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

They pushed through the door into a darkened theater, splitting off on the other side, sweeping the area, finding positions of dominance. Amanda saw the entrance at the other end of the room and gave Rebecca a low, nasal grunt; just a quick expulsion of air between her tongue and the tips of her teeth. Rebecca took a half-second to process her signal before she realized the woman was moving forward again, wraithing up the left side of the room, rifle pointed down into the space between each row of seats. Rebecca followed behind, keeping eyes on the exit toward which they moved and the exit from which they’d entered.

They heard gunshots and screams as they approached the back and then, almost as an illustration of that sound, found a man’s body wedged up against the theater door. There were splat’s of red on his chest, and his face had been caved in such that his eyes stared at each other. If he still had a nose, it was buried somewhere inside of his cranium.

“You’re stronger than me,” Amanda whispered. “Pull him back, and I’ll cover the door.”

Rebecca nodded, though the other woman couldn’t see her, swung the rifle back behind her hip, and took the body by the ankles. Setting her back, she yanked and grunted in surprise when the body came flying after her as though fired from a cannon. Amanda glanced over at her as she dropped the legs and wavered a moment on her feet, struggling to regain her balance.

“You alright?”

“Yeah,” Rebecca muttered. “I didn’t expect it to come scooting at me like that.”

Amanda nodded and put her attention back on the door. “It’s the adrenaline. Take a few deep breaths and let me know when you’re good.” She stood facing the door, motionless, cheek pressed to rifle stock, eyebrows pulled down hard, her mouth a grim blood-line. It must cost her dearly to wait like that , Rebecca thought.

More gunfire erupted from somewhere deeper in the building, possibly further away this time.

“Why the fuck isn’t he moving as a team?” Rebecca spat.

“Jake handles things his own way,” Amanda whispered. “Don’t worry about him; you just focus on what we’re doing.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath and said, “Good to go.”

Amanda burst through the door as soon as Rebecca had uttered the word “to.” The taller woman hunched to try and fill the same minimal space as her partner made to follow, but ran straight away into the door as it slammed into her. She grunted in pain as it bounced her head back, cursed, and pushed against it. It refused to budge.

“What the fuck?”

She braced to bash her whole body against it, but before she could move, she heard a low spit-growling roll through the barrier from the other side, like there were a handful of alley cats over there and they were either fighting or fucking. A moment later the door swung open of its own accord, and she pushed her head through to look into the outer area. There was Amanda, completely locked up with another person—though it was so dark that Rebecca couldn’t tell if that person was a woman or a man—and both of them had their hands wrapped up around a pistol; they were fighting over the pistol in a snarling tug-of-war, and the person she struggled against had her beat for size, such that he or she was able to swing Amanda around, lift her off her feet, and slam her into walls.

Rebecca watched for a second in horror as the barrel bent back and began to lean in towards Amanda’s jaw and then, not thinking about what she was about to do, she strode out into the hall, placed her barrel up against the side of the attacker’s head, and opened it up onto the wall behind them. The muscles in his body (for she saw now that he was once a man) were disconnected from their control centers as quickly as the long march of his life leading up to the present was disconnected from that singular moment, and he dropped to the floor. The parts of his body fell on top of each other in a jumble, as though she’d erased his very ability to assume a human shape, as though he were some ensorcelled collection of common, household objects that had been animated to move like a man and she’d just winked out his magic.

She stood looking down at the body as Amanda took a moment to stretch her arms and unload the pistol over which they’d been fighting. Then she opened the door to the theater and threw the gun in among the seats.

“Rebecca. Hey, Rebecca?”

“That was easier than I thought it would be,” she said in a far-off voice.

Amanda nodded and squeezed the woman’s shoulder. “We’ll deal with that later. Come on, Little Sis. We gotta keep moving.”

She shouldered past the woman and slinked on in the direction of the sounds of struggle.

A short hall stretched out before them, lined on their right by two doors; one of these was the door through which they’d entered. Rebecca guessed each door must have led into another theater—she’d never been there before and was forced to learn the layout as she went. Having lived in larger cities, she was used to the more labyrinthine halls of giant mall cinemas, some of which boasted as many as twenty-four screens. This place only had four, so far as she knew, and it looked like they were all arranged along the back wall of the building. They passed through the large, open area of the lobby, noted two more motionless bodies—impenetrable black night visible through the main entrance with a writhing scum of water throbbing salaciously over the glass doors—and then pierced into the opposing hallway. Another door on the right—a theater, of course—a bathroom on the left, and they kept going. Rebecca thought to ask if they should be sweeping through these areas, but Amanda cut through the space like a fired arrow, ever down toward the end of the hallway, where she finally arrived at the last door on the left.

She was facing it when Rebecca caught up to her, visible in profile as she’d been before when they’d been preparing to exit that first theater. Rebecca followed her gaze and saw that the door led to a kind of office. A sign was posted to the side that said “Employees Only,” and the door itself had a long vertical insert of glass crisscrossed with wire mesh. The room was lit somehow, and through the window, she could see Jake’s back, a section of his meaty shoulder, and the gleaming dome of his head, all rising and falling in a gentle rhythm as his lungs dutifully performed their function.

He appeared to be looking down at the floor.

“You’re Riley,” he declared. His voice was flat and calm. Unfriendly.

The man that lay at his feet was a study in true misfortune. There were bullet holes in both legs just above the knees, his left cheek appeared to have been fractured, likely his orbital socket as well, and the entire top row of his teeth had been blown from his gums entirely. What was left of his upper lip flapped loosely in his gasping breaths; a long slit ran from the corner of his mouth to a point just under the nose, and the whole structure appeared to be dangling by a thread.

The man look down to his hand, saw the gun he’d taken away from Riley, and then looked up to the hammer he’d lately carried; it lay on the floor right next to Riley’s head. Riley seemed to be reaching for it, but he refused to look away from the man to locate it. He only lay there, panting and gasping, groaning by turns, staring into the man’s eyes while his lip flapped daintily on each exhalation.

“ Whoga fugg’reyou…? ” he demanded from the wretchedness of his mouth. The words were wet like he was gagging on bog water.