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

“Let me go talk to them first, huh?”

“Of course,” he replied without looking over at me. He was eyeballing the two men standing outside, perhaps wondering what they were planning to get up to with their weapons. His face was passive, with no hint of aggression at all, but I knew mean-mugging when I saw it. I prayed for everyone to just keep relaxed and happy.

I jumped out of the truck and walked over to them; fanned my hands gently towards the ground in a “remain calm” gesture as I approached.

“Go back to his trailer, find a drum with a taped ‘X’ on the lid, and muscle it over to the bus’s tank. Get whatever tools you need to fill up, even if you need to transfer to a can first with the hand pump.”

Oscar looked over at Jake and said, “He’s cool, right?”

“Looks that way,” I agreed. “Try not to empty the whole barrel, okay? Let’s not start out by being shitheads.”

They both made off for the trailer; Davidson actually waving and nodding at Jake as he passed. Jake nodded back. I took a deep breath and climbed up onto the bus to address the crowd, who must have been fit to come out of their skins by that point.

“Hey, everyone, how we doing? Holding out okay?”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Maria whispered to me from the front.

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, I guess you would, huh, sweetie? Okay, anyone need a head call? Let’s get that out of the way. Same as before: grownups with kids.” Our kids were really just limited to Maria and Rose, who were nine and fourteen. Greg and Alan both looked like they were in their mid to late teens. Even so, I didn’t want to single the kids out by name. Monica offered to take them both, Rose being her daughter and all. The three of them stepped off the bus and went to go find an open storefront with a bathroom. It had become standard practice by this point; leaving little, unflushed care packages in our wake as we traveled. It probably wouldn’t take that much effort for a skilled tracker to trace our journey—just follow the trail of abused toilets.

“Anyone else need a refresher?” I asked.

A few heads nodded, and George said, “I’d like to hear what we’re doing first.” Others voiced their agreement.

I nodded and rested my hands on the front seat backs. “Well, it turns out that this guy isn’t as much of a— Well, he’s…” I struggled to redirect my train of thought, “he’s not a threat, as I originally may have suspected.”

“Is that gas they’re moving over back here?” asked Jeff (a skinny, little waif of a man) as he looked out the side window at Oscar and Davidson fighting the fuel barrel into submission.

“Diesel, yeah,” I agreed. “This guy we ran into, Jake is his name, is helping us to fuel up and has invited us back to his place for…” I struggled to say the next part in a way that didn’t sound idiotic and failed. Drawing a blank, I opted for blowing a raspberry: “ppfffttt, for dinner, I guess. He’s invited us over for dinner.” I put my head down, waiting for the questions and the arguing and all the other bullshit to commence.

When none of that happened, I looked back up at them and was met with row on row of curious, expectant faces.

Edgar (Mr. Asshole himself) said, “Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m fairly hungry.” Several others chimed in agreement. Barbara said, “It’s very nice of him to offer. I wish we had something to bring with us…”

I couldn’t have been any more surprised if they had all spontaneously started sucking their thumbs and farting the Benny Hill theme song. I had been certain I was going to have to swim through a wave of protests and arguments but, apparently, these people were all ready to go out to a dinner party. I turned and sat back down in the driver’s seat, resting my hands on the wheel while slouching into the backrest. I looked out the windshield and saw Jake looking back at me. He smiled and waved.

I smiled and waved back, saying, “Well, why not? Must be ‘Confuse a Jarhead Tuesday.’”

Davidson climbed up the stairs into the bus, I suspected to go get the refueling tools from the back. He stopped next to me and asked, “You want me to carry all that back with me?” He was pointing at my chest rig and rifle.

“Sure,” I said. “Thanks.” I shrugged out of everything and handed it all over, which he slung one item at a time over his shoulder. He wedged my MR556 back behind the driver’s seat, took up the M4, and shuffle-stepped towards the rear of the bus. In the meantime, various folks passed by the front and exited, on their way to go find some relief.

I felt rather than heard someone sit down behind me. Looking up in the rearview, I was surprised to see a shock of curly, red hair and a set of bright, green eyes looking back at me. I said nothing, waiting for her to talk first.

“You okay?” Rebecca asked.

I nodded and said, “I’m just tired. I really need a vacation, is all.”

She laughed quietly and said, “Some of us are worried. People are talking.”

“Oh?” I asked, perking up. “Saying what?”

“They’re just worried about you. Afraid that you’re going to get yourself hurt or killed trying to spread too thin, do too many things at once. I happen to agree.”

I snorted. “We’ll just ask the world for a time-out, then, huh?” It sounded shitty and petulant as soon as I said it. I was too tired to even try to take it back but, thankfully, she seemed not to mind.

“I’m just saying you could probably spread the load a little.”

“I know, Rebecca. I know. I’m sorry. Last time I tried that, though, two of our own bought it.”

A hand reached out and rested on my shoulder, then my neck. I felt a stirring in my shorts despite the topic and tamped it back down in disgusted anger.

“That wasn’t you,” she said, soft hand squeezing. “You can’t let that break you.”

I said nothing but shifted around to face her; mostly to get her distracting hand off my neck.

“You remember where you found me?” she asked.

“I remember. You weren’t in the best shape.”

“Well you don’t know what happened before that,” she said and rested her chin on the horizontal bar between us. “Like most people, I had ended up in a tent camp towards the end. You know how it went. There was a small group of us survivors who just weren’t getting sick while everyone else died off.”

I nodded. I remembered.

“There were three of us girls, all about the same age. The worse things got, the closer we became. Towards the end we started calling each other sisters. Wanda, that was one of us, even started calling our group The Survivor Sisters. She said we were all going to get a redneck tattoo of our gang name if we ever got to a point where we could settle back into homes again and hopefully find someone who could do the tattoo.” She laughed, face sad. “Rebecca, Wanda, and Emily…”

I jolted in my seat at the name “Emily,” thinking of Pinch; thinking of the girl I was never going to meet but whose face I could still see in my thoughts regardless. I felt a wave of mental double vision (or perhaps split perception) in my mind as I struggled to track the two different Emily personalities, one established and older by a day, the other newly formed and taking shape as Rebecca spoke to me. I attributed the sensation to sheer exhaustion.

Rebecca continued on as though nothing had happened. “We left the camp for the road to find a new home. We weren’t on the road for very long before we were found…”

Her chin remained propped on the bar, but her eyes no longer looked at me. They looked inward. Back.

“They chased us for hours that felt like days. I don’t know where they came from, but we knew what they were after. We could hear it in their excited hollering and the jokes they shouted at each other. They were so excited. They wanted to make themselves a… little club.”