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

“goddamnit, Gomer,” I called out, “you keep up this kind of performance, and I’m gonna have to start paying you! Well done!” To my left, Jessica began to clap as she laughed.

Kyle looked back at us over his shoulder and smiled; a genuine, unfiltered, unreserved smile that made him look five years younger, made him look far too young to be slinging a rifle around. He threw a lazy, two-fingered salute my way and then opened up into a light jog towards the little encampment.

As the distance between us increased, I detected movement behind the sandbags.

I immediately called out to Kyle to wait, to stop running away. At the same time, I took a knee and brought my rifle up to look at the site through my optic. Everything jumped into high detail under the 4x32 magnification, but I saw only sandbags. Through my other eye (you never close one eye when looking through an optic) I could see Kyle standing poised with all of his weight on one foot in mid-stride, straining his eyes to see into the enclosure. He was about fifty feet ahead of me. I can’t say where Jessica was positioned exactly; she was on my left and behind me, outside of my field of view.

He looked back and said, “What is it?”

I shook my head but did not get up. I continued to scan over the bags looking for anything. Finally, I called out, “Whoever’s back there, come out where I can see you.”

Kyle’s eyes widened when I said this. He spun around to face the outpost and pulled his own rifle up to cover the area.

Through my optic, I saw one of the sandbags under the shadow of the sunshade shift, and I realized at the last second that I was actually looking at someone’s head. I saw the puff-flash of a firearm discharge; heard the report of the weapon. Out of my left eye, I saw Kyle’s head snap back. His knees buckled out from under him, and he fell backward—his body was rigid, so the first thing to hit the ground was the back of his skull followed by the collapse of his body. His legs remained folded back under him.

Iheard Jessica yell out as I opened fire, though I can’t recall if she said anything specifically or just made inarticulate noise. She began to run towards Kyle. I increased my rate of fire, concentrating along the top line of the sandbags to suppress whoever was back there and called out to her to stop, which she ignored.

On the north side of the street, additional shots rang out from the buildings, and I realized in horror that we were outflanked, outnumbered, and out of cover. I heard a scream and saw Jessica topple to the ground only fifteen feet away from Kyle’s body.

I may have been shouting words at this point, but I can’t remember anymore. It could have been things that made sense, or it may have just been growling and cursing; I certainly wasn’t shouting any commands out to my team—they were incapable of responding. Sacrificing accuracy for speed and volume, I began to alternate fire between the building’s storefront and the sandbag enclosure—three shots to one then three shots to the other, back and forth. I did this while holding my rifle with only one hand; with my other hand, I reached down to my rig and pawed at what I desperately hoped was a smoke grenade (assuming my memory was correct). My accuracy was for shit, hitting all over the storefront, bouncing off the street, the sidewalk, passing over the sandbags, and hitting the trucks behind. I wasn’t trying to hit anything in particular—I just wanted to throw a bunch of fire downrange.

I pulled the grenade out and could tell by feel that I had gotten it right. I stopped firing for a brief second and, without taking my right hand off the grip of my rifle, I threaded the middle finger of my right hand through the ring on the grenade to pull the pin (Hollywood has done an outstanding job of perpetuating the belief that grenade pins are actuated with teeth; this is an excellent way to pull your teeth right out of your head). Letting the spoon pop, I underhanded the grenade down the street, just managing to split the distance between the sandbags and the building despite the fact that I had lobbed it with my off-hand. It began to produce red smoke almost instantly, but it would be a few seconds before it built up enough to effectively obscure the area.

I resumed alternating fire between the two positions while raising to my feet and moving to Jessica’s location. She was still on the ground and groaning though I couldn’t tell where she was hit. I shot my mag empty before I got to her and my hands performed the old routine on their own without me having to think about it; drop magazine, pull new magazine, slam it home, close the bolt, continue firing. I do recall that they were returning fire at this point, but it was not effective. I couldn’t see anything inside the building by now due to the smoke, but I could still make out the odd rifle held over the top of the sandbag wall to be fired blindly up the street.

I reached Jessica and saw she had sustained a gunshot to the thigh, her hands clamped around it with blood everywhere. She had the look of a panicked animal but said nothing to me when I arrived.

I maintained my downrange fire as I bent to grab her by the collar of her shirt, but I could feel it begin to rip as soon as I started to pull. Pressed for time (a thirty round magazine will go dry a lot faster than you realize in these situations), I wound my left hand up in as much of her hair as I could dig my fingers into, barked out a “Sorry!” and dragged her bodily to the north side of the street towards the intersection. As we neared the building, I was saved from having to worry about the storefront since I had effectively rotated out of their range of fire; the sandbags were soon obscured from view as I pulled Jessica around the corner onto the cross street.

Now in temporary safety, I released her hair and said, “Can you walk on it?”

She reached a shaking hand out to me and said, “Help me!”

I hauled her up onto her feet, pulled her arm over my shoulders, and wrapped my left arm around her waist. She hopped alongside me for a few yards, nearly falling as I dragged her along. Shouts came from behind me; they had likely figured out that I was no longer on the other side of that smoke waiting to shoot them when they came out. “Fuck this,” I growled. I stood her up straight just long enough to get my arm between her legs, jam a shoulder into her pelvis, and hoist her up into a fireman carry. Thus situated, I hoofed it double-time back to Walnut Street, turned northeast, and began to move as fast as I could up the street.

I could feel the hot wetness of her blood running down my back as we went and knew that I didn’t have much time to work. I heard the voices of hollering men in pursuit behind me and began to scan buildings for possible entry points, needing to get under cover as quick as I could so we could make some kind of a stand. I clocked movement ahead on my left and, as I strained to bring my rifle up under Jessica’s dead weight, I saw an arm and long, flowing, jet black hair peek out from behind a tinted glass door. Under the hair were very wide, very intense eyes. The arm started to wave and beckon at me furiously. Without stopping to wonder who it might be, I ran towards the door as quickly as I could manage.

I dove through the door and emerged into a musty environment with little to no light; the only illumination was the filtered sunlight coming in from the tinted glass door. We appeared to be in a reception area with several chairs wrapped around the outside perimeter and a high desk jutting out from the wall to take up most of the central floor space. The woman who waved us in hissed from behind me, her voice charged with anger.