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

“You think any of your boys could be holding back?” Clay rumbled.

“Holding back?” asked Elton.

“Yeah. Says I to myself: Clay, what’s a thing you’re most likely to do, assuming the position you’re an untrustworthy bastard and all, that pads out your fucking circumstances as a hedge against a shaky fucking economic system, huh? Given the general condition an untrustworthy bastard lacks basic trust and all, what might such a prick be likely to do, lacking trust in the system that sustains him?”

Elton was silent a moment as he worked out what Clay said. “Uh… all my people are pretty damned good, Clay. We’ve all worked together; a lot of us since Vegas. I can’t think of any of my leads doing such a thing. But, hell, I guess it’s a big enough deal that we’d better give it some thought. What did you have in mind? Random spot checks, or—”

“We can’t blow our time on that,” Ronny interrupted. “That could take weeks going through everyone, couldn’t it? Elton’s team has gotten huge! And from what I’m hearing, Johnny’s point is that our shit is weak right now, right?”

Johnny nodded. “The hunting parties are the only thing keeping us out of a no-shit crisis right now. Much longer, though, and we’re in trouble.”

“There you go,” Ronny stated. “Elton trusts his people and I, for one, trust Elton. I say we don’t burn up precious time dicking around with a bunch of searches that’ll only piss off the people we depend on.”

Elton grunted and said, “Thank you, Ronny. Appreciate that.”

“Pap, you alright?” Clay asked.

“H’why?”

“You look like the Doc just jammed a finger up your asshole.”

“Nuthin’. We can talk later.”

“Well, is it nothing or does it need to be discussed later, Pap?”

“I said we can talk later, damn it.”

Clay sat straight in his chair, eyebrows climbing up his forehead in that scandalized way he had, and said, “Alright, Pap, alright. Easy.”

Shaking his head at the distraction, a frustrated Johnny said, “We need to be discussing options, here, guys. Let’s focus, please.”

Clay brushed a finger under his mustache, leaning heavily over onto his arm, and sighed. “Always. Same fucking thing every time. I’m goddamned tired of it, boys. It’s the same problem we keep solving over and over again. And someone fucking explain to me again why we’ve not placed a greater emphasis on farming? Please clue me in; I seem to be confused.”

Several people shrugged uncomfortably. Doc cleared his throat and said, “Well, it… it hadn’t been prioritized sufficiently, Clay. The emphasis of the last several months has been to get everyone up to speed on power, both through the energy plants as well as gas vehicles. Ned and his team did a hell of a job on that but, honestly, that kind of effort sucks up a huge number of resources. Between scavenging all the parts they needed and the building crews getting our infrastructure up to speed… not to mention the fact that it was the building crews under Horace that were going to take all that farming on.”

“Uh,” grunted Clay, “that’s wonderful. We’ll all be able to drive happily around in fucking circles as we starve to death. That certainly makes me feel better.”

Unable to respond in any way that avoided rebuke, many of them again simply shrugged.

Clay scratched the back of his scalp angrily before jerking his hand away, causing a riot of unruly black and grey waves to stick out from his head. “Well, suggestions, goddamnit? I hope you’re not all waiting for me to pull a rabbit out of my asshole.”

“Well, you know my suggestion…” Ronny said quietly.

After a moment’s thought, Clay nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I do. And it might just be time to follow through on that angle.”

“Whoa, gawtdamned Whoa! Ya’lls talkin’ about movin’?”

“Well, Pap?” asked Clay.

“Whu… well what about ever’thing we built here! We’re gonna up an’ leave it all behind?”

Clay shrugged. “We’ve done it before, haven’t we? All this shit we have; we can take it with us. God knows we have the diesel to haul it since we shifted over to Ned’s Woodies .”

“But… but the homes!”

“Homes…” scoffed Ronny. “We’re living in shacks and campers, man. And I guess I gotta repeat myself here; I know where the food is, Pap. Lemme ask you something, man. Do you remember Sam Kinison at all?”

“Ronny, what the fuck does this have to do wi—”

“Just a minute, Clay, please. You’ll see I have a point. Do you, Pap?”

“I do…”

“Okay, well so do I. He was before my time, but my dad loved him, okay? He had this bit that I saw one time… hell, I don’t remember when—a long time ago, right? He was griping about starving villages in Africa—how to solve them, or whatever—and the whole bit amounted to him screaming ‘GO WHERE THE FOOD IS!’”

Ronny shrugged expansively and smiled. Pap’s mouth slowly fell open as his eyes began to roll under a furrowed brow, as though someone had parted his hair with a two-by-four. “Son… d’you mean to tell me this whole argument you got goin’ here is based on a laughin’ bit put on by some screamin’, dead asshole?”

“It’s a terrible oversi-simplification,” Ned said. “Had it b-been as easy as migrating, those p-poor people would have—”

“Well, I was trying to put it in terms the cowboy could understand, Ned…”

Pap was on his feet and charging across the room before anyone else realized what was going on. Ronny just had time to see the bull come charging; he thrust up from his seat and grabbed for the knife he kept clipped to his belt, but Pap was on him well before he had it, bouncing him bodily off the wall and cocking back a meaty arm. The other men in the room scrambled back as though a grenade had been dropped in the center of the floor, though Clay reacted faster than the rest; he was on his feet inserting himself between Pap and the focus of his rage only a few seconds later.

“Turn him loose, Pap!”

“Git the fuck out the way, Baws, afore y’all git hit!”

“I will not, Pap! Now you turn him the fuck loose and go sit down!”

A pained, betrayed expression flashed across Pap’s face, his attempts to hide it serving only to make his appearance more pathetic, as though he was a small boy who’d just been told by his father that he was unloved and unwanted. His hands dropped lifelessly to his side as he stumbled back. He muttered, “Goddamn it, Baws…”

“Just sit down, Pap. We’re gonna talk this out, you and I, but killing Ronny isn’t going to fix anything right now.”

Collapsing into his chair, Pap grumbled, “Make me feel better…”

“Me too, most likely,” Clay whispered. He turned to put eyes on Ronny, who still stood against the wall with his hand on the knife’s handle. “You want to try me with that toothpick of yours?”

Ronny shook his head slowly. “Naw…”

“Then sit the fuck down and keep that cuntflap of yours shut, huh? I’m not gonna bother stopping him next time. I’ll just assume that your intent is to commit suicide; you get him all riled up again.”

Ronny resumed his seat and kept his eyes on the floor. Clay glanced back at Pap; when he was satisfied it was over, he sat back down as well. The rest of the men in the room, having ascertained the danger had passed, settled carefully into their places.

Clay coughed loudly and said, “I figure the point our retarded fucking friend was attempting to make in the broken excuse of what passes for logic in his beleaguered world was that we’ve got a good lead on some fresh crops. These are not terribly far away, comparatively speaking, and we can just scavenge our way up there, huh?”