Dux Bellorum (Future History of America Book 3) (52 page)

"They’ll be able to see whatever we have inside—or
whoever
we have inside…"
 
The young man looked crestfallen.

"You're on the right track with the wood," Erik said as a way of placating him.
 
"Just think outside the box.
 
What would happen if you put a bunch of nails through those boards and then hid them on the ground
underneath
the windows."

The student turned and looked over his shoulder at the dorm, examining the bushes and landscaping—largely left wild since the collapse.
 
"Well, they’ll have to step on it or move it to get to the window."

Erik nodded.
 
"Right.
 
And what does that do for you?"

"Hey… Hey, I know what you talking about!
 
If they have to step on it…if it's dark and they step on it, they're gonna get hurt—that might be enough to make the run away.”
 

Erik nodded.
 
“And…?”

"And if not, if we bury the boards in the mulch and stuff there underneath the windows, that they’ll probably make enough noise so we’ll hear them rustling around.
 
They’ll definitely make noise if they
step
on one!"

Erik clapped the young man on the shoulder.
 
"Now you're thinking like a survivor.
 
Keep it up.
 
What's another benefit of having the nailed strips laying on the ground where they're not easily observable?"

The kid’s brow wrinkled.
 
"Well, if we had boards up over the windows and someone thought that we had something valuable inside…if we don't have anything up…then they might think there's nothing inside and walk on by."

Erik winked at him.
 
"You got it."

"Awesome.
 
This is awesome—thank you!"
 
The student scribbled more notes in his book and then jogged back to the others, shouting in triumph.

Erik picked up his canteen from the ground and took a swig of water, eyeing the sky.
 
Ever since the thunderstorms a few days ago, the temperature had steadily dropped and now the overcast sky blocked even more heat.
 
It felt like it was in the low 50s, maybe upper 40s.
 

A slight breeze tickled the back of his neck.
 
He’d worked up a sweat tromping around with his little gaggle of students, pointing out the flaws in their current security measures.
 
He took the opportunity to continue practicing his
kata
while the others examined the buildings in detail.
 
The pipe he carried wasn't nearly as graceful as his lost katana so he worked up an awful sweat, but it felt good to use his muscles again.

He looked at the pipe in his hands.
 
The brutish instrument still had a bit of a stain at the end where he’d bloodied the Jocks during the attack.
 
God, I miss my sword.

Three days,
he thought to himself, watching the students eagerly gesticulate toward the window and
 
ground as they hashed out a plan for the building.
 
Three days stuck in this medieval clusterfuck they have going on here.
 
Three days of hiking around this campus and showing these kids how to defend themselves and not a single person has brought up the fact they have a stockpile of guns and ammunition that they won't train themselves to use
.
 
Erik shook his head.
 
It makes no sense at all.

Lindsay's recovery provided all the comfort he needed, though.
 
The honey-derived antibiotics they'd acquired from Dr. Norris down at the farm had already started to show results.
 
Not only had Lindsay's fever stopped climbing, but it actually fell the night before.
 
She was now only mildly warm and was constantly complaining she wanted to get up and walk around.
 

Lucy, her ever-present nurse, strictly forbade excessive movement.
 
Erik smiled thinking about the eager-to-please sophomore nursing major.
 
She never went anywhere without her oversized canvas messenger bag emblazoned with a crude red cross.
 
She was quick to illustrate the dangers of life without modern medicine and ever ready to lend a hand when someone got a scratch or bruise or strained muscle.
 

No matter where Erik went, he always found her hanging around his group.
 
She was a near constant companion for Lindsay and followed Brin around incessantly, always tucking that stray lock of black hair over her ear whenever Brin talked to her.
 
Which was a lot.
 
Erik had come to grips with his jealousy and tried to ignore it, but there it was.
 
Brin talked more with Lucy than with him.
 

Wait a minute,
Erik paused.
 
He turned toward the visitor's center.
 
She's always talking about Brin…always following Brin.
 
A slow smile crept across his face.
 
Maybe she's got a crush on Brin?
 
He frowned.
 
Good grief.
 
Really?
 
Get your mind out of the gutter, Larsson.

Everyone in the Professor's group had realized Erik, Brin, and Ted had taken over the visitor's center as their own private space.
 
Most people recognized that and treated it as their house.
 

Roger was the glaring exception to that.
 
The scruffy grad assistant walked in at all hours like he owned the place.
 
It was as if by the mere fact that he’d survived the attack there now bestowed hero status on him.
 
The other students were quick to promote the idea.

As the days wore on and Erik gained more intelligence about the Professor's operation, he came to understand just how communal it truly was.
 
The Professor had taken the most logical course of action possible when dealing with a large group of 18 to 24-year-olds who were unarmed and essentially helpless after the collapse.
 
Everyone stayed together in a few dorms and hunkered down at night.
 
They only moved around during the day and only in groups of four or more.
 
They were very cautious—to the point of paranoia—about everything.

Erik stared at the golden maples and red oaks that lined the quad.
 
It really was a beautiful campus.
 
He watched as his 'students' trotted back and forth between two buildings, pointing at windows and bushes.

They all seemed like so many lemmings to Erik, willing to blindly follow the Professor and do whatever he asked as long as he kept them safe and well fed.
 
Erik was amazed the man had been able to do so much with so little for so long.
 
Yet one intelligent raid by the Jocks or Rebels and the whole thing would come crashing down.

