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

In the morning’s no-light, Amanda thought she saw Gibs’s cheeks flex in a grimace. She returned her attention to the building and squeezed the grip of her rifle. She had the Tavor back, now; the compact frame of the little rifle fitting her arms and body like a glove. Her knee began to ache, and she shifted her weight over to the other ham, resisting the urge to just stand up and run in.

Before the silence became oppressive, Jake whispered, “Gibs… if we wait until we know for sure, we’ll never go. The window is closing.”

Gibs rolled his eyes so far back in their sockets that he thought he might eventually find himself staring out his own asshole. He opened his mouth to offer up a response—his jarhead mind sifting through nearly hundreds of combinations of profanity, verbs, nouns, and adjectives, arranging them like a computer into an X-rated Madlib—before biting his teeth together hard, jaw muscles pulsating rapidly. Sweat had broken out on his back despite the cool air, clinging fabric to skin in a suffocating embrace; like ocean kelp dragging over him leaving a slime in its wake. He sighed and nodded.

Keying the radio, Gibs whispered, “Go ahead, Davidson.”

“Right, proceeding now.”

In the distance, Amanda thought she saw the fluttering of a shadow moving low along the ground beneath the cover of the undergrowth. She felt an insane desire to turn her weapon light on and follow that movement. The roiling blob of shadow eventually neared the edge of the church and then passed behind it. A tightness bloomed in her chest; she realized she was holding her breath, though she couldn’t say how long she’d been doing so. She forced her throat to unclench and moved air silently through it, taking a moment to experience the coolness of breath moving inside her body, forcing muscles to unclench. She felt a hand on her back; recognized right away from the familiarity of the touch that it was Jake’s. A moment later, another hand joined it on the other side, this one abrupt and brotherly whereas the one before had rested down feather-light like hot gauze.

“Soon,” Gibs promised. “Stay sharp.”

The radio coughed into their ears again, causing Gibs and Amanda to jerk in place.

“Holy fuck! Holy fuck, you guys!” It was Oscar, sounding completely unnerved.

“What, goddamn it?” hissed Gibs.

“There’s… there’s fuckin’ bodies everywhere, man! They’re all lined up along the wall out here. Jesus Christ, man, they’re stacked up like firewood!”

“What the fuck- Repeat your last! You said ‘bodies’ ?”

Tom’s voice answered: “Affirmative, Gibs. Bodies. There are sixteen, all jumbled on top of each other by the back wall. I’m still going through them, but so far, every one of them’s taken a round through the head. If I had to guess, the splatter on the walls suggests they were… uh… Goddamnit—these people were executed, Gibs.”

Something like a lump of ice-cold shit formed in the center of Gibs’s stomach. He wasn’t yet sure what such a discovery meant, but he knew for certain that murders had been carried out here. From the corner of his eye, he saw Amanda thumb the safety off on her rifle.

“Anyone we know?” he forced himself to ask.

Silence for a moment, then, “I don’t think so? Some of them have had their features, uh, rearranged…” His voice became muted, and Gibs realized that Davidson had forgotten to release the transmit button. “You guys recognize any of these? No? Yeah, that’s a negative, Gibs. We think they’re all newcomers.”

“Guys… do we need to pull back?” It was Wang, chiming in over the radio from his station back at the Humvee.

“Hang tight,” Jake said. “We can’t afford to wait beyond tonight; they’ll have too much time to prepare if we do. Just keep on the M2. Keep your eyes open.”

“Proceed with the sweep,” Gibs grunted. “Watch those windows on the south end; you keep buried in the trees as you pass.”

“Roger,” Davidson said, and the channel fell silent.

“Thoughts?” Jake whispered.

Gibs shrugged. “You said these people were operating off-script?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe the scriptwriters got pissed.”

“Yes, that is possible…”

“You have another idea?” Gibs asked.

“Perhaps. It could actually be the scriptwriters piled up out there. I wouldn’t put it past them.”

“You say that like you know them,” Gibs muttered, almost to himself. Jake did not respond.

The radio blipped again a few moments later, followed by Davidson’s voice.

“Ready.”

Wordlessly, Jake, Gibs, and Amanda glided out from under cover, crossed the distance to the side entrance of the middle building, and positioned just outside. Gibs and Amanda stood to either side of the door, rifles set, while Jake stood directly in front of it, rooted to the ground like a tree with his AK hanging from a sling while his hands gripped the handle of the sledgehammer. He nodded, and Gibs began to count over the radio.

“Three… two… one… KILL!”

A shotgun blast erupted from the other side of the property at the exact instant the head of Jake’s hammer made of the door handle and frame a corrupted misery of jagged metal and splinters. His leg drove forward like a piston even as the hammer continued along its unstoppable arc, shivering the door in its frame so violently that Amanda thought the whole wall might come down.

“It opens outward, goddamn it!” Gibs spat.

“I know,” Jake said, his voice serene. He pivoted on his leg and swung the hammer again, this time like a baseball bat, and when it made impact, it was as much against the frame as it was the door, and the whole edge of the wall crumbled under the blow like fired clay. Jake reached out a fraction of a second later, hooked his fingers into the ruin, and yanked. The door swung open easily, the grinding of its passage serving almost as an entreaty to spare it from further abuse. Gibs and Amanda spilled into the church past the door as if its opening created a vacuum that sucked them inexorably in. Jake lowered the sledgehammer and followed them, idly palming the grip of his rifle as he passed over the threshold.

The church’s cavernous guts exploded into dancing shadows and darting spot beams, illuminated by weapon lights swinging sharply from point to point, and everywhere they shined some evidence of conflict was exposed. Toppled tables; shattered glass; bullet holes; blood spatter; dust motes whirling in the air currents, throwing sparks back at their eyes in flashing pinpricks of fairy light. Gibs and Amanda swept along the nave of the modernized space; wide open floors innocent of pews with a large wooden cross in crisp, ruler-straight edges dominating the far wall, behind which stood floor-to-ceiling windows webbed and cracked where they weren’t just blown out entirely. A chill wind swirled in from the outside world, catching the tattered drapery and billowing the fabric out—the lungs of some panting, lowing beast. On the floor: bodies piled atop each other sporadically like rolled up strips of carpet padding, stained with the detritus of age and life, destined for landfill.

The Marine and his female counterpart ripped through the main floor like a tidal flood, pushing with violent aggression, while Jake came behind, moving slower. He breathed deeply, tasting the air, smelling the copper-tinged evidence of what had transpired. In the shadows, his shoulders sagged under the knowledge of it, though his friends did not see.

Their radios crackled simultaneously as they finished off the room, Oscar’s voice saying, “All clear. We’re coming through.”

“Copy. Come on in,” Gibs responded. The door along the south wall pushed open almost in embarrassment and the secondary team funneled in, crossed the common floor, and stacked up at the opposing door. Gibs and Amanda lined up behind Tom, the last man in the chain, and Jake stood patiently behind them all.