficient to ensure we weren’t basing our findings off a few anomalous runs. Additionally, we didn’t want any of Elton’s teams to change their search patterns for fear that a shift in behavior would corrupt our analysis.”

Clay glanced at Johnny to confirm he’d finished speaking and then thrust his chin at Elton. “None of your people reported any shift in numbers?”

Elton shook his head. “Nope. I can go back and chat with my team leads to be sure, but I’d bet not. None of them count what they pull in anymore, you know, and I know they’re not getting together to compare their hauls. It takes too long to track it all, and they’ve just gotten into a habit of letting the Mini-Johnnies down at Distro tally up the haul and credit their accounts. Credits pay out equally for food versus other stuff, so they never would have reported a hit to their pay, would they?”

“Sh-should we weight the payments in f-favor of food?” Ned asked hopefully.

“No, you’re not listening,” Johnny sighed. “The drop is significant; did you not see the table?”

“I… n-no. P-Pap tossed it back at you before I c-could…”

“Shit; sorry Neddy,” Pap muttered.

Johnny sent the notebook across to the little engineer and waited for him to review the figures.

“Oh. Oh…”

“Yeah,” Johnny agreed.

Doc leaned forward and began, “Well… should we change the search pattern so that—”