Commune: Book Two (Commune Series 2)

by Joshua Gayou

  We spent some daylight movin’ ‘round the city, trying to get out of it. The streets was all a mess, as you can well imagine, and it took careful plannin’ to plot a way through all the chaos that wouldn’t see us wedged into a corner some place. After a while, I got the impression we was bein’ herded along; always when I thought we’d gone far as we could, we’d find a way that was open through the worst part of the snarl and it was always feeding us in the same, damn direction. I mean, it may have switched back every so often for a block or two but our direction would always correct back to the same path: northwest – almost the opposite direction we wanted to travel, which was southwest across the Willamette for less populated areas like Shadowood and such.

  We eventually came to a place so piled up with cars and garbage that there was simply no way to get through by drivin’. We could either turn around or try to clear away some of the wreckage to get by. I was just getting ready to turn us ‘round when Robert said, “Hey, let’s get out and try to clear a path. I think we’re in luck, here.”

  I asked him what he meant and, in answer, he pushed a city map into my hands and pointed at it.

  “Look, we’re right about here, I think, just coming up on Clinton, right? Well, if we can just find a way to push through a couple of blocks west from here, it’ll dump us onto these train tracks. They run all the way down until…here, where they split off and go east. We can get off at that point and try to pick up the 99, see? That’ll definitely get us going in the direction we want.”

  It looked really good from the perspective of the map. The main thing was just breakin’ through the snarl ahead to get on the other side. There was so much crap piled up at the intersection that you couldn’t see over the top of it and, at the center of it all, two trucks had been left spanning the gap, overlappin’ and facin’ each other in the street.

  I nodded to the tangle and said, “Any of that look planned to anyone else?”

  “I was just thinking the same thing,” Samantha said.

  “We don’t even have to move both of them,” Robert pressed. “I think if we just push one of those trucks back, we can squeak by.”

  I sighed and nodded. We’d spent all mornin’ and the better part of the afternoon getting to this spot. I didn’t want to turn back now; we’d have lost the whole day travellin’ basically nowhere’s. “Get your rifle, Robert. Let’s see what we can do.” I looked at the others in the back seat. “You two sit tight.”

  Robert and I climbed out of the SUV and made it about halfway to the trucks when an ear-piercin’ whistle echoed out along the street corridor. We froze in place, both of us liftin’ our rifles up, as row on row of heads popped up from behind all the garbage, shop windows, alleyways, and busted-out cars. I never got a complete count of how many was out there but I’d guess they was at least twenty of ‘em. All of them was armed with some sort of gun and all of them had red bandanas tied ‘round they arms.

  “Okay, easy, folks! Easy! Let’s put those rifles down,” a voice called out.

  As you might imagine, the sight of several people poppin’ up out of nowhere with guns caused me ‘n’ Robert to do the exact opposite.

  A voice, muted more than the first, sang out from behind me, “There they go, he’s drawing down, Mike. He’s going for it!”

  “Whoa, WHOA!” the first one yelled. “Nobody shoots, you hear! Everyone just settle the fuck down!” He popped up from his cover behind the truck that was blockin’ the street and skittered out into the open in front of us, wavin’ over his head wildly as he came. “Just…Jesus Fuckbunnies, just everyone chill a minute, will yah? Just everyone be cool! I need everyone to not be a bunch of stupids, right on? Disco-titties!”

  The answer that floated down from the barricades was patches of silence interlaced with muffled snickers, I’m assumin’ because the man who jumped out had such an odd way of cursin’. The good news was that it seemed no one was actually getting ready to shoot us, though there were plenty of barrels pointed straight at us from all angles. I saw a lot of the people behind those barrels ease up and settle back. I took a relieved breath and felt Robert loosen up a bit beside me.

