Alea Jacta Est: A Novel of the Fall of America (Future History of America Book 1) (76 page)

Someone
came out of Ted's apartment with a long rifle.  He was hunched over, half
walking, half hopping.  He was white, but filthy and dressed in rags way too
large for him to wear.  Then they heard the voice.

"Where?  
Where are they?" he roared.  He pointed the gun at Bernie's crotch and
pulled the trigger.  The old M-1 Garand cracked like thunder and the old man
jerked on the ground and screamed in pain. 

"Grimes,"
Erik said through gritted teeth.  His voice sounded like death itself.  He
raised his rifle.

The medic
put her hand on it and roughly pointed it down.  "Not here.  We're exposed
and there's too many..." she hissed.  "Look," she said and
nodded to the left.  The sergeant and his backup had made their way to the
corner of the main building and were creeping along towards the scene at Erik's
building, still out of sight.

Cooper got
the message and crawled forward to a bush.  He was hidden now and poked his
rifle through the leaves so he could get a clear field of fire.  Ted grabbed
Erik's shirt and pulled him forward slowly until they were hidden by the same
bush that concealed Cooper.  The Lieutenant and the others spread out, low to
the ground.  None of the gang bangers across the parking lot had any hint they
were surrounded.

Erik felt
every muscle in his body scream for action.  He sighted in on Henry Grimes
through the leaves of the bush and waited for the signal.  Bernie screamed
again, his voice cut off when someone kicked him in the face.  Erik looked down
and begged forgiveness for not acting.  He looked up again when Ted nudged him
in the ribs.

Henry
screamed again, incoherently.  The thugs around him swayed back and forth
rhythmically and barked or howled.  It was the most surreal thing Erik had seen
in his life.  It was like a football pre-game ritual circle on drugs.  He saw a
flash of metal in the dim sunlight and knew someone had one of his swords.

"Oh
no..." the sword raised and fell.  Bernie screamed, his voice high and
thin as it carried across the Bermuda grass to their location. 

"That's
it," the Ell-Tee muttered when she saw her driver flash a hand sign from
the main building.  Everyone was in position.  She glanced to her right and got
the thumbs up from the three men over there.  She had to pull together all her
training to not rush off to save that poor old man.  She knew they would be
outnumbered, cut down and killed just like him if she didn't employ the tactics
she had been taught by men wiser from war. 

"
Light
'em up!
" she roared.

As she
spoke the first word, Ted fired one round into Bernie's head and put him out of
the misery of his grisly murder.  The crack of his rifle and the medic's scream
paused every one of the thugs to freeze, all trying to detect which direction
it had come from.  That was the last mistake many of them ever made.

From three
different directions, the soldiers poured in controlled bursts of fire that cut
down the barking men like the rabid dogs they imitated.  The M-4s crackled in a
staccato beat that echoed and reverberated off the walls of the buildings which
surrounded Erik.   The noise created a unearthly din unparalleled in his life. 
The Marina had been loud, but this was just...deafening.  The anger inside him
pushed all his senses away except for the gun-sights in his vision and the man
framed by the old rifle held above his head like a staff.

Erik
squeezed the trigger and felt the M-4 kick three times quickly.  When the
barrel dropped below his line of sight, Henry was gone. 
That kicked less
than I thought it would...that game was realistic but that was intense!
  He
couldn't help but smile.

Half the
dog-men were already down.  Erik had time to drop one who had tried to get
around the corner of his own building and saw him slump against the wall, a red
trail followed him to the ground.  Three more were spun around and dropped
where they stood.

Erik saw
only four get away around the far side of his building.  And Henry had
vanished.  The soldiers stopped firing and waited for more targets to appear. 
No one moved.  Though most of the dog-men had carried weapons, not one had
fired a shot back at the Guardsmen.  Their surprise had been total
incapacitating.