As Lindsay continued to improve, Erik's desire to run north grew stronger and stronger.
 
It was an inescapable pull that constantly tugged at his soul.
 
He wanted to be gone before that one intelligent raid took place.

Of all of them, Teddy was having the best time possible.
 
Where Lindsay followed Brin around, Teddy followed Lucy.
 
He was proud to be her ‘surgical assistant’ and fetched anything she needed.
 
He wasn't allowed out of the visitor's center and though there was always someone around doing chores like raiding cars or hunting through buildings for supplies, Brin watched him like a hawk.

As the days continued to march forward, Erik felt more and more like the students were keeping tabs on his group.
 
He couldn't blame the Professor for doing so—it's what he would have done.
 
But it was a little disconcerting, nonetheless.
 

He didn't like being watched.
 
It reminded him too much of being a Russian prisoner.
 
Just thinking about those harsh and dramatic early days of the collapse in Florida made him grip the pipe with white knuckles.

No, first chance he got, he wanted to get everyone off campus and heading north again.
 
They were only about five hours away from his parent’s house in Upstate New York.
 

Erik glanced at some abandoned cars on Main Street in the distance.
 
Well, five hours on open roads traveling at highway speeds
, he corrected himself.
 
Now?
 
Who the hell knows…

He sighed.
 
They’d have to find a working car first and plenty of gas.
 
Both resources the Professor controlled with an iron fist.
 

The tasks ahead began to mount in his mind and Erik felt the weight of responsibility settle on his shoulders once again.

Chapter 53

Gainesville

H
AKIM
STEPPED
DOWN
FROM
the beat-up truck and adjusted his backpack. He slung his captured M4 rifle over his left shoulder and walked forward, glancing at the rows of apartments stretched out before him.

"So little damage…" observed Saldid.

"This is a college town, useful to no one…" Hakim said, eyeing the closest apartment building. "Besides, this place is too far north to have taken part in the fighting around Orlando. The refugees may or may not have made it here—but if they did, they likely continued north.”
 
He turned east.
 

"That way lies Jacksonville. The Americans have their Naval Air Station there, so Malcolm will try to avoid it and head west, toward us.
 
I believe it will be at a border town between here and Jacksonville.
 
Several good spots for an ambush."

Saldid grinned. "And the Russians are heading north to stop him, so
they
will be there as well."

Hakim nodded.
 
"The Americans chase him, so they will follow too.
 
All we have to do is find the place they'll meet and plant the seed of our masterstroke. This, though," he said swinging his arm wide to encompass Gainesville, "is where we shall birth vengeance for Mecca.”
 

"I can hardly believe it. Here we are, surrounded by college students…let us celebrate our good fortune and find some young willing girls.
 
I bet they all have alcohol as well, I have seen the videos on the Internet."

Hakim looked at his partner in disgust. It was the final straw. Throughout their long partnership of destruction over the past six months—setting wildfires in Arizona, killing citizen vigilantes along the border, stirring up the Mexicans, and leaving a trail of dead and bloodied Russians across the state of Florida—they were at last on the cusp of their final act of defiance.
 

He had not arrived in Gainesville by happenstance. He knew the university here held a significant science campus. They must surely have radioactive material. He had just enough rudimentary training to make a dirty bomb the world would never forget.
 

True, it would not be the equal of the device that destroyed Mecca—may Allah curse the Zionists forever—but Hakim’s bomb would be a symbolic gesture to strike fear in the hearts of every American. If during this national crisis,
mujahideen
could reach out across the world and deliver a nuclear explosion, no American would ever feel safe again.

And on the doorstep of all of that glory, this fool is more interested in pussy and beer.
Perhaps it was the heat of the day, or lack of sleep, or Saldid’s insistence on playing nothing but Ashley Sword on their trip north from Tampa—Hakim would never know. He did know it felt good to pull the trigger on his M4 and final put an end to Saldid's incessant sinful distractions.

Once the bark of the rifle had dissipated, Hakim took a quick glance around. He knelt over the twitching body of his partner and stripped off all the useful items like spare magazines and bits of explosive material.
 
He ignored the cigarettes and threw aside the folded up pornographic magazines with disgust.
 
He stuffed the remainder of Saldid's gear into his own bag.
 
Hakim's anger flared anew when he rifled through Saldid’s cargo pockets and found six protein bars.

"You bastard—I have starved the last two days, yet you have been hoarding this!" He spat into the ruined face of his former partner. "You deserve more than death, but I shall leave that to Allah.”

Hakim stood and adjusted his pack, shifting the extra weight to a comfortable position. He reached inside his pants pocket and pulled out a crumpled, sweat-stained map of the university. The science and engineering buildings had been circled in red ink. They were the first places he'd look for radioactive material.
 
He took his bearings from the street signs and walked off to find his bomb.

As he passed between two apartment buildings, he saw a girl's face peek out from behind curtains and then vanish almost as quickly as she had appeared. Hakim paused, squinting up in the sun at the shaded window. He felt a familiar stirring and for a split second thought Saldid might've been onto something regarding the college girls.
 
His breath quickened, thinking of what might await him inside that building.

A cloud passed overhead, casting Hakim in shadow.
 
He frowned at the window.
 
No. That way lies distraction and debauchery—sins in the eyes of Allah. I am mujahideen.
 
I am here for nothing but the glory of Allah.