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

“Oh, Christ, Ernie…”

“Jesus, it’s coming down!” he griped, huddling closer to her. Despite all the back and forth, she didn’t mind at all. They were pretty tight by then. “You know, they used to make waterproof side walls for these things?”

“Yeah, I know; you’ve said it enough.”

“Well, yeah, I’m just saying. We should go looking for some, if the weather’s gonna keep bitching up like this. There’s gotta be some somewhere in town—like, nylon or whatever; I think they were universal, you know? Or maybe, like, plastic sheeting or something. Fuck, anything! Anything to keep the rain out. Have our own little room out here; maybe some chairs. A fire.”

She nodded. “Yeah. That would be pretty nice.”

“Fucking Riley and his fucking paranoia…”

“Yep…”

“I mean, did something change and no one sent out a memo? I saw a little activity between him and some of the other guys, sure; a bunch of whispering and shit, but… what? What the hell do you think is going on?”

“I guess they’ve got something going on over at the church,” she muttered.

“The church? Which one?”

“Out on the west end.”

“The Lutherans?”

“Nah, the Prezzies.”

“Right!” he exclaimed. “What the hell are they getting up to way out there?”

“Don’t know but… I get the impression that asking questions isn’t such a good idea if you know what I mean…”

“Huh,” he grunted and considered her words in silence. He wondered about what might be going on out there and if the rumors were actually true. It sounded shithouse crazy; the idea of gunning for Clay, surrounded as he was. He wasn’t sure how such a thing would shake out. Clay was apparently a complete and total bastard, according to a lot of the guys he’d talked to—most of them Ronny’s crew, admittedly, but still. Even so… he didn’t know how he felt about a full-on takeover. The thought of it made him queasy.

He sniffed (Christ, if this weather wasn’t just perfect for fucking with his allergies!) and drilled out into the darkness with his eyes, seeing just not a goddamned thing in the meager light of their little pot lantern. He thought he could see the edge of the old Recon Mountaineer joint across the way but was unsure if that wasn’t just his eyes playing tricks on him. He knew that was the old dumpster that he saw, stranded out there halfway between his position and the dense line of trees and buildings in the distance, all of which were invisible in the dark and the rain. He figured he must have something like three hundred feet between him and that dumpster, which sounded like a lot but actually looked like a whole bucket full of jack shit.

He sighed. “Don’t even know what the hell we’re supposed to be watchin’ out for in…”

His voice trailed off as his eyes caught movement beyond the dumpster. “Hey… hey Luce. You see that out there?”

“Where?”

He pointed. It was a dark mass that appeared to be heading in their direction.

“What the hell…” she muttered.

It kept coming, whatever it was; something truly out there and not just the shape of the rain injecting imagery into their minds. It soon resolved into the form of a person, hunched over at the shoulders and coming right at them.

Lucinda reacted before Ernie had even half a chance to understand what was going on, bracing into the machinegun and shouting, “Who is that out there!”

They saw movement out at his sides; as he approached they could both see that he was holding his arms out wide (it was a man, apparently, based on the shape). Lucinda relaxed a bit but kept her barrel on him. Ernie looked between his friend and the newcomer nervously, then belatedly pulled his hands from his pockets to take hold of his shotgun. He didn’t bother to lift it, considering that Lucinda had the new guy covered with that almighty machinegun.

When he was close enough that they could see the man’s bearded chin protruding out from under his hoodie, he shouted, “Hey you guys, Clay sent me out here to get you all together! Something big’s happening! He sent this out with me to show you!” He shrugged out of a backpack, pulled it around to his chest, and unzipped it. He kept coming at them as he reached inside.

Ernie lowered his shotgun, now curious about what this man might have to show them. As he approached, Ernie heard Lucinda croak wetly on his left; she jerked in place before dropping to her ass on the pavement.

“Luce?!” he barked, looking down at her. She’d slumped over onto her weapon, head and shoulders exposed from under their shelter with rainwater already pooling up in any of the crevices of her body that would hold it. He looked back up at the approaching man, who’d pulled his hand from the backpack. He was much closer now, and Ernie could see that he held a short-handled sledgehammer.

“What the fu—” Ernie began, but the man swung in a diagonal backhand before he could finish, spraying raindrops up into the air as the hammer descended like a meteor. The twenty-pound head impacted Ernie’s temple, caving in the side of his face, pulverizing the soft, spongy matter within, and snapping his neck like balsa wood. The sledge traveled all the way through him, not even slowing down at the resistance of its impact, and Ernie was dead before he hit the ground, obliterated out of existence as quickly as if God had smudged him out in a spasm of regret.

Rebecca had been shocked when Amanda fired her weapon, shocked that everything had kicked off so suddenly as well as at the fact that she’d barely heard the report of the rifle under all that sheeting rain. She thought they might have been able to just use the regular ammunition in all that noise and nobody would have been the wiser. Her attention was drawn to a flurry of movement out beyond Jake’s retreating form, saw the one person on the right pitch over onto the ground, but then Jake had his doublejack out, swinging it like a Norse god out of legend and erasing the remaining man before him.

Amanda was already pulling at her shoulder hissing, “Come on! We’ve gotta move if we wanna keep up with him!” They were both pounding across the pavement, then, rifles tight into their shoulders, and she saw from the corner of her eye that Amanda was already swapping out the sub-sonic rounds for a mag of the full-powered 5.56; she lifted a shaking hand up to her mag to follow suit, struggling with the release through a numb finger. In the distance, she saw Jake swing the hammer again, bringing it down on the door handle of the theater’s emergency exit, which broke completely from its mooring and clattered to the ground. The backpack dropped from his right hand soon after, which was clutching the old Glock 19. They were still trying to cut down the distance when he plunged through the door; Amanda broke into a full-out sprint and Rebecca struggled despite her longer legs to match her for speed. She concentrated on keeping her muzzle well away from the other woman; the weapon was hot and ready to go to work.

The door sprung out in high-pitched grey as they approached, illuminated raindrops throwing shadows everywhere as they spilled off the easy up, the bodies on the ground throwing prone, misshapen shadows up on the walls of the building, and Rebecca understood that Amanda had switched on her weapon light. The woman slowed from an all-out run to a gliding rush, small feet slipping out ahead of her almost in the practiced steps of a ballerina, hovering just over the pitted ground as they moved, then pressing down smoothly, soles like palms and toes like fingertips. Her knees, hips, and spine compressed and lengthened like a cat’s body, absorbing and dispelling shock, and her head moved in a straight line toward the door, not even bobbing through the interface of her cheek weld. Rebecca watched her move and abandoned all hope of emulating her, knowing that to approach one-tenth of her grace would mean having to assume one-tenth of her speed. Rebecca focused instead on covering Amanda’s six; she clicked her light on, stacked behind her at the door, swiveled quickly for a final look at the surrounding area, and finally gave her a pat on the shoulder.