Joshua Gayou - Commune - Book One

“I ran out of bullets,” said Jake, making it sound like an excuse or an apology for not finishing James off. His voice was clogged and nasal like he had the world’s worst cold. His nose was clearly broken. “So, now that I’m not actively trying to keep them from killing me,” he continued, “it seemed right to me to give you some say in what happens to this one here.”

“Fuck you. Fuck this bitch. Keep that bitch away from me, you hear?” James was practically growling and spitting from his position on the floor. He kept trying to crane his head up to look at us. I could see that his lips and part of his face had swollen up considerably.

“What?” I said, stupidly.

“Look,” he said and groaned as he got up off the couch. “I have an idea of what’s been going on here. Billy and I have been watching the site the last couple of days, and we’re aware that it wasn’t all friendly games with these guys. I think I understand what this has been for you.”

He picked up a roll of duct tape off the table and moved to the back of the RV, toward the bedroom. He started rummaging in drawers as he continued speaking. “My plan initially was just to kill them all clean and avoid having to deal with this kind of…dilemma. I’m not terribly excited about execution as a rule.”

He pulled out a pair of socks, nodded, and made his way back toward James.

James began to twist and struggle. “The fuck you mean ‘execution,’ motherfucker? You just want to think about what you’re do-UNGH!!!” Jake stuffed the socks into James’ mouth quick and rough to avoid being bitten and started wrapping duct tape around his whole head, making several complete circuits. I could see that the knuckles on both of his hands were bleeding as he did this. By the time he was done, the only things exposed on James’s head were his eyes, nose, ears, and the top of his head. He was still grunting and jerking around, but he could make very little noise at all now. Strings of snot flared from his nostrils at each frantic breath.

He stood up and looked back at me. “It occurred to me,” he continued in a reasonable, professor’s voice, “that you should have a say in what happens next. Strictly speaking, you’re probably the most aggrieved person involved in this whole situation. I’m content to make this your call.”

He stepped over James to come closer to me. The process of him stepping over James felt as though it carried weight. He did it slowly and deliberately, as though he had to make a conscious decision of will to take that step. “Billy gave you a gun, yes?”

I nodded, frozen in place by a gaze completely lacking in all expression—a reptile’s gaze. Jake reached behind his back and pulled out a large, black knife—what I would eventually learn is called a Ka-Bar. He offered it to me, handle first.

As my hand closed around the grip, he said to me, “Make sure whatever you do is something you can live with, whether it’s quick or not. If you can’t live with either, come and get me and I’ll put him down fast.”

He moved past me toward the door and stopped to look back. “Whatever you end up doing: fast, slow, or not at all—no one’s going to hold it against you. Do what you have to do. I’ll give you ten minutes.”

He stepped out of the RV and shut the door while James bucked and kicked behind me, grunting and screaming through his nose wordlessly.

I walked toward him and kneeled down. He instantly went still and became deathly quiet. I held up the gun on one side of his face and the knife on the other, both pointed at the ceiling. I looked between the two weapons and back to his face. His gaze was doing the exact same thing.

I thought of him with his hands tangled up in my hair in the middle of the night. I thought of him bending me over the table and spitting between my legs.

I thought of him throwing Elizabeth through the door of the motorhome out into space; the sound she made as she struggled to recover her breath. I felt a wave of heat start in the pit of my stomach, washing up my body and over my face.

I put the gun down on the dining table overhead and switched the knife to my right hand.

I took all from him that I wanted.

“Ihave some land up in Wyoming,” Billy said as we loaded the last of the supplies into the truck. “Jake and I were heading up that way. There’s more than enough room for two more.”

“Oh?” I said. “How much land are we talking about?” I reached my right hand down to feel the butt of my recovered rifle, which Billy had informed me was an M16A4. It was becoming a real habit; I had to keep convincing myself it was still there even though I could clearly feel the weight of it on my shoulder.

“Around one-hundred-and-fifty acres,” he said, “but that doesn’t matter so much anymore, I guess. Land just goes for as long as you need it to, these days.”

“Uh huh. And if I say ‘no’?”

Billy looked at me out of the side of his eyes, sighed, and lifted a plastic crate full of water jugs into the bed of Jake’s truck, the available space of which was rapidly diminishing. “Look,” he began, turning to face me as he leaned against the truck, “no one is going to force you to go anywhere. I certainly don’t want you around if you don’t want to be around. Be too much like having my ex-wife back.” He shuddered and lumbered off to grab something else to load.

Despite my urge to smile at his antics, I called behind him with a steady voice, “So if I decide to take Lizzy and just go, that’s it, huh?”

“No,” Jake’s voice materialized from behind me. I jumped about a foot and spun around, heart hammering in my chest. I know there are some things that I’ve done that aren’t so pretty and some of them I’m not exactly proud of, but Jake used to scare the hell out of me in those early days. It seems like he’s loosened up a little by now, but when I first met him, it was like nothing was going on behind his eyes. I felt like I was dealing with some kind of robot instead of a person. He rarely talked and spent a lot of time inside his own head. He’d sneak up on you without trying to sneak up on you. His natural, unconscious state was that of someone who appeared where you didn’t expect him. He was even grimmer at this instant, with blood still seeping from his nose and both eyes beginning to blacken angrily. Billy had done his best to set Jake’s bridge back in place a while ago, which had produced an outraged howl. Even so, it always had a flattened, mashed in appearance. He’s often indicated troubles breathing for as long as I’ve known him.

“Sorry,” he said as I took a step back and muttered something like “It’s fine.”

“Anyway, no, that’s not ‘it’ if you decide to go. We’ll stay long enough to get you set up with a vehicle and outfitted with supplies. Or we’ll leave if you don’t want our help. It’s up to you.”

“I really advise against that, Little Sis,” Billy said from behind me. “Maybe you and your girl find a space where you can carve a spot out for yourselves, maybe not. Maybe you find some other people. But maybe the wrong people find you. Again.”

I hadn’t told them that it was actually me who had flagged down James and his crew; I couldn’t bring myself to admit that at the time.

“But there’s strength in numbers, Amanda. We can watch each other’s backs. We can accomplish different tasks, practice complementary skill sets.”

What he was saying made good sense, of course. We weren’t doing very well at all when we were on our own before. We had run completely dry on water, and I wasn’t finding any more in all of the places I knew. I began to wonder just how deep in we were, how much there was that we needed to learn to survive. Ancient cultures used to live off the land and thrive but as our knowledge had become more specialized and focused in the modern age, we had lost that entire accumulated general competency. I could figure out how to launch my own web blog in about an hour or set up a brand new TV, but I didn’t know the first thing about growing a tomato or how water could be made safe to drink.