Commune: Book Two (Commune Series 2) Page 7

“That’s…that’s not even funny,” Kyle said. “Like, you have to think too hard to get it.”

  “Yes, it is in fact like going around your elbow to get to your ass,” I agreed. “But that was just like a place holder nickname…you’re keeping your eyes open, right? Scanning the area and such?”

  “Oh, yeah, man. No sweat.”

  “Good. So we had this one Drill Instructor in my platoon; Sergeant McGill, our kill hat. He was amazing. He rarely if ever referred to any of the recruits by their names. By the first day, he no-shit had a nickname assigned to every one of us and never forgot a single one, no matter how much we tried to float under the radar or how much we pissed him off.”

  “How many people were in your group-thing, or whatever?” he asked.

  “Platoon. Fifty-four of us graduated; a couple washed out.”

  “Damn,” Kyle muttered, impressed.

  “I know. He had a gift. But in a lot of cases, those nicknames were just placeholders. They were there until we did something sufficiently stupid to get rebranded. There was one dude, Simmons, who made the mistake of asking another of the DI’s to make an ‘emergency head call’ during our morning PT.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Well, you can,” I said. “The Drill Instructors don’t want recruits pissing themselves any more than the recruits want to piss themselves. But you never call it an ‘emergency head call’. The very microsecond the words left his mouth, he had three very large, very loud DI’s running circles around him screaming ‘Emergency! We have an emergency!’ and forced him to make siren noises. One of them followed poor Simmons all the way to the head making siren noises and screaming ‘Emergency!’ as loud as he could, which is goddamned loud. From that day forward, Simmons was known as Potty Break.”

  Kyle began to laugh. Loud, honking explosions erupted from his throat; the kind of laugh a sick teenager makes after one of his buddies nuts himself on a skateboard. It surprised the hell out of me and I almost considered changing his nickname on the spot.

  We fell into silence for a little while. He scanned the area behind us and, to his credit, never expressed boredom in the activity. He seemed to grasp that the job was important if not glamorous. I appreciated that in a teenager. I would have been complaining nonstop at his age.

  I looked out over the field and watched our people pick among the remains of the tent city. They made slow going but covered a broad area. Every so often I’d see one of them stop and bend over to examine something closer; sometimes they would pick something up and take it with them. It was a hopeful sign but not enough of them were holding parcels in their arms and, even if all of them were carrying something, we needed more supplies than each person could carry in their hands. I decided we were going to have to push into the city and started planning; who was coming with me and who would stay behind to guard.

  “So you mentioned that you used to go shooting with your dad,” I prompted.

  “Yeah,” he said, sounding serious again. I never learned the circumstances of his separation from his family. “We’d go target shooting out at the range and stuff. We went deer hunting a couple of times too.”

  “Nice,” I said to myself. “What did he teach you about shooting?”

  “Mostly safety stuff. I mean, he showed me how to line up the sights and all; he never even let me have a scope until our first deer hunt. He said he wanted me to be comfortable on iron sights first. It used to piss me off at the time but I think now that he was right. It made me a better shooter. Never got to tell him that…that he was right.”

  I kept my mouth shut, not wanting to interrupt. I suspected he’d speak again when he was ready and it turned out I was correct.

  He cleared his throat and said: “The only ‘lesson’ I really remember, if you want to call it that, was what he told me before he’d even let me hold his rifle…it was a Marlin. He said ‘The only safe gun is a gun that isn’t pointed at anyone’. Man, I remember this just about as well as I remember anything. I asked him about safety switches, and all that, and said ‘Don’t those make the gun safe?’.”

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “He said that any safety mechanism that could be disengaged isn’t foolproof, so they can’t be relied on. He told me that I needed to be the safety instead of some little switch.”

  I raised my eyebrows at that. I liked the sound of Kyle’s dad. He had made it clear to his son that he needed to own responsibility for his weapon at all times. I could get behind that.

  “How long and how often did you guys go shooting, Kyle?”

