Joshua Gayou - Commune - Book One

Billy took his hand off the pump of his shotgun and pointed to the dirt next to the body. “Look,” he said, “someone stumbled away from this.”

A part of me giggled internally when he said that (Really? You’re going to do the Indian Tracker thing?) but most of me just wanted to know where the hell Elizabeth was. Also, being fair, the tracks were hard to miss. No one had been this way for a while.

He followed the path of the footprints down the side of the building, hunched over slightly, shotgun shouldered, barrel down. I followed behind with the Tavor pointed out in front and to the right so the muzzle wouldn’t be in his back. It seemed Billy had forgotten to be afraid of having me behind him with a loaded gun.

We rounded the corner and started to run the length of this new wall. At the end, we came to a door. Billy came to stand in front of it and then motioned for me to come around him and get on the other side. The door opened outside, right to left, so he wanted me positioned to get in behind him without having to navigate around the door. He grabbed the handle, turned it, and pulled the door open, plunging in with me trailing close after him.

Just as my eyes were adjusting to the lower light, I saw a door closing on the other side directly across from us with two men rushing into the room. I felt Billy’s hand on my shoulder as he shoved me down in front of one of the line machines and he took a knee right next to me. As soon as his knee touched the ground, I heard gunshots from the other side of the warehouse.

He peeked his head over the top to look, and then pulled it down again as a few more shots rang out. He lifted his shotgun over the machine and sent a few blasts back their way, more on general principle than any real hope of hitting them.

“Assholes are placed behind their own line machine. We gotta get closer or something.”

“Hey!” I called out. “What are you shooting at us for?”

“C’mon out and we’ll tell yah!”

Billy looked at me. “I don’t have to tell you, right?”

“You got my daughter back there?” I asked. They didn’t answer for several seconds, and I felt my heart skip a beat. They knew who I was talking about.

“I’m telling you right now,” I said. “If I find anything wrong with her I’m going to kill you motherfuckers a piece at a time, starting with your god damned kneecaps and work my way up!”

“Jesus, woman!” Billy grunted as he looked at me, shock painted across his face.

A few more shots came our way, but they were being stingy with them. Billy noticed this too. He said, “I don’t think they have that many bullets.”

I crab-walked down to the end of the line and peered through a break in the machinery. There was just enough of a gap through the steel framing, drums, and wheels of our machine that I could see the end of one of their asses hanging out from behind their own cover across the way. I waved at Billy, pointed in their direction and mouthed the words, “get… ready.” He nodded, pulled a few shells from his belt, and started thumbing them into his weapon. When he was ready to go, he nodded to me over his shoulder.

I steadied myself as well as possible and rested the barrel of my rifle on a nook of the machinery frame. I positioned the dot of the rifle’s optic on the backside of the man in the distance. I took a breath and squeezed the trigger. The gun jerked back against my shoulder, and I heard a scream from across the warehouse (strangely, I can’t remember hearing a gunshot when I did this). The man’s back end was replaced by a complete body sprawling along the floor. I repositioned the dot to the newly discovered head and pulled the trigger again. I didn’t miss.

Billy was already running along the shop floor by the time I got off my first shot. The man who had not been hit was distracted by his buddy sprawling across the concrete just long enough for Billy to get in and blow a hole through his ribs.

I ran to meet him where he crouched over the two. “Done,” he said and moved to the door through which they had emerged.

On the other side, the room was dark enough that we had to slow our pace down considerably. I heard screaming now in the distance ahead; the screaming of a little girl. I pushed past Billy and started running blindly down the aisles. He shouted for me to wait but I wasn’t hearing it. I heard my baby screaming.

It wasn’t long at all before I saw a dimly lit enclosed office in the distance. I could see Jake standing up in the window with a revolver pointed down at the floor. Just beyond him was Elizabeth’s head.

I grabbed the handle and pulled the door open. I heard Jake say something that sounded like, “…eye kid.” It was hard to make out because I was in the process of opening the door when he said it. Maybe he said “bye kid,” because he shot her in the face right after that.

Billy pushed into the room behind me, looked around at the mess, and said, “What the hell, Jake?”

Jake collapsed into an office chair. He slumped there, panting. “I… could use… a drink… of water.”

“We don’t have a lot of time,” said Jake. He was still sitting in the chair, leaned forward over the desk with his head in his hand. “The one who stole the van… she said she’d be back to pick the rest up.”

I was just cutting the rest of the plastic wrap off Elizabeth. I was taking my time, afraid I would cut her if I moved too fast.

Speaking of cuts: “You have a nasty cut on the back of your hand,” I said, looking over at Jake. “We might have to sew that one shut.”

“Later,” he mumbled, panting heavily. “Billy. Go around and search everyone. Get the guns. Bullets. Want my damned Glock back.”

“What happened here?” I asked as Billy went out the door.

“Ambushed. They were in this building the whole time. Snuck up on us after you left. Someone hit me with a bus or something.”

“And the van?”

He took a few breaths before continuing. I started getting really worried about him from the way he was acting. “So, one of them, a female, came out and drove off in the van. Said she was going to unload it and come back to pick everyone up after sundown.” He took a few more breaths. “What happened to the other two? What’d you do with them?” He wouldn’t look up when he spoke to me, and he slurred his words like a drunk.

“We ended up shooting them both. Look, are you okay?”

“Nope,” he said promptly. “Knocked me out I don’t know how long. Think I’m concussed.”

Billy came back into the room just then with a couple of pistols in his jacket pockets and an additional rifle. “So how about my van?” he asked.

Jake pointed at me with his left hand and then made a throwing gesture at Billy. I updated Billy on what had happened as quickly as possible. Lizzy looked like she was torn between holding onto me and checking on Jake; she kept stealing glances in his direction. Finally, she went over to him and rested her hand on the back of his neck. “You’re bleeding, Jake, from your head,” she said.

“Just a day fer…good news!” Jake rumbled and gave her a pat on the knee.

“So, she’s coming back with the van. I suppose we could wait for her.”

“Billy, no,” I said. “Look at Jake. He could have a concussion already. He’s in no shape to fight; he can’t even lift his head up.”

“Can,” Jake grunted. He lifted his head an inch and then put it back in his hand. “Uh… shit.” He burped softly.

“We don’t know if she’s coming back alone or with friends. I don’t want to have any more gunfights with my kid around, okay?”

“Think we killed enough people today already, Billy,” Jake said. “You get her a car?”