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

We take comfort in such ideas as we cling like mites to the great afterbirth of our planet tumbling through the cosmos; a galactic bit of residue ejected as a byproduct to the birth of a star. It is one of those stories we tell ourselves in order to quiet the turmoil churning within our own hearts as we lay awake in bed at night, an ideological sedative self-prescribed to pull ourselves backward down into sleep, like an anchor. It is one of many narratives we tell to ourselves so that we can get through the day.

You are being watched over; things have a funny way of working out; you have many, many more years left ahead of you; good must eventually win out. There is a plan.

We seldom contemplate the deeper truth underlying these conceits and why we cleave to them. Along that path lies madness.

She jerked awake again, a numbing shock now so common she could no longer muster up the energy for a quickened heartbeat. She lay there in the darkness wondering what time it was; if she should roll over and go back to sleep or if such an attempt might be pointless. She closed her eyes, and there just behind the half-glimpsed whorls of blurred geometry and ghostly lights swimming hazily back and forth beneath the skin, was an image of two blackened bodies, yellowed fat heated to translucence leaking through where the skin had split and peeled back, limbs intertwined, faces pressed together, mouths opened in a death howl. Pressing together as though searching for each other, seeking some form of connectivity despite nerve endings scorched dead; that cracked and peeled back from their moorings. Writhing in nightmare agony before suffering the true horror; when all of the misery ceased to be. When there was nothing left to experience it. When the fire crawled inside the mind and began one by one to unhook the memories that made the person. Erasure.

Sooty skulls pressed together in a wordless promise that they would find each other; that they would reunite in the next world. That when it was all over, they would be free and free to return to loving each other, unhindered.

She reached out with a hand through darkness and found Elton’s side of the bed empty and cold. He had not yet returned from his day. She wiped her eyes and rose.

Danielle stifled a yawn, laced her fingers behind her head, and leaned back in her chair. With her heels propped up on the sandbags, she was able to tip back onto two legs in a lazy totter and look up into the sky. The heavens above were moonless but filled end to end with so many stars that the absence of the Earth’s lonely satellite had little impact. The night skies of the world had been duly restored to their former status; no longer a thing glimpsed from time to time but an all-seeing presence overhead, looking beneath. Pressing down into the world below like a pure black shroud encrusted in cosmic debris. The great whorls above spiraled out overhead, spinning above her at a million miles an hour, so vast they might be standing still; infinite in breadth and infinitesimally close. She wanted to reach up and touch it with her fingertips and fantasized idly that they would come back wet with ink. The night breeze moved over her bare arms and she shivered.

“It does take some getting used to, even now,” Mitch said. He was reclined in an old, sprung easy chair that he’d had dragged out into the middle of the road. It was something she couldn’t understand; how he could lay back in that chair and stay awake. She preferred her hard, wooden chair—a thing should couldn’t have slept on if she tried. It was good for guard duty.

“It’s nice,” she agreed in a flat voice.

“So can we finish this conversation or what?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t feel as though there was more to discuss.”

“Come on, Danielle. It’s not like they’re keeping it secret, okay? Or if they’re actually trying to then that’s even worse. Either they’re stupid or they think we are.”

“Jury’s out on that one, I guess…”

Mitch ratcheted the chair back into a sitting position so he could look at her in profile. “Five straight days without a damned thing to show for it. When are they going to face the fact that there isn’t any fucking food here?”

“Why are you asking me about it?”

“Well, you’re with Elton, aren’t you?”

Still leaning back in her chair, she rotated her head to the right to look at him. There was a dangerous glimmer in her eyes. “What does that have to do with it?”

He shrugged. “Well… you know. Don’t you guys talk? Like… pillow talk?”

“You’re starting to annoy me, Mitch.”

His voice cracked in laughter. “Annoy you? Danielle… what the hell is going on, here? Look, we all know whose crew you’re on but you’re also one of the good ones, okay? You play it straight with us. You don’t bullshit.”

She turned her attention back to the sky and sighed.

Annoyed, he waved her off. He shifted around in his chair, crossed and then uncrossed his legs, and said, “I mean how fucking long are we gonna stick around here is what I want to know, you know? How long is our food gonna last? Nobody seems to know the answer to that. I keep asking people; the rest of Johnny’s guys are mute on the subject. Elton’s, even more so. Shouldn’t we be planning for this? Or making plans? Why is everyone afraid to discuss it?”

“Maybe everyone isn’t as worried as you are.”

“Oh no, there’s people worrying—they just won’t talk about it in the open.”

“Well maybe everyone else is trying to avoid hysterics.”

“You keep responding like that, as though this is all just me being an alarmist. But you know what I’m realizing here?”

“What’s that?”

“You won’t actually come out and say that I’m wrong directly. You keep dancing around it, implying it, but you won’t just come out and say one way or the other.”

She blinked as she stared up into the heavens but said nothing.

“Some of us might be thinking about packing up and leaving, Danielle, but we’re… hesitant.”

She looked back at him. Something in his voice bothered her.

“We’re not certain we’ll be allowed to leave.”

She lowered her chair and sat up. Rotating to face him, she said, “Why wouldn’t you be? No one’s ever been restrained from leaving before.”

“No one’s ever tried to leave in large numbers before.”

“What? No…” she trailed off. Was that right? She cast back in her mind, trying to recall all the time they’d been together. As it happened, they were almost always rapidly expanding. There had been a few losses along the way, and yet they couldn’t have even been termed a mild contraction. The people lost on the road were more like a couple of apples jostled from an overladen cart on the way to market.

“Not once,” Mitch said.

“Well, fine. But that doesn’t mean people are going to be restricted from leaving. What would be the point?”

Mitch shrugged and looked around. They were the only two out there on the south border but it never hurt to be sure. “Some of Ronny’s guys are talking about a possible economic collapse if it gets out of control…”

“A what?”

“Think about it. The system only works if there’re a lot of different people doing different things. One of the guys was explaining how it works to me. Economic diversity driving an aggregate output. If enough people pull out, it all comes tumbling down like a house of cards.”

She thought about these things, a steady unease growing inside her belly, distinct to the knot with which she already lived, and could say nothing. She looked out into the night, down along the 191, and her eyes jolted wide open as though Lachesis herself had risen up from the ground, jagged shears in outstretched hand reaching for her, seeking her. She sprung from her seat, grabbed Mitch by the shoulders, and jerked him up to his feet. He grunted in protest as Danielle swung him around to face north toward town but she ignored him.