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

He glanced down at the redhead and permitted himself a dull leer. Nothing too overt, of course; just enough to stick the knife in.

“What you people are staring at right now, this… asshole proselytizing himself blue in the face, though his head might be throbbing a goddamned bastard and he maybe sees three of you to every one actual person—I’m your future. Or more accurately, I’m what your future might hold if you ever pulled yourselves down from this mountain and grew your ranks a little. We’re just a bigger version of you people, and not much different beyond that. You all have your little village running up here, a… veritable hippie commune, which I’ll allow seems to be working for you. I don’t go in for that Commie shit, myself, but let’s be honest, here: I can remember a time as well when our group looked a lot more like Communists than a properly organized and functional society. See, the thing about a Commie setup is that it really only works when you’ve got a small group… say fifty or eighty people. Works great at those numbers. If someone isn’t pulling their weight—just living off the efforts of his neighbors and the like—well… you just drag him out to the village center and brutalize him a while… and then I guess he falls right in line, doesn’t he? There isn’t much danger of an abuse of power because everyone knows, huh? You can’t hide a lazy, sandbagging attitude in such a small group.

“But get up to a group my size and try running Camp Pinko . It doesn’t work. Starts to break down, huh? The sandbaggers get lost in the shuffle. Sure, people might get reported to the Man…” he smiled when he said this; tapped his chest with the fingers of his free hand, “…but the Man doesn’t have much in the way of proof or fucking evidence, does he? What then? Setting up governing bodies to keep everyone working for their fair share? Blessed Jesus preserve us! That’s just building up bureaucracies, huh? You all know the definition of the word bureaucracy, don’t you? Anyone? How about you, little girl?”

He gestured at Rose, eyes hopeful and sincere. She shied back from his attention, clutching tightly to Wang’s arm, who in turn shifted to stand in front of her. For a gimp-legged, underfed kid, he looked ready to bite a hole through Clay’s throat.

Watch that one , Clay thought to himself. He’ll be a dangerous son of a bitch…

Clay looked to the girl’s right and focused on the woman instead; the woman who could only be the mother. They both shared the same set of eyes; the same tendency toward dense musculature through the arms and legs.

“Tell her it’s safe to answer, Mom, huh? I save my verbal abuse for adults slow on the uptake.”

The mother glanced over at Asia’s answer to Long John Silver, nodded gently, and then whispered to the child: “Go on, Sug…”

The child looked down at the dirt, shrugged, and said, “A, um… a group of people in charge?”

Clay smiled encouragement and nodded. “That’s a fair start, young miss. Fair start. I’d go so far as to call that a near-textbook definition. But the things they teach in textbooks are only ever just the tip of the iceberg, huh? The understanding of a thing wants experience with that thing, and as someone so experienced, I can offer that the truth of any bureaucracy—the fundamental core of it—is that it’s a place where incompetence thrives, and creativity dies. It’s the very place where sandbaggers can hide, where they can just coast along lining their own pockets while the people of the community—those salt of the earth types doing all the actual work—remain underserved. We don’t let that kind of thing take root, you see. People are held to account for their actions.”

The black man he’d met earlier in the field, Otis, scoffed and rolled his eyes. Clay stopped speaking immediately and met the man’s gaze. “What?”

“Oh, we can speak now, right?”

“Don’t get fuckin’ cute with me, Otis. You have a point or not?”

“Oh, not much beyond sayin’ this all sounds real familiar. Heard it all before. Different group of people; different place and a different time but… I guess y’all end up the same in the end, don’t’cha?”

“How’s that?” Clay asked, not unkindly.

“Old boys.”

There was a moment’s hesitation in his senatorial face; a tensing of muscles in his men as they watched the interplay. In his mind, the old, familiar whirring of gears like oiled clockwork, the tumblers dropping into place. He smiled softly and bowed his head. Speaking as if to himself, Clay said, “One sees where such an impression might be surmised. It’s a sticky little corner you put me in, Otis, laying it out blatantly; depositing the accusation on the ground between us like some rotten excretion spewed forth from cancerous asshole, just deposited there on the dinner table in a rotten, maggot-lined heap, unignorably present, your accusation, to the effect, says this cocksucker before you’s a filthy liar, and we won’t stand still for his filthy cocksucker’s lies, huh?”

“Son of a bitch…” Gibs growled angrily.

“Oh, you just sit tight, little Gibby. I haven’t even gotten to you yet; you just wait your goddamned turn. I’m attending to Otis’s concern at this time if you please.”

His eyes and mouth widened as he spoke, a rapidly heating boiler building up pressure, jaw ratcheting open like a spring-loaded trap shaking strands of his hair loose in shining, grey-black curls.

“I suppose there’s a numerous selection of ways in which I could respond to your query; anywhere from a concerted act of advocacy to a simple disappearing act—and don’t think the prospect isn’t tempting. Says I to myself: ‘What’s the path as gets my point across in the most efficient way? huh?’ Wrack my brain sometimes over this very question, so many times have I encountered you in my travels, Otis; the disbeliever; the resister; the fucking Luddite philistine . How, I ask myself, how ? How do I deal with that kind of willful ignorance; that dug-in, heel-planted attitude of a starving, dying horse been dragged against its will to the fucking well and would just as soon piss in your face than take a drink, if only it had the piss to spare? How? How, Otis? I’m asking you, now. How do I deal with that?”

Otis stood quietly for a few beats, coming to the slow realization he’d been asked a question somewhere in all of that circuitous rambling. He cleared his throat and said, “Uh… well, I imag—”

“Not a fucking thing!” Clay interrupted. “The answer is nothing, Otis. I do nothing. I don’t address your concern because it’s beneath address. I can’t help you, you see; don’t have the words to bring you around, obviously. God curse my failing, faltering, fucking tongue. You are a lost cause, sir, and I apologize.”

He drained off the rest of his coffee, inflamed eyes boring into Otis’s being like great, feverish rays of heat, and the cords of his neck stood up against the age-wrinkled skin as he swallowed. He threw the cup out among the trees, baring his teeth in a loud gasp as he did so, and drug a forearm across his lips.

“I don’t bother,” he reiterated. “No. I focus instead on the people I can reach, whoever the fuck you might be. And I’m here to express the following: We have jobs. Real jobs. I don’t mean people are getting assigned to tasks down there; I mean that people are taking on actual, no-shit jobs and earning an honest to god wage. That’s right; a system of currency that’s functioned well for the last year or so and a means of accumulating wealth limited only by a man’s creativity, drive, and ambition! We have a doctor down there, keeping everyone fit as fiddles. One lady’s set up shop as a tailor and making a legitimate killing, given they’re not importing such a lot of cheap Levi’s from East Asia anymore, huh? There’s a laundry, a communal kitchen, and bar. Wait a minute… bar… bar… Oh, that’s right. We even have a goddamned barber down there. When was the last time any of you took the time for a shave and haircut, huh? Ladies? Are we all wearing long pants because the nights are chilly or… Hmm?”