Commune: Book Two (Commune Series 2) Page 9

  “No shit,” I agreed. “Who the hell else am I going to flirt with? Davidson’s not my type. Too much ass hair for my taste.”

  Jessica laughed and, to my surprise, snorted. This shocked her as well as me, which caused her to laugh harder. When she calmed down a bit, she said, “What about that red head? She didn’t look so bad. I’ve been into dudes for as long as I can remember but she’s enough to make me second guess my position.”

  “Sure, sure, she’s a looker. There’s no denying that,” I agreed. “But as I’ve gotten a little older, I’ve found that youth and a perfect rack becomes a secondary concern.”

  “Oh, yeah? What’s the primary concern.”

  “Backbone,” I said without hesitating.

  She was quiet for a while before she responded. “You’d come with me because of my backbone?”

  “Well…among other things,” I said, taking my turn to smile out of the corner of my mouth.

  She aimed a devious smile in my direction, causing my heart to shift up a couple of gears. I hadn’t flirted this successfully with a woman in I couldn’t remember how long (well, one that I wasn’t passing a couple of dollars to, anyway).

  We had plunged fairly deep into Denver within an hour’s time, often veering away from Washington but never getting more than a block away. Washington eventually passed under the 70 freeway and became 38th Street, which quickly passed under a railway overpass and dumped out onto a busy little intersection. The hour itself hadn’t been consumed entirely by walking; a good portion of our time was spent in breaking into and casing buildings which looked like good candidates to contain food or water. In several instances we found some good prospects in the form of vending machines, as I had mentioned earlier. We noted their locations and continued on, still holding out hope for that big score. The vending machine food was a good find; much of the food they contained would keep for months if not longer but I didn’t want to bank our hopes on it. Most of that garbage is of low nutritional value. It’s the crap that people eat when they’re bored and not when they’re hungry. Even if we managed to bring back several pounds of the stuff (Funyuns, crackers, cookies, and trail mix), the group would burn through it like fire through dried brush in an attempt to stay nourished. The Coke machines were a much better find in this regard – water is water regardless of the source, despite what any new age health guru may tell you. It just needs to be uncontaminated and you can live on it.

  We stood at the intersection looking down Walnut to our right and Marion just ahead of us. Walnut appeared to lead towards a business district with larger buildings of various shape, size, and intent, whereas Marion went into a residential area with single family homes.

  Not wanting to dictate every little thing, I said, “Well, people, what do you think? Businesses one way or homes the other?”

  They both looked in either direction. Presently, Kyle said: “We’ve been having some decent luck with the businesses and such. Those look like bigger buildings down Walnut than what we’ve hit so far.”

  “What do you guys think would be more likely for a military checkpoint?” Jessica asked. “Would they setup in a business or residential area?”

  “It would be more about how heavily travelled an area is,” I said. “A checkpoint is setup for security; it’s about limiting movement and violence. We’re most likely to find them on major arteries. The Soldiers manning them would have staged from those points and patrolled the immediate area.”

  “Well, let’s stick with the businesses,” Kyle suggested. “We’re kind of just hoping to get lucky and stumble on some Army stuff, right? Well, we’ve totally been getting lucky with offices so far.”

  The logic was decent if you only gave it ten seconds of thought and we weren’t feeling strongly either way, so we followed his suggestion. On Walnut, we spread out a bit as we travelled southwest to cover more ground. Jessica walked a block to the north down Blake, I stayed on Walnut, and Kyle was south of us on Larimer. We travelled on in this fashion for a few minutes, each of us stopping at cross streets and waiting for the others to come into view on the adjacent intersections before continuing for another block. I was in the middle of one such block when Kyle came running up my street from behind me. The sound of his feet pounding the sidewalk had me spun around with my rifle levelled before I realized what was happening. This brought him up short, his eyes wide and mouth opened in surprise. I didn’t yell at him nor was I angry; the fact that I’m wound tight was not his fault.

