Commune: Book Two (Commune Series 2)

by Joshua Gayou

  Wang laughed at this and didn’t bother to answer with anything further. We all felt like idiots by then. There wasn’t much more to do but laugh it off.

  What followed was one of the most bizarre, circuitous routes I had yet experienced since settling in the valley. Wells Fargo was probably the biggest personal banking location in the area but it happened to be buried deep in the center of the city, far removed from any block we’d managed to clear out so far. We were lucky that Amanda was with us; she seemed to have a GPS map of Jackson programmed into her head. We drove through all manner of side roads, switching back and forth block by block, often giving up one block of progress to make up two blocks later.

  I used to keep my eyes open on these little excursions hoping to spot military outposts or checkpoints along the way but had long since given up all hope along those lines. Apparently, there had been little to no government presence in Wyoming at all during the fall, owing to the state’s low population and vast expanses of nothingness. The guys in planning and logistics evidently decided that it made more sense to ship people from Wyoming into nearby states that were more populous (and thus had emergency infrastructure already in place). Aside from the obvious drawback of having no gear to pillage, the city’s never having any military presence meant that the streets had never been cleared off at any point outside of what the local government had managed to accomplish before the total breakdown. To my knowledge, any road clearing around here had been accomplished by our people.

  This was evident as we made our way further north. I became convinced that Amanda had finally been defeated by the ubiquitous snarl when she rounded a corner onto a street so tightly packed with cars, trucks, and other vehicles that we couldn’t have made it to the next intersection without jumping from roof to roof. Just as I opened my mouth to tell her that it was no big deal and bound to happen at some point, she pulled a hard right up onto the sidewalk and drove through the front yard of a single family home, veering off to the left to miss the house itself and plow through an opening in the backyard fence. As we passed through a surreal landscape populated by yard toys, a couple of pitched tents, and a swing set, I noticed a line of tire tracks already imprinted into the ground in front of us, indicating that someone had driven through here already.

  As we neared the end of the yard, I saw that the fence in front of us had another section knocked out, the leftover material of which was strewn across the ground close by. We drove through the opening into an adjoining yard, which we continued through, passed between another two houses, and emptied out onto a street one block over from where we’d started. This area was much more open in the direction we wanted to travel and made for comparatively smooth sailing.

  “I didn’t realize you’d been this way before,” I said. “When did you open up those fences? Was that before we arrived?”

  “That wasn’t me,” Amanda said. “I only found them that way. Someone else was responsible for that little side passage.”

  “Nice,” said Wang. “Lucky you found it.”

  “The kicker,” Amanda said, “is that I’d been up this way once before when we first arrived with Billy and that path wasn’t there. It was done sometime after we came to live here. There’re still people out and about. We run into them from time to time.”

  “Bad?” I asked.

  “Once,” she said. “Most times they run away before you realize you’ve seen anything. We try to call out to them and get them to talk but it doesn’t work out.”

  “Imagine it has to do with the hardware you’re carrying,” I said, nodding to her rifle. “Jake left his rifle behind when he approached us, which was good. I might have dropped him otherwise.”

  “Yes, well, Jake has bigger balls than brains sometimes,” Amanda grimaced. “I personally don’t see how carrying a rifle makes a person any more dangerous these days. It’s just another piece of gear. I’m not about to set mine aside so I can make a stranger feel comfortable.”

  Her tone didn’t leave a lot of room for discussion on the matter so I let it drop. I could see her point, though. The presence of a rifle didn’t automatically indicate an evil doer. It sure as hell upped the ante if you happened to guess the wrong way as to a person’s intentions, however.

  We pulled into a bank parking lot eerily devoid of cars in a part of the city that was crippled by traffic congestion on the streets. The shape of the bank building was irregular, with jutting sections and recessed alcoves, which all served to capture garbage as it blew past, causing it to pile up waist-high in some areas. Dormant parking lot lights towered high overhead, never to function again; a few of them had fallen to lie at odd angles across the asphalt for tens of meters. The base of each one had a mangled appearance and I guessed (because all I could do was guess) that they must have been struck by vehicles at some point.

  The front door was an all-glass affair that had been thoroughly busted out, leaving the entrance and main lobby of the branch covered in a layer of the same filth that had stacked up against the outside walls. Amanda parked such that we were pointed directly into the structure and lit the inside with the jeep’s headlights. The inside of the building looked angry. Hungry. It looked like some half-sleeping thing waiting patiently for three assholes to make the mistake of setting foot inside.

  “I really hate how dark everything is on the inside, now,” Amanda said as she regarded the entrance. “It doesn’t matter if the place is a preschool; it always feels like something’s just waiting to jump out and get you. It gets old.”

  “As long as it doesn’t get routine,” I said.

  “What’s that mean?” Wang asked.

  I sighed. “You always want to feel that unease when you go in to clear a building. It means you’re going to be alert. You want to be switched on like that. If you’re bored, you’re liable to do something stupid. More than likely you’re liable to get a buddy killed.” I got out of the jeep, patted down my rig to confirm all was in its place, and adjusted my rifle. “Come on. It’ll be less spooky once we’ve been through the place and know the layout.”

