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

The smile slipped from his face as he looked all of the men over. The guys who dressed like hard-asses were rarely the real deal, in his experience; not when it came down to getting serious. Sure, they’d talk louder and strut around. They would posture and charge like gorillas—of course, they would. But they always pulled up short at the last minute; those vocal, out in the open hard men. They hesitated; pulled up short. And a guy who hesitates is ever so easy to deal with for the man that truly understands and practices the application of instantaneous maximum aggression.

Gibs looked over a collection of such men now, as they all stood behind their chief; all standing in a line doing their best to look hard. A bunch of pretend spooky jokers. His eyes landed on one man who stood apart from the rest of them—an old guy as unlike the rest of the men out there as sand was unlike water. He wore a bright Hawaiian shirt and what seemed to be some kind of loafers… maybe boating shoes. His demeanor was incredibly relaxed; the lazy smile on his face was the same kind of expression you expected to encounter waiting in line to buy a gallon of milk. At his hip was an M60 hanging off an old-fashioned jungle sling.

Yeah , thought Gibs. You’re the motherfucker I wanna watch, aren’t yah?

Gibs pulled his arm out of the rifle sling, rested the rifle in the driver’s seat of the Humvee, and walked out to join his host. As he approached, the man Elton had referred to as Clay took a seat at the table.

“Now… I hope you didn’t get all dressed up like that just for me,” he said, gesturing at Gibs’s rig.

“What, this? Naw, I just threw this old thing on when I left the house this morning.”

He sat down.

Clay eyed him a moment, coal-black eyes glinting in the sun, and nodded. He tapped the table a couple of times with his index finger. A moment later, one of his men placed two glasses and a bottle between them.

“What about you? Did you pretty up just to come out and meet me?” Gibs asked.

“How do you mean?”

Working to maintain a flat expression, he said, “I was admiring your vest. Don’t see a lot of people sporting those anymore. It suits you.”

Clay cracked a smile and said, “I’m the only one around here that wears one. It’s hot as a fast-moving crack whore under a high sun but it’s got the benefit that my people can see it from a good distance off, it being so uncommon and all. They can see me from far away and come get me when they need me, sweet Christ preserve me.”

“Huh,” Gibs mused. Such a thing had not occurred to him.

“So. You asked to see the head motherfucker in charge. Here he is before you. What can I do for you today, uh, Mr…?” He pulled the cap from the bottle and filled the glasses.

“Call me Gibs.”

Clay set the bottle down and paused a moment, seeming to work over some internal list in his mind. Finally, he nodded and said, “Gibs, fine. What can I do for you, Gibs?”

He was momentarily distracted by the arrival of another truck up at the intersection. There appeared to be a bit of a commotion; people talking with each other. That Riley fellow stood at the center of the discussion, running his mouth and pointing back in their direction.

“Your man in the Hummer seems a little twitchy,” Clay noted.

“Yeah. Seems you have some more friends showing up for the party.”

Clay rotated in his seat and looked back up the road. He sighed quietly and said, “Yeah. That’ll be fucking Ronny. A real sweetheart, that one, you’ll love him to pieces.” He turned back to face Gibs.

Trusting Jeffries to keep an eye on things, he said, “So, I live in the area with a few friends—”

“They all military like you?”

“What makes you think I’m military?”

“Oh, don’t let’s start out by being fucking cute, huh?”

Rolling his eyes, Gibs said, “Some military, some not, okay? As you might imagine, the arrival of a group as large as yours is bound to make the locals curious, see? We’re curious about your intentions here.”

Clay knocked back one of the glasses and waited, staring at him. When Gibs didn’t reach for his glass, Clay shrugged, grabbed it, and threw it back as well. He tapped the table as he’d done before and the bottle and glasses were removed.

“Looking for a place to settle, is all.”

“Uh huh. And you think you want to settle in Jackson?”

“Oh, that’s premature,” said Clay. “We might. We’ve been wandering a while now, so we might. A sustainable situation is the main thing, huh? A reliable food supply and so forth? How are you folks set up here? How many of you are there?”

“We do okay,” Gibs said, at pains to pick his words as carefully as possible. “We’ve grown some, but we’re not quite as large as your group.”

“Would you be of a mind to trade?”

Gibs’s eyebrows rose involuntarily at that. As he considered the question, a new man approached the table. He had greasy, dirty blonde hair and an intense, hungry gaze. He stared right at Gibs. Gibs turned his attention back to Clay, hesitated, and then looked at the man again. He was still staring dead at Gibs.

“Can I help you, Squirt?”

His eyes widened, but he said nothing.

“Huh,” Gibs muttered. “You know… you bringing up the whole trade thing has the potential to be interesting but… your little twink over there looks like he has a crush on me. I can’t say I blame him but being eye-fucked by Jeffrey Dahmer’s younger brother is a little distracting. If he keeps it up, I might get a hard-on.”

Clay looked back over his shoulder, groaned, and said, “Knock it the fuck off, Ronny.”

“Yeah, didn’t faze him,” Gibs said.

“Pap, will you please do something about him? Drag him the fuck back up the road and give him a box of crayons, huh?”

“Come on, boy, let’s go,” the giant cowboy muttered. He tugged at Ronny’s arm and, after a moment, got him moving. Ronny’s eyes stayed pinned to Gibs for the first few steps, then he was forced to look away to see where he was walking. Gibs watched their retreating backs.

After a while he said, “That’s charitable of you, keeping so many special ed. cases around.”

“What, besides Ronny? You mean Pap? He’s alright once you get to know him.”

“No, I was talking about that Riley fella.”

“Riley? Not sure what you’re talking about, chief.”

Gibs shook his head. “Never mind.”

“Look, can we get back on the fucking subject, here? I believe we were discussing trade.”

“Take it easy, Daisy. I’ll have to take it back to my people and chew it over.”

Clay eyeballed him a few moments, hooded gaze darkening. He seemed to breathe heavier while his jaw worked slowly from side to side, teeth scraping together. Finally, he said, “Do that. Go on ahead, have a chat with your people, then come back and let us know. In the meantime, Jackson has to be ours now.”

“Come again?”

“It’s ours, including any of the bounty it contains. There’s a little speech I like to give in times like this, but you seem to be more of a to-the-point kind of cocksucker, like me, so I’ll skip it, huh? The point is: I have a lot of fucking mouths to feed, Gibs, okay? Men, women, and children. I don’t have time to be polite about this. We’ve moved into this city, we’re well spread out, and we’re well armed. That’s just the way it is. Now, that doesn’t mean we’re gonna shoot at you people on sight, huh? We want to set up some kind of trade like I said. Maybe we end up getting a little closer later on when we get to know each other better. Maybe it becomes less about trade and more about shared resources.”

Gibs was smiling again; a sight that confused Clay somewhat. It wasn’t some evil ball-breaker’s grin Gibs was wearing—he had a genuine smile. He was amused and looked like laughing any minute. It was unsettling, and Clay began recalculating on the spot.