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

The room was some sort of communal lounge, adorned with low, fabric upholstered club chairs, a few cheap import end-tables, and some other accents, all of which were pushed back against the walls. Along the right wall was a long sink running the whole length of the area, over which were laminated cabinet doors. Formica countertop and stainless steel faucets.

A heavy-duty workbench had been installed at the far end of the room; an all steel and wood construction that looked to weigh a great deal. At the edge of the benchtop was a large vise, and clamped within was Edgar’s hand.

He dangled from the vise, hand extended overhead forever, like a student dutifully waiting to be called on by the teacher, continually ignored. The trapped hand had three of the original five fingers remaining, and these were bent over in sharp, alarming angles, skin around the knuckles having purpled and swollen while the tips thinned out to a sickly white-green in the brightness of the weapon lights.

His head lolled forward on his chest, rocking gently in time with his breathing, and as Amanda moved the muzzle of her weapon over him to inspect the damage, she saw that his other arm ended abruptly in a stump that had been wrapped in greasy, bloody cloth and tape. He stunk horribly, his pale ruin of a body sheened in a film of sweat and oil. He smelled of rotting cabbage.

“Oh my God…” Amanda murmured. She stepped into the room, allowing Gibs to enter behind her.

He stopped abruptly as though walking into a wall of cobwebs, and began to fan a hand in front of his face. “God… DAMN !” he gasped and began to cough in deep, wracking hacks.

“Edgar!” Amanda barked.

The head pulled up, trailing from the chin runners of blood and drool.

“A… manda…?” he croaked. “Gibs…?”

“Edgar… what happened? What did you do?” Amanda demanded in a haunted voice. She struggled desperately against the despair threatening to rise up within her. Looking down at the atrocity, she realized she could see very well what had happened and began to lose in her struggle.

Gibs rushed to the table and began to unwind the vise, but the moment he twisted on the handle, Edgar screamed out in a ripping, bubbling cry.

“No! Oh, God, please, don’t touch it! Ugh, oh Jesus, it hurts, it hurts, don’t do it, please, please, pleeease… ”

Gibs jerked his hands away as though they’d been scorched and look at Amanda in dismay. “This is bad, Amanda. Really bad. Bathtub full of abortions bad…”

Amanda either did not hear him or paid no attention. She crouched down to her haunches, rifle laid across her kneecaps, and repeated, “What did you do, Edgar?”

Edgar’s twisted form sighed out a long, shuddering sob and said, “I just wanted to heeelp… ”

Gibs stiffened in place. Looking down at Edgar, he said, “What… the fuck… does that mean?”

“I wasn’t trying to get anyone h-hurt… I wanted t-to bring people together… I wanted to fix things…”

His voice trailed off in a wheezing squeak as his vocal cords tightened in another sob.

“You sold us out…” Gibs hissed. “I was right, you fucking sold us out you fucking… cunt stain …”

Edgar shook his head, weakened muscles of his neck achieving only a hollow rocking, and his lips and chin contorted in silent misery as tears, blood, drool, and snot ran freely.

“No! I di’n’t wanna do it… I din’ wannaa…” Voice nearly unrecognizable now; words pulled long and thin through the strained contortions of his face, sounding small and childish. A child begging to be protected from the nighttime monsters.

Gib’s voice ground hoarsely through clenched teeth. “ George and Jeffries… are dead… because of you… ”

Edgar’s head dropped as he wept uncontrollably, breaths escaping in thin, trailing streamers; “ heeeeeeeee… heeeeeeeee… heeeeeeeee… ”

“Edgar!” Amanda snapped. “What did you do!”

“ They know where the Bowl iiiiisss… Oh, God help me, they knooooow… They knooooowwww… ”

Amanda remained crouched in front of him, her mind having ground to a halt, as she tried to consider what should be done next. Before her was broken ignorance, unaware he was the answer to everything, bereft of all answers. She saw a barrel creep forward from the corner of her eye and press into the top of Edgar’s head. From somewhere above, Gibs’s straining voice, “ Dead… because of you! Because… of… you! ”

Edgar nodded miserably, the motions of his head causing the rifle to bounce. The tendons of Gibs’s index finger creaked dangerously as the first millimeter of slop was pulled from his trigger. He stood there looking down on Edgar, teeth grinding, vision blurring to watery, swimming patterns, and his hand began to convulse under his anger. His finger twitched but did not pull.

Soft hand on his arm; Amanda’s voice in his ear: “Gibs… don’t. This isn’t you. Come on… let’s go…”

Being led away, turned away from the hateful creature pinned to the floor; guided like an old man through the door into the hallway, where he stood alone, diminished somehow, like a once-great boxer past his prime having lost his first match to a mediocre opponent. He looked back along the hall and saw in his swimming vision the silhouette of Jake regarding him silently. Tears running freely over his cheeks, Gibs whispered, “We’re done, Jake. We’re broken…”

Jake said, “We need to get back to the Bowl right now, Gibs.”

A pistol shot erupted from the room behind him.

They were still waiting for their people to return when the pale red dawn rolled over the ridgeline of the surrounding mountains. The better part of those who’d stayed behind had been up all night; drinking coffee, marching in place, humming quietly to themselves, or standing in groups of two or three to chat away the hours of darkness. Holding sleep at bay while trying to ignore the fact that every one of them wore body armor and carried rifles. A small number were locked up in the garage, perhaps bundled up on a cot or perhaps not—Barbara, Rose, Patty and her adopted children from the Fields. Greg was locked up in the home he shared with Alish though he was still alert, commenting in a low voice to the others periodically over the radio.

Otis glanced down to the corner of the front porch where Columbus and George waited. They had been laid shoulder to shoulder and covered over with a black tarp, presiding patiently in anticipation of being given over to the earth. Otis sighed, struggling against a monstrous weight that bore down upon his chest with a relentlessness he’d almost forgotten, having lived the good, easy life up in the mountains for so long. He’d almost believed they had found their safety; that fortified land where the cold, hard world could not encroach. Sadly, it seemed the world had a funny way of searching you out, of seeping into the cracks and hidden places like poisoned water, quickening through the fissures until that icy liquid found soft, warm skin and wormed its way in.

He dragged a hand down his face, expelling air like an old horse, and returned his attention out to the cleft.

“You okay, Otis?” whispered Brian.

“Yeah. Naw. I wished to hell I knew where they was at. They ’sposed to be back ’fore dawn.”

“They’ll be back.”

Otis glanced at the young man at his side; took in the soft, boyish face under patchy brown beard, cheeks blotched rosy in the morning chill. He had a face that the world had not yet stained. “Sound pretty sure-uh yoursef…” Otis muttered.

Brian smiled faintly and said, “Gibs is out there with them. And Wang… and Amanda. The best we have went out there, Otis. They’ll be back.”