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

Raising his hands, he grunted under another swat. “Okay! Okay! I just didn’t want to assume! I mean, like, if it was important to you… you know? Our family didn’t believe in jack shit so he can be, like… with the family tradition? Or whatever? If you want!”

“Stop, Greg. Just stop it. It’s cute, but it’s also a little dumb. We have bigger things to deal with right now, anyway.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, again sober. “I guess I’ll head over and deal with one of them after I finish cleaning up breakfast.”

She rose from the table and said, “You go. I’ll clean up.” She sniffed before blowing her nose into a handkerchief; wiped at her swollen eyes with shaking fingers.

He breathed deeply, noting how his guts began to tighten. “Yeah. Yeah, okay…”

Stepping out of their home, now, into the dirt and long grass leading to Tom and Rebecca’s home fifty feet away, and beyond them by another fifty, Oscar and Maria. He thought about going to see any one of them, to visit for a time, or maybe going the other direction to see Olivia and tell her first. Delaying tactics, he knew. Little petty resistances intended to belay the unpleasant task. Greg knew them for what they were and rejected them.

He instead turned left and began walking, putting one foot after the other, crossing the expanse of the common ground to the old RV; one of the original two that Oscar had brought home to them all that time ago. A collection of children crossed his path at a run, laughing together; Patricia’s orphans, everyone. Piper, Dominic, Haley, Brandon—they paid him no mind as they passed, consumed as they were in their mad rush to be the first to arrive at whatever location they sought. He tried to imagine being responsible for one of them, tried to imagine his own child running through the patches of wheatgrass, kicking up clumps of soil, and laughing. He could not. The idea of fatherhood was as alien to him as frailty.

When he reached the RV, he stood before the door a while, thinking but not knocking. He glanced over at George’s silver teardrop camper and wondered if the old teacher was looking at him. He wondered if George was smiling. He sighed ( I seem to do a lot of sighing these days , he thought) and raised his fist to knock.

The door swung out before he could strike it, batting his hand away and making him jump back to avoid being hit. Fred filled the entire frame, head bowed low to see under the lintel. His face was as surprised as Greg felt.

“Well, good morning, young man!” he said, coming slowly to a pure, unguarded smile. Fred was ever the bearer of a slow smile, and yet once it began, it seemed it would never stop, spreading further and further out until the corners of his mouth threatened to meet each other at the back of his head.

“Hey, Fred. Is… uh, is Alan in?”

“Oh! Well, yes he is.” He glanced back over his right shoulder, down the length of the motorized home, and seemed to wait for something. He nodded after a moment and looked back at Greg.

“I’ll tell you- Let me just get this and I’ll be on my way.” He reached out of Greg’s view and then his hands returned holding a creaking wicker basket filled with various cuts of meat and vegetables. There were potatoes and beets in clear view, and Greg guessed that the tumble of green spilling over the rim might be carrots.

Greg backed away to let him pass, eyeing the basket as he did.

“You’re off to see Edgar?”

Fred paused. His shoulders set in place as though he were preparing to drag some heavy load and he said, “I am.”

“Don’t know why you bother with that asshole…”

Fred nodded. “That? What you just said right there? That’s exactly why I do bother.”

“He sold us out, man.”

Fred nodded again; a stubborn shake like an irate plow horse. “Maybe he thought he was trying to save us.”

“You believe that?”

“I… I believe the man was doing what he thought was right. I don’t agree with it but… Everyone ought to get a second chance, don’t you think?”

“Everyone?”

“Everyone not evil, Greg.”

Greg shook his head. “I sure hope he appreciates what you do for him…”

“Awe, it’s not just me. Barbara goes around to see him too. Also Andrew. Jake tried a few times, but Edgar won’t see him. Think he might be afraid of him.”

“I wonder why?”

Fred stiffened. He was beginning to run short on patience. “Didn’t you have somebody to go see?”

He began to walk off into the distance without further comment, past the other campers and the school bus where Otis and Ben lived, past the greenhouses and Lum’s “root patch”, out toward the last lonely camper some two hundred yards away; far enough away that it couldn’t hardly be seen on a bright night with a high moon unless the occupant ran a fire. Fred lumbered on, not making excuses or apologies, to visit with Edgar Muller and ask him about his days, to keep him connected and to advise him to be patient. They’d come around to forgiveness eventually—just be patient.

Greg looked at the gaping hole of a doorway, heard the silence inside, and entered.

He found his brother at the little dinette alcove; the table had been removed and was leaned against a wall to the rear of the living area to make room for his work. There was a bucket braced between his feet, and he labored over it, elbows rested on his knees, as he teased the skin from a hare. A sheet of butcher paper lay across the floor between the two bench seats cradling a small offering of slick, pink bodies; headless with furry paws. A foot away from these were the savory, vitamin-rich organs Alan had set aside. What small amount of blood and viscera that remained were squeezed out to the bucket. He worked quickly with deft hands and a frightfully sharp knife, the blade of which seemed to disrespect the meat as it was drawn across its surface, so easily was flesh separated from flesh.

“Hello, Alan.”

“Hey,” he said, not looking up.

Greg waited for a time, hoping he’d be asked to sit or asked how things were. They’d gone without speaking to each other for weeks, now. They did still speak on occasion—since this last spell—when the situation required it. They could work together when called to do so, could bear rifles and move as a unit. For a time, Greg allowed himself to be seduced into the hope that they could do those things; that they could work together in that old way they remembered and the old familiar habit would come back. That, at some point, that old relationship would heal. Brotherhood.

They would finish their work on those occasions when the situation required they work together and Alan would leave with neither a “fuck you” nor a fare-thee-well. In time, Greg learned to stop hoping.

Except here he was now, standing before his younger brother and unable to restrain himself—tentative—thinking here might be a thing that changes us . Obviously, he must come around after this.

Alan dropped a small, cleaned body on the paper and took up another. Holding it over the bucket, he slit open the belly with a flick of the knife’s tip and waited for the body to drip its last.

“Well?”

“We ought to talk.”

“Yeah, I guessed that.”

“I’m… uh… Alish…”

Alan looked up at him then. “She’s pregnant, isn’t she?”

The slow gape of Greg’s open mouth was answer enough.

The younger shook his head and laughed; a sound bereft of all good humor. “You’ll be playing house for real, now, won’t you? So you’re here for what? You want someone to throw a baby shower for you?”

“Alan… you’re going to be an uncle.”

Alan scoffed. “Yeah. And you’re already a dumbass.”

“Dude…”