Commune: Book Two (Commune Series 2) Page 5

  “Negative,” I said. “Aiming and firing an M203 is not a straightforward operation. At best, you’ll waste rounds. At worst, you’ll fuck it up and kill a buddy.”

  “Awe, shit, come on, man…”

  “No, Tom. I’m serious on this. When we get somewhere a little more permanent I’ll square you away on this thing myself but not before then.”

  “Crap,” he said. “Okay, I can live with that.”

  I set the rifle down on the pavement and leaned it against the rear wheel. “I’ll be back with you in a second,” I said to the rifle, and walked around to the rear to pop the aft storage compartment hatch. I was rewarded with the sight of a couple of ammo crates, water, a case of MREs, and a ruck. “Fucking jackpot,” I said.

  I looked over to Oscar, “How’s that going over there?”

  “This can is almost full but there’s more in the tank.”

  “Outstanding. Transfer that to the bus and keep going. I’ll start getting this equipment moved.”

  “Okay,” he said and then started to giggle. “I’ll just put that donkey dick back on.”

  “Okay, man,” I said, “now you’re just being childish.”

  He laughed harder as he lugged the can back towards the bus. I climbed onto the bus myself and called back to the people inside. “We’ve hit a little bonanza, guys. I need volunteers to offload this gear.” Several people came up out of their seats but I didn’t need everyone at once. I saw two people from Wang’s group stand up first (a younger female and very young male) so I pointed at them, thanking everyone else and advising them to relax.

  They both followed me off the bus and out to the Humvee. “Thanks, you guys,” I said. “What are your names?”

  “Jessica,” said the woman. She appeared to be in her early thirties with dark brown hair, striking green eyes, and a few mismatched tattoos on each arm.

  “I’m Kyle,” said the teenage kid. He was blonde, good looking with fair skin, and appeared to be barely capable of shaving.

  “Jessica and Kyle, outstanding,” I said. “Here’s what we need: I want you two to get everything on that Humvee that isn’t dead soldier or secured equipment and move it onto the bus. Throw it all back in the rear. Don’t think about what you’re grabbing or what it is; we’ll inventory later on the road.” They both nodded and began to move.

  “Hang on…” I said, causing them to look back. “If you see any firearms, leave those and let me handle them.”

  Jessica nodded and moved to carry out her task but Kyle griped. “I’m okay; I used to go shooting all the time with my dad.”

  “That’s good but just humor me for now, okay? When I have things the way I want, most of us will be going armed but just bear with me for now. Just let the old fart have his safety brief, rah?” Rah. Old habits were easy to fall back into, it seemed.

  “Yeah, okay. You got it, Gibs.” He turned and started gathering up an armload from the aft compartment. Good kid.

  I went back around to retrieve the grenadier’s rifle (which I was beginning even then to think of as the Boomstick) and slung it over my shoulder. I then opened the driver’s side door to inspect the dead soldier’s fighting load carrier (what we typically called a “chest rig” or just a “rig”). Among several pouches stuffed full of thirty-round PMAGs and a twelve slot grenade belt loaded with 40mm grenades was the man’s sidearm, a Sig Sauer P320 with a stack of 9mm magazines. Laying the grenade belt aside, I tapped the front and rear carriers of the rig, confirming that they were loaded with intact ballistic plates. Finally, I confirmed that the standard compliment of utility gear was present, including a blowout kit, personal flex cuff restraints, some grenades (smoke as well as flashbang), and so on. I threw the grenade belt across my shoulder and lifted the whole chest rig out of the seat, remembering how goddamned heavy the things were (I hadn’t needed to deal with one in years).

  I travelled back to the bus encumbered with all of this gear, not really thinking about how I must have looked until I stepped up into the driving cab and heard various whistles and comments from the passenger area. I looked up to see several shocked faces staring at me.

  An African American woman towards the front (I learned later her name is Monica) said, “How many soldiers were in that truck, anyway?”

