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

“Hang on…” I said, causing them to look back. “If you see any firearms, leave those and let me handle them.”

Jessica nodded and moved to carry out her task, but Kyle griped. “I’m okay; I used to go shooting all the time with my dad.”

“That’s good but just humor me for now, okay? When I have things the way I want, most of us will be going armed but just bear with me for now. Just let the old fart have his safety brief, rah?” Rah . Old habits were easy to fall back into, it seemed.

“Yeah, okay. You got it, Gibs.” He turned and started gathering up an armload from the aft compartment. Good kid.

I went back around to retrieve the grenadier’s rifle (which I was beginning even then to think of as the Boomstick) and slung it over my shoulder. I then opened the driver’s side door to inspect the dead soldier’s fighting load carrier (what we typically called a “chest rig” or just a “rig.”) Among several pouches stuffed full of thirty-round pmags and a twelve slot grenade belt loaded with 40mm grenades was the man’s sidearm, a Sig Sauer P320 with a stack of 9mm magazines. Laying the grenade belt aside, I tapped the front and rear carriers of the rig, confirming that they were loaded with intact ballistic plates. Finally, I confirmed that the standard complement of utility gear was present, including a blowout kit, personal flex cuff restraints, some grenades (smoke as well as flashbang) and so on. I threw the grenade belt across my shoulder and lifted the whole chest rig out of the seat, remembering how goddamned heavy the things were (I hadn’t needed to deal with one in years).

I traveled back to the bus encumbered with all of this gear, not really thinking about how I must have looked until I stepped up into the driving cab and heard various whistles and comments from the passenger area. I looked up to see several shocked faces staring at me.

An African American woman towards the front (I learned later her name is Monica) said, “How many soldiers were in that truck, anyway?”

“There was only the one,” I answered. “You think this is bad? I haven’t even grabbed his assault ruck yet. You’d be amazed how much junk a grunt has to hump around.” I walked past her down to the rear and unloaded. Turning back to the others, I said, “Hands off the firearms unless I’ve instructed you personally in their use, is that understood?”

A few people voiced their agreement, but mostly I just saw a bunch of nodding heads. I wasn’t worried about most of them; in my experience the average civilian tended to fear modern firearms, avoiding them wherever possible. For the ones that did concern me, I had just issued a directive—there wasn’t much more that I could do without carrying all weapons on me at all times. Unlikely, that. I was just going to have to trust these people to police themselves.

I ran into Kyle entering the bus just as I was stepping off the platform. He was carrying a couple of flat-earth colored fuel cans that looked heavy. “Oh, fantastic, man!” I said. “You just stick those bad boys in the rear with the gear and crack some windows. They’re supposed to be airtight, but you never can tell.”

When I stepped outside, I saw Oscar with a now empty can. “Was there more gas in the humvee?” I asked.

“I think so. I’m gonna try to get more.”

“Good,” I nodded. “Keep taking as much as it has to offer. If and when the bus tank overflows, we’ll top the can off as much as possible from whatever’s left in the humvee and consider the goat completely fucked.”

“Donkey dicks and goat fucking. You got some serious farm issues, eh?” Oscar laughed.

“Don’t knock it ’till you try it, homes ,” I said, pronouncing the word “homes” with perhaps the single worst imitation of a Hispanic accent to have ever been perpetrated in the state of Colorado. Oscar continued to giggle as he carried on about his business. I returned to the rear compartment of the humvee where I found Jessica hauling on the aforementioned assault rucksack (I assumed it was the property of the deceased Adams).

“Have you got that or can I help?” I asked.

“I got it,” she said in a strained voice. The tattooed muscles in her arms quivered under the strain. “I think the stupid thing is just hung up on something.”

I shifted around her and hung my head over the side of the compartment and saw where one of the molle loops of the ruck had hung up on a bolt head on the internal frame. “I see what it is,” I said. “Stop yanking a minute, and I’ll fix it.”

I saw the ruck go slack and reached my hand in to free the loop. “Okay, try now.”

The assault ruck (really just GI Joe’s version of a backpack) came out easily, and Jessica sighed. “Thank fuck, that thing didn’t want to let go.”

I raised my eyebrows at this but said nothing. She caught my look and said, “Oh, what? You guys can talk about donkeys fucking goats but I drop one F-bomb, and you get your panties in a bunch?”

This surprised a sharp laugh out of me (I hadn’t realized she overheard us). “Jessica,” I said, “you and I are gonna get along just fine.”

We burned off the rest of our daylight in the process of pillaging the humvee and, given that the distance from Colorado Springs to Denver was about seventy miles as the crow flies, we decided to end the day on the northern outskirts of the city just off the side of the 25. We finished off the meager provisions that had been added to our stores by Wang’s group, which were nowhere near enough to satisfy everyone; we dipped into the canned goods that my group had been hauling along and further supplemented the meal by dividing the humvee mres in half and handing them out to two people at a time. When everyone was finished eating, I went to the rear of the bus to go over what food and water we had left. With a crew of fifteen people, we had just enough food for everyone to get about one more twelve-hundred calorie meal, which we could stretch out over two days by cutting everyone down to one-meal-per-day half rations.

I shook my head in disbelief. These people were going to be harder to feed than a house full of teenage boys. We would have to get settled somewhere very soon, dig in, and start socking away some serious provisions or we were all going to end up being a bunch of Starvin’ Marvins. I heard the alternating step-thump of George Oliver’s feet and cane as he moved down the aisles toward me. I zipped up the large duffel bag that carried all of our food, stood, and turned to face him.

“It must be bad,” he said, “if you’re actively trying to hide it before I get here.”

Damn it.

I leaned close into him, glancing over his shoulder to see if we were being watched by others. It looked like we weren’t, so I lowered my voice and said, “We’re not in deep shit yet, but we will be tomorrow. We need to get some more of everything and look at setting up some sort of camp somewhere.”

“Well why not here,” he whispered back. “There appears to be plenty around.”

“Naw, the original plan was Denver. It was a good plan. There’s some stuff around here, sure, but a lot of it is picked over, and the surrounding area is primarily homes. Whatever we do find here is going to be small little caches; it’ll take all day gathering just to keep everyone from starving.”

I could see his leg was bothering him, so I motioned for him to sit down and joined him in the opposite seat across the aisle. Once he was settled, I continued, “If we stay here, we’re going to get into a daily pattern of just barely outrunning starvation, and it’ll happen sooner rather than later. Not only that, but whatever we do find will have a short shelf life. We need to get another jackpot like we had today, only with food this time. We know there is… or was… a tent city up by Denver. That means military supply pallets. There will be mres. Sure, they taste like cafeteria food, but that’s cafeteria food that’ll last for seven years.”