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

He held up two ruddy hands and shook his head solemnly. “Believe me, Baws, I goddamned am!”

Clay grunted a short but honest laugh, walked a few steps toward the stairs, and then stopped abruptly. Turning, he said, “And here: take this book. I want you to go over each bullet type that’s marked with a Post-It and make sure we have it accounted for in their little stash, huh? You highlight anything missing and let me know.”

“You got it, Baws.”

“Anything, Pap. I don’t care if it’s .22 long rifle.”

Pap nodded and shooed the man away. “Yeah, loud and clear. Goan an’ git. Send Esparza up here if’n y’all see ’im.”

“Uh,” Clay grunted. He descended the steps and strode from the garage, mind already churning over the next three items on his mental list.

It was early evening on the day after Clay’s incursion into the mountains when Elton held the first emergency meeting under the authority of his new position, referred to by Clay as the Acting Head Motherfucker in Charge. He was bitterly tired, going on some thirty-six hours now, with maybe only three worth of sleep over the entire period, stolen away in fifteen-minute bouts during those moments when he’d been able to stop moving. He’d progressed to the point where nothing made sense anymore and had to bend every bit of his will on solving the simplest of problems. He tried to goose himself up with coffee just that morning, only to stand there staring at the empty can of Yuban in his hand for a good minute before he realized he was just fresh out of the stuff. Elton had sighed miserably when he finally understood the message his eyes transmitted to his brain, letting his head rock back and his eyes close. He felt the darkness of sleep begin to saturate through his mind like seeping warm water and jerked back to alertness in a panic, his misfiring inner ear sounding the alarm that he was on the way down, down, down; lined up on a collision course with the tile floor. He tossed the can into the corner of the kitchen and settled on four expired Tylenol ground up like acid powder between his molars. He sucked down a few cups of water—water seemed to be the only thing of which they still had plenty—and proceeded with his day.

He moved through the hours following that morning in a numb fog, grunting out answers to questions reflexively and not quite caring if those answers were of any use or if they were causing more harm than good. He had the impression that a lot of the questions shouted in his direction were needless, as though the people calling out to him knew the answers for themselves already and sought only to confirm their decision from some authority figure. When Elton realized that he was beginning to harbor a very real and poisonous hatred for the people continuously approaching him on all sides, he finally retired to his home, locked the door, and crawled into bed.

There had been a sense of slow rotation the moment his head contacted the pillow, and he marveled briefly at how similar his condition was to being profoundly drunk. He wondered as the bed turned slowly beneath him, like floating down a stream, if the sensation was due more to a lack of sleep or a lack of nourishment… or was it perhaps tied to both conditions? A few moments after that, he realized he was drifting through a half-realized dream; still partially aware of his surroundings while clearly hallucinating in the multicolored darkness behind closed eyelids. It was not an unpleasant experience, strictly speaking, though he did worry briefly that such a state would leave him feeling unrested when he was again able to move.

There came a repetitive flash of light that originated at the crown of his head and flowed down over his body, passing over his feet and out into space. It kept coming, insistent, echoing through his skeleton with a soundless impact like the whole world had been muted; that rapid flashing. He let it pass over and through him, experiencing the brightness of it, and smiled gently to himself. In the waking world, his lips twitched marginally, and he felt this too, felt it enough that he realized the expression of the muscles in his face pulled him gently back up to consciousness. He began to perceive the smells of the bedroom around him and moaned, working desperately to descend back down into the low buzz, the background radiation of his own mind.

It was too late. The rolling flash-wave had become an audible phenomenon; knocking at his front door—insistent and growing in volume. As he lay there hating the sound, Elton began to suspect he heard shouting outside his bedroom window.

He was fully awake now, in the grips of an acute ache permeating his total being, the corners of his eyes running rivulets of tears down the sides of his face out of pure exhaustion; the flesh of his body rebelling in the outrage of waking. He rolled to his side and sat up at the edge of the bed, now in the throes of a violent headache, and yawned as gently as he could, rightly fearing that even the flexing of his jaw muscles would come with a price payable only in pain.

It took him a full forty-five seconds to travel twenty-three feet from the bedroom to the front entry of his home; door pounding hatefully the entire time. Every step he took came with a calculation, the product of which weighed the pain endured through the acceptance of that knocking against that which he would incur in shouting for its cessation. He decided to remain silent; the pain currently experienced was a known quantity. He had no idea what shouting might do to him.

He narrowed his eyes down to paper-thin cuts before he opened the door, then widened them a second later when he saw the sun had gone down.

How the hell long was I out?

Danielle stood on the stoop looking up at him, face apologetic.

“I’m sorry, Babe. I would have told them to take a walk but… this one’s important.”

Elton nodded tiredly, glancing past her to see the rest of the Cabinet waiting outside. It appeared to be the full congress; even Ned stood out there, wedged in between Johnny and the Doc like a newly planted sapling. He pulled the door fully open and stood aside to admit them, croaking over a tongue coated with wool, “C’mon in…”

They entered single-file behind Danielle like a family of quail, dispersing through the small front room and taking up positions between the sofa and the spindle-back chairs surrounding an oval-shaped dining table. Elton fairly collapsed into an old, sprung easy chair—split leather up around the head held together with fraying scraps of duct tape—and rested his eyes in the palm of one hand. There he remained, panting lightly, offending himself with his own sour breath, and waited.

A few moments went by while the others, more accustomed to Clay’s moods and methods, awaited the signal that would start the meeting; some sort of pronouncement to get things rolling… or a line of convoluted cursing, twisting around and folding back on itself like a Celtic Knot until they could no longer understand the underlying message. When nothing came, Doc softly cleared his throat and asked, “How you holding together, Elton?”

“Be a lot better soon as I’m back in bed…” he mumbled.

Doc rubbed his palms together nervously, glanced at the others, and nodded. “Alright. You, uh… you look like you’re fighting off a migraine, there, so we’ll try to work this out quick. First, I want to let you know it’s Doc, Johnny, Ned, and Horace up here talking to you now.”

“Where’s Isabelle?”

Doc’s confusion was mirrored in the faces of the others. “Isabelle?”

“Yeah. You boys think we can get her to start coming to these? I think we’d better have her around.”

“We can ask but… why?” Johnny said.