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

Now, when he’d had the time to consider his actions, as well as the course of action to which he proposed to commit all his people, he felt a narrowing of focus. It was as if time had dilated, lengthening out like pulled taffy until he had all the time in the world to decide if he really wanted to take the path ahead. He spent only a fraction of this period contemplating the righteousness of his intent; the rest of it was taken up in marveling at the inner peace that depended from his resolution.

He squeezed, the rifle kicked into his shoulder, and the tiny man in the distance disappeared.

Greg’s right hand worked the bolt action on the rifle, shucking hot brass into his family’s kitchen as he sent more rounds downrange to match the first. The rifle went dry shortly after and he swapped it out for the very same AR weed-whacker he’d used to fight it out on the open highway, standing shoulder to shoulder with Gibs and Tom. The glass of the truck’s windshield had webbed out to complete opacity immediately after Greg’s third shot, so he was unable to tell if there was anything in that cab worth firing at. He dumped a full magazine into the vehicle before the remains of the windshield fell into the cab like a collapsing trap door. When his weapon went dry, he dropped the mag out onto the linoleum floor, but he still heard plenty of rifle fire surrounding him as he did; saw the surface of that truck still being pelted under fire.

That was good. That meant the others had finally caught on.

Greg inserted a fresh magazine into the rifle, slapped the return, took aim through the window, but did not fire. He instead swept the area for movement while his friends kept the truck occupied. As he did, he felt through the soles of his feet rather than heard the impact of 7.62 rounds as they punched into the yard outside. He jerked from the window, backing away several steps, and looked up into the surrounding mountains to ascertain the source of the gunfire. Before his eyes could focus, the entirety of his surrounding world ignited into the panicked clanking shriek of metal striking metal. The southeast wall of his home rippled into a line of spreading keyholes, rays of light shooting from the wall onto the floor from elevation like diffuse lasers. They appeared at least two feet above the sandbag wall he’d constructed, and as he watched, the rays of light stitched a line along the floor and over Alish’s legs. The flesh of her calves twitched where the searing light played across them, and Greg saw in horror that the skin had split apart under a spray of her blood.

From her position on the floor atop the inadequate cushions, Alish screamed. Greg dove bodily across the room to reach her.

O.B. sent rounds into the side of the little building until he could confirm visually that the staccato flash of muzzle flares issuing from the window had ceased. When he was sure they had, he rested his right forearm against the trunk of the tree, leaned his forehead against the wrist, and waited. The rifle fire below had tapered off into a trickle after his little volley, and he figured that a lot of those little ants down there must be devoting a great deal of energy toward figuring out where he was. He glanced some seventy degrees to the left only to see that not one person out in the GMC had thought to make good their escape under his covering fire. Pursing his lips, O.B. shook his head slowly in the fashion of a tired parent observing his son’s disheveled bedroom. He lifted the radio to hail them when his eyes caught movement back down at the home he’d just perforated.

A man emerged from the side of the building opposite to O.B.’s position, appearing almost to climb out of the top of it, though he knew this was only a trick of perspective. This man stumbled away from the building and turned due west, his shoulders hunched over the burden of a woman that he carried bodily across his chest. The distance was too great for his tired, old man’s eyes, but O.B. understood perfectly well why he might be carrying her away from the gunfire rather than just allowing her to run under her own power.

Casualty.

O.B. sneered as he tracked their progress toward the main cabin, wondering what the hell had happened in the world that so many people now insisted on keeping their women where the fighting was likely to happen. There were plenty of such occurrences within his own group as well, though he preferred to keep his distance; members of the fairer sex who insisted on lugging rifles and rolling shoulder to shoulder with the big boys. He wondered if that wasn’t what had caused the world to start its long spiral down the shit pipe in the first place—this idea that women could or should do all of the things that men must, regardless of biological or reasonable limitations. Equal rights and treatment under the law were all well and good but… honestly. As an old soldier himself, he could pinpoint definite, real-world situations where the limitations of a female physique would have been of severe detriment, to his way of thinking.

He thought briefly of his old friend, Tyson, a specialist in the outfit who had ultimately rotated home long before O.B. got his chance. The old nightmare image of Tyson flashed through his mind; laying in the mud and undergrowth with his whole goddamned leg blown off above the knee, eyes staring sightlessly into the tree canopy as his remaining limbs quivered in the early onset of shock. There hadn’t been time to tie the leg off—not with all the gunfire zipping through the jungle and the Huey on deck a hundred yards distant, rotors spinning hard enough to froth the long grass in liquid waves, skids having only touched down a few seconds before yet still having spent an inexcusable eternity as the door gunner peeled off rounds of fire into a jungle come alive with VC.

There’d only been time enough to throw Tyson’s reduced ass over a shoulder and run like a motherfucker, run his ass off with his buddy and all his gear and that heavy cocksucker of an M60; run all the way like Tom Hanks did in that damned hippy movie that had come out all those years ago. That movie that used to give O.B. the sweats and the shakes every time he tried to watch it.

He tried to imagine how things would have gone if it had been a woman that had to get Tyson out of that particular situation instead of him.

When O.B. had finally gotten, his DD 214, one of the first things he’d done before finally returning home was to visit Tyson out at his house in Cincinnati. The remainder of his leg had been all healed up by then, but he spent most of his time getting around on crutches. He was living with his mother while trying to find some kind of work—whatever work could be done at the time by a one-legged, nineteen-year-old ex-demolitions expert—and she spent most of her time standing where she thought he wouldn’t notice her, watching over him while she kneaded away at her threadbare apron, restraining herself from crying.

O.B. had cried too, along with Tyson, over a few beers on the front porch of their home, after he’d tried to find new and hopeful things to discuss with his friend. Such topics rang flat and hollow, earning half-hearted grunts, and the discussion soon devolved into the remember-when ’s of old, battered soldiers not yet twenty-five years of age. Tyson had experienced an easier homecoming than O.B., apparently, no one having the heart to spit at a cripple or call him a baby killer. O.B. was grateful for that kindness, at least. Such treatment hadn’t concerned him overmuch—he was never a great admirer of humanity, to begin with, and expected little—but it was good that his friend had not been subjected to that hostility.