  “Hey, guys,” the man said, dragging out the word “guys” as though he had some genuinely depressin’ news to deliver and he wanted to soften the blow, “my name’s Mike. Or, Mikey, if you like; that’s what my friends always used to call me.” He smiled, half extended his hand to shake, and then drew it back at the last second and wiped it down the front of his jean jacket. He had what looked like sports-gear strapped down over his left shoulder, as though he’d cut a set of football pads in half, cinched one side down over the joint, and strapped it in place with nylon tie straps. I looked around at some of the others and saw that they was all decked out the same, with knee pads, shin guards, and such, and wondered what the hell they thought they was on about. That stuff would work fine in a fist fight, I guess, but most people was carryin’ firearms; pistols at least. That hard plastic nonsense wouldn’t even slow a bullet down.

  Off to my left, Robert snorted and said, “Hey, what the hell is all this, guys? You supposed to be a Comicon cosplay group or something?”

  “Easy,” I hissed at him. “Those guns’re real enough.”

  “We make it kind of a point to look uniform,” Mike said, still soundin’ like a used car salesman. “Kind of dress the same? Wear these little arm bands, and all. Helps us to know who’s on our team, you see? It’s important to know whose team you’re on around here.”

  “Okay,” Robert said, “unless someone just gets a red bandanna and ties it around their arm, right? What’s stopping someone from doing that?”

  Mike smiled, not unkindly, and said, “Don’t think that would work…yet, anyway. Maybe there’re enough of us that we don’t all know everyone’s name but there’s few enough that an unfamiliar face gets noticed.”

  Nobody said anything after that for at least a good fifteen seconds. It was like some sort of conversation stopper that pulled the life out of everyone. When I got sick of standing around, I finally said, “Say, what is this, Mike? Why’re you stopping us? We ain’t starting nothin’; we just passing through.”

  Mike raised his hands in a “hang-on” gesture, while bowing his head slightly. “I know, I know, and I’m sorry, you guys. I keep telling folks we need to put some decent signage up so travelers know what the hell to expect around here, but one thing at a time, you know? The deal is this: you’re kind of in a group territory. People don’t get to come through this way without they check in, get catalogued, pay a little tax. You know. Mainly, you gotta meet with Raul.”

  “Raul?” asked Robert. “Who’s this, now? Gang leader?”

  Mike winced thoughtfully as he wobbled his head back and forth, making a more-or-less gesture with his hand. “Eh, you could say we all kind of fell in behind him, I suppose. I don’t know if I’d use the word gang, though. Organization, maybe.”

  “Oh, hell,” I said, disgusted. “So you tellin’ me you folks are charging tolls for people to pass by? What sort of foolishness is this? Ya’ll just robbin’ people passing by, right?”

  Mike was waving his hands over his head again, agitated. “Okay, okay, okay, dude, I hear what you’re saying but I hate to say that this is really how it has to be. There are something like a good hundred and fifty-“

  “Two hundred, Mikey,” called the man behind him.

  “Two hundred! Fine, that’s even worse. There’re a good two hundred folks in our crew. That’s a ton of mouths to feed, man. Can you imagine trying to keep two hundred bellies full on a day to day basis? It’s a fucking chore, dude. Believe you me.”

  He completely dropped the barrel of his weapon, lettin’ it hang off his shoulder as he began to build up a momentum.

  “We do our best to get by on scavenging and that’s mostly enough to keep us fed but we run into a real problem when travelers just come…flitting through the area. As far as us in our crew are concerned, this is our area that we staked
out, you know? We defend it, keep it clean, keep the streets safe at night and all. And now here comes some random people, drawn to the spoils of the fat, dense city, trying to get all set up to compete with us for food and shit. What would you suggest we do? Kick a can and go, ‘awe, shucks, guess we’ll have to just search that much harder, now’? We have mouths to feed, man. A lot of them are kids.”

  I dropped my rifle and motioned for Robert to do the same. “I see your point,” I said. “Fact remains: you’re aimin’ to steal from me, whether you call it a toll or not. We just passing through, like I said. We ain’t takin’ any food out this’ere area. We just wanna leave.”

  “Cool, cool, cool,” said Mike. “But you might also want to stay, you know? Two hundred people could easily turn into Two hundred and…uh, four? Looks like you got two people in your…yeah. Two hundred and four, hey?”

  “We join your group just like that, right?” Robert said with sarcasm.