  “What’s up?” I asked as I dropped the muzzle.

  “I think I have something on my street,” Kyle said in excitement. “Some trucks, a big sun shade of some kind, and a whole crap load of sandbags stacked up everywhere.”

  “That does sound good,” I said. “How far?”

  “Uh, I don’t know.”

  “Did it look like more than a mile?”

  He considered for a moment before saying, “I guess? I’m really not sure, dude.”

  Attempting to restrain frustration (and perhaps failing), I said, “How many intersections were between you and what you saw.”

  “I dunno. Something like five or eight? Definitely no more than ten.”

  I drew in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. Finally, I said, “Okay, good job. In the future when we’re doing something like this again (and we will be), remember to count the number of blocks to your target. A guy like me is always gonna want to know the distance.”

  “Okay. You got it, man.”

  “Good deal. Let’s grab Jessica and go see what you found.”

  We went a block over to Blake to flag down Jessica. She put her hand on her pistol, which was stuffed in her right hip pocket, and jogged over to us. I updated her on the situation, at which point she looked over to Kyle, smiled, and punched him lightly on the shoulder.

  “Way to go, stud!” she said. Kyle blushed bright red and stood there grinning like a little idiot. I suppressed a laugh, not wanting to embarrass the poor kid, and said, “Come on. Let’s go have a look at what you found.”

  We crossed the two blocks over to Larimer and turned southwest again. Our target came into view as soon as we rounded the building corner; more of an outpost than a checkpoint about three blocks away. As reported by Kyle, the outer perimeter was walled off with chest-high sandbags and covered with a large canvas shade. There appeared to be some razor wire wrapped around the whole thing; the outpost itself spanned all four lanes of the street, from building to building. There was a traffic gate on the north side of the street that narrowed vehicle passage down to a single lane; it was the only break in the sandbags that I could see. I could just make out a Jeep and a supply truck on the other side of the outpost enclosure. Thinking back to the bonanza we had encountered in the single Soldier and his Humvee down in Colorado Springs, I felt my heart beat harder in anticipation. There would be much here that we could make use of; I could taste it.

  “Goddamn it, Gomer,” I called out, “you keep up this kind of performance and I’m gonna have to start paying you! Well done!” To my left, Jessica began to clap as she laughed.

  Kyle looked back at us over his shoulder and smiled; a genuine unfiltered, unreserved smile that made him look five years younger, made him look far too young to be slinging a rifle around. He threw a lazy, two-fingered salute my way and then opened up into a light jog towards the little encampment.

  As the distance between us increased, I detected movement behind the sandbags.

  I immediately called out to Kyle to wait, to stop running away. At the same time, I took a knee and brought my rifle up to look at the site through my optic. Everything jumped into high detail under the 4x32 magnification but I saw only sandbags. Through my other eye (you never close one eye when looking through an optic) I could see Kyle standing poised with all of his weight on one foot in mid-stride, straining his eyes to see into the enclosure. He was about fifty feet ahead of me. I can’t say where Jessica was positioned exactly; she was on my left and behind me, ou
tside of my field of view.

  He looked back and said, “What is it?”

  I shook my head but did not get up. I continued to scan over the bags looking for anything. Finally, I called out, “Whoever’s back there, come out where I can see you.”

  Kyle’s eyes widened when I said this. He spun around to face the outpost and pulled his own rifle up to cover the area.

  Through my optic, I saw one of the sandbags under the shadow of the sunshade shift and I realized at the last second that I was actually looking at someone’s head. I saw the puff-flash of a firearm discharge; heard the report of the weapon. Out of my left eye, I saw Kyle’s head snap back. His knees buckled out from under him and he fell backwards – his body was rigid so the first thing to hit the ground was the back of his skull followed by the collapse of his body. His legs remained folded back under him.