  I approached the bank entrance but stopped just short of walking in, waiting for the others to catch me up. When I sensed they stood close by, I said, “If nothing else, this’ll be a good opportunity to practice moving as a team. I’ll take point; Amanda, you get the rear. Ready?”

  They said they were so I switched on my weapon light, gave what I could see of the lobby from the outside a quick sweep and, seeing no movement, advanced.

  There were a series of offices encircling the lobby and entryway of the building, most of which were walled in glass. Regardless of my ability to see inside, I decided to clear each room individually; both to get the practice in for Wang and Amanda and also because each office had a wraparound desk that would easily conceal one or more people if they were crouched.

  They moved pretty well and, to my satisfaction, successfully implemented many of the concepts I had covered with them back in the valley, which impressed me considering that I’d only just begun drilling them using the container homes as well as the cabin when Jake would allow it. I did note from time to time, however, that Wang had a habit of covering my sector; essentially, he was pointing his rifle in the same place I was. When you’re moving in a team as we were, you want each person to be covering their own sector. You hug a wall whenever you can and your point guy covers forward. The next guy in line should be covering out in the direction opposite the wall, and so on down the line until you get to the rear position, which needs to cover (surprise, surprise) the rear. The pattern and positions shift around depending on the area, whether you’re moving down a hallway, up a staircase, where a door might be positioned within a room, and the like, but the overall concept is the same. Every person covers his own sector and you position in such a way that you can achieve overlapping sectors whenever possible.

  Wang had a habit of just following wherever I put my weapon light. I didn’t really blame the guy; each physical room layout has
a predetermined set of positions that fire team members need to assume automatically. These positions are chosen for the purposes of maximum dominance (or coverage) as well as to ensure that team members aren’t flagging each other. There’s a lot of shit to remember, all of which changes based on your position in the team, and this all has to be muscle memory so that you can move fluidly through an area, focusing on the task at hand rather than worrying about where your position of dominance was supposed to be, whether you should take a knee or not, and so on. They all just needed a lot more drilling, which would only come with time. Given the circumstances, I was still pretty happy with his performance. All I had to do was whisper, “Wang: your sector,” and his muzzle would snap to position (as evidenced by his shifting light).

  I soon realized that Amanda seemed to have it all down, either because she’d managed to commit everything I’d covered thus far to memory or because she had a natural instinct for this kind of thing. It was good to know, yet not particularly amazing. You encountered people like her every so often; naturals who always seemed to be in the right place at the right time; folks who always put their feet right and only had to be told a thing once. In my own anecdotal (and also correct) experience, these were the same people who made outstanding dancers; people who seemed forever comfortable in their own bodies and could always move them exactly as they intended…natural athletes, in other words. I didn’t know if this was the case with Amanda at the time, though I would later learn that she is in fact an outstanding dancer, but she did seem to be a natural. This did not excite me, however. Everyone has a weakness that needs to be worked, without exception. I was just still waiting to discover hers.

  We went through the first few offices in quick order, stacking up at the door, moving in to find our points, pronouncing the room cleared, and moving on. By the fourth office, we made what I’ll call an unfortunate discovery.

  “Jesus Christ!” gasped Amanda. “What the hell?”

  “Shit,” said Wang.

  And he was right. In the back of the office, hidden behind the desk, was a prodigious pile of the stuff. Arranged in various shapes, colors, and consistencies, as though an artist of the obscene had been laboring away for weeks (or maybe even months) at some kind of fucked up, Howard Hughes-level magnum opus of turd sculpture. Judging by the smell, much of it was fresh.

  “Goddamn,” said Wang, “why the hell wouldn’t they just do this in the bathroom?”

  “Perhaps the bathroom’s already full?” I pointed out.

  A gagging sound came from behind us. I turned to see Amanda bent over outside of the office, leaning her right shoulder against the glass partition separating the little room from the lobby. She hadn’t actually emptied her stomach as far as I could see but she looked close to it.

  “Okay, come on. Let’s move along,” I said, and backed Wang out of the room. Shutting the door behind me, I placed a light hand on Amanda’s left shoulder and asked, “Okay?”

  She nodded without straightening up, panting, and shot a thumbs up over her shoulder. After a few moments her breathing returned to normal and she advanced a few steps forward before standing up, probably so she could put the room outside of her range of vision. Wiping sweat from her forehead, she said, “You forget how disgusting people can be sometimes, you know?”

  I agreed with her, though I actually did not ever forget. A pile of shit in a corner is the least of what I’ve seen, even if it did look like an original Jackson Pollock.

  “Hey, can we call this area covered, or what?” asked Wang.

  “Have we cleared every office?” I asked.

  “Well, no, but come on, man. They’re all glass. We can see inside. There’s no one here.”

  “They’re not cleared until they’re cleared, Wang,” I said. “If it was a good idea to clear the first few, it’s still a good idea to go through the rest.”

  “Fu-uck…” he groaned, tilting his head back. “Fine. You’re right. Let’s get it over with.”

