Commune: Book Two (Commune Series 2) Read online

  Fred Moses’s voice erupted from behind me in his characteristic rumble, “Now that is just the ugliest motherfucking thing that ever existed. Who the hell is responsible for this?”

  “I don’t remember his name anymore,” Wang said. “I had seen pictures when we studied this airport in college. I always told myself if I ever came this way I’d have to stop and get a picture of myself next to it.” His voice sounded almost reverent.

  “Well…why?” Fred asked. “I wish I could un-see the damned thing.”

  “Jesus wept!” said Jessica as she walked over to join us.

  “I mean, is it a joke or something?” Fred continued. “Did the artist get screwed by the city government and this is his revenge?”

  “Why would you go to the trouble to give it an asshole?” Jessica asked in dismay.

  “That’s not even the best part,” said Wang. His voice was shaking on the verge of laughter. “In the evening when it was dark? The eyes would glow bright red.”

  I erupted into laughter at that point. I couldn’t help myself; the whole thing was so preposterous. The blue color, hideous veins, genitalia, and inflamed asshole were insane but could be explained away with artistic eccentricity. Glowing red eyes was just an obvious troll. This horse was a giant middle finger extended right at Denver; there was nothing anyone could have said at that point to convince me otherwise. I laughed so hard that I started coughing uncontrollably; huge, wracking hacks that came from the center of my windpipe and burned like fire. I felt a shaking hand on my shoulder and realized that Fred was leaning on me, laughing as well. Wiping tears from my eyes, I looked up and saw that all of us were doubled over in various states of duress.

  We carried on for several minutes before we began to regain control of ourselves, the intense laughter giving way to roiling aftershocks. Through choking hiccups, Wang stopped laughing just long enough to gasp, “The locals used to call it ‘Blucifer’…”

  And just like that, we were off again. I ended up on my knees clutching my side, genuinely afraid that I was about to crack a rib.

  “You’re a fuckin’ asshole, Wang,” Fred said in a panicked voice a few moments later, still laughing. All of us were panting desperately.

  When I was capable, I stood up and said, “Very well, can we get the hell out of here now, please? Before Wang takes us around the side of the building to have a look at the Goatse exhibit?”

  Wang giggled at this but Jessica asked, “Goatse?”

  I rolled my eyes, wanting to kick myself for running my mouth. “Yeah, look, don’t ask me to explain it, okay? You don’t want to know anyway. I’ll just say that a bored Marine is a dangerous Marine and the advent of the internet only magnified the problem.”

  “I’m not following,” she said.

  “One of the ways a bored Marine will typically pass the time is to try to gross out his buddies and, well, you could find some pretty disturbing imagery on the Internet. Do you have any idea how depraved you have to get to gross out a Marine?”

  “Oh…” she replied.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “I’m not entirely convinced that the Internet going ‘poof’ was such a bad thing.” I slung my rifle over my shoulder and nodded at Wang. “Are you good now?”

  “Yeah, thanks,” he said, shaking out one last chuckle.

  I turned on my heel and walked back toward the bus, eager to put distance between myself and Blucifer.

  We had to wait a while longer for everyone to get back onto the bus (they were out either stretching legs or watering the sides of buildings). I sat up in the driver seat trying to keep from fidgeting while I waited. Once everyone was back in their seats, I started her back up again and drove down a street that emptied out directly on the tarmac. There was a guard shack with a security gate barring our access to the field so I parked the bus, retrieved the hooligan bar from the back (which had been part of the soldier’s gear from the day before), and stepped off to go to work on the gate. Fifteen minutes of grunting and cursing saw the gate opened with us on the other side.

  We had to drive across the two runways and park on a road on the opposing side. I saw a C130 sitting abandoned up by the northern end of the runway and made a mental note to check on it when we came back. Having parked the bus, I exited to have a look at the tent city spread out before us.

