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

Still looking dead at Amanda, Clay said, “Nothing so much as a fucking shambles, really. I brought your little angel back, like I said, intent on making the case that her departure was in no way a development of my fucking design, huh? Comes Pap, here, and I up to your dugout, white flag held high overhead in proclamation of that intent, and olive branches jammed up our asses like peacock tails in declaration of fucking peace and prosperity, good humor, and whatever fucking else benevolent fucking sentiment you might care to dig from a moldy old copy of some Dickens novel—the wordy cunt—when your lovely folk, god bless ’em, opens fire on us. Just a hail of goddamned gunfire for my troubles, two of my men killed outright and a third later… oh, and by the way, you and I will need to sit down and have a little talk about that at some point, Mother Bear, huh? We’ll call that shit a parent-teacher conference if you like. But yeah, two of mine… e-mmediately face down, teeth shot through their assholes like a fucking Original Trilogy Sarlacc pit— with your own kid in the goddamned truck, by the way…! ” he took a moment to point at Elizabeth in the crowd, finger quivering violently as it stabbed through the air, “…before we had the slightest chance to introduce ourselves or beg a fucking cup of sugar!”

His head dropped again for a moment as he caught his breath. Now looking down at the railing, he grunted, “I’m a little putout, as you might gather…”

“You were bringing her back,” Gibs proclaimed flatly. “You. To make nice.”

“Yes, goddamn it,” Clay barked, eyes pinching shut.

In the collected gathering, Alan spoke out loudly: “You sure shot the hell out of us in the process!” This was joined with shouts of agreement, causing the armed men who penned them all to lift their rifles and glance from prisoner to prisoner in grim fashion. Gibs saw this—saw the looks on the faces of these men—and understood they would kill aplenty if the situation required.

“Easy,” Gibs cautioned them. “Inside voices, Alan.”

“Listen to him, Son,” Clay agreed. “Let the grown-ups sort this out a while before you go sticking your nose in.”

“Start from the beginning,” Jake said. From his position, Gibs was unable to tell in which direction Jake was looking, though he assumed from the angle of the man’s neck and head that he was looking up at Clay, whose own eyes swiveled down to look at him as though noticing Jake for the first time.

“The beginning of what, now? The gunfight or further back?”

“From as far back as you need.”

Clay nodded slowly, rolling his tongue luxuriously in his mouth. “You’ll be Jake .”

“Sure…”

“Uh. You find my care package?”

“Ronny…”

“Yeah, fucking Ronny. I’ve been piecing this shit together since they tossed me out of bed this morning god knows when, but he was at the head of this whole thing. Let’s not get into how or why he was allowed to get away with it for this long, though, huh? I’m in a foul enough mood already. But you didn’t think I’d go in there, clean out the garbage, and then just leave their king cunt locked up for safe keeping, did you? Our boy Ronny was scheduled to be dealt with one way or the other; only real question was you or me? We clean up after our own in my crew, see, but I thought maybe you people’d wanna take a pass at him, seeing how he dumped no end of shit atop your heads, and so forth.”

“You left him there for us?” Gibs croaked, mildly disgusted.

“Call him a twig on the olive branch.”

“Did you leave Edgar too?”

Clay’s face twisted in confusion. He glanced at Pap, who shrugged, and then back at Gibs.

“Didn’t see him.”

“But you know him.”

“Know of him…”

Gibs uttered an unamused grunt and scratched his chin. “Yeah. I guess I’m starting to swallow the idea that you’re incompetent.”

The surrounding air seemed to run thin at this easy statement, Clay’s men having ceased to breathe as they waited to see how he would respond. With the mood he was in, they figured it could have been anything from a classic country ass-whooping to a nine millimeter round to the head. Clay stared at Gibs balefully, eyes reduced down to black pits, so tightly were they narrowed. He pulled in a slow lungful of air through his nostrils and whispered, “That’s very rude…”

“Gibs…” Jake warned.

“Don’t fucking ‘ Gibs ’ me, big boy.”

Clay snapped his fingers a few times and said, “Hey, can we focus here a minute? The point was: Ronny went off on his own and did some unsanctioned shit, huh? Now he’ll be dealt with one way or the other, assuming you haven’t solved the problem for me already. Now, have you or have you not?”

“Call it resolved,” Jake said.

“Fine. Done, and I owe you a beer later. Next fucking item. I don’t need this shit blowing up any further than it has already. I brought your girl back; like I said, to make peace. It’s not my goddamned fault what happened next. I made a solid, best effort attempt to come to you as unthreateningly as possible—again: a white… fucking… flag !—and your idiots respond by shooting us up. In what possible ways would you expect us to respond, huh? Why don’t you try enumerating them right now? Go ahead, we’ll all wait for you.”

He crossed his arms and sucked air through his teeth. No one bothered to answer him, so he said, “No takers, huh? Well, I guess I don’t blame you, given the fucking OBVIOUS NATURE OF THE SITUATION!”

The shout echoed out into the valley, causing several of the people on the common ground to flinch in dismay. Clay panted for a few beats, wrestling with his own anger, before continuing in a subdued manner.

“So here’s the news: you killed some of my guys, and I killed some of yours. It was, uh… three of mine, that right Pap?”

“Reckon so!”

“Three of mine. And we got three of yours. Even push, okay? We’ll bury ours, and you bury yours, and nobody’ll hold it against anyone else. That’s a fucking statement intended for my people as much as yours!” He raised his voice on the last sentence, looking out at his own men as he bit the words off.

“Who…” Amanda began and then stopped. Clay looked down at her expectantly as she shook her head, fighting back tears. Composing herself, she tried again. “Who of ours?”

Before Clay could answer, Fred’s voice boomed from the gathering: “Got Drew, Victor, and Isaiah.”

“Goddamn it…” Gibs spat. His hands had begun to tremble at his sides.

“Drew… Victor. Isaiah…” Amanda repeated in a numb voice.

“Yes, goddamn it, and Perry, and Charlie, and fucking Ralph!” Clay interrupted. “Don’t suppose that bothers you so much, though, not knowing them and the like? Who they were or where they came from? Whether they had anyone waiting for them to come home? Back in Jackson? No? I thought… fucking… not . Read these old, cracked lips, sweetheart: your people won’t be held to account for those murders. I pronounce you absolved.”

He cleared his throat and cast a hard eye around at his men, looking to see if they would protest. They did not.

“Now, that…” he said, bouncing a pointed index finger in the air repeatedly, “…that is as good a deal as you’re likely to get, huh? It was never my intent to go this far… or that anyone should take things this far. I am too fucking old and tired to go shitting in the sandbox of others. We need to put this all aside, like adults.”

He fell silent and waited for a response. Gibs and Amanda stood behind Jake, glancing at the back of his head and waiting for him to make some kind of response. When he didn’t, Amanda touched his elbow and said, “Jake…?”