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

Jake’s eyes were trailing off again, looking inward. Wang pointed at him with his chin and opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, a clamor arose from out in the great room—the slamming of the front door followed by elevated voices and cursing. Jake looked at the two parents sitting so small before him and muttered, “Just stay with her. We’ll handle the rest of it.”

He left the room, pulling the omen of disaster out behind him like smoke pulled into a vacuum, and emerged through the hallway to find Gibs planted in the center of the group, feet nailed to the flat ground in a slow-spreading puddle of rainwater, his fists balled up at his sides. He was sputtering in sentence fragments about getting his hands on people and splitting them right down the center, of exhuming and then anally violating the remains of their ancestors, and washing in a wave of napalm any trinket or memory that ever served as a placeholder for a cherished thought or dream.

Regarding the bunched and twitching muscles of the man’s back, Jake said, “Edgar wasn’t home, then.”

Gibs whirled in place, teeth clamped in a jaw-cracking grimace, and grated, “One… goddamned guess … where he is.”

“When was the last time anyone seen him?” Otis asked, looking around the room from face to face. Several people spread their hands before Isaiah spoke up.

“Fred took him a basket of food a few days back…”

“How many days?” demanded Gibs.

Isaiah shrugged up one shoulder. “Three, I guess? Let’s see… he, and I were up in the hills yesterday scouting bog iron, uh, day before that was field work and laundry… and then it was work on the new farm patch day before that. So sure… guess it was three.”

“Jesus Christ, could we really go that long without seeing someone around here?” Andrew asked, sagging into a chair.

“We could with Edgar,” Greg said. He looked at no one when he said this; only stared into the cold, barren fireplace while his hand absently rubbed at Alish’s stomach. “He’s been pretty outcast since word got out that… you know…”

“But do you really think he’d do this? Selling us out like that?” Rebecca asked. Her lips were twisted and sour like she was about to be sick.

“He goddamned well—” began Gibs but was interrupted by Jake.

“Let’s not speculate on this; we’re wasting time. Gibs, I’m going to describe a man to you—please tell me the first person that comes to mind: tall, skinny, long light-brown stringy hair, jean jack—”

“Riley. That Riley bastard.”

Jake nodded. “Just so.”

“What about him? He’s involved?”

“Rose gave that exact description as the man who killed George.”

The sound of low creaking emerged at the center of their little group; a stuttering slip like old leather straps pulled into knots and twisted in circles. After a few moments of this, those standing close to him realized it was the sound of Gibs’s fingertips grinding against the meat of his palms as the muscles in his forearms corded up and released. “ Rileeey… ” he purred.

Speaking up a shade louder, Jake asked, “Have we had eyes on Riley?”

“Absolutely,” Tom said from the back. “Gibs and… and Lum… they both told us to keep a close eye on him with the Binos. We have his place marked out on the town map and everything. The old movie theater off 191… Movieworks?”

“That’s a bit of luck,” said Jake. “We can come in through the old neighborhood over Flat Creek. We’ll be able to keep to the trees the whole way in until we’re on top of them.”

“Outstanding,” Gibs barked. “I’ll go get my gear.”

“No,” Jake said, stopping the man in his tracks.

Not turning back to look at him, Gibs spat, “I’m sorry, Jake… the tinnitus. I thought I just heard you ask to chew on my taint.”

“Think it through, Gibs,” Jake cautioned. “I recognize that you want some payback but just stop and consider a moment. They came into our area; found the campsite. They had to pass by the bowl to get to it from the direction they most likely came. They must have passed right by us. Even if we didn’t have the case of Edgar’s absence, which suggests things are even worse, it stands to reason they know where we are.”

“Well… okay, goddamn it, but—”

“Gibs, if you wanted to soften up a target and draw them out of superior terrain… how would you go about it?”

He did not answer, stood only with his back presented to the room, as rigid as an iron strut.

“If the greater part of our best fighters saddle up, there’s a better than average chance we’re doing exactly what they want. My first mistake was assuming that we were safe up here in the mountains, Gibs…”

“Were safe, until that son of a—” Tom muttered, but was soon shushed down by the others.

Jake continued on as though the interruption hadn’t occurred, as though it were only him and Gibs in that room, as perhaps it may very well have been at that moment. “I can’t afford to make any more blunders like that, Gibs. Not with where these people have taken things. They can afford to make mistakes and lose people but we can’t; it’s simple numbers. We need the majority of us here in the Bowl, protecting what we’ve built here. Because if they get at that, they’ll take it all. All the crops and supplies, the cured meat, the tools, and the medicines… everything that was supposed to carry us through the winter. We can’t allow that, Gibs. If they take the Bowl it’s over, don’t you see? I need you here.”

Gibs nodded, swallowing the poison back down his throat, burning the lining of his esophagus. He turned to look back at Jake and said, “You can’t go by yourself, though. They’ll have guards out; there’s no way they can think this will go unanswered.”

“No,” Jake agreed. “Amanda’s coming.”

“Oh, yeah?” Gibs grunted, looking over at her.

“Can you imagine trying to stop her?” Jake asked. She said nothing in response to this exchange, looking only towards the cabin’s exit, impatient to get back to her cabin and her gear.

“Yeah… I guess not,” Gibs muttered.

“I’m going, too,” Rebecca said.

“The hell!” Tom barked.

Amanda’s head jerked over in her direction. She said nothing to this but also didn’t need to. The look of complete perplexity hung clearly on her face for all to see.

Rebecca shook her head at Tom—her great, unlooked-for love—and said, “She’s my friend. They’ll do better without me here; Tom’ll be able to focus instead of shadowing me to keep me safe.”

Tom’s face flushed three different shades of deepening red, and he shouted, “Now, hang on a fucking second!”

“No!” Rebecca insisted. “We don’t have time to go through this. I’m not letting them go out alone, Tom. I can back them up. And you can’t protect me, baby, so stop trying.”

“You… you can’t just…”

He folded under her piercing eyes, knowing he’d lost before he could even mount a rejoinder.

“Fine,” Jake said, “three of us. Agreed?”

Amanda was still looking at Rebecca, eyes swimming in equal parts confusion and gratitude. “Agreed,” she allowed her voice far away.

“We’ll go tonight,” Jake continued. “I don’t think they’ll be expecting us so soon; they must have thought they got everyone out at the camp. They didn’t know Rose was there watching them, so they’ll think they have a bit of time before we learn what they did. We’ll head out on foot and cut overland through the rough country between the peaks, where the mountain saddles are low.”

“That’ll take all night, won’t it?” Brian asked. He sat in the rear of the room stuffed into a high-backed chair like he’d been shoved down by the hips, scribbling away in a notebook. “Cutting cross-country like that?”