  The whole thing appeared to go on for several kilometers but it was hard for me to tell; after a certain distance I just lost all ability to estimate. It may have been five klicks across but that’s really only a wild-ass guess. In the distance it just looked like a sea of different sized white, brown, and olive squares laid out in a grid. The tents that were closest to us had clearly seen better days.

  Many of them were either knocked down or blown over; whatever had been inside of them had been strewn out all across the field. Whole patches of the encampment, some as large as a football field, were blackened from a fire that must have raged through the area. There was no rhyme or reason to the pattern – you’d see a cluster of tents that looked totally intact right next to a gutted area that had been charred to the ground.

  Concerning me the most was the lack of support vehicles. With an encampment of that size, I had expected to see a wide variety of trucks lined up throughout the field, from 7-tons all the way down to Growlers. There was none of that. I saw a couple of burnt out chassis in a few areas next to tents that had seen significant fire damage but outside of that, there was nothing. I stood there with my hands on my hips staring out at the wreckage, trying to figure out what came next.

  Straining my eyes, I looked closer at the garbage scattered between the tents and saw the occasional human body at odd intervals.

  I heard the old familiar thump-step approach from behind.

  “Do you think there’s anything left out there?” asked George. Other people from our group manifested in my peripheral vision to either side of me.

  “I don’t know,” I finally said, sighing. “It looks like a battle took place here.”

  “It makes sense, doesn’t it?” asked Rebecca. I glanced over at her and then had to look away to the field again; I had a serious weakness for Irish girls (well, being fair, I had a serious weakness for anything with a pulse and appropriate plumbing) but looking at Rebecca was dangerous. She’d make you forget what you were talking about; make you say stupid shit if you weren’t careful.

  Oblivious to (or perhaps used to) my reaction, she said, “Whoever was left alive in the city would have come here for food and supplies, the same way we did, right? There would have also been survivors in the tent city itself. Most of us came from a tent city, didn’t we?”

  “I did,” agreed Fred.

  “Us too,” said Monica Dempsey, her hand draped over her daughter’s shoulder.

  “Yeah, so survivors living here were trying to protect what they had from survivors coming in from the city. It probably got super brutal,” Rebecca concluded. I turned my head toward her again, getting a good look this time and not allowing myself to be distracted by her eyes, full lips, chest, or those big, fat, red curls coming out of her head in every direction (Jesus, that hair was something else, though). I had always thought of Rebecca Wheeler as your typical, selfie-addicted bundle of bad decisions. Outside of the fact that she was nice to look at, I had her categorized as just another person to look out for and keep fed; never really expecting much back from her on the return angle. Looking at her then, I could see some genuine street intelligence at work in those eyes. I took it as a data point to adjust my expectations for her. Not just another pretty face.

  “That actually makes all of the sense,” Wang agreed.

  “Okay, well, we’re out here now,” I said. “We might as well make the full effort and have a look. You all know what MREs look like, right?”

  I received several nods and verbal confirmations; everyone had become very familiar with the little brown bags over the last year.

  “Okay, keep your eyes open for other stuff as well; don’t get tunnel v
ision. If you do get lucky and find MREs, inspect the packaging. Don’t take anything that’s sweating or has been punctured. You don’t want to take in any food that’s been compromised. Also remember to keep your eyes open for water, ammunition, or anything else that looks useful.”

  I looked to my right and left to see who was out there with me, trying to decide who to send out and who to keep back by the bus. This quickly became a frustrating exercise, compounded by the fact that people were looking at me and beginning to fidget.

  The main problem was that I wanted to be in two places at once. I trusted Davidson with a rifle the most because I had spent the most time discussing fire team tactics with him in our down time (he ate that kind of thing up; always had another question to ask on the subject). That being said, this trust didn’t go terribly far. I wasn’t sure what Davidson actually had or hadn’t done in his life. I knew he had plenty of range time but the guy didn’t have any experience moving through a dynamic situation within a small team of people, not even to play paintball. As far as I was concerned, his ability with a rifle in relation to the rest of our group was comparable to a cat that had learned how to bury its shit in the litter box among siblings that just left their little care packages exposed on top of the sand to air out. I knew I could trust him not to flag anyone in a calm, relaxed situation because I had spent so much time chewing on his ass the first time I saw him do it; he had learned and corrected. I had no idea what I could expect if he was thrown into a firefight but I had a good idea – he needed training and practice, which required time we hadn’t yet discovered.

