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

A sour churning of rage twisted through O.B.’s guts at these words. He chewed the inside of his cheek while his hands flexed on the radio, distracted eyes still tracking the odd muzzle flash below.

“Hello?” Clay pressed.

O.B. squeezed the talk button, though he remained silent a few moments more. Then, in a voice gone high and reedy, he said, “Clay… you sit tight a while. Keep her safe. I’ll get this calmed down. Then, when it’s all over, I recommend you have your shit lined up for a real fight. You’re going to have to do a whole lot of convincing to keep me from killing you. Go ahead and stack your pet cowboy up between us, while you’re at it. I don’t mind starting with him at all.”

He turned the radio off, suppressed the near-insuppressible urge to hurl it down the slope, and handed it off to Ralph.

“Jesus…” Ralph whimpered, eyes locked on the old man’s grey curl of a ponytail.

Without looking back, O.B. nodded and said, “Figure out what side you wanna take, Ralph, and do it quick. No hard feelings if you take theirs. I’ll let you slink out of here but… don’t let me see you again in this valley, okay? If I do, I’ll figure you’re coming at me on their behalf and respond accordingly.”

Something in O.B.’s unconscious mind informed him that Ralph was standing now if he hadn’t been standing up the entire time. He felt him shifting around, back there, working the problem over; trying to decide how the rest of his life would shake out. If it would be a long or short existence. Finally, he said, “Okay, I’ll—”

A rifle shot rang out from a position down-slope, close enough that O.B. caught the flash hidden down among the tree trunks. He noted there had been no delay between the flash, the report of the rifle, and the collapse of Ralph’s dead body as it rolled past him down the slope. Whoever they were, O.B. estimated they were inside of a hundred feet to his position, and they were still firing. He swung around behind the tree he’d been leaning against a moment before, nodding silently to himself in approval. It had been well executed.

Slowly, he edged his right eye around the side of the trunk and looked down the slope into the press of trees. He eventually saw movement down there, as he knew he would, and opened fire.

Otis hadn’t wasted a great deal of time when the bullets started ripping into the Connex homes; there had been a few moments of useless yelling over the radio which had obviously gone unanswered, and then, when the ricochets began pelting by and warbling off into the distance, he gave up on the radio, grabbed Brian by the shoulder, and yanked him over the railing. They fell to the dirt surrounding the immediate area of the porch on the southwest side of the house, rifles colliding together in a series of clicks and rattles, and Otis took a moment to thank the blessed Mary herself that Gibs spent so much effort harping on about safety switches being engaged when you weren’t actively shooting; he was fairly sure he’d jerked on his rifle’s trigger the moment his spine contacted earth. Then the present bit of Hell playing out over the area of the whole damned valley came back home to him in a rush and he was dragging Brian over behind the cabin. Otis sat the kid up against the wall, where he remained frozen with his rifle clutched to his chest, eyes wide and rolling like a panicked animal.

Otis again lifted the radio, amazed that he’d managed to hold onto the thing in his rush to get under cover, and began hollering into it.

“Greg! Greg, you there? Come back, boy, let me know you’re alright!”

Greg’s voice answered, sure enough, though it came from a direction wholly unexpected. Otis whirled toward the back of the cabin, where he saw Greg hobbling along in their direction, his back hunched under the weight of Alish, who clutched him around the neck in a death grip. Otis noted immediately that her face was contorted in pain; saw a second later that both her lower legs were bleeding freely.

“Great God, son, she’s hit!”

“Yeah…” Greg said simply, grunting as he knelt beside Brian. He crouched such that his knee buckled under Alish’s, keeping her own feet elevated in the air.

“Any shattered bone?” Otis asked nervously.

“No clue,” Greg panted. “I’m too terrified to touch and find out.”

Through clenched teeth, Alish added, “Can’t tell one way or the other… It feels like they’ve been blown off!”

Otis leaned over and examined her legs without touching near the wound area and saw that there were entries and exits on both, one through the thicker meat of the calf and the other having punched cleanly through the more taught material just beneath. That one looked bad; it looked like the bullet might have gone through tendon, but Otis couldn’t tell for sure. He typically would have relied on Olivia or Gibs for such an assessment, neither of whom were available at the moment. One thing was sure: Alish wasn’t going anywhere under her own power.

He started wracking his brain for ideas; some plan of action to address their current predicament when his radio lit up.

“Otis, it’s Drew. You guys okay? Repeat: are you okay?”

“It’s me, Brian, Greg, and Alish over here! Alish is hit through both legs, but she don’t seem to be in permanent danger if we can clean ’em out and stop up this bleedin’! But we pinned down! Can’t get nowhere with her like this!”

“Understood!” Andrew said. He spoke with urgency, but his voice was smooth and controlled. He might have been reading the Sunday paper for all Otis could tell. “Keep under cover… or better yet, see if you can edge around the rear of the cabin and get in through the back—”

“Get in how? Oscar done walled it up last summer!”

“Bust out a window or something. Just hang tight and don’t come out into the open. We saw your shooter on the hill, okay? We’re gonna start edging up toward him now and see if we can put him down.”

“You be careful, now!” Otis shouted. “What if he has friends up there?”

“Well, if he does we haven’t seen ’em yet. It was just the single line of fire down to the cabin. Just sit tight, Otis. Keep them safe down there and try to keep an eye on that truck. We’ll check in with you as soon as we can.”

Andrew released the transmit button on the radio hanging off his chest rig and took a moment to adjust the ballistic helmet he was wearing. He’d broken out in a sweat all over his body despite the continuing coolness of the weather, and even though he’d managed to adjust the helmet down to a snug fit, the sweat worming its way over the skin of his forehead under the padding made him itch like crazy. He was half-tempted to yank the thing off but didn’t, remembering when Tom had shown off his own helmet; specifically, the several-inch crack that ran over the top of it. Armor was there for a good reason, it seemed, and it didn’t do a great deal of good when the person using it tossed it down the hill in a fit of frustration.

He looked at Victor, who stood with his eyes rooted up the mountainside on the thick patch of trees at the midway point to the northeast ridgeline, and asked, “Still up there?”

“Yeah, I can see him. He’s keeping close to the undergrowth, but I can see that shirt. I don’t think he’s trying to stay out of sight, honestly.”

“Do you think he wants to be seen?” Isaiah asked.

“Do you think it matters?” Andrew responded. “We’ve gotta stop him, either way.”

“Well, he’s stopped now…” Victor whispered, eyes unblinking. “Can’t tell what he’s up to now. It’s like he’s just standing there.”