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

I grimaced and said, “What a douche.” Realizing what I had said out loud, I quickly added, “Uh, excuse me.”

“It’s no problem at all; he was, in fact, a massive douche.”

I’d seen videos with people like this guy on the internet before. The pinnacle of humor for them was apparently to take a waif of a girl weighing in at about ninety pounds soaking wet, hand her a goddamned hand cannon loaded for bear, and then sit back and laugh their asses off when she’d inevitably shit herself in response to the concussive forces unleashed by the monster. More often than not, the subject of all the laughter ended up hurting herself in some way; either by falling down or smacking herself in the head with the barrel as it rotated violently back in her hand. As someone who strongly believes that a good citizen is a well-armed citizen, videos like that used to make me all stabby. You simply could not devise a better means to make the average person terrified of firearms nor find a way to better condition them to believe that guns are evil.

“Well, I won’t pry,” I continued, “but if that’s an indicator of the man, I guess I can see why his title is ‘ex’-husband.”

“Oh, that’s a small, small part of it. But in general, yes. He never laid a hand on me or anything like that. He was just a controlling prick. I spent more time than I care to admit being worn down by him, being told ‘I couldn’t,’ believing I wasn’t worth anything. You see these?” She held her arms out in front of her, indicating the various tattoos that wrapped all around them. They weren’t quite sleeves, but if she managed to cram any more in there, they would qualify.

“I got these as a big F-you to my ex. I’d wanted a tattoo ever since I was in high school. It was nothing elaborate; just my father’s name on the back of my neck… he died when I was fourteen. Whenever I dreamt about him, the back of my neck was where I could still feel his touch on waking. He always had his hand there. When I was a little girl, it was how he guided me through a crowded area. During dinner at the end of the day, he’d reach out to pull me over for a kiss on the cheek; he’d do it by gently pulling me over by the base of my neck. If I close my eyes right now, I can still feel it. I wanted his name inked right where I could feel his touch.”

“Damn,” was all I could think to say. It was a heavy thought.

“Anyway,” she continued without acknowledging my interruption, “my ex forbade it. He said that no wife of his was going around with some bullshit trailer trash badge of honor stamped across her neck.”

After hearing the deeply personal reason behind her desire to get the tattoo, this last statement made my blood boil. The thought that anyone should be roped into wasting time with such as him was galling. Keeping in mind, of course, that there are two sides to every story; I’m sure she had her moments when any sane man would favor jumping out of a window to dealing with the worst of her tirades… most women do in my experience. But still: that story about her dad was a heartbreaker, even for a salty old Marine. Reducing it down to “trailer trash shit” was indefensible in my view.

“It sounds to me, if you’ll excuse me saying so, that you made the right choice for yourself. So all that ink was before or after you broke it off?”

“In the process of,” she answered. “I actually wish I had left it until all the proceedings were done. It might have helped in the custody fight.”

“Oh, no, there were kids tied up in it?”

“One: my daughter, Pinch.”

“Pinch?” I asked. I was unable to keep amusement from my voice.

“Yeah,” she smiled. “My baby girl. Her name is Emily, after the asshole’s mother. I could never bring myself to call her that. I called her Pinch instead.”

“Any particular reason?”

Jessica looked me over up and down, appraising. “You have any kids?”

“No, ma’am, thank God. I like kids just fine, you understand. I’m just lucky I never had any with the women I married.”

“Plural, huh?” she said with an impressed air.

“Uh, yes. It takes a special woman to be married to a Marine and remain faithful, especially when you spend half your marriage deployed. Unfortunately, young Marines don’t have a lot of luck at picking special women.”

“Ah, none of it was your fault, of course.”

“Oh, hell no! There were all kinds of fu- uh, things I could have done better. It’s just that they weren’t giving me a whole lot to work with either.”

“Well, in either case, you’re probably right to be thankful,” she said. “An ugly divorce is a hard thing for a kid to go through. Anyway, I called her Pinch because that’s all I wanted to do to her when she was born. Fat little arms, fat little legs, her fat little cheeks… I don’t know what it is, but something about all that screams pinch me to a mom.” She started to giggle, recalling some private memory.

I thought back to the holidays of my formative years and the outright beating my cheeks took at the hands of my sadistic Aunt Angie, deciding that Jessica’s statement must be a true one.

A thought occurred to me during this lull in the conversation. From what all of us survivors had seen, immunity to the plague was a guaranteed deal through maternal heredity. “Jessica, where is Pinch now?”

She sighed. “Her father had her for a few months out of the year; it’s why I made the comment about waiting until after the custody battle to get my tattoos—things may have gone better for me. She was with him when the plague hit.”

“Oh, no,” I said. Knowing what we all knew about the statistics behind the plague, there wasn’t a lot of hope that the father was still alive. If her kid (Pinch not Emily, I reminded myself) was still alive, the chances were good that her father wasn’t around to look out for her anymore. “How old is she?”

“Thirteen,” she said.

“Goddamn. Well, where was she last?”

“He lived in North Platte, Nebraska. There was a fema camp up by Sioux City, so I imagine they must have ended up there.”

“Well, why the hell didn’t you say something sooner?” I asked, feeling agitated. “We could have been making plans to go that way!”

“You’ve been going my way so far,” she answered. “I wasn’t going to ask anyone to make the trip with me; Sioux City is a really good distance from here. I was going to help you get some supplies here in Denver, claim my share, and go my own way up the 76. It’s why I wanted to come out with you guys. It gives me a better claim on taking some of the food and water with me.”

“Damn, man,” I said. “Just… damn.” I looked out ahead to see Kyle still maintaining a good distance out in front. There wasn’t a great deal of anything in the immediate area that looked like it was worth stopping for so I put my attention back on Jessica. “Well, crap,” I said. “And here I was under the impression that you just came out for the company.” I glanced at her sidelong.

“Oh,” she laughed, “that was just a bonus. You can always break off from this group and come with me, you know.”

“Well, yeah, what about your group?” I asked, coming back to reality for a moment. “I get why you’re going for your kid but can you really just bounce on them like that? Why wouldn’t you ask them to come? It’s not like they’re going to be dead set in going anywhere else.”

“They’re not my group,” said Jessica without any malice. “I had only been with them a couple of days in Colorado Springs by the time you showed up. I was there to rest and hopefully resupply before heading out; I think they were getting ready to vote me off the island, honestly.”

“Oh, why is that?”