  6 – Escape from Denver

  Gibs

  I heard Jessica yell out as I opened fire, though I can’t recall if she said anything specifically or just made inarticulate noise. She began to run towards Kyle. I increased my rate of fire, concentrating along the top line of the sandbags to suppress whoever was back there and called out to her to stop, which she ignored.

  On the north side of the street, additional shots rang out from the buildings and I realized in horror that we were outflanked, outnumbered, and out of cover. I heard a scream and saw Jessica topple to the ground only fifteen feet away from Kyle’s body.

  I may have been shouting words at this point but I can’t remember anymore. It could have been things that made sense or it may have just been growling and cursing; I certainly wasn’t shouting any commands out to my team – they were incapable of responding. Sacrificing accuracy for speed and volume, I began to alternate fire between the building’s storefront and the sandbag enclosure – three shots to one then three shots to the other, back and forth. I did this while holding my rifle with only one hand; with my other hand, I reached down to my rig and pawed at what I desperately hoped was a smoke grenade (assuming my memory was correct). My accuracy was for shit, hitting all over the storefront, bouncing off the street, the sidewalk, passing over the sandbags, and hitting the trucks behind. I wasn’t trying to hit anything in particular – I just wanted to throw a bunch of fire downrange.

  I pulled the grenade out and could tell by feel that I had gotten it right. I stopped firing for a brief second and, without taking my right hand off the grip of my rifle, I threaded the middle finger of my right hand through the ring on the grenade to pull the pin (Hollywood has done an outstanding job of perpetuating the belief that grenade pins are actuated with teeth; this is an excellent way to pull your teeth right out of your head). Letting the spoon pop, I underhanded the grenade down the street, just managing to split the distance between the sandbags and the building despite the fact that I had lobbed it with my off-hand. It began to produce red smoke almost instantly but it would be a few seconds before it built up enough to effectively obscure the area.

  I resumed alternating fire between the two positions while raising to my feet and moving to Jessica’s location. She was still on the ground and groaning though I couldn’t tell where she was hit. I shot my mag empty before I got to her and my hands performed the old routine on their own without me having to think about it; drop magazine, pull new magazine, slam it home, close the bolt, continue firing. I do recall that they were returning fire at this point but it was not effective. I couldn’t see anything inside the building by now due to the smoke but I could still make out the odd rifle held over the top of the sandbag wall to be fired blindly up the street.

  I reached Jessica and saw she had sustained a gunshot to the thigh, her hands clamped around it with blood everywhere. She had the look of a panicked animal but said nothing to me when I arrived.

  I maintained my downrange fire as I bent to grab her by the collar of her shirt but I could feel it begin to rip as soon as I started to pull. Pressed for time (a thirty round magazine will go dry a lot faster than you realize in these situations), I wound my left hand up in as much of her hair as I could dig my fingers into, barked out a “Sorry!”, and dragged her bodily to the north side of the street towards the intersection. As we neared the building, I was saved from having to worry about the storefront since I had effectively rotated out of their range of fire; the sandbags were soon obscured from view as I pulled Jessica around the corner onto the cross street.

  Now in temporary safety, I released her hair and said, “Can you walk on it?”

  She reached a shaking hand out to me and said, “Help me!”

  I hauled her up onto her feet, pulled her arm over my shoulders, and wrapped my left arm around her waist. She hopped alongside me for a few yards, nearly falling as I dragged her along. Shouts came from behind me; they had likely figured out that I was no longer on the other side of that smoke waiting to shoot them when they came out. “Fuck this,” I growled. I stood her up straight just long enough to get my arm between her legs, jam a shoulder into her pelvis, and hoist her up into a fireman carry. Thus situated, I hoofed it double-time back to Walnut Street, turned northeast, and began to move as fast as I could up the street.

