Commune: Book Two (Commune Series 2) Read online

  He finally brought me to a grocery store where, I swear to God, every square inch of glass in the store front had been busted out. To compensate for this, the people inside had apparently piled up everything that wasn’t nailed down in front of the wreckage. And I mean everything – whole sections of aisle shelf, every shopping cart they could get their hands on, even a goddamned ATM was all stacked up in a big old barricade along the entire store front. Wedged in front of the door in the center of it all was one of those refrigerator-sized Coke machines.

  Davidson walked up to the thing like he was planning on inserting a dollar and slapped the plastic front panel with his open hand. “Hey, guys!” he called out. “We’re back. You can let us in.”

  The sound of men grunting came from behind the machine and it began to slide back slowly over the floor, creating a bit of a squeal and dragging a shopping cart along with it. As the gap between the machine and the door frame increased, I could see at least one man pulling from behind. He reached out and moved the stowaway shopping cart over with his hand.

  Davidson looked back at me and indicated my rifle. “These people are skittish but they’re okay. Go ahead and let that hang.”

  I had my doubts and decided to compromise; I lowered the rifle across my body but kept my hands wrapped on grip and handguard. I did not engage the safety.

  The Coke machine was pulled back only far enough that we could get past it and into the store by stepping to the left or right around it, so I couldn’t see in. A grubby, shell-shocked head poked out from the right of the opening and stared out at us. His face was dirty enough that I couldn’t tell he was Asian at first; I had to really stare at the guy to place his ethnicity.

  “I brought him,” Davidson said. “This is Gibs.”

  “It’s just you two?” said the man. His accent was just barely noticeable; you had to really listen for it to detect it at all.

  “Sure. I said it would be.”

  “Okay. Come on in.” The head pulled back and disappeared around the corner.

  Davidson looked back to me and smiled nervously. “Hey, I know this looks fucknuts but these people really seem okay. They’re mostly just scared.”

  I nodded while grimacing internally at his use of the word “fucknuts”. There’s no nice way to say this: Davidson was a fanboy. He was in college when everything came flying apart, his plan being to join the Marines as an officer. Unfortunately for him (or perhaps fortunately, depending on how you look at it), the Marines stopped existing before he had a chance to sign up. It still bugs the shit out of him now but back then he was overcompensating. I remember regretting telling the kid that I was a Marine; as soon as he heard that, he was busting out the lingo at every opportunity. I swear, I think he knew more Jarhead jargon than I did and I left the Corps as a Staff Sergeant. Davidson was that one motarded kid who would have shown up at the Island with a high-and-tight and a Semper Fi t-shirt. The Drill Instructors would have murdered his poor, dumb ass.

  “That’s fine, but let me go in first anyway,” I said and shouldered past before he could say anything.

  I poked my head around the Coke machine to see a group of eight people huddled together at the front of the store, clearly waiting for me. Squeezing the grip of my rifle and really not wanting to kill anyone, I took a breath before stepping in.

  The interior of the store looked as though a bomb had been detonated right in the middle of it. The light level was very low; there was some illumination creeping in through the tops of the front windows in the gap between the ceiling and the shit-pile the inhabitants had stacked up – there were also some lanterns setup throughout the place. All of the aisles were in disarray, having been pulled out of alignment and repositioned along the outside walls of the store. Many of them were stacked up against the front windows, as I had mentioned before, but there were so many in the store that a lot of them were just shoved to the side. There appeared to be some kind of common area in the center of the floor space beyond the checkout stands – I could see some boxes and a few office chairs (probably hauled over from the manager’s office). There appeared to be a dwindling supply of food and water stacked up in this area. Along the outer perimeter of the floor were places to sleep (a few mattresses, some blankets, and even a couple of yoga mats).

  I looked back at the people in front of me. There were males and females but they were so damned filthy it was hard to guess their ages. I thought I saw the angular shape of a teenage body on two of them. There were no children.

  “How long have you people been in here?” I asked. I screwed up my face and tried to breathe shallowly. The whole place smelled like a rhino had taken a shit in a moldy old sock.

  “Weeks,” said the Asian kid.

  “Jesus,” I responded. “Name’s Gibson. Call me Gibs.”

  “Wang,” he offered back. “Where are you folks coming from?”

  Before I could answer, one of the others pushed forward. Again, I couldn’t tell much about him regarding his appearance outside of the fact that he was tall and skinny. He said: “Yes, it’s all very nice to meet you but can you help us? We need food and water. We’re starving.”

  I looked past him back to the pile of supplies. From what I could see, they weren’t starving yet but they appeared to be on their way. Water looked like more of a problem than food, certainly.

  “Hang on a second,” I said, and turned back to Davidson. I whispered, “Head back to the cars and grab a couple jugs of water. Have Barbara come back with you and tell her to grab a couple of packs of wet wipes. We gotta sanitize these people before they get ass-to-mouth disease.”

  He nodded and bounded back through the store entrance. I’d half expected him to say “Yut!” before he went.

  I turned back to the others and tried to think of something to say next. It was hard – that whole place was foul and oppressive. “Look, can we step outside?” I asked. “The air in here is kind of close.”

