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

“Protected? He was gone!”

“Protected from themselves.”

She blinked and shook her head.

“You and I? We’re not like them. We’re a lot more like each other than we are like them, anyway. They’ve not been to the place we’ve gone. Who out there has killed for the convenience of vengeance?”

“Con… convenience ?”

“Yes. Revenge is convenient. It’s easy. And, as you and I both know, it does solve problems, doesn’t it? James will never actually harm anyone ever again, will he? Outside of the occasional nightmare?”

Amanda lowered her eyes, looked at her hands, and was relieved to see that they were steady. For a woman so proud of her brutal self-honesty, she found herself uncertain in this moment. She felt disconnected and numb.

“They’re an experiment,” she whispered.

“I beg your pardon?”

She looked at him again. Jesus Christ but his brown eyes were like the glass orbs of a doll… or a figure in a wax museum.

“All of them. George, Oscar, Gibs… Wang. Rebecca. They’re an experiment.”

“Amanda…”

“And the Bowl is… your laboratory?”

He sighed. “Amanda… do you not value these people? Have you not grown to love them?”

When she didn’t answer he pressed on. “Would you not see their best qualities preserved?”

“Oh… God,” she whispered.

“They made the good choice, Amanda. The decent choice. And I didn’t have to make it for them or force it on them. All they needed was for someone to lay out the parameters. And when they saw what it was… what it meant, they chose. They chose hope. They knew… they knew … what they’d be giving up and chose instead to hold on.”

He leaned forward in the chair, eyes boring into hers. “Did what happened after really matter? So long as they decided for themselves who they wanted to be?”

“And you wouldn’t let him go.”

He settled back. “The fact remains, Amanda. Children are not to be violated. And those who would do so must not remain. Honestly… would you have chosen different?”

“I did!”

“No. You let Oscar choose for you. Had it been up to you and you alone, what would have happened? Don’t bother answering out loud; you don’t need to. I already know the answer.”

She looked down at the bracelet again; a small, cold, dead thing. “Why did you keep it?”

“So that I would not forget.”

She slumped lower in the chair and shook her head slowly. “You had me believing…”

He leaned forward and took her hand, the sensation of his touch at once appreciated and hateful. She wanted to throw it away… and to grab it, to pull him toward her.

“I would have spared you that if I could,” he said. “But as I said, you and I have both been there already. I don’t know if there’s any coming back. It doesn’t have to be a question for them. They can still be better. All of them. Better than you and me.”

“I need some time,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Some time to work this over and decide how I want to feel about it. How I feel about you.”

“Yes, I understand.”

She left.

“We need to talk about something,” said Alish.

Her voice was tense and her spine stiff. Greg had known her long enough, had loved her long enough, to see when she was in a near panic. Suddenly uneasy, he lowered the dish he’d been washing into the basin, slowly so it wouldn’t clack against the rest. He swallowed, nodded, and gestured toward the table. She sat down, so stiff in all of her movements—everything about her so rigid—and waited for him. She would not look him in the eye.

He lowered himself into the adjacent chair as carefully as he’d lowered the plate, eyeing her like a fawn that might startle and bolt.

“What—”

“I’m pregnant.”

The rest of the sentence hissed from his mouth on a breath of air. He looked away and swallowed thickly.

“Holy shit…”

She looked at him, then, and he saw that her eyes were swimming. “I’m so… so sorry.”

“Sorry? Wh-what for?”

She only looked down again.

“Holy shit,” he repeated. “Well… so I guess this means we don’t have to hide anymore.”

“What!”

Greg shrugged. “Come on, Ali. We won’t be able to hide it soon enough. They’re gonna know.”

She shook her head violently. “They won’t understand!”

He rested his arms on the table and sighed. “Ali… it’s not the same thing—”

“What I did to you…” she hissed. Her chin contorted horribly, swimming eyes threatening to spill.

He reached out to touch her, to give comfort, but she pulled away. Letting his hand drop, he said, “I was involved as well, you know.”

“It’s not right… None… none of this is right…”

“Look at me.”

She looked, and he said, “That was desperation. We were all desperate. And what that was, what happened—it’s nobody’s fucking business but ours. What are they going to say? Nineteen is, like, a couple of months away unless I’ve totally lost track. So what?”

“What if they don’t see it that way, though? What if they see what it was?”

“How could they?”

“Come on. At my age with a teenager? What else could it have been?”

“Ali… do you love me now?”

Silence.

“Well?”

Slowly—slow enough that he felt the slow stirring of terror’s child—she nodded. “I do love you.”

“That’s all that matters, then. I love you, too. They’re gonna have to accept this.”

“I don’t know…”

“Hell, I think half of them must suspect by now.”

“I just don’t know…”

“Baby? We have to deal with this.”

She rested her forehead in her hand—resting her body on the table. “When?”

He blinked for several seconds as several truths began to sink in at once, all tumbling over each other like punishing waves barreling up a beach.

“Geez, I guess I better go tell Alan, first…”

Alish wiped her eyes and then her nose. She asked, “Will he listen to you?”

“I guess he’ll have to; he’s gonna be an uncle, isn’t he? Holy shit.”

“Should I go with you?” Her face began to crumple up in worry, and he squeezed her hand.

“No. Let me go first. I’ll let him know, and then you and I’ll go see Olivia. Then… well, I guess we’ll go see Gibs.”

“Gibs?”

“Sure,” Greg nodded, looking vaguely off to a point in the distance, far behind the wall of their little Connex home. “Yeah, we’ll tell him, and maybe he has a good idea on how to… hell, I don’t know—how to get it out there, I guess.”

“If they don’t accept it?”

“They’ll have to. Or, I guess we don’t need to be here that bad if they don’t. I won’t stay where we’re not accepted.”

She laughed sadly and said, “It’s very easy to talk so big.”

“You wait and see if it’s big talk,” he said. “When you and my kid are involved. Hey, do you think you’ll have a boy or… oh, shit! Will he be a… uh…”

She cocked her head. “A… uh… what?”

“A Muslim?”

She exploded into surprised laughter, filling the home with the music of it, making him smile despite all his fears and uncertainties—his doubts against his own suitability—and shoved him lightly. “You goon! Have you ever seen me pray? I may have been raised that way, but my parents were not strict at all. A great many things were left behind when we came here, and they ended up letting me find my own way… after a lot of heartburn, of course, but still. I would teach my child the traditions, of course, but really, I’m about as orthodox as a drive-through Mosque. And besides—it’s not an ethnicity. Dope!”