Alea Jacta Est: A Novel of the Fall of America (Future History of America Book 1) (46 page)

“Do not
dare to speak
, Jew!
  You and your kind will be exterminated from this
planet once and for all…this act…this…
barbarity
…crime…” the Saudi
delegate was growing red in the face and stammered in his rage.  Finally his
assistant pulled him down to his seat, shaking with fury.

The
delegate from Great Britain watched the scene unfold with genuine sadness in
his heart.  While not a religious man, personally, he never opposed some bloke
getting his jollies off talking to God.  Whatever suits, that was his motto. 
But destroying a holy site, be it Christian or Muslim or Pagan, as far as he
was concerned that was just
wrong
.  He just couldn’t bring himself to
believe the poor Israeli chaps had gone off the deep end like that.  When he
saw the shared look between the Russian and French delegates, warning bells
went off in his mind. 

So, the
game is afoot, eh, old boys?

HAKIM, SALDID, AND
Hassif stared with open-mouthed wonder at the badly flickering old TV sitting
on the rusted wagon in the door to a run-down little shop in a run-down little
town just north of Mexico City.

The picture
on the distorted screen showed another mushroom cloud in the Middle East.  The
anchorman, speaking rapidly in Spanish told the story.  Hakim and Saldid had to
wait for a few minutes while Hassif listened, translated, digested, wiped his
eyes and finally told his comrades what had happened.

An old
Mexican lady jumped nearly out of her colorful but tattered shawl when the
three Arabs across the street suddenly started screaming and ranting and
raving, waving their arms about, crying and carrying on like a bunch of young
girls at a wedding.  She clucked her tongue at the idiocy of foreigners and
shook her head, shuffling down the dusty street heading for the ancient
Catholic Mission on the edge of town for her daily devotional.

WHAT THE HELL
is this?”

The Arab
communications officer stared at the hand written orders thrust in front of
him.  He had just finished a set of highly coded orders for troops coming in
from the north, only a few miles away—his break was coming up in a few
minutes.  Now here someone steps into his tent and gives him another classified
order manifest.  He sighed as the messenger shrugged and left the tent. 
Reading over the message, then checking the frequency it was to be transmitted
on, he knew there must have been a mistake.

This
message will be heard by the Jews for sure…they’ll be able to translate it with
little trouble…and this message!  It cannot be correct!  Or can it?  I haven’t
heard anything about this yet…Since when are the Russians sending in tanks to
support us?  By Allah’s Hand, three whole Divisions!?  That’s almost as many
tanks as we have already fighting!

The radio
man got on the horn and checked the authenticity code for the message.  An
angry voice on the other end—his Colonel, confirmed everything and demanded he
get the message out as soon as possible.

Okaaaaay….someone’s
going to lose a hand for this, though…and it better not be me,
he thought
as he picked up the dusty transceiver and began to speak over the airwaves.

WHAT THE HELL is this?”
asked the CIA trained Israeli counter intelligence technician.  He pushed
harder on his headphones to drown out background noise.  The command post,
situated just behind the front lines, was a scene of anarchy.  The noise was
almost unbearable.  Such is war.

He reached
back and grabbed his superior officer while writing down the message he had
just intercepted with his other hand.  When the officer leaned over with a
harried look on his face, he nearly fainted as he read the written message.

“Is this
real, sir?”

“The signal
came from a command post—that’s the right frequency…but I’ll be damned if I see
why they didn’t encrypt
this
…” the officer said, clutching the fresh
dispatch in his sweaty hand.  “Damned crazy Arabs.”

“What do we
do, sir?  It’s obviously a fake.”

“Get this
to Headquarters.  Our job is not to ask why the Russians are siding with the
Arabs and sending forces to aid them, or why they’re trying to make us think
they are—we just get the info to our commanders.  They’ll decide what to do. 
Now hurry!” ordered the officer.  “With any luck the Americans will send more
help
our
way…this is getting too big for us to handle alone.”

