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

“Who knows you’re out here!” she demanded.

“Danielle, what? I-I…”

“Mitch! Who knows that you’re out here?”

Confusion pulled the edges of his face in unlovely directions. “Uh… just Perkins, I think…”

She nodded. Good. That was good. “Mitch, you need to go home right now. Just go straight there, keep your curtains drawn and go to sleep, okay? You made it out here earlier tonight but you felt sick and left soon after, do you understand that?”

He tried to look over his shoulder down the highway. In a near panic, she grabbed him by the chin and wrenched his head back. He jerked angrily from her hands, demanding just what the hell she thought she was doing, and she began to despair of saving him. Seeing that look of abandonment in her eyes—that look of abject loss—Mitch froze in place. He felt the blood slow to a crawl in his veins and his mouth went dry like the piled husks of dead insects. Her eyes were beginning to shimmer in a silent, feverish howl and she lay the palms of her hands on his chest, patting feather-light, and her fingertips reached up to caress his cheeks.

“Go,” she whispered. “Don’t look or think; just go. You got sick and left. Please .”

“Danielle… are you in danger?”

She shook her head. “You are.”

His breath caught. Mouth hanging open like a forgotten back door, he nodded in a jerk and began to walk up the street on shaking legs. She watched him as he went, refusing to take her eyes away for several hundred feet. He did not look back.

She turned to look back down the highway. The man who approached her was close, close enough now that she could see he was tall with a frail, bird-like build.

She picked up her rifle and went out to meet him.

He approached cautiously, hands held in plain sight and feet choosing each position on the cracked, rocky pavement like an alley cat in a minefield. As she came within hailing distance she saw wide, owlish eyes in the low light, and an effete point of a nose lifted high on the face. He attempted a smile—a crooked thing that served only to make her uneasy—and said, “I’m unarmed, obviously.”

“Right. How about put your back to me and lift those arms up?”

He stopped walking and considered the request, looking as though he’d been asked to perform a naked cartwheel. “I… well, if you insist…” He turned and she patted him over with her left hand, taking care to sufficiently ruffle any loose point of fabric. He yelped when she hit his waist, a verbal crack like an exclamation point.

“Okay, turn around.”

“Thank you,” he said, smoothing out his clothing.

“Where are you coming from?”

He paused, eyebrows raised, and said, “I’d think you know, don’t you? I’m with the people who lived here before your group arrived. You may take me to the person in charge; I believe there are a number of things we should discuss.”

“I… may take you …?”

“Yes, please.”

“And you want to discuss what?” she asked. She shifted her weight to one foot and crossed her arms over the rifle sling.

“I suspect that both your people and mine are on edge right now; it’s usually how these things go, isn’t it? I can’t speak for yours but I know how mine can be… it’s all very childish, in my opinion. It seems rather clear that we should be working together, benefitting one another as it were. Well, it seems that no one is willing to take a risk—to cross the aisle , as it were—so I’ve decided to come down and see if we can’t all be reasonable before things escalate. I’m here to broker a deal.”

“What kind of deal?”

“Well, I don’t want to be boring with details, but… I’m sure there are certain things each of us has that the other wants. A little trade is always a healthy thing, isn’t it?” The smile that spread across his face pulled the sharp point of his nose down into an undersized beak.

Danielle’s eyes narrowed. “Details don’t bore me at all.”

The man’s smile widened further, along with his eyes, and he bowed minimally at the waist, glancing down at the pavement between them. “I… really think I should be discussing this with someone in authority, don’t you? I’m sure whoever that is around here would feel the same way…”

Suppressing her annoyance, she asked, “Your people don’t know that you’re down here, do they?”

Wobbling his head, he said, “No… I’d like to keep it that way if possible. Sometimes a person is forced to act for the good of a community, you know? Even if they don’t know it’s for their own good.”

“What’s your name?”

“Edgar.”

She nodded. He looked like an Edgar. She considered him a while as her mind turned circles inside her skull. He was looking for the guy in authority, he’d said, and she could very well take him in that direction. But she was also cunning—as cunning as any man, she often reminded herself—she knew that a large poker chip had wandered into her lap. She could take him to the others and let them decide what to do. She considered this option. She wondered if she could do such a thing.

“Follow me,” she said. She turned to walk back up the highway. “Keep your head down. We’ll take a back way instead of the main road, as soon as we come up on some more buildings. It’ll help to keep your presence unnoticed.”

“I appreciate that very much, uh… miss?”

She ignored the inquiry. The man walking behind her might potentially represent an out of sorts for her; a way to extract herself permanently from the old crew, never to deal with them again. She could be free and clear, free to just be with Elton and build a real life with him—not having to worry about passing information or keeping secrets. It could all just be left behind. She could be free. Thinking back to what Riley had done in Colorado, the burned-out hulk and the smell of charred bodies, she considered that freedom might mean some form of cleansing for her soul. While she’d not lit the match herself, she knew good and goddamned well what had actually happened—certainly not any fallen candle, as had been suggested. That terrible smile pulled along Riley’s face as the bodies were lowered into the ground, the jab to the ribs from Ronny; these things had told her all of the story she needed to know. She’d remained silent on the matter, digging the hole deeper, and had been looking for some means to claw her way out ever since.

Hearing the quiet tread of the man following her now, she wondered if she was too deep to climb out of the top of that pit. Was she now descended to a degree that escape meant digging even further, plunging into the earth’s black heart until she broke through to the other side? Was it possible that the way out was through a final act of sacrifice?

Danielle had come to another crossroads, felt it as clearly as she felt the molars grinding between her jaws. Her mind continued to spin out of all reckoning, a runaway centrifuge, as the options turned over and over and over within her skull, and she truly did not know what path she intended until they stood together at the rear entrance of the old cinema. Two men stationed outside of the fire exit door, one in a chair while the other stood against the back wall’s beige aluminum siding.

“Well, hello there, stranger,” said the one in the chair. “Who you got, there?”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Danielle. “Is he in?”

“Your head man lives in a movie theater?” asked Edgar. They all ignored him.

“Sure, he’s in. You go right ahead.” He opened the door for her and smiled at her breasts as she passed. She considered dragging him from the chair by his lip, his buddy be damned, but let it pass for now. There were more important issues to attend.