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

Monica came through next, “Clear behind the cabin. We’re lined up shoulder-to-shoulder on the cleft and ready to go.”

A few moments of silence, followed by Olivia Lee in the garage with the others: “I could be out there with a rifle right now, you guys…”

“No!” Otis grunted. “Stay where you are and keep low! We goan need you if someone takes a hit.”

A disgruntled sigh bled over the line before the channel fell silent. Otis waited a few moments for additional check-ins, then realized that all group stations had actually completed status. He drew breath to issue a few last minute instructions but again heard Fred’s voice before he could speak.

“Problems, guys. That is not our truck…”

Clay shifted around uncomfortably in the passenger seat of the old GMC, trying to find a position he could easily maintain against the sharp rocking of the truck as it climbed and dipped over the jagged mountain trail. It was a losing battle. Just when he thought he’d found an ideal arrangement for his legs or arms that allowed them to rest easy, it seemed to be the exact moment Pap hit a pothole in the dirt or rolled a tire over some hunk of rock. If Clay crossed an ankle over his knee, it was dislodged and spilled to the floor in a jarring thump. If he rested his elbow on the small shelf of the door between window and frame, it would jostle away and bounce annoyingly off the lower armrest. He looked over at his driver and grimaced; the great hick rode the truck with a careless disdain as though it were a dazed, underfed bull working off the effects of a roofy cocktail. Pap’s gut, prodigious and nearly crammed against the lower curve of the steering wheel, sloshed lazily over his buckle. He drove along with his left thumb carelessly looped through the wheel’s side and his right hand posted onto the top of his thigh, like he was impersonating the storied little teapot from his seated position.

Looking back out the passenger window to count the ranks of pine trees as they trundled by, Clay asked, “How is it a fella gets as big as you, Pap; food situation being what it is, huh?”

“Pardon?”

“That gut. It looks like you’re smuggling a baby hippo under that shirt. Everyone’s on half-rations right now, so I’ll ask again: how does one maintain that size? Or will you tell me you’re fucking big-boned?”

There was a moment of silence from the other end of the cab, during which Clay stifled a yawn with a curled up fist, then: “Nope.”

Clay looked back at Pap. “‘ Nope’ ? What the fuck does ‘nope’ mean?”

“Means you ain’t baitin’ me that easy, Baws. I git yer in a shit mood right about now, an’ you got plenty cause to be so. But you ain’t bleedin’ that energy off’n me. Sorry, but… we just ain’t gonna do it.”

Clay grimaced at the man, left eye twisting in a sour squint. “The fuck do you know, anyway?” he muttered.

“Knowed what you was tryin’ to do…”

“Alright, already,” Clay sighed. “Shut up.”

He balanced his chin on the knuckles of his right hand and managed to hold it there for the next twenty seconds or so before his elbow was joggled off the armrest. He suppressed a snarl and rotated in his seat, so he was facing Pap. Looking back into the rear of the cab, he saw the little girl strapped in behind the driver seat staring sullenly up at the headrest. Her lip still looked like an almighty car wreck, but Doc had at least managed to clean it up in the fifteen minutes he’d been allowed to work on her. The Doc had advised that a stitch or two might be required when he was done, a pronouncement with which Clay had no trouble at all. Certain… lines of questioning … had revealed that the people up in the mountains had their own trained medic, hiding somewhere between all the trees and deer shit. Clay figured they’d just stop by, introduce themselves, straighten one or two things out, and get the girl patched right up. There were probably a few extra steps hidden in that sequence somewhere—little bumps in the process to match the bumps in the road currently beating the ever-loving dog shit out of his kidneys—but those were just details, after all. You never want to get bogged down in the details , he thought idly to himself— it kills your flexibility and locks you in a corner . And in Clay’s experience, such a corner usually ended up being the one in which the sustained ass-fuckings were perpetrated.

Her eyes darted away from the headrest as he regarded the stern lines of her face, considering how it would become something fresh and pretty once the bruised swelling of her lip died down a bit. Pretty even if she had a scar, he thought, and then, considering such a scar, thought briefly of the Madame back in Jackson.

Goddamn , he mused. Is it possible that here before me sits the beginnings of a new Isabelle? That cocksucker; I’ll kill him myself if he’s still alive when I get back. I’ll kill him twice if it’s at all possible…

Her eyes had locked onto his, smoldering in some form of hatred hybridized between impotent, childish anger and the very adult rage of one who might not yet be a killer but was on her way all the same. Clay’s forehead stair-stepped in response to her look. Tilting his head down so that he could look at her through the dark brush of his elevated brow, he rumbled, “Now that’s a look I know about, little girl. That’s a biting look, is what that is. And I’ve heard about you, see? Biter, right?”

She said nothing.

“Uh. I’ll make you a deal. Keep those choppers locked up the way you’ve been doing, and I won’t have to split your other fucking lip, huh?”

Her eyes flicked back to the headrest of Pap’s seat, skin of her cheeks and forehead darkening like the stain of freshly-perpetrated sin.

Clay turned further to his left; looked at the man riding behind his own passenger seat. He noted with some distaste that the man held a semiautomatic pistol casually in his lap with the barrel pointed right at the girl across from him.

“Hey,” Clay grunted.

“Charlie,” the man supplied.

“ Cunt , so far as I’m concerned. A well-fucked one, if you don’t get that gun off her.”

Charlie shifted uneasily, eyeing her side-wise like she was a live grenade. He said, “You’ve seen her when she gets squirrelly…”

“You’re gonna see me when I get squirrelly in a minute, you don’t put that muzzle somewhere else. I’ll hitch you up to the bumper and drag you the rest of the way by your balls, Chuckles . Don’t look at Pap. He’s not gonna help you right now.”

Charlie glanced at the girl, swallowed hard, and slipped the gun barrel-down into the pocket on the back of Clay’s seat. Clay nodded and faced forward, muttering to himself about the slow, insistent degradation of man. The episode with the girl recalled to Clay’s mind a nagging concern that had been whittling away at the back of his skull for the last little while; a problem he kept reminding himself to address, just before he promptly forgot to do so.

“Pap, that kid that’s been following you around lately…”

“Cuate.”

“Uh. What’d you do with him?”

“I fig’red things was apt to get hairy so I, uh, left him back in town.”

Clay nodded, at last beginning to understand a few things. “That’s why it took you so long to get your shit together…”

“Yip. Didn’t wanna let me go. I had to convince ’im I’d be back in a few days, just as soon as ev’rything calmed down. Still wasn’t happy over it, though.”

Clay looked at his friend a moment. He saw in Pap’s eyes the worry he’d noticed before, now understood under the circumstances, and wondered what it had cost the man to leave the kid behind like that. Pap might have been a simple hick, but Clay was at least still himself enough to recognize love when he saw it.