ERIK SLOWLY GOT up off
the bed just after dawn the second—or was it third?—day after the battle. 
Maybe it had been four days.  He shook his head, it didn’t matter anymore. 
Time seemed to lose relevance.  All that mattered was they get as much work
done between the hours of sunrise and sunset.  At night, bad things stirred and
haunted the world.

He checked
his bandages—Brin had wrapped and cleaned his wounds after the Battle of
Colonial Gardens, as the remaining people in the surrounding neighborhoods had
named it.  Since the Battle, they had seen more and more  people show up at the
gate begging to be let in, seeking safety behind the big concrete walls of the
complex.  Some had checked out the ‘safe zones’ and determined that they were
more like prisons than sanctuaries.  Some were just frightened neighbors who
wanted to be in a larger group.  All had been turned away reluctantly, for fear
of setting a precedent.

Erik flexed
his torso to test the healing of his right side where he had received a nice
scrape during the fighting.  His right arm was still sore and stiff around the
shoulder, where an ugly purple and yellow bruise was just starting to lighten. 
That was where the baseball bat had knocked him off his feet.  Three or four
inches higher and Erik had no doubt the man would have taken his head off.

Erik slowly
dressed himself in the usual t-shirt and shorts, then strapped on his sword and
ever present K-Bar.  He grabbed a cup of water from the kitchen and stepped
outside.   With the new guard training programs, there were always ten armed
men roving about to keep his mind at ease.  Anyone with any weapon of any kind
usually carried it on their person now.  It was ammunition they were concerned
about.  The Battle had shed light on the situation they all faced more than any
speech Erik had given in the past few days.  Every day, their supplies of
everything—food, water, ammunition—dwindled.

As he
walked into the early morning sunshine and peered out across the pond towards
the leasing office, he marveled at how much had been accomplished in the days
since the Battle.  It seemed that the fighting had awakened many people in the
complex to the new reality they all faced.  There were still the old die-hard
peace freaks who remained steadfastly loyal to the ‘wait and see’ attitude, but
there were a lot more people at least willing to consider the ideas and reforms
Erik had pushed the week before.

Only now
Lentz is pushing them and taking the credit…
Erik thought to himself
darkly.  Not that credit for the idea mattered to him.  He was just glad
something
was getting done.  It was the thought that Lentz didn’t have any ideas of his
own that worried Erik. 

Maybe it’s
time to take Brin and run.

“Morning,
Duke,” one of the residents said with a cheerful smile as he hauled some odd
bits of scrap wood from the abandoned construction materials by the south wall.

The title
irritated Erik to no end.  Lentz, knowing Erik’s educational background—as all
good school administrators do—took it upon himself to bestow Erik the honorific
title of
Dux Bellorum
the day after the Battle.  War Leader, in Latin. 
A glorified general of sorts.  Now the residents, especially those loyal to
Erik since the beginning, took pride in calling him Duke—once Lentz pointed out
to people that the word duke was derived from the Latin
dux
, or leader.

It seemed
Erik was the only one that immediately questioned his being given the title. 
He had two reasons.  First and foremost in his mind was the clause in the U.S.
Constitution that prohibited American citizens from being granted titles,
unlike the old-world Europeans.   Second, and perhaps only a little less
disturbing was, if Lentz could hand down a title, what did that make him? 
Imperator
? 
Emperor?

“Hey, Duke,
nice to see you up and about.  How’s the side?” asked Lucy Clark, the complex’s
Historian, one of the appointments made by Erik that Lentz had chosen to keep. 
She had her ever present messenger’s bag over one shoulder, full of notebooks
and pens and pencils to record the daily activities of the apartment complex. 
Over her other shoulder was an old plastic grocery store bag that had a few
boxes of nails and screws, all liberated from the abandoned construction
supplies by the south wall.

“Morning,
Lucy…how’s the Keeper of the Flame today?” asked Erik with a grin. 
You
embarrass me, I embarrass you.

