Joshua Gayou - Commune - Book One

“Well…shoot,” I said. “There’s nothing we can do about that?”

“Well, there’s always something you can do.” Billy leaned on the truck bed and wiped his forehead. “You just have to decide if the result is worth the effort. There’re more important things to deal with. Shelter, sustainable food, sustainable water. By the time you have all that figured out, all the gas will have gone bingo. The only viable option after that point will be diesel.”

“It lasts longer?”

“Oh, yeah,” Billy nodded. “Diesel is just a fantastic technology. The engines are really forgiving and run on just about anything, and diesel fuel will last a good ten years even if you don’t baby it. The only problem there is finding diesel vehicles, which were less popular for some damned unknown reason.”

“Should we not just be tracking down diesel right now?” It sounded like we might as well just pull the Band-Aid off fast instead of slow.

“Naw.” He kicked himself off the truck and started wandering towards the van. “Regular unleaded is plentiful right now. It makes sense to use it while we have it. We’ll know when it’s time to trade up. The gas engines will start running rough.” He pulled the van door open; levered himself up into the cab. “Come on, Whitey. We got another stop I been thinking about all day. Time to test out my theory.”

We were already with Dwight and his group by the time Jake and Billy found us. I had no idea what to think at the time. I didn’t know if they would be any better or any worse than Dwight. They looked just like Dwight’s people. They were men, they were stronger than us; had more guns than us. Certainly, they knew how to use those guns better than us. Obviously, we were saved when Jake and Billy came along, but I didn’t know that at the time. As far as I knew, Lizzy and I were just being passed along to someone stronger.

Dwight was running a caravan when we found him. It was him along with three other men driving two motorhomes: Dwight, Hugo, Richard, and James. I never got their last names—don’t really care. Dwight appeared to run the whole thing, though. The other three just seemed to be the sheep following along.

It was actually me that found them and flagged them down, if you can believe that. Lizzy and I were out foraging among some busted up shops looking for anything the looters might have left behind when I saw the motorhomes rolling by at a crawl, weaving around the wrecks and other trash in the road.

I said, “Oh my God! Come on, Lizzy!” or something close to that and started running (or at least tried to run) in their direction with all the crap I was carrying slamming off my sides. I started screaming for them to stop; I screamed so loud I was hoarse for two days after. We were almost out of food and completely out of water. I was desperate.

I remember both laughing and sobbing when I saw brake lights. Doors opened on both of the motorhomes, and four men came out, every one of them wearing the same shocked expression. They were too far away for me to hear them say anything, but Dwight turned to look at the rest of them, said something, and made a gentle, pushing “stay calm” gesture with his hands. He turned and ran over to meet us.

“Hey, are you two okay?” he asked. “What the hell are you doing out here?”

“We’re looking for food and water,” I nearly sobbed. “Please, can you help us? Do you have any water? Please… my daughter…”

You would think that I would have been able to see that something was off with him but I swear to God, there was nothing. He gave absolutely no indication of who he was or what he planned. I think it’s possible that even he didn’t know at the time.

“Yeah, come with me. We have plenty. Other stuff, too, if you need it. Hugo! Grab some waters, man!” He started leading us back toward the others. He didn’t so much as lay hands on us. I was so relieved that my legs were weak.

In the lead motorhome, he sat us down at the little dining table while all the rest of the men stood around us, hands in their pockets and looking very out of place. He put bottled waters down in front of us, which we both grabbed and started sucking down as fast as we could.

“Whoa, whoa, easy!” he said. “How long has it been since you had water?”

“Two days,” I gasped and started drinking again.

“Okay, okay, slow it down a little. Sloooow … good. Don’t shotgun it, lady. You’ll make yourself sick. Are you both hungry?” I nodded. Lizzy said, “Yes, please,” which shocked me. The most I had gotten out of her in a while were grunts.

“Richard, would you set them up, please?” The one named Richard rummaged in a pantry and pulled out a can of beef stew. He retrieved a pot from another cabinet and turned on the gas stove. I stared at the stove. I couldn’t remember the last time we had eaten hot food.

“Let’s start with splitting this up between you,” Richard suggested. “If you keep it down, I’ll warm up another can.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I’m Dwight. This is James and Hugo. The chef is Richard.” He pointed at each of them as he spoke.

“I’m Amanda. This is my daughter Elizabeth.”

“Lizzy,” she said. I squeezed her hand. It was so good to hear her speak.

James, who had been completely silent until now, finally spoke up in a rough, cracking voice. “Amanda, I’m going to reach out and take your rifle, okay? I don’t want you to be alarmed or nuthin’. We’ve run into some crazies out here, is all. We’d prefer to be careful until we all know each other a little better, see?”

I agreed and gave the son of a bitch my own weapon.

Lizzy and I ate the soup when it was ready, which was delicious, and they made us another can after.

They were all on their best behavior for the next few days. Every other day, two of them would head out together to go scavenging among the deserted houses and shops, which was nasty work. You always want to prefer the shops because they’re mostly just boarded up and empty, but they’re also almost always picked over for all the best stuff. That means that your chances of finding useful items are actually better if you go house to house. The problem there is that you’ll find dead bodies in most of the houses; people who died in the Plague. We all learned to stop being squeamish a long time ago, but the average sane person still wants to avoid a rotting corpse if possible.

I became restless before too long (I had always been an active person) and started asking Dwight for ways to contribute. “Give me a rifle,” I said. I’d go with them into the city looking for supplies. Just sitting around with Lizzy and eating their food made me feel anxious. I didn’t want to wear out our welcome. I even offered to do their cooking and cleaning. All of my offers were refused politely.

“You and your daughter just need to rest easy for now,” he said. “You’ve both had a rough run of days, and you’re still recovering; we can all see it. When you’re better, when you’ve gotten a bit of your strength and color back, we can all sit down and talk about what you can do to pitch in.”

As it turned out, that discussion came late one night after we had all gone to bed. Lizzy, Dwight, and I were sleeping in one of the motorhomes while James, Richard, and Hugo slept in the other. They gave me the queen bed in the back bedroom while Lizzy took the bed over the cab because she was excited about having a bunk bed. Dwight was on the fold-out between us.

I was woken out of a dead sleep by Dwight shaking my shoulder gently. I was startled at first because I could only see a dark shape hovering over me, but I realized who it was and relaxed immediately.