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

“Ugh, damn it! I liked that rifle. Just had it figured out.”

He groaned enough for all three of us as we got him settled in the Jeep. “There we go. How do you feel?” I asked like an idiot.

“Like I downed a bottle of whiskey and got horse-kicked in the face.”

“Lizzy, you get up in the back seat and help your momma keep Jake awake, okay?” Billy said.

“Why can’t Jake go to sleep?” asked Elizabeth.

“He took a nasty shot to the head,” Billy answered. “I need to get him to a place where I can check him to see if it’s safe to let him sleep. If I get this wrong, he may not wake up.”

Elizabeth’s eyes went very wide and solemn at that. She jumped into the Jeep behind Jake and put her hands on his shoulders, shaking gently. “Stay awake, up there,” she commanded.

“I’m serious,” Billy said to me specifically. “Don’t let him sleep at all. I want to look him over before we allow that.”

“How long will it be before we know he’s safe?”

“We’ve just got to get to a safe area where I can get a good look at his eyes,” he said. “I’ve never dealt with a concussion directly; only read about them. But the main thing is if his eyes aren’t dilated, and he can talk coherently, he can sleep. He’s talking fine right now, but I just want to get a look at his pupils. Assuming all is well, we want him to get all the sleep . It still might be as much as a week for him to be back to full speed. Mostly he should find it easier to solve complex problems and use his memory, but I think we’ll know we’re through the rough part when he stops talking like he’s drunk.”

“Do you mean the slurring or just talking way more than usual in general?”

Billy just shrugged at this and turned to make his way to the truck. “Keep close behind me, Little Sis,” he called back. “Soon as we get away from all these towns we’ll pull off the road and see about stitching him back up.”

Billy led us about twenty miles North of Cedar City up the 15 before pulling off the road and taking us to a good stand-off distance.

He jumped out of the truck and came our way, his always present shotgun slung over a shoulder and a flashlight in hand. He opened the passenger side door to gain access to Jake and said, “Okay, let’s have a look at you. Amanda, can you start setting up the tents? They’re in the back of the truck. Alright, look over this way, Jake…”

The flashlight turned on and off several times with intervals of five to ten seconds in between. Billy let out a sigh.

“Good news. Here, Jake. Let’s get this seat reclined back. You go ahead and get some rest.”

“Well, thank God for that,” Jake groaned.

Billy eased the door shut and came over to where Lizzy and I struggled with the tents. He passed us by and went back to the truck to shift bags around in the bed. I resigned myself to decoding the riot of poles and canvas without help.

Now, I have since learned to erect all manner of tent, so I know how the things work by now. It’s just that at the time, this kind of thing wasn’t a regular activity for me. We had been camping all of twice since Lizzy was born and Eddie did most of the work putting the campsite together both times. I knew enough to understand how the poles worked, though, so I started straightening them out with Lizzy and laying them aside. The two biggest challenges we had to deal with were that this was during the night (we had to do everything while juggling our own flashlight), and the two tents with their constituent parts had all been jumbled together, so it wasn’t obvious which poles went with which tent.

While we straightened out the poles, I heard Billy grunt off to my right followed by the rattling sound of a pill bottle. This was followed by the sound of ripping fabric. Billy called over to me, “Hey, remind me to put washcloths and towels on the shopping list, huh?”

“Uh, okay!” was all I could think to say in response.

This was all followed by the sound of water splashing onto the dirt for a few seconds. He straightened up, replaced some items into the truck, and walked back over to the jeep. I heard him speaking to Jake but his voice was low, so I couldn’t make out what was said. Billy shut the door and came over to check on us.

We had finished straightening out all the support rods and had the two tents spread out next to each other. Billy bent, picked up one of the rods, and said, “The longer rods go with the blue tent,” before threading his through the green one.

“Ah, thanks,” I said and meant it. “I was worried about getting one set up halfway and finding out I made the wrong choice.”

“Sure, no worries. I’ve mixed them up several times.”

Things were up quickly after that. I was concerned that my tent looked sad and deflated compared to Billy’s until he showed me some little plastic clips running along the length of the nylon that I had missed. I clipped them to the rods, and everything looked much more squared away.

“I think he’s gonna be okay,” Billy said when it was all done. “He just needs a lot of rest. I don’t know how long he’ll be goofed up, but we need to make sure he understands that he’s not to push it. He seems to me like the kind that will just try to tough it out through this sort of thing. With a head trauma, that’s only going to make things worse. I think if we explain to him that pushing it will make him a liability, it’ll get the message delivered, yeah?”

“Right,” I said. “Sounds good.”

“Okay,” he continued. “Jake and I’ll double up in the blue tent; you and Lizzy take the green. We’re a pretty good distance from Cedar City now, but on the other hand, they do have a really nice van now… assholes.”

Despite everything we had just been through, I couldn’t suppress a grin at this. Billy really liked his van.

“Anyway, no fire tonight and I think we’d better keep watch. Let’s get some sleeping bags laid out. I’ll help Jake get settled in, and then I’ll take the first watch. I’m not feeling very restful, myself.”

We went to the Jeep and opened up the door. Jake stirred and mumbled, “Time to get up?”

“Let’s just start with sitting up, Whitey.”

“The hell you always calling me Whitey for?”

“Because,” Billy laughed, “You da White Man, sucka.”

“Heavens,” Jake mumbled. “Anyone ever tell you that you talk like a teenager?”

“Look, you gotta hang onto your youth however the hell you can.”

Jake sat his seat up, grimacing in the low moonlight as he did. A wet, folded up scrap of cloth fell from his eyes, which Elizabeth reached out and caught. I noticed that his right hand was bound up in a clean, white bandage. “His nose is all wrong again,” Lizzy said.

“Yeah,” Jake said. “Guess I fell on it a little.”

“How is it?” Billy asked. “You want to fix it or leave it?”

“Ohhhhh, man,” Jake groaned. “We’d better deal with it. It’s giving me a nasty headache.”

Billy motioned for Lizzy and I to back up, then he raised his hands to Jake’s face. I saw Jake’s hands grip the frame of the Jeep’s door and brace. The muscles in Billy’s shoulders tensed and Jake’s knuckles went white. Jake himself unloaded a growl that sounded like a hot poker had been shoved up a grizzly bear’s behind.

“God damn it, we’re not quite there, boss. Gotta do it again.” I could see Jake’s head nodding past Billy. Shoulder muscles tensed a second time, and Jake howled.

“Grrrrraaaarrrrghhhhh—shit!” Billy pulled back and pointed a flashlight in Jake’s face as he sat there, panting. Presently, Jake looked at Lizzy and said, “Sorry for that, kiddo.”