  “There was only the one,” I answered. “You think this is bad? I haven’t even grabbed his assault ruck yet. You’d be amazed how much junk a grunt has to hump around.” I walked past her down to the rear and unloaded. Turning back to the others, I said, “Hands off the firearms unless I’ve instructed you personally in their use, is that understood?”

  A few people voiced their agreement but mostly I just saw a bunch of nodding heads. I wasn’t worried about most of them; in my experience the average civilian tended to fear modern firearms, avoiding them wherever possible. For the ones that did concern me, I had just issued a directive – there wasn’t much more that I could do without carrying all weapons on me at all times. Unlikely, that. I was just going to have to trust these people to police themselves.

  I ran into Kyle entering the bus just as I was stepping off the platform. He was carrying a couple of flat-earth colored fuel cans that looked heavy. “Oh, fantastic, man!” I said. “You just stick those bad boys in the rear with the gear and crack some windows. They’re supposed to be airtight but you never can tell.”

  When I stepped outside I saw Oscar with a now empty can. “Was there more gas in the Humvee?” I asked.

  “I think so. I’m gonna try to get more.”

  “Good,” I nodded. “Keep taking as much as it has to offer. If and when the bus tank overflows, we’ll top the can off as much as possible from whatever’s left in the Humvee and consider the goat completely fucked.”

  “Donkey dicks and goat fucking. You got some serious farm issues, eh?” Oscar laughed.

  “Don’t knock it ‘till you try it, homes,” I said, pronouncing the word “homes” with perhaps the single worst imitation of a Hispanic accent to have ever been perpetrated in the state of Colorado. Oscar continued to giggle as he carried on about his business. I returned to the rear compartment of the Humvee where I found Jessica hauling on the aforementioned assault rucksack (I assumed it was the property of the deceased Adams).

  “Have you got that or can I help?” I asked.

  “I got it,” she said in a strained voice. The tattooed muscles in her arms quivered under the strain. “I think the stupid thing is just hung up on something.”

  I shifted around her and hung my head over the side of the compartment and saw where one of the MOLLE loops of the ruck had hung up on a bolt head on the internal frame. “I see what it is,” I said. “Stop yanking a minute and I’ll fix it.”

  I saw the ruck go slack and reached my hand in to free the loop. “Okay, try now.”

  The assault ruck (really just GI Joe’s version of a backpack) came out easily and Jessica sighed. “Thank fuck, that thing didn’t want to let go.”

  I raised my eyebrows at this but said nothing. She caught my look and said, “Oh, what? You guys can talk about donkeys fucking goats but I drop one F-bomb and you get your panties in a bunch?”

  This surprised a sharp laugh out of me (I hadn’t realized she overheard us). “Jessica,” I said, “you and I are gonna get along just fine.”

  4 – The Horse

  Gibs

  We burned off the rest of our daylight in the process of pillaging the Humvee and, given that the distance from Colorado Springs to Denver was about seventy miles as the crow flies, we decided to end the day on the northern outskirts of the city just off the side of the 25. We finished off the meager provisions that had been added to our stores by Wang’s group, which were nowhere near enough to satisfy everyone; we dipped into the canned goods that my group had been hauling along and further supplemented the meal by dividing the Humvee MREs in half and handing them out to two people at a time. When everyone was finished eating, I went to the rear of the bus to go over what food and wate
r we had left. With a crew of fifteen people, we had just enough food for everyone to get about one more twelve-hundred calorie meal, which we could stretch out over two days by cutting everyone down to one-meal-per-day half rations.

  I shook my head in disbelief. These people were going to be harder to feed than a house full of teenage boys. We would have to get settled somewhere very soon, dig in, and start socking away some serious provisions or we were all going to end up being a bunch of Starvin’ Marvins. I heard the alternating step-thump of George Oliver’s feet and cane as he moved down the aisles toward me. I zipped up the large duffel bag that carried all of our food, stood, and turned to face him.

