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

“You have any idea how much fuel those things hold?” I asked. “I don’t, but I’ll bet it’s a lot. I’ll bet they get lousy mileage, too.”

Wang nodded and said, “Yeah, I don’t know either, but I’m sure you’re right. It still can’t hurt to go check it out, though, right? Maybe we get lucky, and it has a lot of gas to start with.”

“Eh, it’s probably diesel. What do you know about this area? Did a lot of folks drive diesel?”

“I’ve lived in Colorado for several years now,” said Wang. “Yes, you can find a lot of trucks that run on diesel. You could say that outdoor activities are big around here.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, probably,” I agreed. “Okay, let’s go check it out and see what we find.” I eyeballed Wang for a moment, trying to decide if I should hand him the Beretta or not. I ultimately decided against it. I was reasonably confident in my ability to cover the both of us with a single rifle; an M4 and a pistol between the thirteen people remaining here was already incredibly stupid, and I didn’t want to make it worse by taking that pistol to hand over to Wang. I turned to look for Davidson and Oscar—the two guys in our outfit who I had managed to brief on safety. I could at least trust them to handle a firearm without shooting their own dicks off. Probably.

They were both standing over by everyone else near the supply trunk (most of Wang’s group had walked over for chow while I was talking to him). I approached and pulled both Davidson and Oscar aside.

“Wang thinks he has a solution for our transportation,” I said. “It’s in walking distance from here, so I’m going to head out with him and take a look. I want you guys to maintain position here until we get back.”

I looked around at the buildings surrounding us on either side of the street. The place resembled your basic middle-America city street. A lot of the buildings were brick and mortar, went up two or three stories, and a lot of them had side alleys with fire escapes. The place actually looked like it was a nice little getaway town once upon a time.

I pointed to Oscar (more of that knife hand—it’s a hard habit to break) and said, “I want you to take the rifle and get some overwatch on one of these buildings. You’re limited to whatever has a fire escape but pick one of the taller ones, get to the roof, and keep your eyes open. Be close enough that you can call down to Davidson if you see anything. Be ready to lay down suppressing fire if shit gets stupid. Do not shoot anyone that belongs to us.”

Oscar nodded, slapped Davidson’s shoulder, and headed off with the rifle to find likely candidates. I grimaced to myself as he went, praying that nothing would happen. If a firefight actually did break out, I gave these guys even odds on shooting one of our own by mistake in all the confusion. They were untrained, unskilled civilians, which made them every bit as dangerous to themselves as they were to others.

To Davidson, I said, “You hang on to the M9. Keep everyone close and keep your eyes on these alleyways; they’ll be a blind spot for Oscar. If Oscar calls down to you, I want you to lock up the cars, take the keys, and get everyone displaced into a building somewhere.”

“What do I do after that?” he asked.

“Barricade and dig in. Get everyone under cover, including yourself. Shoot anyone that tries to come in without first identifying themselves.”

He nodded and (Jesus Christ) saluted me. I suppressed an eye-roll and returned it, being a lot lazier than he was on the snap—hoping he would take the hint. I sincerely hoped I wasn’t making a poor call.

I returned to Wang and advised him to grab some food that he could eat while walking as well as a bottle of water. We headed out after that. Once we made some distance away from the group, I took the opportunity to grill him.

“So what’s the deal with this Edgar guy?”

“Deal?”

I elaborated: “Well, what I mean is how much trouble am I going to have with him?” I wasn’t excited about every little decision turning into an argument.

“Oh, yes. He can take some patience. He’s actually pretty smart in a lot of ways if you get to know him; unfortunately, a lot of those ways aren’t very useful anymore. I guess he was a pretty successful accountant of some kind from before. Let’s turn right up here…”

“Here, let me go ahead of you,” I said. I edged up to the corner of the building and poked my head around. I spent several seconds in this position sweeping the area with my eyes, looking at nothing in particular and trying to detect any kind of motion. Halfway down the street, a knot of vehicles was stacked up almost on top of each other, completely choking off the way through. Several of them were little more than burned out hulks.

I looked back at Wang and said, “The street’s blocked off by a pileup—we can get through on foot, but we’ll never get the cars through. Is there another way?”

“Yeah,” Wang said. “We’ll just have to go another block up and circle back.”

“Okay, let’s do that. I want to find the route we’ll have to take with the cars to get there if this works out. I don’t want to hump everything over there.”

The majority of Colorado Springs was laid out in a grid, so he just led me up the street another block and found us a way through. Wang took the opportunity to finish his thought regarding Edgar as we walked.

“Anyway, he can be a pain, but he can be pretty useful. He tends to argue about everything, but I’ve chosen to use this behavior as a way to reinforce our planning. Basically, if we can get him to shut up, we know we’ve covered all the angles.”

I snorted while grimacing inwardly. Edgar sounded just like the type of guy who was going to tap-dance all over my last nerve. I decided to change the subject before I managed to piss myself off again just thinking about him.

“So what about yourself? It seems like a lot of those people tend to follow your lead.”

“Well, I guess they do. What, that’s a bad thing?”

“Oh, no,” I said. “Well… I guess it’s a bad thing if you’re a dumbass, but you don’t strike me as a dumbass—”

“We haven’t known each other that long. Give me a little time.”

“Anyway,” I said laughing, “you seem okay.”

“So what I can tell you is that from what I’ve seen, it doesn’t take much more than speaking to get people to listen to you. The key thing is that you just can’t say anything stupid. It’s okay to appear ignorant as long as you show that you’re aware of your ignorance, but nobody forgives stupid.”

I compared what he said to my own life experiences and found that they agreed with what he said. I was impressed; he was a pretty young kid compared to me (I’d have to guess he was twenty-two or twenty-three) but he already knew more about basic leadership than most of the junior officers I had encountered in my military career. They always seemed to come to us with a chip on their shoulder; they knew they were young and inexperienced and always seemed to think that they had to compensate for this by knowing everything . The problem with that approach is that you can’t actually know everything at that age. The ones that ended up being good officers (few and far fucking between, I might add) learned early on that ignorance wasn’t actually a cardinal sin and that, by and large, you survive by listening to your NCOs. It seemed obvious to an old fart like me, but the quickest way to win confidence from people was usually to be open and honest about your weak points. Then again, I was an old fart with years’ worth of leadership experience under my belt. Wang was a kid. I pointed this out to him and asked how he came about having such a seasoned understanding of human nature.