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

“But if we got them started on their own crops? An exchange of knowledge; we could teach them—”

Jake was shaking his head. “No. We need to be much more careful than that. They’ve already shown that they’re quite comfortable with declaring their primacy over us; of taking over an area. Let’s say we take up with them? That we establish some regular dialog and they eventually learn where we are or what we have? We simply cannot afford to disregard what people can do in times of desperation, whether they’re good or not. Think of yourselves: if we were starving? If the kids were starving, and you knew a group of others down the mountainside had food they weren’t willing to part with? Can you not see resorting to certain… unfortunate behaviors?”

“Oh my God, no Jake,” Barbara whispered. “I couldn’t imagine—”

“If our children were starving, Barbara. If they were starving and you had no other way to feed them.”

She fell silent. Her coloring had run through to a sickly grey.

“As Gibs stated,” continued Jake, “we have no reason to yet assume that these are bad people. Shall we not proceed with caution… and give them no reason to prove otherwise?”

George coughed silently, arresting the expulsion at his throat and puffed lips, and said, “It certainly didn’t turn out so well for the Native Americans when they went out to invite the Pilgrims to dinner.”

“No,” Jake agreed.

“What should we do, then?” Wang asked. “There’s an army of squatters out there. You’re saying we just shut ourselves in here? Sorry—not interested.”

Shaking his head, Jake gestured to Gibs and Lum. “I was thinking I’d ask our military friends to establish some sort of look-out over the town. It could be done in shifts.”

Lum nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah… reckon so. I know a few trails’ll take you all the way plumb over to Snow King. Probably a half-day to hike it but we could station a few there for a few days at a stretch with a spotter scope and collect some Intel. Count heads; see how they are.”

“The more we know, the better,” Gibs said. “You can be sure they were on their best behavior when we met—which wasn’t all that impressive, to begin with—but how they behave when they think they’re alone should give us a lot to work with.”

“And then, if they turn out to be unsavory, we actually could just hunker in a while,” said Jake. “Give them long enough to figure out that there’s not enough food to sustain them and they’ll probably just move on down the road, you know? We certainly won’t try to detain them if they do.”

Several began to nod their heads at this, liking the sound of a problem that just solved itself over time.

“What if they don’t go?” Rebecca asked. “They know we’re out here somewhere. What if they come looking?”

“It’s a fair point,” Jake conceded, “but it’s why we’ll have spotters watching Jackson. There’s good elevation up on the mountain; they should be able to see mostly everything. They’ll see if people are looking aggressive. Or if they look like forming search parties.”

“We’ll set up a town map here in the Bowl,” Gibs said to her. “The spotter teams’ll keep their eyes out for dirt-bags and pay them extra special attention. We’ll mark out their homes; their routines and activities. You’ll see. Give us a little time, and we’ll be able to tell you what color skivvies they prefer… or even if they don’t wear any at all, the nasty freaks.”

She settled back and nodded, placated for the time.

Leaning forward, Jake said, “Just a little patience, Edgar, okay? Your point is a good one. I’m sure it would make everyone here about the happiest people in the world if this all turned out well and we established some good arrangement with these new arrivals… but we’ve got to rule out the ways this can go wrong.”

“How will we know?”

“I can’t really say. It will require a great deal of consideration and thought. Collective thought, yes?”

Feeling his position already as tenuous as a foundation built upon loose sand, Edgar sighed and nodded. He held his tongue.

He left the gathering shortly after; the rest stayed behind and continued to discuss the matter. The disapproval of his presence was a palpable thing, like a stiff wind that impeded his passing, and he desired to wade through it no longer than was required. He excused himself—ignoring the shaded glances of the others as he rose from the chair—and made the long walk back to his camper out beyond the greenhouses, alone.

Edgar told himself that he was used to such things, that people would come around eventually, and even lied to himself that he didn’t mind the isolation so much. He’d always been one to prefer his privacy; never had a great deal of time available for the tiresome or the slow, which in his experience was just about everyone he met. He enjoyed being on his own, not having to explain things all the time or be embroiled in the day to day issues of the simpler folk.

So he insisted to himself in the quiet later hours.

Entering his home, he shut the door and lit a kitchen match and moved through the tiny living area lighting candles. Then he blew out the match and tossed it into a small metal bucket on the sink. He sat down on the couch and thought about the discussion they’d had. He thought about it a long time.

It seemed to him so clear that there were significant, tangible ways in which the two groups could impact each other for the better; an overall net improvement to their quality of life. Jake had made his points about caution, of course, and Edgar had duly noted them; good, common sense points that they were. But at the same time, Gibs had made his pronouncement: they didn’t seem like such a bad sort when you looked past the rough edges.

Gibs was a caveman, more apt to drag his knuckles through the dirt than hold his hands at his sides, and if the wind blew in the right direction in just the right way, the man might take it upon himself to sexually violate the closest available hole, be it in the ground or in the side of a tree. But despite his naked hate for the man (Edgar still insisted on categorizing it as “disdain” within his own mind), one thing Gibs never got wrong was a first impression. He seemed to have an innate talent for nosing out the vulgar lower class of the world, perhaps because they were his own people. His track record for weeding out the detestable from the mundane had, at least thus far, been without reproach.

He would have to approach the issue with great care. His error with Warren was obvious to him now—he’d never considered the possibility that his intentions would be so thoroughly misconstrued. Absolute clarity was essential. The exchange of knowledge for knowledge… and nothing further. If Edgar managed to broker a successful arrangement, well…

He imagined things would change pretty significantly. And then, what if he could get these people, these new arrivals, to ante up to the table but his own people in the Bowl insisted on obstinacy?

Edgar balanced his chin on a fist and stared into the low, dancing flame of a candle, unblinking until all of his surroundings faded away to darkness, and there was only the tiny yellow light. It swayed on invisible eddies, twisting and writhing for him, like the swaying hips of a dancer.

He supposed that the people of the Bowl were no longer his people, strictly speaking. Hadn’t been for some time now; not since Gibs had seen to it. Some of them had been accommodating, such as Fred or Barbara—even Olivia—but none of them had really spoken up in his defense, had they? Might it not be time for a fresh slate? A clean start?