  A few of them looked nervously at each other and I saw one or two hands reach out to grab other peoples’ arms. Finally, Wang said, “I’ll go out with you. We don’t all need to come.” The tall, skinny guy got indignant and said, “I’ll be coming along too.” Right away, I had a feeling about that guy. You know how some people just telegraph “Asshole” wherever they go? This guy had it coming off him in waves. Even through all the dirt and grime I could see it in his posture, hear it in his voice…fuck, I could see it in his eyes. Second Lieutenant material all the way.

  I thanked Wang, ignored the asshat, and backed out of the store. Once outside, I took a deep, cleansing breath and let it out slowly, trying to get all the funk out of my lungs. When I no longer felt like I had the creepy crawlies all over me, I slung my rifle down on my shoulder and said, “Okay, Wang, read me in.” I saw the skinny asshole bristle at being ignored, which I would have enjoyed if I wasn’t as mature as I am.

  Okay, fuck it, I enjoyed it.

  Wang crossed his arms over his chest and said, “We’ve been here a few weeks. There isn’t much to tell besides that. We got into the store and made a little home. There was enough food at first but it didn’t take long for it to run low. We’ve been collecting more from around the area but that’s all getting scarce now too.”

  “Yes, this is all very nice,” the skinny guy broke in. He held out his hand to shake and said, “My name is Edgar. Were you going to be able to help us? Your friend Tom indicated that you could.”

  I didn’t take Edgar’s hand. “I need to understand the situation here so that I can determine the best way to help.”

  “Don’t mind him,” Wang said. “He just gets pissy when people don’t bow to his obvious authority.”

  This statement was delivered so effortlessly and without inflection that it surprised a snort out of me. I had no idea what the history between these two was at that point but I was glad to see that I wasn’t being unreasonable in my assessment of Edgar – he clearly bugged some other folks as well.

  Edgar’s face
went red as his mouth clicked shut. He breathed out the word “bastard”, turned, and walked back towards the store entrance. I swear to Christ, he almost said, “I never!”

  “Thought he’d never leave,” Wang said as Edgar disappeared behind the Coke machine.

  I smiled and said, “You seem to have a way with people. ‘Wang’, right?”

  His eyebrows rose as he smiled back at me. “Oh, are you setting up a dick joke? I promise to act as though I’m hearing it for the first time if you are.”

  This got a genuine laugh out of me. “I wasn’t but I can make up a few new ones on the spot if you’re feeling frisky.”

  He walked over to lean against a concrete pylon. “Oh, let’s not do that right now. You want to dole them out slowly over time. I don’t want you to shoot your wad all at once.”

  “Ha!” I laughed. I was going to get along with this guy just fine. I went over to stand by him. “Okay, fella. No one’s here to interrupt now. Let’s have it.”

  “It’s like I said,” Wang shrugged. “Our short term plan is close to finished now. We’ve picked the immediate area over pretty well.”

  “What about picking up and moving on to a new area?” I asked.

  “I’ve been trying to talk them into that. I have maybe half of them convinced but that asshole Edgar opens his mouth and screws it up whenever I start making some real progress.”

  I began to understand the source of the friction between the two of them. “Why so resistant to moving?”

  “A group of bikers came through here not too long ago. They made a lot of noise, broke things up.”

  “A…group of bikers? Like, a no-shit apocalypse biker gang?” I had been wondering how long it would take for the Mad Max wannabes to band together and start tooling along the countryside like their own little douchebag posse.

  “Don’t think of it like that,” said Wang. “They weren’t on Harleys or anything. They were just riding a bunch of bikes. A lot of them were on dirt bikes, some had BMW’s. I even saw a couple on scooters. We could tell they were no good, though. They were making all kinds of noise, shooting out windows. A bunch of jerks.”

  “Yeah, what happened when they saw you?”

  “They didn’t,” said Wang, shaking his head. “We ducked out the back of the store like a bunch of cowards and hid out behind some of the other buildings. They came through the store, helped themselves to our supplies, and left.”

  “You wanted to fight them?” I asked.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I didn’t want to just let them take our food and water. Maybe they would have killed us or maybe they weren’t really bad people – just a bunch of loud dickheads. I just didn’t see the point of hiding to survive if we were going to end up starving anyway later on. You can guess who it was who talked everyone into hiding.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, well, he was probably right though. It sounds like they were armed and I didn’t see any weapons on you guys. ‘Guns versus Fists’ is never a thing you want to get into unless you’re the one with the guns.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe we could have ambushed a few in the dark, taken some of their guns, and evened things up.”

  “Maybe,” I said but I wasn’t buying it. In my experience, it’s pretty hard to take a gun away from someone who doesn’t want to give it to you. Typically, you need to shoot them a lot to pull it off.

  “So, anyway,” he continued, “since then Edgar’s gone roach and complains at anyone else who doesn’t do the same.”

  “Roach?”

  “Yeah, it’s what some of us call it when you hide out like Anne Frank: absolutely quiet at all times, venture out only at night, hide like your own shadow is trying to kill you. It sucks.”

  I nodded agreement. It did in fact sound like a shitty way to be.