A handful
of the gangbangers writhed on the ground and cried out in agony.  Erik heard a
door slam and car engine start.  Tires squealed, a radio blared some jarring
rap music and an old beat up Chevy truck swerved on skidding tires around the
back of his building.  The driver made a straight line for the main entrance. 
He failed to see Erik rise from the bush he was behind and take aim.

Erik saw
the white face in the passenger seat.  Henry was in that truck.  He saw Erik
and opened his mouth, arm out in a motion to encourage the driver to go
faster.   As the stolen truck entered the straightaway and the engine roared, a
thought came to him. 

You will
NOT get away. 

He stood
and brought his rifle up in one smooth motion.  Without looking, his thumb
sought out the fire mode selector switch on the side of the rifle, just where
he had seen it on his television in countless hours of virtual warfare.   His
hand had a sort of muscle memory from seeing the digital hand make the same
move on the screen so many times.  If this were any other time, any other
place, he might have stopped to ponder how...
cool
...that side-effect of
excessive video gaming was.  Somewhere off to his left, he heard a woman's
voice scream his name.  He ignored the medic and walked towards the parking
lot, eyes and rifle locked on target.

Erik
thumbed the switch to full-auto and brought the rifle up to his face as the
truck's engine sucked down air and roared.  The driver still hadn't seen Erik. 
But Henry did.  Erik's world was in slow motion again, like the day the man had
tried to attack Brin and Susan.  Only he did not hold a sword now.  He heard
Ted's voice roar now and ignored that as well.  It was like he heard everything
through a wall.  Distant.  Irrelevant.  As the gun met his cheek, he sighted
down the barrel, saw Henry's face, smiled, and pulled the trigger. 

This time
he had a better expectation of what would happen and held a death grip on the
weapon to keep it from jumping about like a scalded cat.  He poured the
contents of his entire magazine into the driver and the hood of the truck in a
few loud seconds as the truck tried to pass his position.

It
disappeared behind the building in a flash and Erik snapped back to real time. 
He lowered the rifle and ran around the corner of the building in time to see
the truck speed up, swerve wildly around the corner of the road, and crash
headlong into the wreck at the entrance gate.  There was a loud, delayed crash
sound and parts of the crumpled truck flew into the air in a circle pattern
around the gate.  The three men who were in the bed of the truck were flung out
like rag dolls.  They didn't rise after they hit the ground.

Erik took
off in a ground eating sprint towards the wreck.  Then he heard his name again,
only it wasn't Ted and wasn't the Medic.  It was Brin.  When he recognized her
voice, his mind froze, sent mixed signals to his long legs, which caused him to
face plant on the asphalt.  The rifle scraped and skidded off the ground out of
his grip. 

He rolled
over, with a groan and got to his knees as his skinned hands started to bleed. 
He heard her voice again and looked up. 
There
.

"
Erik!
"
she screamed again.  She was on the top floor of the Keep, half out a window
and waving frantically to get his attention.  He closed his eyes and sent the
most heartfelt prayer of his life Heavenward.

Thank You.
  He
struggled to his suddenly weak legs and raised a bloody hand to signal he saw
her.  He smiled.  She didn't. 

"Hurry!"
she called out.  "Susan's hurt!"  Brin ducked back inside the window.

He took off
towards the building, Henry forgotten.  
Nobody could have survived that,
anyway
...his mind told him as he applied his long stride to propel him
across the lawn in seconds and through a ground floor door to the Keep.  Two
soldiers had taken posts at the doors, guarding the exits.  The rest had
already started up the stairs of the five-story building.  He took the first
stairwell three steps at a time.

There were
bodies of some of the gangbangers on each floor.  He took in the ghastly scene
as he went higher and higher.  They had been fought off, floor by floor.  One
of the soldiers ahead of him peeled off the stairs to man a window and get a
better view of the wrecked apartment complex.  Erik ignored him and took the
last set of stairs, focused on the screaming and moaning coming from the upper
floor.  Ted was just in front of him and leapt up the stairs like a jungle cat.

