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

Ahead of them, Jake plunged ahead in the Ford with Amanda, Rebecca, and Oscar. Riding in the Humvee: Tom, Gibs, and Wang. Gibs had originally ridden in the Ford on their way down the mountain when they’d all been keyed up and thirsty for blood. And now here he was riding back up in the Humvee.

This, too, was significant.

Jake pumped the brake at them as they neared the final bend into the Bowl, the Super Duty’s remaining functional tail light throwing out a dull-red glow in the morning sun, and his voice came over the radio immediately after.

“Ease up through this last eighth-mile. I don’t know what we’ll find up here. Amanda tried contacting them a few times on the way up and… they should have been able to respond by now despite the terrain. But nobody’s answered, so take it easy. I don’t want to come around that corner and ram into a bunch of wreckage if they blew the mortars.

“Well… should we just be driving up the middle like this?” Tom asked. “I mean, what if Clay’s people are up here already? Do we really just want to drive straight in?”

The Ford’s brake light flashed again, and the truck came to a complete stop on the trail. Tom pulled up behind them to a distance of a few feet and waited. They sat in place like that for a while, heavy diesel engines rattling away, waiting for some kind of answer. Tom eventually lost his patience and lifted his radio to try again, but Jake’s voice came over the channel before he could.

“I don’t know… Tom. I really don’t.” He sounded exhausted. “Every guess or assumption I’ve made so far seems to have been wrong or otherwise flawed in some way. Founded on incomplete data. I don’t know what we’ll find up here; I don’t even know for sure if Clay’s arrived before us. What if we beat them back and we try to sneak in under cover? And what if our people shoot us full of holes when they see movement? What if we’re being watched right now, Tom? What if there are eyes up on the hillside right now looking down at us?”

A protracted hiss issued from the radio like steam being bled off at low pressure. Tom realized a few seconds after it stopped that the noise was Jake sighing into the handset.

“I’ve been working it over the whole drive back. We have the following possibilities, as far as I can tell. One: Our assumptions were wrong. Clay’s group never made it up here, and our people are barricaded in, just waiting for someone dangerous to show their faces. Two: Clay’s group did make it up, there was a gunfight, we won, and they’re barricaded up there waiting for another attack. Three: Clay’s group made it, and we lost. They may have taken prisoners or hostages; recent history has shown us that such a thing isn’t out of the question. Four: Clay’s group made it, but there was no fight at all, for whatever reason. Each case suggests to me that the lowest risk course of action has us driving in carefully in plain sight. Any other approach could end in a deadly misunderstanding in the best case or prisoners executed in the worst.”

“There is another option,” Tom said. “You let me head in alone and take the risk. I can keep out of sight, get in close and have a look. I’m not too worried about one of ours shooting me; they’re trained better than that.”

“No,” Jake said simply. He did not provide a reason.

“Okay…?” Tom pressed.

“I’ll drive in alone,” Jake finally said. “You’ll all wait back here—”

They heard the sounds of protest coming from the truck over Tom’s radio; angry voices chattering rapidly on the encrypted channel. The radio went suddenly dead amid the hottest part of the debate, cutting off the thin sound of protest before those in the Humvee had a chance to make out any of the words. Chief among the dissenters had been Amanda, nearly shouting over the others. A few seconds later the channel opened up again, and Jake continued speaking as though the interruption had never occurred.

“As I said, you’ll all wait back here with the Hummer—that M2 will come in handy if things go badly—and I’ll drive in to see how things stand.”

“Bullshit…” Gibs muttered; the first word he’d said since climbing into the vehicle for the return trip. The others flinched at the sound of his voice; his quiet pronouncement doing more to jar their nerves than the greatest of his classic tirades. He reached out and yanked the radio from Tom’s hand so violently that the other jerked away for fear of being struck. Gibs ignored this; his eyes were pinned up on the spring steel bands enwrapping the rear window of the pickup truck, feverish and unblinking. The skin at his temples was an angry shade of red, pulsating like the veins in his neck that stood out in thick, knotted aqueducts.

He lifted the radio and said, “The rest of them stay. You and I ride in the Ford.”

He threw the radio back into Tom’s lap, kicked open the passenger door, and dropped to the ground. Then, grabbing his rifle, he strode to the passenger side of the truck, yanked the door open, pointed back in the Humvee’s direction, and grunted, “Un-ass the vehicle!”

A few moments later Oscar and Rebecca climbed down from the cab uncertainly, eyeing Gibs sidelong as they departed, and ambled slowly down the track to join the others. Amanda remained behind, visible only as a sliver of cheek and nose as she leaned out the passenger side of the truck and argued. It seemed they were trying to maintain some semblance of quiet as they had it out, so their words were indiscernible to Tom and Wang, but silent or not they battled each other verbally for a healthy duration, Gibs with his feet planted on the trail and the small, demure sliver of Amanda’s face jerking mechanically as she bit off each response. Gibs appeared to get more agitated as they carried on, shuffling from foot to foot as they argued, and his hands came up more than once in grasping claws, convincing Tom that he’d finally lost his patience entirely and aimed to drag her bodily from the truck. Such a thing never happened, thank Christ (even Tom wasn’t sure how that would have played out). Gibs took a few steps away from the truck right before the explosion seemed most likely to come, facing in the opposite direction to heave several gasping breaths while shaking his hands out violently before his chest. Shortly thereafter, he sighed—a deflated, conciliatory gesture—and climbed into the truck’s backseat without further comment.

As soon as the door slammed shut, Jake’s voice came back over the radio. “Amanda, Gibs, and myself will drive in to investigate. The rest of you remain back here and wait for our signal. Get off the main trail and undercover; there’s a good pull-out about a hundred yards back with a thick copse of trees you can park behind. I’ll be in touch.”

The Ford was rolling forward before Jake finished speaking, and after that, the radio fell so still that Wang would have suspected the unit’s final demise had he not been able to see the screen’s readout. Rebecca climbed into the front seat next to Tom while Oscar hopped up into the rear, causing the battered workhorse of a Humvee to tremble on its rickety excuse for a suspension. She reached out and squeezed her lover’s hand once her rifle was properly stowed and asked, “What the hell was all that about?”

“You got me,” Tom scoffed, shaking his head in confusion. “I’m just here to shoot stuff and chew gum.”

“That’s ‘kick ass and chew bubblegum,’ bro,” Oscar said.

“Close enough…”

“What the hell are you guys talking about?” Wang asked irritably.

“Roddy Piper, man. ‘They Live’?” Oscar said.

Wang squinted at him thoughtfully, then said, “No idea.”

“Damn, dude. Yeah, we’re firing up the jenny and fixin’ that shit, assuming we’re still—”