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

Just as I was getting ready to call it quits and throw the vehicle in park, Wang muttered, “What the…”

I perked up and glanced back at him to get an idea of the direction he was looking in, only to find that direction was dead ahead. I faced forward and rubbed my eyes. Just beyond the nastiest snarl of traffic, everything suddenly opened up, offering clear, unobstructed passage into the city. This sudden opening in the road began roughly one hundred yards before we would encounter the first visible buildings. This was disturbing because the cars that had once clogged up the street were all still there; they were just pushed off to the shoulders. At some point, between the final die-off of the plague and right now, the main road had been cleared.

“Someone’s been through here,” Davidson said.

Whispers came from behind us; I heard Rebecca hiss, “Did he say someone’s here already?”

I saw Davidson wince in the long, overhead mirror. He said, “Sorry, man.”

“It’s okay,” I said. I had the bus coasting along the open road; we weren’t even getting five miles per hour. “They would’ve figured it out without you saying anything. Try to hide something that obvious and nobody will trust you.”

The pathway into the city stretched before us unobstructed with a bumper-to-bumper wall of vehicles lined up on either side; curbs and soft shoulders alike were completely occupied. We continued on at a crawl, leaning forward as far as we could into the windshield, straining to see onto rooftops as we passed by storefronts. There was no movement to be seen anywhere, which basically meant that I began to see movement everywhere.

A few blocks into the city, the frequency of cars and trucks stacked up on the sides of the street began to lessen; large gaps of sidewalk and buildings became visible as the cars thinned out. Beyond this point, nearing a kilometer in, the vehicles weren’t even pushed to the side anymore, they just created little island barriers at odd points along the way. I put the bus in park and separated the power lines to keep from burning fuel in idle. Rather than move from my position at the seat, I sat and stared, trying to piece together what I was looking at.

Davidson finally lost patience and asked, “What now, Gibs?”

“You guys see anything funny about all these cars?”

“What, you mean besides the fact that they’ve all been shoved over?”

“The antennas!” Wang said.

“Correctomundo,” I said, climbing out of the seat. As far as I could tell, every antenna coming out of every car that was within viewing distance had a little duct tape flag wrapped around the top in plain sight, whether the car was out in the middle of the street or pushed over to the side. I had some suspicions about what that might mean but didn’t care to comment until I knew for sure. I walked to the rear of the bus past questioning glances, dug out the molle gear, and started to put it on. The grenade belt went on after, strapped around my hips. Finally, I grabbed the hand pump along with its hoses and held it out to Oscar as I approached him.

“Take this, the M9, and come give me a hand, please,” I said.

He jumped up from his seat and said, “You got it, boss.”

I walked back to the front of the bus where Davidson stood with Wang and paused while Oscar situated himself. I looked at Davidson and said, “You hold onto that rifle,” while pointing at the HK pinned behind the driver’s seat. To Wang, I said, “Grab the binos and spot for us. Look for movement.” He nodded and pulled the binoculars from the dashboard. Oscar approached from behind and slapped me on the shoulder (my left one, thankfully) to let me know he was ready.

I looked back to everyone else, who were all wide-eyed and white-knuckled in their seats, and said, “Just sit tight a bit. We’re going to step out a while. See what’s what.”

Without waiting for a response, I stepped off the platform into the street. Oscar waited in the doorway, giving me time to look the area over before following and I made a mental note to give him a gold star or something for his caution. I walked a few paces away from the bus while looking in all directions, hardly daring to breathe; just looking and listening for any possible thing out there. I think I must have spent two or three minutes doing that. Aside from the sound of wind and the occasional bird call, the silence was a physical barrier.

I decided that if anything was going to happen, it would have happened by now, so I nodded to Oscar and gestured over to the closest car.

“Do you want to grab a gas can?” he asked.

“Not yet. Let’s just see if we can get anything out of it.”

He spent the next few minutes snaking a tube down into the tank while I continued to scan the area. I saw Wang inside the bus nearly spinning in place as he scanned rooftops and alley entrances.

“Dry,” said Oscar.

I grimaced and said, “Next one over, then.”

He moved up the line, popped the gas cap on the next car, and began to feed in hose while I adjusted position to stay close by. I happened to see Wang staring at us instead of watching the area and waved at him with my left hand. Recognition flashed in his eyes as they locked onto mine; I stabbed two fingers towards my eyes and then swung my hand around over my head in a few exaggerated circles. Wang jumped in place as though he had been startled and resumed monitoring the area.

“This one’s dry, too,” Oscar said, coming to stand next to me.

I sighed, “Yeah, okay, shit. Let’s try some across the street.” He nodded and trotted over to the closest truck to get busy.

He completed three more vehicles, all of which had flagged antennas, all of which were bone dry. He wasn’t waiting for me to command him on to the next one now; he was gamely moving from vehicle to vehicle to see what could be had. I stepped out around the side of the bus and looked back down the street from the direction we had come, setting eyes on a sea of little, flagged antennas. I looked back up the road in the opposite direction and was met with the same situation. I thought there might be an antenna or two that was bare far off in the distance and pulled the M4 up to get a visual assist from the optic.

“Hey, we okay?” Davidson called from the doorway of the bus behind me.

“Yeah, it’s good. I’m just going blind in my old age.”

It was true; off in the distance, I could just make out some car antennas that had no sign of any duct tape along their length. I was just getting ready to call Oscar back to the bus when an unfamiliar, flat voice spoke off to my left.

“These have all been tapped. You’ll need to head a little further up.”

I swung hard in the direction of the voice, heart instantly jackhammering in my chest and finger hooking fast around the trigger of the rifle. I slammed into a cheek weld so hard that a bruise actually developed on my face later that day.

Without giving it a great deal of thought, I was already shouting, “Hands! Show me your goddamned hands, motherfucker!” It was only after I shouted this that I realized he already did have both of his hands held up in front of him, palms out in my direction.

He was leaning against the corner of a building as though he had just come from the alleyway behind it, and yet what he said to me suggested he had been watching us at least a little while. He was dressed lightly, probably owing to the warm season (we were either in July or August during this time, but I can’t remember for sure anymore); he was wearing some jeans, a heavy set of hiking boots, and a plain, white T-shirt. He had a full beard that was just beginning to look wooly and a thick head of long, straight hair that was held out of his eyes by a red bandanna tied 1980s-style above his ears and eyebrows. He appeared to be in good physical shape, with noticeable muscular definition visible through his shirt at the shoulders and neck. He stood there, maybe thirty feet away from me, as calm as you please with his hands held out like he wanted to play Patty Cake.