  “He started taking me out when I was eight. We went out to the range all the time unless it was raining. He’d only started taking me hunting just before…you know. We only went out hunting a couple of times.”

  I nodded. I was starting to feel pretty good about this kid so I made a decision on the spot.

  “We’re not finding what we need here,” I said. From my right side, Kyle turned and looked back out at the people in the field.

  “No luck, huh Mr. Brown?”

  “Nope. We’re gonna pack it up here pretty soon and move closer to the city; set up a staging area. I’m going to head out into the city looking for more stuff. We’re good on fuel for now but food and water are a big problem. I want you to come with me. I’ll give you the rifle to carry.”

  “Oh, sweet! Can I get the grenade belt too?”

  “No, you can’t get the…what is it with everyone? I’m not handing you guys a grenade launcher. It’s too dangerous if you fuck it up. I’m giving you my M4.”

  “Oh. Well, okay, I guess.”

  “’Okay, I guess’. Well, I’m so very grateful to have your consideration, good sir.”

  “No, it’s cool, man,” Kyle said. “I get it. You can count on me, Gibs. I won’t fuck this up.”

  There was real sincerity in his voice and it put me at ease.

  “Your father taught you one of the major laws of firearm safety: muzzle awareness. Never put the muzzle on anything you’re not ready to kill.”

  “Right on. What’re the other laws?”

  I held up my hand to start counting off fingers: “The gun is always loaded (therefore always clear any gun you pick up); muzzle awareness, as I already said; know what’s behind your target; and trigger discipline.”

  “Trigger discipline?” he repeated.

  “Trigger discipline,” I answered. “There’s no reason for you to have your finger on the trigger until it’s time to shoot. You just lay your finger along the receiver, otherwise.”

  “Oh, okay. Got it. Always loaded, muzzle awareness, know what’s behind the target, and trigger discipline,” Kyle repeated to himself quietly.

  He was a good kid.

  5 – Pushing Out

  Gibs

  The excursion out into the field wasn’t a total waste of time but it also wasn’t the major payday I was hoping for. A few people who had been out looking managed to find the odd MRE and Jessica even found a filled water bladder insert from a camelback but, by and large, what they encountered most was either trampled, burned, ripped open, or compromised in some way. As we spent more time on the site, I became convinced that whatever military presence that had been here had actively packed up to leave; either to consolidate forces elsewhere, travel to some agreed upon rally point, or just displace to a more defensible position. Whatever had actually happened, it was obvious they had combed through the area and packed up every useful item they could find.

  The C130 was likewise a bust. I didn’t have a great deal of hope as we approached so I just put the bus in park and left it running. The airplane’s cargo door was down (another bad sign), so I just ran up the platform, made a quick circuit around the interior, and poked my head into the flight deck. As suspected, the only thing the cavernous plane had to offer was a lot of empty space.

  One of our ladies (I can’t remember if it was Rebecca or Barbara anymore) asked if it made sense to try and get some fuel out of the aircraft
. I thought about that suggestion a moment and realized that, yeah, that was a damned good point. Those old turboprop engines basically just ran on kerosene, which would burn fine in that bus’s diesel engine. I ran over to the plane and started slapping all the fuel tanks, which were suspended under the wings, but they sadly all rang empty. Whoever it was that had lit out of there, it seemed as though they’d pulled everything off that plane but the skin.

  We got back on the 470 and continued North around the perimeter of Denver, our plan being to take Washington Street due south, then push down into the city from the top. The idea was that we would penetrate in as far as we could without having to shove a bunch of cars out of the way and, when we could go no further, a small team would continue on foot towards the heart of the city.

  The primary goal of this team was reconnaissance; confirm the existence or lack of other survivors, identify likely scavenging targets, and report back within a set timeframe (in this case we decided two hours was reasonable). On the chance that the team found something really good (defined here as a cache of provisions in one spot capable of sustaining the whole group for a substantial period), the search was to be called off and they were to RTB (return to base) immediately.

