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

The edges of her eyes pulled back sharply in the glint of the sun, vaguely Asiatic in appearance, and her high, sharp cheekbones suggested an air of severity, though her full lips softened the appearance into something rather striking. She could be a gorgeous woman when she smiled, Brian well knew—plain though she was—but that undercurrent of severity was always there, always refusing to be ignored. She made him think of the stern Indian wives he’d seen in old movies; women as strong as their men or stronger—those women who stayed behind when the braves left for war with a rival tribe, who would strike a drum and sing mightily in the chill air, bells jangling at their feet; those women who would sing for life, for love, for rain, fire, the harvest, or death.

Amanda sat before him at the table, a small woman in simple jeans and t-shirt—barely up to Brian’s shoulder—small, clever hands folded around her mug, and in the unwavering glare of her eyes, he heard bells. Brian swore to God that he heard those bells.

“I… I’m sorry,” he stammered. “What was your question?”

Those lips widened into a smile, and she nodded at his cup; teabag string still dangling over the rim.

Brian’s eyes widened fractionally. “I wasn’t going to ask but… if you’re offering I sure won’t say no.”

Amanda’s cheeks dimpled as she rose from the table.

The interior of the cabin was an amalgam of construction and design techniques that Brian, whose eye was ignorant to specific detail, could nonetheless recognize as being a hodgepodge of practical knowledge and experimentation. The walls were composed of logs hewn from trees harvested right in the valley, though they’d been chinked with buckets of some sort of chemical-based caulk; something Lum had instantly disdained on sight, stating that he’d have much preferred a mixture of natural clay and moss. Lum and Oscar had turned a few circles over the matter, finally agreeing to use the caulk for Amanda’s home due only to the fact that disregarding the substance would have amounted to a criminal waste of gasoline—a substance now extinct in the Bowl outside of Jackson, Wyoming… and everywhere else, presumably.

The floorboards were of milled two-by-six planks, available at any old-world lumber yard, laid across the honeycomb frame of the cabin’s foundation, the chambers of which were packed with pile after pile of sawdust insulation, and the doors leading to the two bedrooms in the rear were basic shaker-style panel doors hung off custom frames with locking brass doorknobs. The windows, which were again mounted into custom frames set into the wall using both screws and industrial caulk chinking, were double paned and energy efficient, though the shutters that closed over them were beautifully rustic and weather-beaten.

The effect of the cabin’s construction suggested that of a mock-up; as though they were living in a historical theme park operating under a corporate mission statement that asserted, “We’ll do our best to be as historically accurate as possible… but only just.”

Amanda clomped across the floor of the main room to the make-shift kitchen, where the heavy butcher block table, wash basin, and wood stove were located. She tossed the old bag of tea into the basin, lowered a fresh bag into Brian’s cup, and filled it up from the kettle. Returning to the table, she again apologized for the lack of sugar, as always. As always, Brian assured her that it was no trouble at all.

She resumed her seat at the table and waited patiently as he quickly read over his notes—some alien cipher that made no sense to Amanda at all—while dandling the bag in the steaming water. To himself, he muttered, “Where, where, where… what was I going to ask again?”

Amanda opened her mouth to respond, but the door to Lizzy’s bedroom opened, admitting the girl into the room. Now ten years of age, she’d clearly grown (if you knew what to look for, that is; she was still small and slight of frame like Amanda). She padded across the floor, callused feet scraping over the boards, and kissed her mother on the cheek.

“You have your knife?” Amanda asked.

Smiling, Lizzy pulled it from the small of her back, wearing it exactly as she had seen Jake wear his. It was a broad, deep-bellied bushcraft knife with a stout spine and an edge sharp enough to shave. Lizzy had sharpened and then stropped it herself only the night before.

“Will you be back for dinner, do you think?”

Lizzy gave it some thought. “Maybe? Gibs says we’re ranging out past the far peaks so… we might be coming back after dark?”

“Mmm. And who’s we?”

“Brandon and Piper are tagging along, I guess.” The girl’s mouth twisted only a little when she said this.

“Lizzy? Are you being nice?”

“Yes!” she nodded. “Yeah, absolutely. It’s just… well… they’d be a lot further along if Patricia’d let them all come out more.”

“Not your call, Mija .”

“Yeah… I know.”

Amanda looked her daughter over and sighed. “Take a sweater.”

“Of course—”

“And wear your boots!”

Lizzy’s face fluctuated dangerously close to a scowl—narrowly avoided—but she was unable to restrain from huffing. “Mom, those things are terrible! I can barely feel the ground!”

“Hey, you wanna go, or no —don’t you roll your eyes at me !”

“Sorry…”

“Yeah,” Amanda grunted. “Go on. Get your boots off the porch.” Lizzy turned to rush out the door before her mother could think of any other requirements. As she went, Amanda called after her: “And don’t take them off once you’re out of the valley—I’ll talk to Gibs later!”

The door clapped shut.

“ Cabrona… ” she whispered.

Brian snickered despite his best efforts to contain himself.

“What?” Amanda demanded.

“Nothing—ahem—sorry, it’s nothing. It’s just… uh… Oscar explained to me what that word means.”

Amanda’s eyebrow arched dangerously. “Yeah?”

Lips tightening around a smile, Brian said, “Sure. ‘Beloved daughter,’ right?”

A sharp laugh escaped her, catching them both by surprise. She wasn’t sure if the kid was serious or not; sometimes he could be completely clueless, and Oscar was almost always evil like a gremlin to anyone who didn’t speak the language.

“I think you were going to ask me something, weren’t you?” she smiled.

“Yeah, sorry…” he scanned over the paper again, tapping his finger on the table top. “Umm… okay, right—let me get the timeline right, here. Jake returned before or after Gibs?”

“Before. Something like a day or two; I’m not certain which.”

“Okay, good… and… right, we already have the list of our soldiers that came with him… duh…”

He blew into his cup before taking a sip.

“Okay—here: so you stated that Jake seemed, uh, despondent? When he came back?”

Wrinkling her nose, Amanda shook her head briefly as she thought it over. “I don’t know if I’d say despondent . Distant, definitely. He kind of locked himself away, you know? Like, he came walking back into the Bowl like nothing, looking all dirty and everything, like I said. We called out to him, but it was like he didn’t hear us, or maybe that he didn’t want to hear us. He just went back into the cabin.”

“And he didn’t say what he’d been up to when he was gone.”

“Never.”

He scratched a few notes in the sheet. “And he left… the same day you sent Jeff away?”

“Yes. He walked out and then I drove Jeff out several hours later. After… you know.”

Brian stared down at the sheet for a few seconds, tapping his teeth with his stub of a pencil. “Huh…”