  “It must be bad,” he said, “if you’re actively trying to hide it before I get here.”

  Damn it.

  I leaned close into him, glancing over his shoulder to see if we were being watched by others. It looked like we weren’t, so I lowered my voice and said, “We’re not in deep shit yet but we will be tomorrow. We need to get some more of everything and look at setting up some sort of camp somewhere.”

  “Well why not here,” he whispered back. “There appears to be plenty around.”

  “Naw, the original plan was Denver. It was a good plan. There’s some stuff around here, sure, but a lot of it is picked over and the surrounding area is primarily homes. Whatever we do find here is going to be small little caches; it’ll take all day gathering just to keep everyone from starving.”

  I could see his leg was bothering him so I motioned for him to sit down and joined him in the opposite seat across the aisle. Once he was settled, I continued, “If we stay here, we’re going to get into a daily pattern of just barely outrunning starvation and it’ll happen sooner rather than later. Not only that, but whatever we do find will have a short shelf life. We need to get another jackpot like we had today, only with food this time. We know there is…or was…a tent city up by Denver. That means military supply pallets. There will be MREs. Sure, they taste like cafeteria food but that’s cafeteria food that’ll last for seven years.”

  “That’s assuming we find what we’re looking for,” he said.

  “Yeah, I know, there’s a lot of ‘if’ involved,” I told him. “But even if we don’t find MREs or other goodies up there, we’ll be in the same boat there as we are here; only Denver is just a touch bigger. It’s just another seventy miles or so. I think it’s worth a try.”

  He nodded and leaned back against the window in his bench seat. “Okay, Gibs. Denver, then.”

  I didn’t tell him the other half of my reasons. Driving to Denver gave everyone a goal – gave them that next task on the list that they had to look forward to. It gave them some green grass on the other side of the fence to stretch their necks out for. Morale was very much on my mind back then, specifically the ways in which it could be preserved. Everyone was working well together so far but all it was going to take was a slight shortage of food and a few setbacks before they all started eating each other alive. It was bad enough when I only had a crew of six people to worry about along with myself. Now with fifteen, I had to worry about getting up to speed on the personalities of Wang’s group and how they would work alongside mine, not to mention managing Edgar’s bouts of self-important assholery. Keeping a carrot dangled out on a stick for them to chase after was my main secret weapon; the trick was making sure none of them noticed. This would be a problem in the long run – plenty of them were probably smarter than me (George was for sure and I suspected Wang was, too). They’d be calling me on my bullshit soon enough.

  Getting a permanent establishment with reliable food and water was critical.

  The Denver tent city had not been what I’d hoped for.

  The best information we had on its location had it positioned right next to the airport out in the surrounding fields. None of us actually had any clue where the airport was located, so the first thing we did on arrival was pull over to a gas station to burn an hour sifting through a riot of garbage until we found a local map. Davidson eventually got lucky and we brought his find back to the bus to get out of the smell of the market area (the food had stopped being offensively ripe long ago but a general odor of corruption still hung about the place; it made me want to limit my breathing to my nose and take an alcohol bath).

  Looking over the map, we learned that the 470 essentially made a giant, sloppy loop around the entire city; we could take that road due east to the 70, hang a right, and be by the airport in no time. This had the additional benefit of keeping us on the outskirts of the city. After the shit show we had been through in getting the bus out of Colorado Springs the day before, none of us were in a hurry to drive into the heart of Denver.

  As the airport came into view, I suffered a moment of confusion, thinking I was actually looking at the tent city. The main “building” looked like an enormous row of white circus tents with tall, sharp peaks stabbing up into the sky – more than I could count at a glance. I’m serious; there must have been something like thirty or forty individual spires. They were arranged in a long row and were dwarfed on one side by a gigantic, glass building that reminded me of a shiny “W”. Once I came to my senses and saw the parking lots surrounding the area I figured out that I was looking at the main terminal of the airport. Having been a Marine, I’ve done some travelling in my life but I’d never had occasion to come to Colorado in all that time and I’d never seen anything like this airport.

