Dux Bellorum (Future History of America Book 3) (51 page)

“It’s Greek,” Erik said, still smiling.
 
“It means come and take it.”

“Ooooh no you didn’t,” chuckled the tall one.

Shorty’s eyes flashed and his nostrils flared.
 
He tensed his muscles, the cords in his neck standing out.
 
He paced back and forth in front of Erik waving his arms and jumping, throwing practice punches in the air.
 

Erik remained still, only his eyes moving, watching Shorty pump himself up for a fight.
 
He tightened his grip on the pipe and exhaled.

"Fuck 'im up!" called out the tall one.

"You gonna do something or are you gonna dance for me all day?" asked Erik. He hoped his voice was steadier than his nerves.

"Erik!
 
What's going on down there?" called Brin's voice from the top of the stairs.

Dammit
.

Both men in front of him pivoted to look at the stairs.
 
"Yo, they got bitches in here!"
 
Shorty said breathlessly.

"Hell yes—
jackpot!
" said his partner.
 
They high-fived.

"Now this changes everything, my man," said Shorty suddenly calm.
 
"Look here—I’ll give you a new deal."
 
He pursed his lips and clasped his hands in front of him, striking quite the magnanimous pose.
 
"I tell you what—you keep everything in here, including that fucking pipe of yours, but we take the bitches.
 
Got it?"

Erik gripped the pipe tighter.
 
"No deal."
 
He pointed the pipe with one arm at Shorty.
 
"You've been warned."
 
He took a step forward.
 
The larger man ironically stepped back.
 
Shorty, clearly the leader, held his ground and Erik's eyes with his own steely gray gaze.

"Oh, we got us a tough guy,” he said over his shoulder.
 
“You remember the last one?"

The taller student chuckled nervously from the doorway.
 
"Yeah, that was a mess."

"Better get some cleaning supplies, Leo, I’m about to fuck this white boy up."

Erik took one half step back, dropped his sword arm and swiveled the pipe in a long, slow circle around his wrists.
 
The open-ended pipe whistled as he stretched his arm above his head and brought the sword into an offensive position.
 
The smooth, practiced movement had the desired effect.
 
Shorty stepped back, his eyes growing wider.
 
Leo’s mouth hung open from the doorway.

"Last chance.
 
Leo, right?"
 
Erik asked, directing his question toward the younger student in the doorway.
 
"You might want to follow your friend’s advice and go get some cleaning supplies.
 
You’re gonna be pickin' brains out of the carpet in a minute."

"I don't think so," growled Shorty.
 
He whipped out a six-inch knife from his baggy basketball shorts.
 

Without another word, Erik stepped forward and brought the pipe down in a vicious swing from overhead.
 
It whistled as it cut through the air but missed Shorty’s arm by millimeters.
 
He was fast—far faster than Erik had expected—and the weight of the pipe threw him off balance.

“Erik?” called Ted.

“Engaging!” he yelled over his shoulder.
 
Lightning flashed, throwing the room into supernatural clarity for a split second.

"Damn how many people they got in here?" asked Leo.
 

Using size and strength to his advantage, Erik muscled the pipe around in a gray blur to force Shorty back while he reloaded his swing.
 
He pivoted on his right foot, slung the pipe around his head in an arc and felt a satisfying crunch as the pipe connected with Shorty’s knife hand.

Shorty screamed, and the knife went twirling away to embed itself into the far wall.
 
"Motherfucker!
 
I'm gonna cut your fucking head off for that!"
 
He clutched his wounded hand in the other.
 
"That was my glove hand!"

Leo stepped out of the doorway and the two of them rushed Erik at once.
 
Erik took note of their positions: Shorty on the left, Leo on his right.
 
It looked like a well-practiced bum rush.

Erik fainted toward the leader and then snapped the open end of the pipe directly into Leo’s face.
 
Blood gushed down Leo's face as he gurgled a scream and stepped back.
 

Erik turned and exposed his back to Shorty’s punch.
 
He grunted in pain as the black man's fist connected with his spine.
 
He knew by the sound of cracking bones and another howl of pain that Shorty had broken a finger in exchange for giving Erik a nasty bruise.
 
Erik dropped his shoulders while thrusting out with his hips, causing the shorter man to launch up and over his back like a sack of laundry.

Shorty landed flat on his back, his head a few feet away.
 
Erik swung the pipe behind him in a wide circle after gathering all the speed he could, swung it down in one final blow.
 
The pipe clipped the ceiling tiles, robbing Erik of most of his balance and all his power.
 
The killing blow was significantly less than intended.
 

Dead or unconscious—either way Shorty was out of the fight.
 

Erik spun on his heel, ignoring lingering screams from the earlier inflicted pain on Leo. The younger man staggered backward, both hands in front of his ruined face.
 
He hit the wall and paused, his eyes round.

"Jesus Christ!" screamed Roger.
 
Over a clap of thunder.

Leo's eyes traveled down to the inert body of his partner and his face hardened in rage, transfigured into the mask of a demon by his own blood.
 
He shoved off the wall and lunged for Erik, screaming like a madman.
 

Erik calmly sidestepped and used the end of his pipe to smack Leo on the side of the head as he rushed past.
 
Leo grunted under the impact and staggered sideways into the wall again.
 
He fell to his knees, clutching the side of his head, already sporting a nice goose egg.
 

Erik swung the pipe out, making it whistle until the tip pointed directly at Leo.
 
"Get out of here while you still can."