  I could feel the hot wetness of her blood running down my back as we went and knew that I didn’t have much time to work. I heard the voices of hollering men in pursuit behind me and began to scan buildings for possible entry points, needing to get under cover as quick as I could so we could make some kind of a stand. I clocked movement ahead on my left and, as I strained to bring my rifle up under Jessica’s dead weight, I saw an arm and long, flowing, jet black hair peek out from behind a tinted glass door. Under the hair were very wide, very intense eyes. The arm started to wave and beckon at me furiously. Without stopping to wonder who it might be, I ran towards the door as quickly as I could manage.

  I dove through the door and emerged into a musty environment with little to no light; the only illumination was the filtered sunlight coming in from the tinted glass door. We appeared to be in a reception area with several chairs wrapped around the outside perimeter and a high desk jutting out from the wall to take up most of the central floor space. The woman who waved us in hissed from behind me, her voice charged with anger.

  “Idiot! What have you started? Didn’t you know they were out there?”

  She spoke in a flat, featureless American accent with no suggestion that she had ever spoken anything besides English in her life but her appearance put me back on my heels. She was younger than me but no longer youthful; perhaps in her early thirties – young enough that you could still see the girl she had once been but old enough that you could see where the laugh lines and wrinkles were forming. Her features were unconventional in unexpected ways. Her face was wider than what TV had told us is desirable; her nose was just square enough that Cosmopolitan would have suggested makeup tips that she could employ to slim it back down to a petite line. None of that mattered. Her look worked for her.

  Her eyes were really what stopped me. Seeing them now as they expressed aggravation in my direction, I could understand why they stood out to me as I was hobbling up the street. They were a grey so light that they nearly glowed, framed by dark black lashes in a field of olive brown skin. The corners pulled back like cat’s eyes.

  I took this all on board in rapid course, my inner lizard brain noting those features that were attractively exotic while my analytical mind advised me to unfuck myself and get moving in a hurry.

  “Who the hell are ‘they’, lady?”

  She shook her head at me, oil black hair spilling around her face. “Scavengers. Strangers. Really dangerous people.”

  I heard shouts outside the building coming from far away. “Is there a back door?” I asked. “There’ll be a blood trail; they’ll find this-“ I gestured at Jessica’s leg.

  The woman crouched down next to my elbow to look up into Jessica’s face as it lolled off my shoulder. “Lay her down on the desk,” she said. “Hurry!”

  I
did as instructed, grunting to get her onto the high surface. I straightened up after laying her down, looked at her face, and felt my guts go soft. She had gone bone white and fluttered her eyelids like she was punch drunk.

  From behind me and to my right, I heard the woman say, “Greg, give me your flannel.” I paid no attention to this; I had my knife out and was slitting the thigh of Jessica’s jeans open. I ran the slit all the way down to her ankle, pulled the pant leg away from her like a cast-off banana peel, and cut the whole mess off her leg at the hip with the knife, completely exposing the leg from crotch to shoe. There was an entry wound on the inside of her thigh towards the top; I lifted her leg at the knee to look under it but could find no exit. The skin surrounding the area was covered in an angry, purple bruise extending down to her knee. More blood came oozing from the wound in slow pulses that were very weak.

  On the other side of the counter, a young male approached with some wadded, checkered fabric in his hand. He moved to apply it to Jessica’s leg but I shoved his hand away, saying, “Hang on a minute.”

  I ripped open my blow out kit and pawed through it for a pack of QuickClot gauze and another package of standard sterile gauze. I looked up at the kid in front of me and indicated his flannel shirt, saying, “Stuff that in her mouth,” which he did without hesitating.

  I ripped open the QuickClot packaging, unrolled several inches, wadded it up, and packed it into the wound with my finger. Jessica barely responded to this, which distressed me; I started taking deep, shaking breaths to maintain my composure. I had no idea what I was going to do for her in the long term. Whatever she had been hit with, it had nicked or severed her femoral artery; that much was apparent from the way she was bleeding. I was praying that I could arrest the blood loss with the use of the hemostatic agent but I couldn’t tell if I had crammed it deep enough to make a difference. She had also lost far too much blood and I had no way to get any back into her. I didn’t even have a bag of plasma to give her.