  I felt a presence over my shoulder and looked to see who it was. Wang stood next to me, holding onto my seat back for balance with his eyes locked on the airport. I made the mistake of asking him what was up – he must have spent the next fifteen minutes pissing in my ear about the history of the airport’s design. He just went on and on about the original designer of the place (I’ll be goddamned if I can remember the guy’s name now) and how he had this whole artistic vision of a profile that was suggestive of the snowy tops of the Rockies while paying homage to the teepees of the Native American Indians, blah, blah, blah. He really went on forever; I tried to get a word in to calm him the hell down but he transitioned from discussing the artistic aspects of the joint straight into the internal structural design without even taking a breath. I guess the inside of the building was based on some sort of bridge design or something, which didn’t make any sense to me at all. Why would you base an airport on a bridge? Just base it on a goddamned airport.

  I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the whole mess looked like a big-ass circus tent to me.

  As we got closer we realized that what had been the actual emergency tent city that the Army set up was on the outskirts past the southeast runway. It made sense to me from a logistical standpoint; that airport would have been a major supply hub for the forces encamped in Denver and they would have used it for emergency supplies as well. The place was well positioned in the middle of a wide-open flat area where it would have been relatively easy for our pilots to take off and land using Visual Flight Rules (VFR), which was a necessity back then due to the loss of GPS and ground-based radio beacons. Placing the tent city right next to the runway would have effectively turned resupply into a simple unloading op. Smart dogfaces.

  We rolled slowly by the main terminal roads, taking the smaller streets in an ever more zig-zagging pattern towards the east runway (which appeared to have also serviced all of the shipping aircraft back in the airport’s heyday; I saw some FedEx aircraft still parked out by the smaller hangars). As we approached the turn off that would lead us to the runway security gate, Wang leaned in and said, “Can we stop here for a minute?”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “I have to see the horse at least once.”

  “The…horse?”

  “Yeah,” Wang nodded. “Come on with me and I’ll show you.”

  “Well, okay, I guess.” I put the bus in park, not bothering to pull over to the side of the road, opened the door, and separated the power wires like Oscar had shown me to kill the engine. I looked ba
ck down the length of the vehicle to see some very curious faces. “Uh, rest break, guys. Take a minute to refresh yourselves – maybe smoke if you got ‘em.”

  Wang bounded off the bus like he was hurrying to be first in line at the ice cream parlor. I slung my rifle and followed.

  We didn’t have to walk very far to get to “the horse”. Now, I call this thing “the horse” but that really doesn’t do it justice. A more accurate description would be “Giant Soul Devouring Hell Demon”. First of all, it was huge - it had to stand thirty feet at its highest point. Second, the goddamned thing was blue. It was a giant, Smurf-blue horse rearing up on its hind legs like it was setting up to kill something.

  I’m really not getting my point across. I mean, this thing was obscene. The mane stood up from the neck like a punk Mohawk and its whole stomach was crisscrossed in a web of dark blue (almost black) veins. The veins across the stomach and the stylized, elongated body reminded me of a big blue dick; yet for those people with a less active imagination, the artist had chosen to include an actual dick complete with a set of dark blue balls just hanging out in front of God and everybody. The damned thing looked like a cock slapped on top of a cock.

  The kicker to this whole mess was around the back end. This was something you wouldn’t see at all unless you walked up to the thing and really got in there among the sheer animal glory of this monstrosity. In the back, the tail was lifted well up and out of the way to expose an intricately (nay lovingly) sculpted anus pushed out to the point of near prolapse in expression of the animal’s fury. More dark veins originated from the base of the creature’s scrotum to wrap out symmetrically around the bottom of the ass cheeks; a vascular cradle for the inflamed shit pipe.

  This horse made The Elephant Man look like Angelina Jolie.

  “Wang,” I said, unable to tear my eyes away, “what in the hell did you bring me out to see?”