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

She was balled up even tighter than she’d been before, fists pulled up by her ears and panting heavily. When he felt like she wouldn’t move again, he reached his hand out carefully like he was attempting to rub the nose of an infuriated mustang. His fingertip made contact with the cold edge of the cuff where it looped around her ankle, and he murmured, “Easy… easy does it…” as he slipped his finger between the cuff and her flesh. He could get the tip in, but it still felt a little tight to him; she’d probably managed to torque it down again while struggling with it. He nodded to himself and pulled the key from his pocket.

“Don’t fucking move. I mean it,” he warned and inserted the key. When he felt the mechanism give, he took the cuff in both hands, opened it fully, and then clicked it back down with his index and middle fingers pressed firmly against her ankle, loose enough to keep from damaging her skin but tight enough that she couldn’t work her heel through the opening.

“That’s better,” he said. He settled back into the seat and looked at her. “Can’t sleep either, I guess.”

“Why do you care how tight it is?” she whispered.

His eyebrows rose at this by a fraction; it was the first thing she’d said to him that wasn’t spitting or cursing. Counting the interaction an improvement, he said, “I guess I don’t want you to be any more uncomfortable than you have to be.” He moved the light over her, resting on her face a moment before he pulled it away to keep from hurting her eyes.

“How’s your lip? I’d check those butterflies for you, but I can’t be sure you won’t try to take my finger off.” He glanced down at the miniature half-moon of teeth marks that wrapped around the back of his hand between knuckle and wrist and shook his head ruefully.

“Why do you care about my lip? Why are you being so nice?”

Ronny sighed. “I suppose you remind me of someone. Barely.”

“Your great-grandmother’s stupid cat.”

“No.”

She sat quietly, offering nothing further.

“Will you let me check your damned lip? I’m pretty sure it needs a stitch or two. I just gotta make sure it stays closed up and clean until I can get the Doc to look at it.”

Still nothing, not even an indication she’d heard him.

“Jesus Christ—I’m coming in to look, okay? You’d better stay calm, now; I’m not above braining a fucking kid, got me?” He raised the flashlight again, bringing the edge of the beam to her lip, and leaned in closer. Two of the butterfly bandages had pulled loose, though it didn’t look like the blood was running again. The clot appeared to be intact, thankfully.

“Shit, maybe that’s why you aren’t talking; I’ll bet you feel that trying to pull apart every time you move your mouth. Gimme a second, and I’ll put it all back together.”

He went back to his room, retrieved his supply kit, and returned a few seconds later. She hadn’t moved a millimeter, so far as he could tell; just sat cramming every square inch of her body as she could manage up against the far wall. He pulled the chair over to face her, sat back down, and produced some antiseptic wipes.

“Don’t move, okay? This is going to sting like a bitch.”

He saw her eyes go dead when he reached in to pinch the far edge of the bandage and pull it away—towards the cut to keep the edges from separating; saw the lights go out just as if he were raping her instead of trying to clean her up. He shuddered and focused on what he was doing. “Creepy fucking kid…” he muttered.

When the bandages were removed, he wrapped an antiseptic wipe around his index finger, again admonished her to not move, and began to dab at the cut. As he did so, her eyes welled up and over-spilled, though that same detached, dead stare remained. When he was done, he examined the edges of the cut for infection, found none, dried the skin, and re-tied the fissure with fresh bandages. When he finished, he sat back in the chair and said, “Done.”

The lights behind her eyes turned back on, and her attention swiveled back to his face like she was a motion-tracking robot.

“Where did you go just now?” he asked her.

Again, nothing.

“I’m not happy with what Riley did to you,” he said lamely. He hated himself for saying it; knew he sounded incredibly weak as soon as the words left his mouth. “He won’t be coming near you again. Once this is all over—”

“Once what’s all over?”

Ronny was drawn up short by that simple question. Once what was all over , indeed. What was the definition of completion, so far as this little girl was concerned; a creature whose name Ronny refused to learn? At what point did reconciliation happen? What could he tell her? That she would eventually be reunited with her people? That would be a lie. And Ronny, for all of his self-professed faults, did not feel particularly enthusiastic about lying to this girl. Certain parts of himself would be held on to. Certain things must be maintained.

If everything went as he planned, this girl’s people would be wiped out along with a significant portion of his own, leaving him and a few others in his select crew to put down any stragglers, waltz into that little valley, and begin harvesting the food contained therein.

Or so he told himself. There was some deeper part of his mind that felt the pull of the old compulsion; that need to get back—to get even. He was at least still honest enough with himself to understand that the last thought on his mind before he drifted off to sleep and the first thought that awaited him the following morning… was Gibs . How was that even a thing that could be explained? It couldn’t; especially not to some little girl. If he’d taken the time to lay it all out; to say, “Look, at some point you’ll realize that the world out there likes to take things away from you. It’ll take everything if you’re not careful; just snatch it right out of your hands no matter how hard you hold on. Takes your family and your friends… your pride, your health… self-regard. It takes everything eventually; even your ability to control your own destiny. You can’t just lay down for a world like that. You don’t just get fucked and take it with a smile. That’s all it comes down to anymore, especially in the world that now is. The population’s been cut down, sure, but we’re still just a big collection of fuckers and fuckees. And when it comes right down to it, you always want to be the fucker. Even though you’re still gonna get fucked from time to time, try as hard as you might to avoid it. It’ll come, but you can always fuck back. You take it back, see? Your destiny, whatever little scraps of control you can still hang on to. You hold on by holding on; by living according to a code. When the world takes things away from you, when it fucks you, well…

“You fuck it right back.”

He couldn’t explain any of that to a little girl; not in any way she’d understand. He wasn’t sure he could explain it to himself half the time. He rationalized by telling himself stories; he told himself that Clay was an ineffective leader, that he was taking initiative to solve their food situation for good, that he had the will to make the hard decisions that the others would not or could not make.

Ronny’s favorite story to himself always began with the refrain, “ What you’re doing is right. It is necessary. ”

He looked at the girl on the mattress, saw the hate in her eyes, and understood it. He understood that she knew; knew without him explaining a single thing. A memory flittered up to the surface of his thoughts; a time long ago playing Frisbee with his little sister; her twisting an ankle and falling heavily on her legs, skinning her knees, and screaming for her brother. The other kids running up to help her and her swatting them away, screaming all the while for her brother, only her brother, only her brother could help her. Picking her up in his arms—all knees and elbows and tears and bloody patches of loose, grey skin peppered under with the grit of the pavement beneath their feet. Hot tears and hitching shoulders, his sister, and the burning hate buried in the depths of her dark brown eyes for the misery inflicted upon her.