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

Almost bored, O.B. stepped up next to the kid, grabbed the belt of linked 7.62 as it was sucked greedily into the weapon, and twisted hard like he was gunning the throttle of a motorcycle, breaking the belt in two. Two or three more rounds cycled through before the M60 shuddered and fell silent.

“What the fuck happened?” demanded the idiot kid.

Instead of answering, O.B. grabbed an old canteen, unscrewed the cap, and dumped it over the M60’s barrel. The water hissed on contact, throwing steam up into the air.

“We used to carry spare barrels for these babies a hundred years ago,” he said in a voice that was high and reedy, the polar opposite to what most expected before hearing him for the first time. He lifted a small lever just ahead of the rear sight, grasped the barrel with some channel-locks, and lifted it out of the weapon. “Had asbestos gloves to pull ’em out… swap ’em in. Can’t find those anymore…”

He laid a fresh barrel into the weapon and set the locking lever. The kid hadn’t even looked at him; he was staring out at the burm, pulling in quick, sucking breaths. Clay saw his hand shaking and suppressed a grin. O.B. kept talking, failing to notice or failing to care, in his quiet old man’s voice.

“The best thing to do is fire bursts like I said. You say a little chant in your head: ‘fire-a burst-of six.’ In the time it takes you to chant those words, you’ll’ve fired six rounds. Finger off, give her a rest, and back on again. ‘Fire-a burst-of six… fire-a burst-of six… fire-a burst-of six…’, like that.”

He leaned down and put his sharp whiskered mouth close to the kid’s ear, laid a gnarled hand tipped in flat nails yellowed with age over his shoulder, and in that same high cautious voice said, “I tell you what, son, next time you pull a look at me like you did back there, I won’t even bother letting you embarrass yourself. I’ll just take you aside, drop your britches, kick your ass up over your shoulders, and dry fuck an ounce of respect into you. How would that be?”

The kid said nothing, only stared at O.B. sidelong out of unreasonably wide eyes.

“Sure, thought you’d like that. Now get the fuck off my line. Go find Pap and tell him O.B. says you’re either good enough for working laundry or good enough for Isabelle’s tents.”

The kid got up to leave. As he did, the old man called in his friendly voice, “And I’m gonna check with him to make sure you told it right, kid. Tell it right, or I’ll come find you so we can clarify this whole conversation, okay? I surely hate it when the young folk don’t hear the first time around.”

Clay smiled as he thought about that time; realized a moment later he perhaps felt a touch of nostalgia for Colorado Springs. He sighed and settled back into his seat and waited to see what they would find in Jackson.

The city of Jackson could almost be said to have been divided in two; a southwest end and a northeast end combined by the snaking line of the 191. The southwest end—the point at which Clay’s army entered—was composed primarily of the high school, a few sprawling neighborhoods, a few different groceries, and the odd small business. Take the 191 north from here, looping up and over to the east as it passes by the ruins of Powderhorn Park, an old baseball park and play pit now stuffed with row on row of rapid-deployable temporary housing which were themselves stuffed with row on row of the deceased and rotting; past the empty RV park out by the burned-out wreck of the Stone Drug store; the homeless tents of Karn’s Meadow Park; past all of these things you’ll find the press of Jackson-northeast. Here you’ll discover the jumble of homes arranged patch-by-patch, both permanent structures and mobile homes set up on platforms; old trucks rusting down to nothing under the drooping branches of the mournful trees—sad thoughtless creatures that have heard neither the laughter of children nor the melody of music for long, long days. Garbage lines the roadsides and, in some places, blackened, semi-melted piles of bodies. Cored-out businesses that once displayed family names. Snow King Mountain raises up in the distance, looking down over it all; the dead relics; the empty houses; the quiet survivors who skitter like cockroaches and hide, always hide from the rumor of the silent eyes watching the city; structures ripped open blowing their broken hearts across the chipped and pitted pavement; the lives that are no more. The cold hard mountain looks down over it all and does not care .

Clay halted the column outside the Shell gas station at the halfway point between southwest and northeast Jackson, the lush tree-covered green hills of the mountain slope visible in the distance to the south; ski slopes becoming overgrown and hidden—the plaything of a dead culture reclaimed by the world and made wild again. In this place—right in the middle of the street—the top people in the tribe met and planned.

Johnny made a game attempt at kicking off the discussion. “So I guess we’d better start out b—”

“Where the fuck is Ronny?”

“Baws, h’what?”

“Ronny. He’s still back at the other end. Someone bring him up here, huh, so we don’t have to repeat ourselves.”

A woman on the periphery bent her mouth to a radio; Danielle, Clay remembered after a moment of mental digging. Her fella Elton stood close by massaging his lower back.

“He’s heading up now, Clay. Says to give him a few,” she said.

“Uh. Somebody break a little food out, huh? Nothing too fancy but something we can all pick at; snacks and the like?”

They broke out a table and spread a city map over it while some of the others went digging for food, resigning themselves to the new understanding that they’d probably be there a while. As they waited for Ronny to materialize, Ned bent almost double to the map and began to trace a finger over the line work, head twisting from time to time as he referred back to the key.

Clay sidled up to him and muttered, “What’re you looking for, there, Professor?”

The small man’s body jerked slightly when he spoke. “I was l-looking for a machinist’s shop or… s-similar…”

Clay leaned over next to the man and said, “It’s alright, Ned,” in a soothing voice when the other shied away. They studied the representation of the city under their feet together quietly for a while. After some time went by Clay shook his head and said, “Well, I see a few auto repair joints and a couple of welder shops. I suppose we’ll have to cobble something together.”

He looked up from the map abruptly when he sensed the approach of more people. Ronny was in view now, walking in their direction with a small collection of his people; it looked like five or six to Clay. He went everywhere with a little posse now, it seemed, probably even taking them along for nature’s little necessary activities. It was a development with an uneasy aftertaste.

He strolled along with a rifle and a smile, no doubt pleased at having finally arrived to the place he hadn’t been able to shut the fuck up about over the last year or so, taking his sweet time as he heel-toed up the pavement, sometimes swaggering his step or dancing a bit of a jig. He reminded Clay of a parade leader; perhaps a circus crier. Clay saw the other one, Riley, following close behind, as always. As always, his face carried that dour, flat look. He struggled to put a name on the expression and came up short. He’d disliked the man instantly the first time they’d spoken to each other long, long ago in Nevada. Eyes cast aside, always, was how Riley did it. Never looking at you to speak, never meeting your gaze head on like a man. Like a man hiding certain shit. He seemed the exact sort that Ronny would enfold into his breast and cultivate.