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

We drove a steady and consistent pace for the next three and a half hours before Billy’s truck was pulling off toward an exit. Rather than taking the exit outright, he pulled over and slowed to a crawl in the middle of the highway. He stuck his arm out of the window and waved us forward. Jake complied, and I rolled down my window so we could talk to him.

“What’s up?” Jake asked.

“I want to make a stop at this place here,” he said, hooking his thumb toward a large, square looking building a few hundred feet to the East of us. It stood by itself, alone in a vast field—about as middle of nowhere as you’d please. It had large, red letters on the front of it that read “ barnes. ”

“What is it?” I asked. I felt my stomach tighten at the prospect of another building sweep. I had convinced myself we wouldn’t be doing this again until after we made it to Wyoming. My discussion with Jake had suggested that we may be at it again before we got there. I was utterly unprepared for the prospect of doing it only a few hours after the last excursion.

“They sold ammo and reloading supplies. I had this marked as a stop on my route since day one, just like the Vegas stop.”

I put my eyes forward and cursed under my breath. Ammunition of any kind was simply too important to pass up. I think Jake must have known what was going through my head because he said, “What do you think about sitting this one out? You got the last building. I’ll take this one. Gets boring standing outside, yes?”

I looked at him, trying to decide if I should be annoyed. The look in his eyes was perfectly serious and without guile; I decided to be touched instead. “You did say that I would have to get used to this,” I reminded him.

“Well, I did, but this is a bit much,” he told me. He nodded to Billy and waved him on, signaling that we would follow. “I figure we can spell each other. Billy has to go every time if he’s going to insist on stopping every few miles…” he trailed off as we took the 300 North Street exit.

I considered his offer but ultimately decided to reject it. “No,” I said, “you get the next one. Like you said, this probably gets easier the more I do it. I’d prefer ‘easy’ to happen sooner rather than later.”

“Well, I can respect that,” he said. “You’re on. I’ll take the next one.”

“Do you mind if Lizzy stays with you?” I asked. “It didn’t seem like a big deal last time until we got into the building. Once we were in there, it became clear how dangerous it actually was.”

Jake scratched his chin and was silent a moment. “You sure you’re comfortable with that? I failed miserably the last time we tried-“

“No. No, you didn’t,” I interrupted. “You went and got her back. At great risk to your own life, you got her back. You fought for her as hard as her own father would have.” I stopped talking as his whole demeanor changed. Any bit of latent expression sloughed from his face completely, leaving a half-lidded, dead stare in its place. It was the kind of look actors assumed in movies when they had to pretend to be hypnotized. This was the first time I had witnessed this change in him, but it would not be the last; I would later learn that this is the exact same expression he wears when he decides to kill someone. I had forgotten to be afraid of him as I became used to his manner and company, even enjoyed having him around. This look reminded me why I had feared him when we first met.

I looked away from him and suppressed a shudder. “Anyway, I know she’s as safe with you as she’d be with me,” I said and let the matter drop.

“Yeah…” I heard him say from about a hundred miles away.

Billy attempted to lead us around the back of the building as we had done earlier that morning, but there was actually no “back” to drive around to. There was a firing range immediately behind the building, which they must have used to test the ammunition that was made on site. He drove us around to the south side of the building as a compromise, and we backed in there.

We all got out of the vehicles and Billy promptly came over to throw a monkey wrench into our planning.

“Listen,” he said, “I don’t like how visible we are from the road. All three of you hang out here by the vehicles, and I’ll go through this place myself. You have good visibility; if you see anything coming lay on the horn and I’ll come out.”

“Are you sure?” Jake asked. “One of us can lay on the horn just as well as three.”

“I am. I want you guys to be able to support each other if a group comes along. I’ll be quick, I promise.”

We checked our rifles and leaned them against the truck. He opened a rear door on the Jeep for Lizzy to hop into and then leaned against the bed of the truck to eyeball the road. Billy tried the side door and found it unlocked this time. “Well, that’s not a hopeful sign,” he muttered. “Be right back.” He disappeared into the door, shotgun and flashlight in tow.

We weren’t waiting out there very long, maybe only five or ten minutes. Jake and Lizzy chatted about the music selection that had ended up in the truck. She had apparently been schooling Billy on some of the very best Lady Gaga had to offer all afternoon. Their conversation was interrupted by Billy bursting from the building.

Jake and I both swung back around toward him with our rifles leveled. We both lifted the muzzles high when we saw it was him. He had the wild-eyed look of a prospector too long in the hills away from humanity who had stumbled across a massive gold strike. He walked directly up to us and said in a very low voice, “Let’s start moving the food and water back over to the truck.” I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I saw his eye twitching. “We hit the god damned jackpot!”

We made Spanish Fork just after four in the afternoon. This was the next in a series of planned refueling stops that Billy had mapped out on our route to Jackson, Wyoming. Our vehicles had become an integral part of our survival so the intent was to not push things. We would stop for top-offs whenever our tanks were at half empty or less, assuming the area looked hopeful (meaning there were enough cars to tap with good visibility in the surrounding area). Spanish Fork was a town dense with housing along with the businesses to support that housing; there were vehicles aplenty for us to exploit.

We exited the freeway at Main Street and only had to proceed south for a block or two before we started passing vehicles stopped in the middle of the road. Rather than getting in too deep, we opted to stop there just in sight of the freeway and begin what I was already thinking of as our topping-off operation. I had engaged in this activity once before with Billy when we first picked up the Jeep, but I didn’t see the particulars at the time; my job at that point had been to stand as a look-out for Billy while he worked under the cars.

“Come on,” Billy said as he hefted the jack from the truck bed, “Jake can keep a look out for us this time. You can watch me and learn how to do this. It’s really easy.”

Hearing this, Jake positioned himself between the truck and the Jeep just between their front bumpers, his AK-47 held at the ready. He started scanning back and forth over the horizon like some kind of automated sentinel. Billy positioned the jack toward the rear wheel of our first target (a grey sedan), showing me how to find a strong jack point as he did. He lifted the end of the car up just high enough that he could wriggle under on his back. I lowered down onto the ground and lay on my side to see what he was doing.