  Consequently, it should have been me pushing out into the field with everyone to keep a close watch on their asses. I’m not Rambo or anything, but I have actually been in firefights and know what to expect (honestly, they even got boring sometimes). Proximity and repetition are critical training tools. I would be able to keep my head screwed on, maintain good situational awareness, and not shoot my buddies.

  On the other hand, I needed someone back here on overwatch to keep an eye out while everyone was digging through the field with their heads in the garbage. Again, the only person I knew I could rely on to carry out this role was me. Marines qualify at five hundred yards (we were the only branch to do so) and I’ve personally made groupings good enough for center mass at a thousand yards out on the range with a friend’s American Predator. I’d been out of the Corps for twelve years by then but I kept my rifle skills current and even picked up a few tricks that they don’t teach you in the Marines. While I had never been a sniper (I was a rifleman before promoting to Staff Sergeant), I knew I could make the longer than average shots. As far as everyone else was concerned in that regard, I again had no freaking clue and no time to find out.

  So, how can I be in two places at once? The simple answer was: I can’t. Goddamn it.

  In the end, I decided that sending Davidson out into the field was the lesser of two evils.

  “Okay, Barbara, George, Kyle, and the kids stay here. Everyone else heads out among the tents to look for food, water, ammo, or medical supplies. Davidson, take the rifle; you’re not looking for anything on the ground. Keep your head on a swivel and watch everyone’s back.”

  “What are you going to be doing?” Edgar asked.

  I suppressed my annoyance at the question. I had already decided at that point that anything coming out of Edgar’s mouth was borne on the worst possible intentions. Because of this, I knew I had to pay extra attention to anything he said. I couldn’t allow a good idea to slip by because I didn’t like the source; doing so could mean someone’s life. I had to pay extra attention to Edgar, the prick, to keep from developing a blind spot.

  “I’m going to the bus roof to watch you guys from as much elevation as I can get.” I looked at everyone else and continued. “Everyone get a good look at that first DRASH tent out in front,” I said while pointing.

  “DRASH…?” Jessica asked from my right.

  “Sorry: Deployable Rapid Assembly Shelter. It’s the larger, longer tent down in front where I’m pointing.”

  “Okay, I get it,” Jessica said.

  “I make that a distance of about four hundred yards or at least close enough to four hundred that it doesn’t matter. Nobody pass that tent.”

  “Why not?” asked Fred. “Food might be just on the other side.”

  “Because it will severely impact my ability to shoot anything that jumps out at you.”

  “Oh,” Fred muttered. “Right on.”

  “Also,” I continued, “try not to put anything between you and me; try to maintain a line of sight back to this bus at all times. If you can see me, I can see you. That’s a good thing. Everyone clear?”

  I got several nods and comments in the affirmative. “Good, let’s get moving then. Davidson, come here.”

  Davidson had just stepped off the bus carrying the M4 (my M4, not the boomstick with the M203, thank God – I didn’t want to have that argument again). I put my head close into his and whispered: “You make goddamned sure you know where your muzzle is every fucking second, do you get me? If you fuck up and shoot any of our people you will not be forgiven. Clear?”

  The color drained from his face and he nodded. “Yeah, man. Crystal.” He was taking it seriously. That was the best I could hope for.

  I nodded and slapped him on the shoulder. “Get out there, then. Protect your people.”

  Kyle was waiting to piss in my ear as soon as Davidson was off with the others.

  “I’m not a kid, dude. I could be going out there with the others.”

