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

I nodded. I had seen.

“I remember being surprised at that,” Otis said as he looked off toward the freeway. “You think back to all the movies and TV shows where all the zombies broke loose: what did you always see the military doing? They was always becoming some evil, autonomous junta, weren’t they? Seemed like every director or screenwriter involved in those damned things had to have that one gratuitous scene with soldiers shooting down a whole crowd of civilians—brutalizing them and whatnot. I didn’t realize how much we’d all been conditioned to expect the worst out of the military until we saw everything fall apart for real. After a while, we all figured it out.”

Otis shook his head and looked back at us. I could see tears running down his cheeks unchecked. He shook his head slowly.

“They was just American boys and girls like the rest of us. They took an oath at some point to protect the rest of the civilians; they families and loved ones. When the end came and they found they couldn’t, they did their best to give us comfort, and then they finally died right alongside of us. Could have left to go looking for they own families—some of them may have, I guess. I heard of a few A.W.O.L. reports. But all the ones I knew by name were all there with us, and I passed by many of them lying in cots. I felt wretched and ashamed for leaving them there like that, but those of them that could still speak were all saying the same thing to me as I pulled Ben past.”

Otis stopped talking and sighed. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve absently.

“What did they say to you?” Billy asked quietly.

“They said ‘Run.’”

We slept in our vehicles that night instead of the tents, due largely to our exposure and proximity to the freeway as well as our proximity to the city of Spanish Fork itself. Mainly we felt safer being encased within the hard cabs and liked the idea of being able to fire up the engines and evacuate without leaving any supplies behind. The flipside to our reasoning (I believe) was that we were also too tipsy to effectively set up the tents in the dark.

I took the first watch of the evening and, after roughly two hours, I tapped on Otis’s window to let him know he was up. My last thought before passing out utterly was to wonder how long it would take to go to sleep in a reclined car seat; I was dead to the world from that point until morning.

I was awakened by the light of the sun shining in through the Jeep’s windows and the heat that it was beginning to generate. Elizabeth was still asleep in the passenger seat, so I quietly pulled on my shoes, slipped out of the Jeep, and saw to my usual morning routine.

The truck was gone; something I had noted when I first stepped out of the Jeep, but Jake was out in a chair between the Jeep and the minivan nursing a smoldering fire. The easy-up was packaged away and strapped to the minivan’s roof. I came over and pulled another chair off a stack that was leaning against the Jeep’s front bumper, opened it up, and sat down beside Jake.

“No rifle this morning, huh?” he asked.

“No. It’s a pain to always be carrying around. It’s hard to pee with it strapped to the front of me.”

“Well… yeah. I imagine it would be.” He sounded embarrassed.

“So Billy and Otis are already out there?”

“Yes. Billy took the last watch of the morning, so when he was done, he roused Otis and me. Just before sun-up, that was. They went off in the truck a couple of hours ago. Shouldn’t be too long, I think. Breakfast?”

“God, please. I’m starving like there’s no tomorrow.”

“How do some eggs sound?” he asked.

“They sound fantastic. Any of that sausage left?”

“Sure, sure,” he said, walking over to the stack of chairs. Next to these were the ever-present pantry and kitchen bins. He popped the lids off both, pulled a camping skillet out of one, and a can of freeze dried sausage and a bag of powdered eggs from the other. He read the back of the bag for a moment, grunted, and then pulled a bowl and spoon out of the pantry bin. He brought these items over to the little cook fire and went back to the bins. Retrieving a bottle of water, he closed both bins and returned to the fire.

“Never made these before,” he warned me. “Bear with me…”

He opened the bag, dumped out about a cup of the yellowish-white powder into the bowl and then poured in some water until it was all fully immersed. He began stirring the whole mixture with the spoon. After all of the powder was mixed in well enough, he began to work the spoon fast, clanging the sides of the bowl.

“How long are you supposed to stir it?” I asked. The whole thing seemed dubious to me; it became runnier and runnier as he stirred it. I was expecting the mixture to thicken up and look like eggs at some point, but it just stayed watery.

“The instructions just said to beat the eggs. It suggested using a mixer or blender, but since we’re short of both, I figure I need to just smack it around for five minutes or so.”

I settled in to watch that transpire. He was already breathing heavy.

As expected, he stopped halfway through to let go of the spoon and shake out his arm. “Here, let me take that a bit,” I offered. He passed the bowl to me with a “Thanks” and went to go get a little camping grill to set across the rocks encircling the fire. I worked the spoon for another few minutes before giving up and saying, “These aren’t getting any thicker… or any more mixed for that matter.”

“I think you’re right,” he said looking into the bowl. “Oh well; in for a penny, in for a pound, right?”

He deposited a dab of oil into the skillet, swirled it around inside, and placed it over the fire. I offered him the bowl, which he took and upended into the skillet, stirring the result with the spoon as he passed the empty bowl back to me.

Two things happened at this point: the mixture began to take on an orange tint, and the texture looked nothing like improving.

“I think it’s getting worse,” I muttered.

“It is doing that…” he said.

I began laughing as he struggled with the mixture. “Are we really going to eat this?”

“Oh, I think we must try. Look how far we’ve come.”

This comment surprised more snickers out of me, and I struggled to respond. “But what if… whoo! What if we end up shitting ourselves to d-death?”

I was done in by this point, laughing like a mad idiot. Jake stoically continued to stir the concoction with his spoon, smiling his serene smile. Occasionally, he would lift up a spoonful to smell and give me a thumbs-up, which sent me off laughing again. Over time, however, the eggs went from looking all wrong to looking maybe okay. The smell coming from them was more than okay.

“Hey,” he said. “Maybe this is coming out right, huh?” The eggs were starting to fall over each other appropriately as he stirred.

“Well, don’t just stand there, man, throw in some of that sausage!” I urged. My stomach was beginning to growl painfully.

He smiled and did so. He cooked the whole thing for a little while longer before he pulled it smoking from the fire and dumped it all onto a plastic plate. He divided the pile, spooned one half onto another plate, and passed it to me along with a fork.

We sat there facing each other in two chairs looking down at our plates. I finally said, “Well, are you going to try it?”

“I’m a little afraid to. Shitting myself to death sounds like a horrible way to go.”

“Don’t start that up again,” I said while suppressing a fresh round of the giggles. I lifted the plate up and breathed deep, taking in the aromatic heaven. The smell was too good to ignore, so I shoveled in a mouthful.