When he got
to the top, he found the Ell-Tee already at work on Susan, who was very pale. 
Erik quickly saw she had been shot in the abdomen.  The medic had another
soldier kneel down beside her and assist.  Ted was there in a flash, his hands
cradled his wife's face and the two of them were nose to nose.  They whispered
furtive greetings to each other and Ted tried to reassure his wife she was
okay.

Brin
crashed into Erik with such force they both nearly tumbled down the stairs. 
"Oh God, I thought I'd never see you again!" she breathed into his
ear and nearly choked him.  They had hands in each other's hair, on their
faces, their necks, subconsciously checking for injuries.  Brin had a bandage
on her right forearm but otherwise appeared unhurt.  Erik just held her for a
few precious seconds more.

He muttered
over and over into her dirty hair, eyes screwed shut: "
Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou
..."

"They
came for you...they kept saying they were
hunting
you..." she began
to cry.  "Henry...."

"It's
okay...I don’t think Henry will be bothering us anymore," Erik whispered. 
In his mind’s eye he saw again how the truck had smashed into the wreck at the
entrance gate. 
There's no way Henry survived.

"What
happened to your arm?" he asked.

"That
bastard bit me..." Brin almost laughed. 

"He
bit
you!?"

"Like
he was a
dog
or something.  Well, not a real bad bite.  I'm pretty
fast.  It was more of a scratch than anything.  I kicked his ass across the
room for it, but...the others went after Susan and the kids.  They said they
wanted to..." she glanced at Ted's girls.  "With the girls...Erik,
they made me so mad I wanted to hurt them.  
Bad
..." she whispered,
head on his chest.  The tears came back.

"He's
gone...they're all gone.  Don't worry, it's over..." Erik said with a
warmth he didn’t quite feel in his voice. 

Crazy son
of a bitch bit her.  Bit her!  What a freaking nutcase.

"Hey! 
I need help here!  See to the children," barked the medic with a voice
that cracked like a whip.  She had Susan's shirt ripped open to expose what
looked to Erik like a nasty gut shot.  A few of the other surviving women
hovered over the scene, hands over mouths. 

Erik
glanced up from the top of Brin's head and saw there were also a few men, all
guards he had trained and every one of them was wounded.  They had already seen
to each other's wounds and had set to their weapons.  A few peered out windows
in an effort to see if the nightmare was really over.  One just stared straight
ahead, back slumped against the wall and watched the drama unfold over Susan. 
He was done fighting. 

Erik
blinked.  He suddenly couldn't remember anyone's names.  It was as if he were
floating behind himself in a dream.  Nothing made sense.  The fear of losing
Brin had vanished so fast when she called to him that it was like he was in jet
lag. 

Is this
it?  These are the only survivors?  Dear God...where
is
everyone? Where's Art?

He could
see down the hall into the room in which Art Carillion had taken up residence. 
The door was open, some radio gear strewn about.  No sign of their wheelchair
bound HAM radio operator.  For that matter, Alfonse was gone too.

Erik shook
his head to clear it and he and Brin quickly disengaged and grabbed supplies
before checking over Ted and Susan's kids.  One had a nice gash on his leg
where he fell in the rush to get to shelter.  The adults had been too busy
fighting off the attack to tend to the wounded yet. 

Defense
came first.

Erik set
started to clean Ted's youngest boy's leg.  He carefully wrapped it up with a
bandage.  Inwardly, he marveled at how many wounds he had patched up that day,
between the wounded soldiers at the Marina and now Ted's children.  It seemed
he had lived a lifetime in one day.

"You're
gonna be alright...you're very brave, you know that?" said Erik as gently
as he could.  His hands were red with his own blood and he smeared the nice
clean bandage on the boy's leg.  "Is that too tight?" he asked.  The
little towhead shook side to side. 

The other
children sobbed quietly and clung to each other for support.  They were all
huddled together in the corner further from the stairwell entrance.  Furniture
had been piled in front of them to shield them from stray bullets should the
fight reach the top floor.  Now they used the barricade to hide from the truth
that their mother was in mortal danger.