  Davidson and Barbara popped into view down the street ten minutes later; with him lugging the jugs of water and her clutching the wet nap packages. He was wearing his usual goofball grin and Barbara had a concerned, purposeful expression on her face.

  “Here they come,” I said to Wang. “C’mon, let’s go inside and get your guys cleaned up a bit and hydrated. We’ll figure out what’s next after that.”

  It turned out that what came next was the whole goddamned crew joined up with mine for a cross country field trip.

  “Brace yourself,” I advised Barbara. “They smell like they’ve been swimming…well, they’ve been swimming through it.” She nodded at me and followed us in.

  Everyone was where I’d left them, more or less. I noticed Edgar was a little off to the side talking quietly to a smaller group, not that I really cared. “Uh, hey guys,” I said, waving with a hand. “We’ve got some water for you and Barbara, here, will come around and hand out some wipes for you to clean yourselves up with. We gotta get your sanitation under control before you get sick. You don’t want to get dysentery right now; it’s likely to kill you.”

  Barbara started making the rounds among the group as I talked. I noticed she was handing out only one or two wipes at a time and said, “Fistfuls, hon. Their hands and faces need a total rub down.” She nodded to me and returned back to the beginning of the line. “The rest of you take the used wipes and just throw them in a pile on the floor. No sense cleaning up, we gotta get you outta here.”

  Davidson glanced my way with raised eyebrows. I knew what he was thinking. I was a little shocked myself. I hadn’t realized I was going to say that last part until it came out of my mouth. I knew it was the right thing as soon as I said it, though. These people were going to die here if I left them.

  “Just a minute,” Edgar said from his little cluster of people. “Exactly where do you propose to take us?”

  I ground my teeth and took a deep breath through my nose. “For now, just out of here. Back to the others. We have some cars that we’re travelling in; we can get a few more and bring you with us, I guess.”

  There were some uncertain glances around the room from everybody when I said this. I could see that some people were ready to pick up and go right then but others weren’t so certain. They had been living in fear for a while now. I wondered how much of that fear was earned and how much of it had been implanted by Edgar’s attitude.

  “And where is it that you’re travelling to?” he asked.

  “Uh, well, we don’t know.”

  “You don’t…know?”

  “Yeah, I said that, didn’t I? We’re going towards Denver. It’s a big city, probably a lot of things we can scavenge. We were thinking we might find a little patch out in the suburbs; maybe find a place worth setting up a camp.”

  “Does anyone else think this is a bad idea?” Edgar said to the rest of the group. “These people, of whom we know nothing, propose to take us into their little group to go to a new area which may or may not be more secure than this?”

  “What, you call this secure?” I said. “Couple of Molotovs busted over all the crap piled up in the windows and you guys are looking at a Soylent Green barbeque.”

  “This has worked out for us so far,” Edgar said, overriding me. “We know it’s safe here because we’ve been here and it has worked. Even if someone gets curious and pushes their way in, we know we can get away from them. We know this because we’ve done it. We know this area…”

  “Hey, listen, you dipshit…” began Davidson. I cut him off.

  “Davidson, watch how you talk in front of my girl.” Barbara smiled at me and winked. The ladies never could resist my animal charms.

  “Sorry, Top.”

  I rolled my eyes. Top. I was gonna need to have a talk with him at some point. Top is what you call the Master Sergeant. I was a Staff Sergeant when I left the Corps and I hadn’t even been one of those for twelve years now.

  I looked back at the group of survivors. “Look, how much food have you got left in that little pile back there? How long is that going to feed eight people? How well is scavenging going right now? Are you still finding what you need or are things starting to thi
n out?” I looked over all their faces, hoping mostly that someone (anyone) other than Edgar would answer. Thankfully, my man Wang didn’t leave me hanging.

  “It’s getting tight,” he said. “We can still find things to eat but we’re going to bed hungry most nights now.”

  “I cooked a rat a few nights ago,” one of them said; a young, slender looking man who I later learned was named Jeff.

  “A rat?” I asked disgusted. I looked back over at Edgar. “And you want to stay here?”

  “You don’t even know where you’re going,” Edgar reiterated. “You can’t promise us that where you’re going will be any better or safer than what we’ve carved out right here.”

  I was dumbstruck. Clearly, he and I saw the palatial digs of the King Soopers in an entirely different light.

  “Guys, you’re overlooking something really important,” Wang cut in. “These people have guns. We have a much better chance going with them. They can defend themselves. What do we have besides a couple of sharpened mop handles?”

  “How many guns have you guys got?” asked a large black man in the rear of the group. His voice was Darth Vader deep.

  “Hey,” I nodded to him, glad that more of them were willing to speak to me rather than let others speak for them. “What’s your name, man?”

  “Fred.”

  “What’s your last name, Fred?”

  “Moses.”

  “Nice. Okay, Fred, we have two rifles and a pistol, all semi-automatic,” I said.

  Edgar jumped back in all over that, the little twat. “Three guns between us and…how many did you say were in your group?”

  I sighed: “Seven.”

  “Seven?” he scoffed. “So three guns between fifteen people? That hardly sounds like enough.”