  It turned out that they were all empty, as I knew they would be, but I didn’t care. Empty rooms or not, it was still good practice and Wang needed all he could get, whether he was willing to admit it or not. It was good for Amanda as well. She was still a little grey after nearly vomiting and moving around a bit helped her to re-center.

  We completed the area and thus began to move down a hallway connecting the main lobby to what appeared to be a smaller back area containing additional offices, a cafeteria/rec room area, and, all the way at the end of the hall, what I hoped would be an employee locker room of sorts. I noted this last area, assuming that any kind of security shack or locker would likely be located there. Amanda had the same idea as well, judging by her reaction, but I held them to the plan of clearing area by area, which was probably not a bad idea, in hindsight.

  We made our way down the hallway such that we had decent cross cover for a three-man team; I was along the right wall covering the left side of the hallway, Wang was along the left wall covering the right side, and Amanda was to the rear and in the center of us, covering dead ahead. As we advanced, I caught a hint of movement around the cafeteria door jamb on the left side of the hall and extended my hand to stop the others. They immediately tensed up.

  My mind began racing furiously, running through options and discarding them as fast as they were considered. If this had been a normal situation, I would have pulled a flashbang off my vest, tossed it into the room, and rolled in hot. This was anything but a normal situation. I didn’t know a damned thing about who or what was on the other side of that doorway. In fact, I didn’t even know if it was human or not; it could just be a scared dog or nothing at all. It may have been that I just saw a shadow cast by my weapon light. If the room was empty, it would be a waste of a priceless bit of gear; it didn’t look like we’d be stocking up on additional grenades any time soon. Even if the room wasn’t empty, what if it was just a kid?

  I really, really missed having decent intel at my disposal. We usually had a good idea who we’d find in a building when I used to do this stuff for a living; all the recon had already happened by the time we were sent in for the most part, so we felt more confident about mixing it up. This situation, by contrast, was horse shit. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to go in hot or easy.

  I finally sighed, coughed out a “fuck” beneath my breath, and raised my voice to address no one in particular.

  “Alright, goddamn it. Whoever’s in there, I hear you…existing. I’m coming in right now. I’m armed to the teeth and prepared to ruin your whole fucking experience. I’m only interested in talking, okay? Bullets are expensive and I hate wasting them, so you be cool and so will I. I guarantee, though, that if you play stupid games, you’re going to win stupid prizes.”

  I glanced back at my buddies. Amanda was good to go. Wang, with his bugged-out eyes and hanging jaw, looked like a spilled can of fuck.

  Well, fine. Two out of three ain’t bad.

  I moved to the left wall and choked up on the door, waiting for the others to stack behind me. When Wang tapped me on my shoulder, I hunkered and pushed in.

  There were five of them within easy view as we positioned ourselves in the room, some of them behind an older wooden laminate folding table that had been turned on its side as a useless barrier, given that it would be ripped to splinters and dust by our rifles. Two men were standing out in the open; they were both armed (one with a pistol while the other had a rifle) but had their weapons pointed at the ground. They were all filthy and underfed, giving me flashbacks of the King Soopers in Colorado Springs.

  When I saw that their weapons were lowered, I did the same with my rifle and said, “Muzzles down, guys,” to the others. They complied but all of us kept the rifle butts pulled into our shoulders, ready to raise them back up on a moment’s notice.

  There were two women and three men; two of these men stood armed, as I said. I gave up trying to determine their age. The grime caked onto their faces emphasized every crack and wrinkle,
adding on years if not decades to their appearances. Their combined odor was at least as offensive as their appearance; they smelled like sweaty Funyuns and hot, buttery garbage. As I looked closer, I realized the two armed men were frozen solid with white-knuckled grips on their firearms. A loud fart could have knocked them over.

  “Hey, ease up,” I said. “We’re not here to start anything and we’re definitely not here to take…whatever it is you might have. Just…just take it easy.”

  From my peripheral vision, I saw Amanda disengage the swivel stud on her sling and slowly lean her rifle up against the wall behind her. She resumed her position and let her hands hang at her sides.

  Well, now who has more balls than brains? I thought, and refocused on the two men in front of me.

  “Why are you here?” asked one of the women from behind the table.

  “Just looking for radios,” I said.

  “Radios?” said one of the men, confusion clear in his voice. “What d’you mean?”

  “Radios,” I repeated. “Two-way radios, like what you’d see security guards carry. We come from a larger group of people and we’d find them useful. I don’t need to explain why, do I? We suck at smoke signals, is the main thing.”

  The other armed man snorted. “Yeah, makes sense. What are you, military or something? You got the look, sorta, but your two friends look like they’re wearing daddy’s uniform.”

  I didn’t like this one’s tone. Of the two armed men, he stood to our right with a guarded (I’d almost say aggressive) posture. I rotated slightly to my right so that all it would take to put a bead on him would be to raise my muzzle. I heard Amanda shift to my rear left as well but I couldn’t see her anymore and so couldn’t tell how she had positioned herself.

  “Something,” I said in answer to his question.

  He snorted again and glanced at the others in his group. Turning his attention back to us, he said, “Well, I guess we’re all in luck, anyways. There are, indeed, some radios here. We’ll let you have them, too, in exchange for food and water.”