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

Clay nodded, sipped his coffee (he was probably going to kill Jake the next time he saw the man… but not before he shook his hand for keeping the place stocked with the beverage), and said, “Well, let’s try this again, huh?”

He paused briefly in case someone wanted to speak up, knowing, of course, that they wouldn’t but… appearances…

“Right. So, the next step is to go over what you have up here and determine how it gets managed. It’s, uh… regretful, but we can’t very well have you all going around armed, or even going around at all if there’s a chance of you arming.”

Several of his own men broke off from their removed positions, fanning out toward the various homes, campers, and smaller cabins. Those people addressed by Clay began to look around in hitching, little jerks as doors were opened, and privacy was violated. An angry muttering began down in the dirt patch, rumbling just out of hearing like low-frequency white noise.

“Take it easy,” Clay warned. “The goal is to let you people come and go around here as you please, just as you’re accustomed to, alright? But we can’t do that until we make sure the place is safe. You people are gonna be disarmed a while, huh? Until your probationary period is complete, you’re gonna be disarmed. Don’t worry about your valuables; my boys have done this a few times, now. They’re pretty damned good at it—they’re good about not breaking things. This isn’t about some show of force; we’re already past that at this point. Any of you that haven’t figured out the situation by now are probably too fucking bovine to add up the numbers after a simple room-toss, anyway.”

As if to prove his point, two men exited from different homes almost at the same instant—the first coming from Amanda’s cabin while the second stepped down from Otis’s converted school bus. Each man closed the door of his respective structure, produced a thin roll of masking tape, and proceeded to mark a large “X” by the handle before strolling off to find another residence.

“There you go,” Clay said, nodding at the two men as they pursued their task. “Looks like the first two places were clean. Whoever lives in those places… uh, that was you, Otis, for the bus and Amanda over at the cabin, right? Fine. Well, when we’re settled up here, you can go home.”

Someone down in front timidly raised a hand over her head—an older lady with plain, motherly hair and a mouth like a puckered asshole. Clay remembered finding her locked up in that enormous garage amid a jumbled collection of whimpering children. Eyebrows bunched to sagging awnings over tired eyes as he looked at her dumbly for a moment, disarmed by the thought process behind such a clueless gesture.

“What’s your name?”

“Uh… Patricia.”

“Patricia, yeah. Are you waving hello at me?”

“Am I…? Well, no.”

“Did I ask a question necessitating some form of verbal response?”

“No…”

“Well then put your fucking hand down, sister.”

The arm retracted slowly, descending like a dying balloon. Clay filled his lungs with a heaping breath, shook his head, and said in the most reasonable voice he could manage, “I understand how you all must feel right now. I get it; I’m not a lunatic. This is intensely unsettling, having a bunch of bastards push their way into your homes, tracking their mud on the carpets, and the like. But… let’s, uh… let’s not get the idea that this is a discussion, huh? I’m not interested in fucking you up at all, but I’m not here to win hearts and minds, either. If you force me to fuck you up, I’ll bend you over and reach for the closest bucket of lard. My solemn word, hand to God. Starving people fed and peace maintained is the main fucking thing, huh? I can’t afford to consider the matter any deeper than that right there. Now, I’ve already told you, people, you’ve got a week to come up with some kind of plan that works for you. Within that timeframe, we shall not encroach on your crops. I’ll take a quick tour to visually confirm what you have, but after that, my boys’ll be stationed outside watching the doors. That’s one week to solve the problem. I’m sorry; I wish I could do you better than that but… hell, folks, if we push it out much further than that, my people down in Jackson are liable to start killing each other off for supplies. You’d be amazed how people get when they’re drowning, huh? Climb atop the heads of their own fucking children just to catch a lungful…

“And then, when they’re done killing down there, they’ll come looking for us up here. And the problem, you see, is that we can’t hide from them because they all know where this is now. I told a few of the people I left in charge how to find the place, huh? In case something big down there happened, and they needed to reach me.”

He took another sip of coffee and counted off a full ten seconds as he looked from face to face searching for any signs of resistance. He saw none, but then he’d done this sort of thing enough times now to understand that his failure to detect such an attitude did not mean it was absent.

“So… it’s a shitty situation, but it is the situation. I’m sure that not a damned one of you is in a hey-let’s-pull-together mood, but sadly, that’s about the only way you’ll be gifted with the sight of my retreating ass. You either work with me to get this thing figured out, or I’ll figure it out on my own, only by then, I won’t be spending so much time agonizing over what I leave behind. I’ll just take everything. And then you fine people can decide if you want to stay up here naked or come down the mountain and throw in with us.”

One of the men down in front actually scoffed at this last comment; a younger guy standing arm in arm with a red-headed bombshell. Clay’s eyes were drawn to her almost against his will like she produced a small but powerful gravity well, and he ticked this off as a mental note. He had a good feeling about the men he’d brought along, but… one could never be too careful. He’d instruct Pap to keep an eye out for signs of mistreatment, just in case.

He realized abruptly that he’d not heard a single word Laughing Boy uttered. Clay shook his head, cleared his throat, and said, “One more time.”

The man glanced at the woman standing next to him as if he understood what had happened—as if it had been happening continually for a good, long time. “I asked why the hell you’d think we’d want to ‘ throw in ’ with you people.”

“Well, why wouldn’t you?” Clay asked, sounding almost bored.

“Are… are you serious, man?”

“I’m not much for the odd fucking joke. What’s your name?”

“Tom.”

“Right. Tell me a few hundred more times, and I might remember it. Okay, Tom, the answer is ‘yes.’ I’m serious.”

Tom’s eyes bugged out of his head as he began to look around at his friends in confusion, a look Clay had seen a number of times in the last few years. The memory of Willy Dingle surfaced, unwanted and hateful; he swallowed it back down like a fleck of burped vomit and said, “Lemme ask you something: how do you think it came to be that we have upwards of some four hundred or whatever people in our crew? You think we’re taking prisoners, huh? Keeping slaves?”

Nobody had a smart comeback for these questions, as Clay had expected. He resisted the urge to smile.

“How did you people come together, huh? You didn’t all start out together in the same pest tent, did you? Don’t bother answering that; I already know you didn’t. You all came together over time, obviously. You clotted together for whatever fucking reason… additional strength, spread the workaround, and such—I imagine you all got nice and chummy with each other, probably a bit of baby making here and there…”