  “Negative,” I said, walking past him to the bus. “I need you up top so you can spot for me.” I retrieved my MR556, a couple of spare mags, some binoculars, and stepped back off to see him standing outside waiting for me.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “Come on, follow me.”

  I walked up to the nose of the bus, which stuck out from the cab like you see on a Peterbilt truck. There were two side view mirrors on each side of the bus for a total of four; one was bolted high up on the roof above the accordion door and the other was supported by a frame attached to the front of the fender over the headlight. I grabbed the frame of the mirror over the headlight with my right hand and with my left I grabbed the strap that was holding down the engine cowling. From this position, I put my foot on top of the front tire and boosted myself up to stand on the bus’s hood. After that, it was easy to climb up onto the roof. I turned back to regard Kyle, who was still on the ground looking up at me.

  “You coming?” I asked. I turned back to put eyes on our people moving out among the rubble. From below, I heard Kyle say, “Hey, you guys just hang out in the bus, okay?” He was talking to the children; Maria and Rose. That was good. The kids weren’t just someone else’s problem as far as he was concerned.

  I could feel the bus rock minutely under my feet as Kyle grunted and heaved himself up to the roof. He came over to stand by me and look out at the field.

  “Do you think they’ll find anything out there?” he asked.

  I sighed. “I don’t know. Whatever hasn’t been burned out looks pretty mangled. I can’t see a field kitchen in there anywhere but those might just have been positioned in the camp so far back that I can’t see them from here. The big thing is that I don’t see a lot of vehicles. It’s like whatever military were here packed up and left at some point.”

  “Or, you know, they died like the rest of us and other people came through to take the trucks, right?” Kyle suggested.

  “Yeah. There’s that, too.”

  I handed him the binoculars. “I want you to keep an eye out while I’m busy watching everyone down there,” I said. “Don’t keep the binos glued to your face. Just keep on a constant swivel while looking back behind us to make sure that we’re not being crept up on. If you see movement, use the binoculars to confirm.”

  He did as instructed but also griped, “I can handle a rifle, dude. Serious.”

  “Kyle…what you’
re last name?”

  “Montgomery.”

  “Montgomery…okay, Gomer it is. How old are you?”

  “Eighteen. And what do you mean ‘Gomer’?”

  “Guys on the fire team gotta have a nickname,” I said. “I have determined that yours shall be Gomer.”

  “Awe, dude, fuck no. Can’t you call me something else? Like, I don’t know, ‘Ace’ or something?”

  “Nope, you don’t get to pick your own nickname. If it worked that way, everyone would walk around calling themselves stupid shit like ‘Terminator’ or ‘Predator’. No one could take anybody seriously. It would be total chaos.”

  “Yeah, but Gomer? Bullshit, man.”

  I glanced at him and smiled. “You know what my nickname was in Boot Camp? Mr. Brown.”

  “Oh, well see? That’s a cool name-“

  “No, just hang on. They called me Mr. Brown because I have a bit of a sensitive stomach and it took me a long time to get used to military chow. It wasn’t until I was approaching graduation day that I really started getting used to it. But before you get close to graduation, you have to get through The Crucible.”

  “Oh, dude. ‘Mr. Brown’? Is this going to turn into a story where you shit yourself?”

  “No, no. Almost, but no. But I was farting the whole time like a sick rhino.” Kyle started laughing, which made me smile. “I couldn’t help myself. It was like clockwork. Me and my buddies were out there, caked in mud and soaked through to the bone, going through the most demanding physical trial that we had yet experienced, and I was farting loud enough that guys were hearing it three columns over. And the smell was fucking putrid. One of the DI’s came as close as I ever saw to breaking character to comment on it.”

  “Holy crap, man,” Kyle laughed.

  “I ended up being one of the guys to get a nickname change halfway through boot camp. I’d started out as ‘Chimp’.”

  “Chimp? You mean chimpanzee? What the hell for?”

  “My last name is Gibson. ‘Gibbon’, ‘monkey’…Chimp.”