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

His hand flexed on the bottle neck, causing it to rotate slowly. Ronny groaned at the stinging sensation he perceived as a shard so fine as to be invisible slit through the lid of his eye by a scant millimeter. He could feel its pressure against the wall of his eyeball; knew that with just a hair’s-worth more of pressure it would punch through the lid entire and begin to scour through the ocular membrane. He rolled his eye towards its tear duct to protect the pupil and iris from any potential slip of pressure and focused on not blinking or twitching in any way; aware that such movement would only lengthen the cut. A red runner of blood leaked out and balanced on his lashes in a fat drop, quivering out in space.

“Pap…?” Cuate called from the couch, haunted eyes peering over its back.

“Hush now, son. Lay over ’n don’t listen.”

Ignoring the child, Clay said, “So the point here is that you really wanna pay attention right now. I really want this place to work, Ronny. I don’t want to start off on the wrong foot and I also know that such is the only kind of foot you were born with. You and your fucking people will do… nothing , is that clear?”

He flexed his stomach to get the air moving, croaked out an “uh-huh” through mashed lips when the requisite pressure was achieved.

They were distracted by the front lobby door opening across the hall. Clay said, “Ned—I didn’t know if you’d be coming ba—”

He looked up over Ronny’s head and saw that the newcomer was not Ned.

“Who the fuck is this, now, waltzing into my office?”

The man who wandered into the dining room, feet shuffling in the manner of the unsighted, was simply a vagrant. There was no other description or moniker in the language of man more readily applicable to the creature. Top to bottom, a vagrant through and through. The frizzed and wiry hair standing up from his scalp alternated dry and greasy, a mottled-grey no-color akin to concrete dust and powdered gypsum. He wore a moth-eaten olive jacket with one of the sleeves nearly ripped off at the shoulder; an article likely held together more by the man’s own vomit and mucus than it was the art of any tailor; a crusty, scaled urine stain sheeted the front of his britches, and his tattered shoes flapped in the yammering pontification of a puppeteered sock and buskin, laughing and weeping by turns at each step.

“Any of you ever seen the likes of this before? Oh… let him up now, Pap.”

“Not ever,” Pap said in a daze, staring after the newcomer as he released Ronny. The smaller man jerked away from the bar by twenty feet and began to swipe at his eye in fury.

“Anyone else?” asked Clay.

“Never seen this guy before,” muttered Elton, returning to his stool. He eyed the man suspiciously, reaching for his rifle where it sat propped up against the outer bar wall.

“Ern’t gonna need that, yer loopy bashtid,” the vagrant called. He continued to shuffle on by the bar in tentative little half steps, making directly for the tatters of the sun room beyond. “Ernly weapon ’ere is mah pizzle!”

“Holy damn,” whispered Pap, “who in hell’s bells ya’ll reckon this is?”

“Looks like your fucking father,” Ronny hissed quietly, still swiping away at his eye.

The vagrant, who was now well beyond the bar and into the next room, shouted back over his shoulder, “Haw deh FUCK did yer knew I wush ’is deddy?”

Pap’s hand floated up to the grip of his revolver as though he was in a waking dream. Without looking back at him, Clay extended his own hand and said, “Hang on a minute, don’t kill him. I think I like him.”

They watched as the vagrant braced up against a wall with an arm, extracted his “pizzle”, and pissed all over the exposed carpet padding, swiveling his hips in broad, protracted loops.

“Well, he’s got some balls on him,” Elton sighed.

“Biggesht ev’rn yer sheen, mah schweet!” He snorted up a prodigious gobbet of snot-laced phlegm and hocked it up into the rancid puddle at his feet. He took a moment to shake, giggled happily, and recomposed himself in a near-officious air. Turning to face them, he smoothed down the ratty lapels of his jacket and began the slow, shuffling return track to the bar.

Rounding the perimeter, he stopped feet away from the others, slapped the board with a gnarled claw, and declared, “Drank!”

Clay swung eyes over the other men, leaned against the inside edge of the race track, and said, “What’ll you give for it?”

“Give?”

“Payment.”

The vagrant turned to face them, eyes near to bugging out of his head. He made a great mummery of looking himself over, patting down any conceivable location likely to conceal a pocket, looked back at Clay, and threw his hands out to his sides. “How in deh fuck did ah git down’ere?!”

Clay snorted, grabbed the bottle of cheaper whiskey, and strolled down to meet him. He pulled down a glass and as he made ready to pour, the vagrant stopped him. “None uh dat. Take me shome rum! Cap’n Morgan!”

Eyebrows steepled to brow, Clay again looked back at his men, smiling. Most of them shrugged but Ronny said, “I don’t have time for this horseshit. You idiots enjoy your distraction; I have business to see about.” He strode from the room, rapid steps echoing over the dusty floor.

“Good riddanz, yer cum-dumpshter fuck…”

Clay cast about until he located a bottle of the requested beverage, with only a swallow or two entombed in its glimmering bottom. “You’re in luck, it seems, uh… what did you say your name was, old timer?”

“Shilly little dick-bandit, aint’cha? I ain’t shaid.”

Clay poured the entire contents of the bottle into a fat glass and watched as the vagrant’s rheumy eyes widened over leathered cheeks. The vagrant smiled at the sight of it, the yellowed tombstones of his canines proudly solitary within a barren expanse of mottled grey-black gum line. “Fuskov, goddamn ’ee. Fuckin’ Fuskov, a’ready…”

“Fuckin’ Fuskov,” Clay hummed, and pushed the glass along.

Fuskov took the glass up, held it aloft as though to sight the purity of the liquid in the day’s sunlight, and whispered, “Amen…” before lowering it to his lips for a sniff. He breathed deeply at the glass’s rim, closed his eyes, and sipped politely as though testing a rarified vintage.

“Where’d you come from, Fuckin’ Fuskov?”

“Come from ’ere,” he sniffed.

“Jackson.”

“Yeah, Jackshun, yer shimple shitter…”

Clay flicked eyes to Pap to ensure the man took no offense; saw he needn’t be concerned. His man had leaned onto the bar and knocked his hat back, smiling lazily at the interplay. Fuskov took another sip.

“You were here when we came rolling in?”

Fuskov smiled. “Yeah, I sheen all dat. Big fuckin’ prosheshun, yer buncha ash-holes…”

“How long’ve you been up here?”

“Ah, hell, why yer ashk me dat? Don’t fuckin’ knew; how manner shits yer take in yer life? No fair roundin’ up, now!”

“Make a guess, Fuckin’ Fuskov.”

Pap pulled the .44 from his belt and lay it on the bar, barrel pointed strategically. Fuskov’s glass paused mid-hoist to his mouth but he did not look at the iron.

“Nuff ter she ther moon change a few.”

Clay nodded. “Uh. You know the fucking town then, huh?”

Fuskov sipped, belched out in a watery crack, and sighed, “Yar… knew ’er like I knew yer mamma’s pushy.”

“Bet you could show us a few things around here, huh?”

Fuskov shook his head, sharp and business-like. “Nope. She’s haunted like yer mamma’s pushy, too.”

“Hwhat the… he say haunted?” Pap laughed.

“ Haunted , yer ignent cunt, an’ don’t fergit it.”