Lucy
blushed.  “Oh, I don’t think it’s all that important to deserve a title like
you,” she said, hurrying on her way.  “But there’s so much going on, it’s hard
to keep up!  See you later!”

Erik
grinned. 
Someday, if we survive this, she’s going to have a hell of a book
to write.
  He took a sip from his water and strolled up to the main gate,
suffering through more ‘Duke’ greetings than he cared to hear.

He had to
admit, the people around the complex certainly had come out of their slump. 
Before the Battle, things were gloomy and getting worse with every foreign news
media report they heard over Erik’s radio. 

The people
of the complex had been depressed, and Erik and Ted had to damn near resort to
using whips and chains to get any work accomplished at improving the conditions
and defenses of the complex.  But, since the Battle, everyone had been busting
ass to get things done and what’s more they were in a good mood about it.  Erik
figured coming so close to being killed by a ravenous gang of street thugs
might have an effect on people.  After all, if the gang had broken through the
eight or nine defenders before Hoss and the cavalry had arrived…

That was
another bright point.  Hoss and his crew had been unanimously accepted into the
complex with open arms after coming to the rescue of the residents during the
Battle.  Erik explained to Lentz what had happened—his plan for sending Hoss
and his bikers around the flank of the gang and Lentz had in turn told the
people that the bikers had come back of their own volition to help save the
good people of Colonial Gardens.  That had become the only sticking point Erik
had with Lentz.  He did not like the idea of the new leader lying to the
apartment residents.  In part, Erik felt that he was awarded the title and
fancy ceremony as a way of giving Erik credit for something the people thought
the bikers did on their own.  It was confusing but Erik resolved to sort it out
soon.  He hated politics.

Erik
spotted Alfonse up on the roof of Building 1, the big three story building just
to the north of the leasing office, where Ted and his snipers had perched
during the battle.  Alfonse was installing the battery of solar panels
‘liberated’ from the local Radio Shack the day before.  He was running wires
down through windows on the third floor, where his workshop was situated.  That
was a move that Erik had actually agreed with—moving Alfonse and his critical
electronics skills to the most secure spot in the complex, the third floor of
one of the big buildings.

Erik was
becoming aware that it was getting harder and harder to find a store that had not
been raided.  Those that the complex sent out to find food and water were
coming back with stories and rumors.  More and more reports from visitors and
neighbors were talking about groups of cars driving around town looting.  The
people in those cars were armed.  Erik shook his head,
And it’s only been a
few weeks since the lights went out.  How quickly things fall apart…

Erik had
suggested that Lentz use the inner most three story building as a ‘Keep’, where
the non-guard residents might hole up during a siege for safety.  They had
worked out a rudimentary room assignment for all the families and people and it
had appeared that the large building, designed to hold 200, would easily hold
the 60 or so people, including bikers, who still lived at Colonial Gardens.

The Bikers
had been given one of the last completed buildings on the south side, complete
with car-ports for their bikes and a small covered garage to use as a
workshop.  For the time being, the complex had more than enough space for
people to live.  After all, at peak occupancy, it was designed to hold close to
five hundred residents. 

Erik turned
and surveyed the entire complex from the pool deck. 
It’s almost
too
damn big.  There’s only about sixty of us, now that Hoss and his crew are
here.  We need more people, it’s just too big for twenty guards to patrol on a
daily basis.
  Erik filed that thought away to bring up at the daily Council
Meeting that afternoon.  He thought about asking the National Guardsmen who
stopped by every few days to warn people about going to a safe zone if maybe
they
wanted to move in.

We need
more men, more food, more water, more guns, more ammunition, more time…more
everything.

Erik heard
a commotion from the other side of the leasing office and watched as a group of
eight people, four men, four women came trotting around the building in shaky
formation, all trying hard to run in step with each other.  Just to the left of
the group, at the front and running faster than they were, but backwards, was
Ted. 