  Well, we were able to hold to this plan until we got to Washington Street before we had to abandon the whole damned thing. On our map, Washington just looked like any other street. Sure, it ran from the outskirts all the way into the heart of Denver, but I had kind of hoped that it would be a little open given how close it was to the 25 freeway; I figured people would have just skipped it altogether. Fat chance. Washington was a nice, thick artery running through the city with a total of four lanes and a wide, open median running down the center. Up by the 470, it was completely snarled with vehicles packed in bumper to bumper. We ended up driving around like a bunch of tourists before finding a way in through Quebec Street, and only then because we were able to come in on the soft shoulder. So from there we were able to reach Riverdale, which got us to 104th, which got us back to Washington Street, only now it was deep enough into the city that we were past the pileup and could travel on the street. Once we were back on track, I resisted the urge to look at the fuel gauge, preferring to remain ignorant about how much diesel we had spent wandering around like a bunch of dickheads.

  We pushed far enough south that the residential area gave way to actual city (or, at least what passes for city in Denver – a lot of it was wide open, it must have been a very lovely town at some point), which was what I was looking for. I didn’t know how likely we were to find food or water within a place of business like a store but I was banking on the hope that there were going to be outposts and distribution points in the heart of the city, setup either by FEMA or the military. I knew there was a better than average chance of these being picked over (anyone living in the city would have known exactly where they were) but it was a start. If we came up dry, we could just go back the way we came and take our time going house to house. This final option was a matter of last resort for me; I was still hoping we could hit it big somewhere.

  When I decided we had gone far enough, I pulled over and executed something like an eight-point turn to get that goddamned bus reversed in the other direction (I wanted it going back the way we came mostly because I didn’t want to hassle with it later). I parked it, opened the door, shut off the engine, and walked down the aisle to have a chat with the group.

  “I’d like to accomplish a few different things at once with this,” I said. “Yeah, we need to get food but I also need to get you guys familiar with moving in teams, comfortable with carrying weapons, and everything that entails. The only way to do that is practice and there’s no time like the present. We have three rifles and two pistols. I’m leaving a rifle and two pistols here at the bus; I’ll take two rifles and Kyle out with me.”

  I saw Kyle straighten up at this; Jessica also perked up. She waved at me and said, “I’d like to come too, if that’s okay. We’ll get up to speed a lot faster if you take two people out at a time…and also, I really don’t want to just sit around on this bus.”

  As I considered this, more people started offering opinions. Suddenly everyone had a reason why they should be coming along as well and, before I knew it, we were looking a lot more like a squad than a team. I had to get control of this quickly.

  “Alright, alright, knock it off. We’re not all going at once. I’m sorry; I know sitting around on the bus sucks but this is how it’s gonna go until we have a better handle on the area. Jessica, you have a point. Since you were the first person to speak up, grab the Sig; you’ll come with us.

  Edgar chose this time to weigh in, of course. “You know, I’m sure we all appreciate your experience as a Soldier,” I inwardly cringed when he said this but didn’t bother to correct him; Marines and Army Soldiers like to have their little pissing contests from time to time but, truth be told, I was actually very positive on the Army…besides, the only people who actually care about the difference between Marines and Soldiers are Marines and Soldiers, “but I don’t ever recall voting to put you in charge-“

  “That’s because you didn’t vote. I just am.”

  That shut him up.

  “Let’s be perfectly clear, guys. The arrangement here is thus: I’ve voluntarily agreed to be responsible for this group’s well-being. This is nothing new to me; it was my job for twelve years as a United States Marine.” I restrained myself from emphasizing the word “Marine” for Edgar’s benefit – one must not be petty. “It may be a little more personal now; back then I was serving for a more abstract concept like Country whereas now I can see all the faces of the people I’m working for but the concept is the same. The conditions of my service, now, are that I’m in charge. You all follow my lead; otherwise I can’t do my job and keep you safe. And frankly, if I’m unable to do this properly, I’m not going to kill myself trying to half-ass the job.”

