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

“That’s fine, but let me go in first anyway,” I said and shouldered past before he could say anything.

I poked my head around the Coke machine to see a group of eight people huddled together at the front of the store, clearly waiting for me. Squeezing the grip of my rifle and really not wanting to kill anyone, I took a breath before stepping in.

The interior of the store looked as though a bomb had been detonated right in the middle of it. The light level was very low; there was some illumination creeping in through the tops of the front windows in the gap between the ceiling and the shit-pile the inhabitants had stacked up—there were also some lanterns set up throughout the place. All of the aisles were in disarray, having been pulled out of alignment and repositioned along the outside walls of the store. Many of them were stacked up against the front windows, as I had mentioned before, but there were so many in the store that a lot of them were just shoved to the side. There appeared to be some kind of common area in the center of the floor space beyond the checkout stands—I could see some boxes and a few office chairs (probably hauled over from the manager’s office). There appeared to be a dwindling supply of food and water stacked up in this area. Along the outer perimeter of the floor were places to sleep (a few mattresses, some blankets, and even a couple of yoga mats).

I looked back at the people in front of me. There were males and females, but they were so damned filthy it was hard to guess their ages. I thought I saw the angular shape of a teenage body on two of them. There were no children.

“How long have you people been in here?” I asked. I screwed up my face and tried to breathe shallowly. The whole place smelled like a rhino had taken a shit in a moldy old sock.

“Weeks,” said the Asian kid.

“Jesus,” I responded. “Name’s Gibson. Call me Gibs.”

“Wang,” he offered back. “Where are you folks coming from?”

Before I could answer, one of the others pushed forward. Again, I couldn’t tell much about him regarding his appearance, outside of the fact that he was tall and skinny. He said: “Yes, it’s all very nice to meet you but can you help us? We need food and water. We’re starving.”

I looked past him back to the pile of supplies. From what I could see, they weren’t starving yet, but they appeared to be on their way. Water looked like more of a problem than food, certainly.

“Hang on a second,” I said and turned back to Davidson. I whispered, “Head back to the cars and grab a couple jugs of water. Have Barbara come back with you and tell her to grab a couple of packs of wet wipes. We gotta sanitize these people before they get ass-to-mouth disease.”

He nodded and bounded back through the store entrance. I’d half expected him to say “Yut!” before he went.

I turned back to the others and tried to think of something to say next. It was hard—that whole place was foul and oppressive. “Look, can we step outside?” I asked. “The air in here is kind of close.”

A few of them looked nervously at each other, and I saw one or two hands reach out to grab other peoples’ arms. Finally, Wang said, “I’ll go out with you. We don’t all need to come.” The tall, skinny guy got indignant and said, “I’ll be coming along too.” Right away, I had a feeling about that guy. You know how some people just telegraph “asshole” wherever they go? This guy had it coming off him in waves. Even through all the dirt and grime I could see it in his posture, hear it in his voice… fuck, I could see it in his eyes. Second Lieutenant material all the way.

I thanked Wang, ignored the asshat, and backed out of the store. Once outside, I took a deep, cleansing breath and let it out slowly, trying to get all the funk out of my lungs. When I no longer felt like I had the creepy crawlies all over me, I slung my rifle down on my shoulder and said, “Okay, Wang, read me in.” I saw the skinny asshole bristle at being ignored, which I would have enjoyed if I wasn’t as mature as I am.

Okay, fuck it, I enjoyed it.

Wang crossed his arms over his chest and said, “We’ve been here a few weeks. There isn’t much to tell besides that. We got into the store and made a little home. There was enough food at first, but it didn’t take long for it to run low. We’ve been collecting more from around the area, but that’s all getting scarce now too.”

“Yes, this is all very nice,” the skinny guy broke in. He held out his hand to shake and said, “My name is Edgar. Were you going to be able to help us? Your friend Tom indicated that you could.”

I didn’t take Edgar’s hand. “I need to understand the situation here so that I can determine the best way to help.”

“Don’t mind him,” Wang said. “He just gets pissy when people don’t bow to his obvious authority.”

This statement was delivered so effortlessly and without inflection that it surprised a snort out of me. I had no idea what the history between these two was at that point but I was glad to see that I wasn’t being unreasonable in my assessment of Edgar—he clearly bugged some other folks as well.

Edgar’s face went red as his mouth clicked shut. He breathed out the word “bastard,” turned, and walked back towards the store entrance. I swear to Christ, he almost said, “I never!”

“Thought he’d never leave,” Wang said as Edgar disappeared behind the Coke machine.

I smiled and said, “You seem to have a way with people. ‘Wang,’ right?”

His eyebrows rose as he smiled back at me. “Oh, are you setting up a dick joke? I promise to act as though I’m hearing it for the first time if you are.”

This got a genuine laugh out of me. “I wasn’t, but I can make up a few new ones on the spot if you’re feeling frisky.”

He walked over to lean against a concrete pylon. “Oh, let’s not do that right now. You want to dole them out slowly over time. I don’t want you to shoot your wad all at once.”

“Ha!” I laughed. I was going to get along with this guy just fine. I went over to stand by him. “Okay, fella. No one’s here to interrupt now. Let’s have it.”

“It’s like I said,” Wang shrugged. “Our short term plan is close to finished now. We’ve picked the immediate area over pretty well.”

“What about picking up and moving on to a new area?” I asked.

“I’ve been trying to talk them into that. I have maybe half of them convinced but that asshole Edgar opens his mouth and screws it up whenever I start making some real progress.”

I began to understand the source of the friction between the two of them. “Why so resistant to moving?”

“A group of bikers came through here not too long ago. They made a lot of noise, broke things up.”

“A… group of bikers? Like, a no-shit apocalypse biker gang?” I had been wondering how long it would take for the Mad Max wannabes to band together and start tooling along the countryside like their own little douchebag posse.

“Don’t think of it like that,” said Wang. “They weren’t on Harleys or anything. They were just riding a bunch of bikes. A lot of them were on dirt bikes, some had BMW’s. I even saw a couple on scooters. We could tell they were no good, though. They were making all kinds of noise, shooting out windows. A bunch of jerks.”

“Yeah, what happened when they saw you?”

“They didn’t,” said Wang, shaking his head. “We ducked out the back of the store like a bunch of cowards and hid out behind some of the other buildings. They came through the store, helped themselves to our supplies, and left.”

“You wanted to fight them?” I asked.

“Maybe. I don’t know. I didn’t want to just let them take our food and water. Maybe they would have killed us, or maybe they weren’t really bad people—just a bunch of loud dickheads. I just didn’t see the point of hiding to survive if we were going to end up starving anyway later on. You can guess who it was who talked everyone into hiding.”