“Move,
move,
move
…keep up the pace—Good, Johnson!  I’ll make Marines out of you
assholes yet!” Ted bellowed in their red faces as they tromped past on their
daily PT drill.  Erik didn’t know how Ted managed to train two different groups
of guards, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, every day without
killing himself. 

“There’s
the Duke!  Guards,
salute
!” roared Ted.  Very nearly in unison, with
only a few stragglers, the guards in training snapped hands to foreheads as
they ran by, saluting Erik.  Not knowing what else to do, Erik gave a surprised
salute back.

Day before
the Battle those people were the same ones lounging around the pool finding
excuses for not doing the work I asked them to do…and only one of them actually
fought in the Battle.  It’s amazing…
Erik thought as he
watched them go by, Ted yelling obscenities at them.

Drawn by
the sound of hammering, Erik strolled around the side of the leasing office to
inspect the damaged gate, site of the recent battle.  Where once a strong
wrought iron gate had stood, now two cars left behind by some residents who
fled the day after the power went out blocked the entrance to Colonial
Gardens.  The night of the Battle, those same cars were used to prop the gate
up after the fighting.  Now the gate was back in place, with layers of thick
beams of wood on both sides for added support.  There were even a few slots
left open in between the big wooden beams for guns to poke through and shoot
someone on the other side.  Erik’s first thought was that people on the other
side could just as well stick a gun in there as well and shoot the defenders. 
He’d have to talk to Lentz about that.

After the
obligatory round of ‘Morning, Duke!’ greetings, Erik climbed up on the cars to
inspect the work that four men and a biker were doing.  They were in the
process of installing a crude platform about halfway up the gate to allow
guards to stand there and see over the gate or shoot down at people standing
before the gate.

“Damn,
you’re making this place look like a castle more and more every day,” said
Erik, admiring their work.  After the Battle, the construction materials along
the south wall were finally considered by many to be the treasure that Erik and
a few others knew it to be from day one.

“You got
it, man,” grumbled the biker, his flashy sunglasses twinkling in the light. 
His large frame and bushy beard contrasted with the smaller more groomed men
from the complex.  “We figure we got enough of this shit,” he said, motioning
with a hammer to the planks they were using for the platform, “To almost ring
the whole place.  We’re gonna have to raid a lumber shop to finish, though…” he
said.

“Yeah,
we’re sending a team out this afternoon to check out the hardware stores and
the Home Depot up by I-75 to see what’s left.  If there’s enough stock layin’
around we’ll go ‘liberate’ it tomorrow,” said another of the impromptu
carpenters.

Erik
grinned.  “You guys are doing a helluva job here.  Keep up the good work.”

“You got
it, your grace,” the biker said with a wide grin.  He knew the title irked
their new-found battle chief.

Erik
climbed back down to the ground, grimacing in pain as he over stretched his
bruised shoulder.  He looked at the gate and thought for a second that it would
be nice to build a second gate—like a true castle, with walls to connect the
two.  That way, instead of repairing the gate after each fight—he presumed
there would be more as people became more desperate—the residents could open
the first gate, let the attackers flood in and be stopped by the second gate,
then close the first and lock them in.  At which point, just like in the Middle
Ages, the defenders could climb up the walls and on the second gate, able to
strike and kill the attackers from three sides and above. 
A kill box. 
Nice.  Something else to talk to Lentz about, if he’s really serious about
putting me in charge of defenses.  I’m sure Ted will love the idea
.

As he
toured the complex, Erik could see on just about every porch or balcony the
rain collection devices people had set up to collect their own water for
flushing toilets or drinking.  Most were half full.  It had rained the day
before in the morning, but there had been no rain since.  He looked up at the
cloudless sky.  Obviously, collecting rain water was not going to be a
long-term solution to getting drinking water.  It might not even be a long term
solution for flushing toilets.  Erik filed away a thought about fixing the
sewage problem.