  I let the unspoken threat hang in the air. I was absolutely serious, too. I wasn’t about to hang around with a group of people if they were going to start engaging in a bunch of fuckery likely to get people killed.

  “So,” I concluded, “does anyone now care to hold a vote?”

  No one spoke. I saw a few heads shake back and forth, some people had downcast eyes. It made me feel like a shitbag but I still believe it was critical to get it out in the open. Clarity for the group was more important than my pangs of guilt over stomping puppy dog feelings. I locked eyes with Edgar, waiting to see what he would do. He breathed in, exhaled, and looked out his window.

  “Outstanding,” I said. “Davidson, you take the rifle we found at the Humvee.” Davidson lit up like a Christmas tree, no doubt thinking about the grenade launcher. I thought about taking the grenade belt along with me; the look on his face made me question whether I could trust him with ammo for the damned thing.

  “Kyle, you’ll take my M4, and Jessica gets the pistol. Oscar, hang on to that Beretta.” I gestured to Kyle and Jessica, motioning them to the back of the bus. I followed them back and opened up the bag of provisions. I pulled out an MRE (Mac ‘N’ Cheese, I noted, the lucky bastards) and handed it up to Kyle with a bottle of water. “You guys get this heated up and divide it in half. I’m going to get everyone else fed and then I’ll be right with you.”

  I took the duffel back up the aisle to the center of the bus and addressed the group. “Let’s get some chow, people. One MRE for every two people; pair off and select your poison from the bag. If you run out of MREs, switch to canned foods and other items. I don’t know if it will come to that because I haven’t counted these out but there are definitely less MREs than there are people. When it comes to the other, non-military food, make sure you get at least six hundred calories but take in no more than seven hundred. We need to ration this out until we get a resupply.”

  I grabbed a can of ravioli from the bag and took it back with me to the rear of the bus. Kyle and Jessica had their ration pack underway; it was on the floor of the b
us leaning against a seat strut. I used my pocket knife to saw through the lid of my can, making the jankiest, most jagged opening in history and not caring. Thinking about how I was going to eat my food, something suddenly occurred to me. I pulled out a pack of wet wipes from our supplies and pulled out several sheets to share between Kyle, Jessica, and myself. “Wash your hands,” I said.

  I called out to the rest of the group towards the middle of the bus: “Hey! Everyone wash your hands! You do not want to get ass-“ I cut myself off as I noted the women and children looking back at me. “That is…you don’t want to make yourselves sick.” I threw the wet wipe pack forward, where it was caught by Wang.

  I spent the next fifteen minutes going over the operation and safety procedures of the M4 carbine and Sig Sauer P320 with my new team. I’m happy to report they never once rolled their eyes or fidgeted during the safety brief.

  Within a half hour everyone was fed and the three of us were ready to hop off our ride to take a walk into town. As I was lifting my rifle to sling over my shoulder, African Carry style with the barrel down, Jessica said, “Shouldn’t you be putting on that equipment that we took from the dead soldier?”

  “Negative,” I said. “There isn’t enough armor to go around. I’m not about to see to my own protection if the other guys in my team are going out naked. In fact, here Kyle, you’re the baby. You wear it.”

  I smiled at his grimace when I said “baby”; I began to dig through our gear to find the rig. From behind me, I heard Wang speak: “Hey, don’t take this wrong, Gibs, but that’s pretty dumb.”

  I straightened up to look back at him. “Excuse me?” I asked. I wasn’t pissed off at him; just a little surprised.

  Instead of answering me, he addressed the rest of the bus. “How many people on this bus have served in the military?”

  George Oliver, Mr. Thump-Step himself, raised his hand. That surprised me. I hadn’t known that about him. Either way, the guy looked older than the Pyramids and walked around on a cane; he probably served in World War One or something. Maybe I was being too optimistic. Spanish American War, probably.