  “Well…yeah,” said a perplexed Mike. “More eyes, more arms, more strength, right? Why the hell not? How did you think we got so many people? We sure as hell aren’t holding entrance exams.”

  “Okay, look,” I interrupted. “We ain’t interested in joining up, no offense. Like I said, we’re just passing through.”

  “Yeah, right, I know,” Mike laughed while waving me off like I was some obstinate child. “They always want to be stubborn. Either way, come on. We’ll go see Raul, figure out what’s what, and decide what happens next.”

  “We’ll pass, Mike. Don’t feel like goin’ to see anyone and we sure ‘nough don’t feel like joinin’.”

  Mike’s face took on an aggrieved expression and he said, “Aw, shit. Look, man, this isn’t a discussion, okay? You’re coming along with us. We’re not gonna hurt you or anything like that, but this is how it is. It isn’t perfect but this is what we got.”

  All around me I saw rifle barrels raise back up and, from some locations, I heard the ratcheting sound of weapon actions as they were cycled.

  They loaded Robert and me into the bed of one of the trucks blockin’ the street while Ben and Samantha was left in the Suburban. Mike and the fella that kept correctin’ him jumped into the bed along with us, keeping they rifles leveled at all times, though they didn’t trouble to tie our hands up. Mike said doing so would’ve been rude. Two other men from Mike’s crew climbed into the front seat of our SUV. So, all in all, it was a lead truck, followed by the truck me and Robert were ridin’ in, and finally our Suburban in the rear.

  “We’re gonna head back across the Willamette River and travel up into the hills for a bit, okay?” said Mike. “Your SUV’s gonna stay behind us so’s you can look back from time to time and see that no one’s dicking around with your friends, see? Everything is totally above board, here.”

  “Yeah, above board. All except for the whole kidnapping thing, right?” said Robert.

  Mike grimaced and said, “It’s temporary, kid. Trust me, I’d much rather be drinking a beer and reading a girlie mag.”

  “Maybe watch that attitude,” said Mike’s friend. “Someone might end up having to fuck yer face up a bit-“

  Mike jerked in his spot over the rear truck wheel and groaned loudly. “Oh, son of a dildo-swinging…can we just not, Pete? Huh? For once, can we just please not have you start off by assuming god-tier levels of douchebaggery? What the hell is it with you, anyway? You watch too many eighties action flicks as a kid? It’s like you’re trying on every cliché you can think of. You were probably a Verhoeven fan, right?”

  Pete looked confused, between his slackened jaw and loosened grip on the rifle. He stared at Mike for a few beats before he said, “Ver…wha? What the fuck’re you talking about?”

  Mike rolled his eyes and looked back at me. “Right, probably more of a Cameron guy. You’re a shoe-in as Henchman Number Three for that Burke dickhead.”

  “I…what?” Pete reiterated.

  Mike ignored him and continued to address me and Robert. “Look, I’m sorry about him and sorry about all the rest of this. Nobody’s fucking up anyone’s faces,” he shot a pointed look at Pete, “unless you guys do something really stupid. We just got this way of doing things. It ain’t the best way by a long shot, no sir. But goddamn it, we need some sorta way, or everything just runs to shit. Seen it a hundred times. Raul’s seen it, too.”

  I didn’t want to get into a big philosophical debate and tried to steer the conversation towards somethin’ approaching useful. “Okay, Mike, okay. So we’re goin’ ‘cross the river. Fine. Whereabouts? You got a town hall over there, or something like?”

  He straightened up and smiled. “Oh, naw, dude. We’ll take you up to The Man’s house. He’s got himself setup in some really nice digs; a place they used to call Pittock Mansion. Some kind of museum or something. You know, that’s been, by far, the absolute best thing about this whole little reset? We used to live in a world of complete and total inequity, right? There was, like, this vanishingly small percentage of assholes that owned everything everywhere, a slightly larger group of shlubs who could barely grind out a comfortable living, and then a massive horde of people who had to go without, right?”

