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

His mouth pulled up into another of those ghastly smiles; long, yellow canines gleaming in the light.

“How about this? Regular and frequent use of electricity? Heating and electric fans. Lightbulbs to show your way in the evenings; none of this plodding around burning animal fat like a bunch of primitives, huh? Fucking… ice… cubes. How do you folks fancy a cold drink in the dead of summer?”

He leaned against the porch rail again, hanging his head and panting. In the interlude, Otis thought he saw a filament of drool descend from the man’s lip, fine as spider’s silk in the low breeze. Then the moment passed, and Clay was looking at them all again, eyes compressed in zealotry; glinting like pits of oil under flame.

“You people think about that a while, huh?” he panted, teeth bared. “You give that a good, hard think while you tell yourselves that I’m the bad guy and you’re all the fucking good guys. Tell yourselves the stories you like best, apply whatever labels need to be applied if you have to; Clay’s the despot or the dictator—the new fucking Hitler if you like if it makes you feel any better.

“Or come down the mountain and see us. See how we live and educate yourselves before you start making such weighty decisions. I leave all that up to you. It’s all the same to me; my plans remain as they are no matter what. But we have a place in the crew for resilient, resourceful people. Throwing in with us isn’t climbing aboard a sinking ship; it’s spreading out the burden of daily life to something thinner. Something more manageable. You remember how it used to be? Before? When we lived in a world so ludicrously prosperous that even the fucking hobos were obese? Well… we’re not there yet, but we’re a goddamned sight closer today than we were yesterday, and we’re just gonna keep clawing our way forward, one little victory at a time. You people can choose either to see that or not, but that’s on you—I’m not in the business of forcing people into improved situations against their will. Otis!”

The man jumped in place at the sudden bellow. “Jesus! Yeah!”

“You were the first man to hang your neck out and come to a peaceful solution, despite your recent display of backward, primitive cave thinking. That tells me there’s still some promise there; that it’s not quite time to write you off as a lost cause. You may thank me later for my fucking benevolence. In the meantime: you have a stockpile of weapons. I want to see them.”

Otis glanced around at the others before looking beyond his friends at the surrounding homes; eyes darting from stranger to stranger as they moved room to room searching. They were emerging from the various places of residence more often than not with rifles and pistols both, and these were being arranged into a small pile by the main cabin.

“Your men’s goin’ through an’ fetchin’ up e’rythang we have, Clay. What makes you think there’s any more?”

“Never mind how I know, huh? You and I both know what the truth is. I wanna see it. I’m guessing the lion’s share is packed away in that garage of yours, but you’re free to tell me it isn’t so. Go ahead, and I’ll just ask the boys to take another pass through these homes, seeing as they’re so obviously missing all the good stuff. We’ll instruct them to be more thorough and see what comes up.”

“No,” Otis grunted, shaking his head. He’d chewed the word out like it was a hunk of rancid gristle. “Ain’t no call for that. C’mon… I’ll take you to see.”

“Why, thank you, sir,” Clay nodded. He stepped down from the porch and began to walk in the direction of the garage without waiting to see if he’d be followed. Otis watched after him as he departed, poised on the balls of his feet and looking as if he’d take a step forward any second.

After several seconds, Pap said, “Y’all better git, Otis, he’ll get annoyed if’n you keep ’im waitin’. Goan, now; ain’t nobody gonna shoot you. Scat.”

A wall of unreadable faces looked back at Otis; people he knew and considered family. Their expressions were as unreadable to him as an ancient scroll upon which had been scratched some dark incantation in the extinct languages of ancient man. He shrugged under their gaze as he left the circle, bearing the weight of their eyes has he passed them by, convinced that they understood the situation, that it wasn’t their animosity he felt slowly embedding into the flesh of his back.

Otis insisted to himself that he was certain of their understanding. He commanded himself to believe.

The garage roll-up door was unlocked from earlier when Otis had surrendered to Clay. The inhabitants of the Bowl still capable of walking were brought out to the communal grounds first, where they were held at guard, while Clay, Pap, and several other men watched as Otis unlocked and then opened the giant steel barrier, exposing a collection of women and children inside. They were huddled around on chairs and cots—some of the youngest swaddled up in blankets like hurricane survivors—blinking at the sudden light shining into the dark enclosure. Clay had taken a moment to look them all over, eyes alighting on each frightened face, and then nodded to Pap.

“Get ’em out of there.”

He stood before the opening again, looking into the garage’s vast, empty space and concentrating on not seeing those frightened faces. Otis stood quietly next to him, eyes cast at the concrete slab floor.

“It looks bigger on the inside,” Clay noted absently.

“Yeah… It, uh… has that effect.”

“Let me ask you something… Otis. That beat-to-shit Ford out there. Looks armored, huh?”

“That’s right. It was some modifications we made a while back. Gets tough out there on the road, you know.”

Clay laughed uncomfortably, nodding his head. “You have any more like that?”

“What? Trucks?”

“No, I mean armored vehicles.”

“Naw. Nothin’, we did up like the truck, anyway. We got that turret up on the Hummer, like, but that was sort of a gift.”

“Uh. Of course. That son of a bitch…”

“What?” asked Otis, made nervous at the other’s bitter tone.

“Oh… nothing, Otis. Nothing to worry about at all. You know… I think I might just thank this Jake of yours, next time I see him. Before I shoot him.”

“Don’t understand what that means.”

“No. Of course not. Well, let’s see it.”

“Alright,” Otis sighed. He rubbed an elbow with his hand apprehensively. “Up them stairs in the back.”

They ascended to the second level of the garage, walked past the pool table pushed into the corner and draped with an old cloth, and approached the reloading bench in the corner. Clay squinted in the darkness, looking over irregular shadows and dimly perceived angles jutting out into the low, grey light. Otis moved past him and fiddled with something on the wall. There was the sound of a click, something like a box opening and closing, and then a switch being thrown. An overhead light came alive, casting back the shadows to expose row after row of primitive racks. They appeared to be made from black steel pipes fastened to floor flanges that were screwed into plywood paneling lining the rear wall, spanning at least twenty feet; short black arms jutting from the wall, upon which was cradled an exhaustive collection of rifles, pistols, and shotguns. Further back, along the right wall of the building, he could see an improvised coat rack that appeared to hold a broad selection of ballistic armor.

“Well… my… goodness, would you look at this!” Clay said in wonder, walking slowly along the selection, eyes darting from weapon to weapon in naked appreciation. He recognized less than half of what he saw; wasn’t even sure of the calibers involved as he attempted to identify the various options. “Jesus Christ… you people have bullets for all these?”