Leo blinked back the pain, whimpered a little and got to his feet on shaky legs.
 
He raised both hands in submission and nodded.
 
“Okay… I'm out…
fuck!
 
You’re crazy, bro."

Another Jock stepped through the rain pouring in the doorway and gasped in surprise.
 
"What the fuck is
this?"

"Stay back—this guy's insane!"
 
Leo warned with bloody hands.
 
Erik turned and brought the bloody pipe up into a defensive position, facing the new threat.

"Hey!
 
That's Roger!" the newcomer said.
 

"Shit!"
 
Roger whined from the background.

"This ain't over," said the newcomer.
 
"We'll be back for your bitch ass," he grinned.
 
Lightning flashed over his shoulder.
 
The storm seemed to approve.

Erik swung the pipe again in a loose circle, making it whistle and sing in the air.
 
Flecks of blood splattered the surrounding walls.
 
"Leo, get this sack of shit out of here before I decide to lay you both out next to Shorty here."

Leo nodded submissively, bent down and scooped up his unconscious friend by the shoulders.
 
He got reluctant help from the angry-eyed newcomer and the two of them dragged Shorty out, leaving a bright red trail on the gray industrial carpet.
 
They moved out the door and disappeared into the storm-torn night.
 
Erik heard more hoots and laughter, then shouts of surprise and finally the sound of running footsteps through the rain.
 
Eventually the raging storm swallowed all sounds from outside.

It was over.

A moment later Ted appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
 
"You okay?
 
I think they're gone—holy
shit
," he exclaimed, looking at the blood on the floor, the splattered drops on the walls, and the gore dripping from the end of Erik's pipe.
 
"What the fuck did you
do?"

Erik turned and dropped the pipe.
 
He winced at the pain in his lower back where Shorty landed a blow.
 
"I think I'm going to throw up," he said.
 
He dropped to one knee and braced his hands on the floor.
 
"Why can't they just leave us alone?"

Brin appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
 
"Is everybody okay—Erik!" she gasped.
 
"You're bleeding!"

Erik blinked at her and then brought a trembling hand to his face.
 
He wiped blood from his cheek.
 
"Oh—it's not mine.
 
I'm okay."

The concern melted from Brin's face.
 
The stony, distant Brin returned, but Erik was happy enough to have seen the brief emergence of his wife—his real wife—if only for a moment.

Chapter 52

Training

E
RIK
PUT
DOWN
HIS
pipe and wiped the sweat from his brow.
 
"No, you’ve got to do it again.
 
Walk around the ground floor of this building and check all the windows and doors.
 
That's all I’m going to tell you.
 
Now do it again," he said gesturing with a tired arm.
 

A few of the Professor’s students groaned but dutifully trudged off to visually inspect the dormitory again.
 
It'd been three days since the attack on the visitor's center and Roger had spread the word of Erik's fight.

As a consequence, Erik had become a living legend among the Professor’s group.
 
No one had ever stood up to the Jocks so successfully.
 
Word had come back almost immediately that the captains in the northern campus desired a more lasting truce.

It didn't hurt that Roger had also spread rumors Erik and Ted were only a small number of the larger group who'd recently merged with the Professor’s.
 
The Jocks took it all in as gospel.

The temperature had started to drop and though most everyone—including a few students who were majoring in meteorology—hoped it was merely an early cold snap and not a lasting trend.
 
The fight at the visitor's center convinced the Professor they needed to disperse more supplies throughout the buildings on campus rather than have everything centralized at the farm.

Erik had been tasked with training as many of the students as possible to recognize security faults, shore up defenses, and harden living quarters against future attacks.
 
It had not been a hard conversation to have with the Professor.
 

The night of the storm, the Jocks had been bolder than ever before, actually breaking into an occupied building.
 
It showed signs of desperation and an unwillingness to have their behavior checked any longer by assurances of
 
medicine and antibiotics supplies.

Erik put his Newark University cap on and watched approvingly as this time the group of students figured out the ground-floor windows were prime targets.
 
Two of them took notes while the others discussed how best to set up impromptu defenses.

Eventually one of the group broke off and trotted over to Erik.
 
"So, we got a couple ideas we want to run by you."

Erik hefted the pipe and twirled it casually.
 
"Let's hear it."

"Okay,” the kid said, eyeing the open end of the pipe as it sang through the air.
 
“So we don't have access to large sheets of plywood, which would probably work best to cover the windows…"

Erik nodded.
 
"Right.
 
Kinda like hurricane shutters back right where I come from.
 
But to make it worthwhile, you'll need some thick, heavy pieces.
 
Go on."

The student agreed.
 
"We don't have that—but we do have lots of scraps in one of the machine sheds down at the farm.
 
We could bring those up and…we were thinking maybe to put a few across each window—”

Erik frowned.
 
He planted his pipe firmly on the ground, resting his arm across the top.
 
"Stop right there—you’d be wasting your time.
 
Look at the exterior of this building.
 
It's mostly brick-and-mortar.
 
If you try to nail something into that, you're only going to weaken the mortar around the windows—which is a very bad idea.
 
Also, if you just put a few boards up and leave open gaps where light can get in, what else happens?"

The young man thought for a second, scratching his head with his pencil.
 
His eyes grew large.
 
"Anyone outside can see in."

Erik smiled.
 
"Right!
 
All you're doing is warning people outside that there's something valuable
inside
you're trying to protect
and
showing them you don't have the necessary tools to protect whatever it is properly.
 
That will invite them to check it out further and when they do…"