  He reached over to a cooler, opened it, and pulled out a bottle of water. He grabbed an extra one and held it up questioningly to me and Robert but we both turned him down, not wantin’ to owe anything. He shrugged and handed it over to Pete.

  Taking a sip from his own bottle, he continued, “Now, I’m not saying that everyone who was rich was a cock donkey or that everyone who was poor was an unwashed, noble saint, but you have to admit: a violently levelled playing field is kind of fun, ain’t it? Take me. Before this all happened, I drove a forklift in a warehouse. I barely scraped enough money together to pay for my shitty-ass apartment from month to month. And now? I’m living The Life in an eight hundred thousand dollar home up in the hills, man. Sure it sucks for all those people who had to die and all, but I’ll tell you, this is really working out for those of us that’re left and have the brains to organize appropriately.”

  “This Raul fella,” I said, “he knows how to organize appropriately? He raised you all into an army, or what?”

  “Naw, we ain’t big enough to be called an army,” he scoffed, taking another drink. “We’re only a hundred and fifty, like I said-“

  “Two hundred, Mike,” interrupted Pete.

  Mike snorted and rolled his eyes again. “Fuck. Yes, two hundred. Thanks again, Pete. But, no, we ain’t no army. We’re just setup in work crews, plus we have outposts just like the one you ran into all along the river. We have positive control all through the South Waterfront, Downtown, the Pearl District, and the Northwest District. We hold just about everything west of the Willamette, man. Nothing really happens around here without we know about it first. It’s really not bad at all.”

  I looked over at Robert to try and get a sense of whether he was buyin’ into any of this. Mike did a good job of sellin’ the concept but I knew Old Boy shit when I heard it. For every nice little perk he was describin’, I’m sure there were at least five gotcha’s just waitin’ to rear they heads, every one of them poppin’ up right after you signed on the dotted line. I was gettin’ a vibe off Mike, alright. I figured he was lyin’ like a no-legged dog. Only question in my mind was: could Robert see it?

  Robert didn’t give me much to work with; no expression, wink, or nod. Probably best, too. Them other fellas was right up in our business. They’d have caught on if me or Robert tried to get cute. Still, made it hard for me to know how to move forward. I figured I’d need to find a good point where they guard was down and make a grab for one of their rifles. They’d thrown ours in the back of the Suburban, obviously with the intention to keep everything we had whether we decided to hang around or not. I don’t know how things would have ended up, either way. If we’d all gone before this Raul, listened to his pitch, and told him ‘thanks but no thanks’, would they have killed us or turned us loose?

  I honestly can’t
say. Could be, they’d have just taken everything we owned and dumped us on the road outside the city limit. I s’pose that would have been as good as killin’ us. Sure wouldn’t have gotten far that way. Won’t never know, though, ‘cause we never met the son of a bitch.

  I don’t recall what street we was on when it all went down. All I can honestly remember from right when the you-know-what hit the fan was that gunfire erupted from all around us to start, I saw the silhouettes of helmeted heads and shoulders popping up from rooftops, and Pete hollered out, “Army!” before divin’ off the back of the truck with his rifle.

  Mike followed over the side soon after, shoutin’ over his shoulder as he went, “You’ll want to seek some shelter!” He hit the ground, ran across the street, and dove around the side of a building. His head peeked out from around the corner so he could keep an eye on the goings on.

  The doors on both our truck and the one in front of us had opened in the meantime, people fallin’ out of both vehicles with weapons firin’ at the rooftops. I noticed the driver of our truck wasn’t movin’, and then realized the whole back window and windshield was webbed out with cracks and there was blood all up in the cab. Robert grabbed onto my shoulder and hauled me off the back of the truck, causin’ me to land awkwardly and wrench my knee a bit. He didn’t slow down and kept pullin’ on me as he drug us both over to the alley where Mike had holed up. As we closed the distance, the two men sittin’ in the front seat of our SUV spilled out and ran up to the head of our column to join the fight.

  “Wise choice, you guys,” Mike panted when we rounded the corner. “I don’t think they’re doing a lot of discriminating between red armbands and random-ass people.”