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

“Idiot! What have you started? Didn’t you know they were out there?”

She spoke in a flat, featureless American accent with no suggestion that she had ever spoken anything besides English in her life, but her appearance put me back on my heels. She was younger than me but no longer youthful; perhaps in her early thirties—young enough that you could still see the girl she had once been but old enough that you could see where the laugh lines and wrinkles were forming. Her features were unconventional in unexpected ways. Her face was wider than what TV had told us is desirable; her nose was just square enough that Cosmopolitan would have suggested makeup tips that she could employ to slim it back down to a petite line. None of that mattered. Her look worked for her.

Her eyes were really what stopped me. Seeing them now as they expressed aggravation in my direction, I could understand why they stood out to me as I was hobbling up the street. They were a grey so light that they nearly glowed, framed by dark black lashes in a field of olive brown skin. The corners pulled back like cat’s eyes.

I took this all on board in rapid course, my inner lizard brain noting those features that were attractively exotic while my analytical mind advised me to unfuck myself and get moving in a hurry.

“Who the hell are ‘they,’ lady?”

She shook her head at me, oil black hair spilling around her face. “Scavengers. Strangers. Really dangerous people.”

I heard shouts outside the building coming from far away. “Is there a back door?” I asked. “There’ll be a blood trail; they’ll find this—” I gestured at Jessica’s leg.

The woman crouched down next to my elbow to look up into Jessica’s face as it lolled off my shoulder. “Lay her down on the desk,” she said. “Hurry!”

I did as instructed, grunting to get her onto the high surface. I straightened up after laying her down, looked at her face, and felt my guts go soft. She had gone bone white and fluttered her eyelids like she was punch drunk.

From behind me and to my right, I heard the woman say, “Greg, give me your flannel.” I paid no attention to this; I had my knife out and was slitting the thigh of Jessica’s jeans open. I ran the slit all the way down to her ankle, pulled the pant leg away from her like a cast-off banana peel, and cut the whole mess off her leg at the hip with the knife, completely exposing the leg from crotch to shoe. There was an entry wound on the inside of her thigh towards the top; I lifted her leg at the knee to look under it but could find no exit. The skin surrounding the area was covered in an angry, purple bruise extending down to her knee. More blood came oozing from the wound in slow pulses that were very weak.

On the other side of the counter, a young male approached with some wadded, checkered fabric in his hand. He moved to apply it to Jessica’s leg, but I shoved his hand away, saying, “Hang on a minute.”

I ripped open my blow out kit and pawed through it for a pack of QuickClot gauze and another package of standard sterile gauze. I looked up at the kid in front of me and indicated his flannel shirt, saying, “Stuff that in her mouth,” which he did without hesitating.

I ripped open the QuickClot packaging, unrolled several inches, wadded it up, and packed it into the wound with my finger. Jessica barely responded to this, which distressed me; I started taking deep, shaking breaths to maintain my composure. I had no idea what I was going to do for her in the long term. Whatever she had been hit with, it had nicked or severed her femoral artery; that much was apparent from the way she was bleeding. I was praying that I could arrest the blood loss with the use of the hemostatic agent, but I couldn’t tell if I had crammed it deep enough to make a difference. She had also lost far too much blood, and I had no way to get any back into her. I didn’t even have a bag of plasma to give her.

I ripped open the standard gauze package and wrapped up the whole leg.

I looked up at the kid and was surprised to see another young male standing behind him. They were both teenaged boys with brown hair, rail thin, and looked so much alike that it would have been funny under different circumstances.

“What was your name again? Greg?”

The kid nodded his head, eyes frightened.

“Put your hand on that leg and push down hard,” I commanded. He jumped to do so as though he had been goosed.

I turned and grabbed one of the chairs lining the wall. Laying it on its side, I proceeded to curb stomp the living hell out of one of the legs. When it had bent far enough that kicking wouldn’t get me any further, I grabbed it and started wrenching it back and forth like I was trying to yank the horn off a rhino. It didn’t take me very long to snap the cheap metal tubing. I could hear the shouts of pursuing men and women outside in the street. They were taking their time and being careful; I suspected I may have hit one or more of them with my wild shooting. Even so, they were getting closer.

I twisted and ripped some paracord out of a side pouch on my rig, cut off a six-foot length, and jammed the remainder back into the pouch. I doubled the severed length, wrapped it around Jessica’s leg, and tied it off above the gunshot wound.

“Okay, move your hand, Greg,” I urged. He did, and I could see that all the bandaging was on its way to being soaked through, despite the clotting agent. “Fu-uck,” I growled under my breath.

I jammed the broken chair leg under the lash and started cranking it in circles like a windlass, clamping down savagely on her whole leg until it looked fit to pop off her body. “Hold!” I commanded Greg, who reached out and kept the improvised windlass positioned over her knee while I got another length of paracord going. I tied the bottom end of the metal tubing at her knee joint, securing the whole tourniquet in place. I jammed my fingers into her neck under the, bend of her jaw and held my breath. I failed to find a pulse but that didn’t necessarily mean anything; I was frantic and moving fast. It may have just been so faint that I couldn’t detect it under those conditions.

I looked up at the kids and said, “Alright, you two: get her on her feet, and each of you take an arm. You—” I gestured to the woman standing back in the corner, “name?”

“Alish,” she said.

“Good. Alish, there’s a trail of blood out there that’s going to lead those people right into this room. Find us a rear exit; get us going north towards 38 th.”

“And what makes you think we’re coming with you?” she said in a low voice. “We were fine until you brought all that along!” She threw a hand at the door as she said this.

I pinned her with my best no-shit stare. “Lady, you come with me, or you take your chances here. I appreciate you waving me in here, but I’m not in a ‘pretty please’ mood. Make a decision now .” I swiveled back on the teenaged boys, who had not moved. “I said pick her… the fuck… up.”

They did.

I looked back at Alish, who still appeared to be thinking about the best way to respond to me. “Move, goddamn you,” I growled. “You can hurl insults and slap the shit out of me later.”

This finally seemed to get the point across; she shook her head once, turned, and pushed past the boys as they were hoisting Jessica off the counter. She went through a door that led deeper into the building.

“You two keep up with her,” I said. I wiped my bloody hands across my thighs, not wanting to spare the time to screw with my water carrier. I had baby wipes back at the bus. “I’ll cover the rear and shoot anything that moves.”

They reversed direction and heaved through the door, each of them with one of Jessica’s arms braced over their shoulders. I dove through behind them, emerging into a much darker back office area filled with a little cubicle farm. I reached up with my thumb to turn on my weapon light; one of the boys in front of me (not Greg) hunched slightly at the sudden illumination throwing the room into high relief and looked back over his shoulder at me. I pulled the muzzle of my rifle around to the side to keep from blinding him with all one thousand of the little light’s lumens and said, “Don’t look directly at the light, man! You’ll spend the next ten minutes walking into walls.” Saying nothing, he turned his head back around to face forward and continued to negotiate the grid of walled-in desks.