Dux Bellorum (Future History of America Book 3) (72 page)

Erik felt the pistol shift against his back again.
 
Almost there…
A trickle of sweat slipped between his shoulder blades. He hoped the old Colonel had his finger off the trigger.
 

"I got you a new recruit. I want my bounty," the old man stubbornly repeated.

"Deal's off," the convict said nonchalantly picking his teeth.
 
"You took too long."

"It's not my fault he chose to come back
now
, if there had been anybody else—" whined the Colonel.

Carl raised his hands in supplication. "Then how is it
my
fault? The offer had a time limit, pops.
 
One month and guess what?
 
That month has passed. We spread the word to bring in people for bounties and looks like you didn't make it in time.
 
Tough shit."

"You know who I am, Carl?" asked the Colonel.

"I don't give a fuck who you are.
 
If you don't clear outta here, you'll be dancin' on the blacktop."

Erik could contain himself no longer.
 
"You guys really trashed the place, huh?"

Carl poked a greasy finger into Erik's shoulder and forced him to look forward. "Don't go dippin' in my Kool-Aid, fish.
 
You need to learn some respect—I wasn't talking to you."
 
The greasy convict push a lock of dank hair out of his face and looked Erik up and down. He licked his lips. "You know how we got new fish to show respect back in the 5-0?"

"You're the one who killed my parents," Erik blurted.

Carl threw his head back and roared in laughter, quickly joined by the guards above the gate house. One of them shouted about what he did with Erik's mom the night before, the other laughed and said he did the same with Erik's father.

Erik clenched his jaw and held his tongue. He waited patiently. In his head, he imagined striking forward with his katana and slicing right through Carl's ugly face. The world would be better for it.

Carl wiped a tear from his eye and slowed his laughter to the point he could speak again. "Man, you are one
funny
motherfucker. Maybe we just cut your hands and feet off and let you tell jokes all day." He looked up and shouted at one of the guards up above.
 

"You hear that? There's plenty other assholes for you in Shanty Town! I'm markin' this one for Spike and me!"

Carl ignored the raucous boos and complaints thrown down at him from above. Erik noticed more than one of the guards on the far sides of the fort had lost interest and turned their attention back outside. That was a good sign.

He shifted his eyes back to Carl and fixed him with a stoic gaze.
 

Carl laughed. "Well, you got a set of balls on you, I'll give you that. We done we killed a lot of people, took a lot of women. Have you seen?" Carl said putting a friendly hand on Erik's shoulder and turning him to face Shanty Town.

Erik resisted the urge to grab Carl's hand and break his arm. Carl must've felt Erik shoulders tense because he quickly removed his hand and stepped to the side.

"Okay, okay, just relax, fish. Look, as the hospitality chair—" Carl fired a string of expletives at the guards who laughed at his title, "—it's my job to make sure your stay with us as pleasant as possible," he said to another round of laughter from above.

"Forget those assholes," Carl said conspiratorially. "They think they're all that just because they're guards. All they do is stand around and watch people all day, then grab anything that moves and have fun all night. That's not a life."
 
Carl took a deep breath and threw his arms out wide, facing the lake.
 

"You want the open-air, the clean water, the sky above you, the dirt in your hands," Carl said putting his hand back on Erik shoulder and gesturing toward the view beyond Shanty Town.
 

"You wanna work the land, grow crops, make us food—and stay alive."
 
Carl stared at Erik, the smell of onions and garlic on his breath.
 
His eyes narrowed.
 
For the first time, Erik saw how dangerous the man was.

 
"Don't you?" Carl asked. His hand painfully squeezed the side of Erik's neck. "Because I guarantee you, fish, you don't do what we say and I
will
make your life—what remains of it—a living fucking nightmare."
 
A sudden smile broke out on his pock-marked face.
 
"And I'm the
nice
guy," he said with a laugh as he slapped Erik on the back.

Erik tried a different tactic. "So…that's it then? I'm your prisoner now for life or something?"

"Hey now, nobody said anything about being a prisoner!" said Carl with an offended hand across his chest. "Like I said, you're our
guest
here. This is
Casa Del Spike
," Carl said with a sweeping gesture that elicited another laugh from above.
 

"Shut the fuck up, Ray!" Carl shouted up at the wall.
 
He looked at Erik.
 
"What's your name, fish?"

Erik ignored the banter. "Erik Larsson."

Carl stared at Erik for a second, then rubbed his finger across the sandpaper on his chin. "Larsson…Larsson…"

"You came through and killed this boy's parents and burned down his house," growled the Colonel.

Carl's eyes hardened as he looked past Erik to stare at the diminutive old man. "Oh, how could I forget," Carl muttered sarcastically. "That was your house?"
 
He laughed.

"That's right, he was your daddy, huh?" he asked, his eyes shifting back to Erik, "He killed two of my boys—almost shot me.
 
I don't think I'll be forgetting
that
one anytime soon."
 
He grinned, revealing yellow teeth.
 
"Spike really did a number on him. Stepped right up and—"

"Erik?" a weak voice said outside the gate. Erik ignored Carl and turned to look at an old woman who shuffled by, carrying two buckets of water up from the lake.
 
A wooden yoke had been placed on her neck, making her stoop almost halfway.
 

"Mom?" Erik breathed.

A guard shouted behind him, but Erik didn't care. His mother stood before him, doubled over carrying water for the animals who’d killed her husband, his father. Carl's face suddenly blocked his view, so Erik removed it from his sight. He slashed out with the knife Brin forced him to conceal in his waistband and Carl fell out of the way clutching his throat in a spray of blood. The Colonel's first gunshot echoed behind him—it sounded as if it had been fired miles away.

His tunnel vision focused only on his mother, driving him forward to her as she shrugged out of the cruel yoke wrapped around her neck and shoulders. She collapsed into his arms and he fell to his knees as gunfire exploded all around them. A bullet ricocheted off the thick stone wall of the fort not ten feet away from him with a loud whining cry.

"Sorry!" a man's voice said, carried on the wind to Erik's right, deep inside Shanty Town. "Sorry about that!"

"Dammit Irwin, shoot, don't apologize!" yelled Dan's voice from the other side.

The ricocheting bullet snapped Erik into action. He gathered up his mother and raced with her over to the dubious protection of the nearest shack. Crouching down behind the wooden structure, he tried to yell over his mother's screams and grabbed both of her hands as she clawed at his face.
 

"Mom! It's me! It's Erik!"

"They killed him! Eddie!
 
They killed him!"

His mother descended into silence and fell down face first onto the ground, covering her head as the battle erupted.

A young woman with a black eye and a busted lip shrugged into what was left of a tattered blanket and emerged from the next tent over. "I'll watch over her," she said quietly. "Are you here to fight them?" she asked, hope written on her battered face.

"No," Erik said.
 
"I'm here to kill them."

"Good," the woman whispered as she wrapped her blanket around Erik's mother.

He turned and peered around the corner of the wooden hovel in time to see one of the guards topple off the gate house and land in the dirt at his feet with a stomach-turning crunch of broken bones. His shotgun clattered a few feet away.
 

Erik scrabbled into the open to collect the weapon and remained crouched. Shanty Town erupted into screams as people ran in every direction, desperate to get away from the firefight that exploded all around them.

Erik faced north, straight into the open maw of the fort. On the far wall he saw a single guard sprinting for the northwestern corner. Gunshots crackled to the west, loud thunderous booms that signified the ongoing attack from Ted's snipers.
 

Behind him, toward the lake, he heard the telltale
pop-pop-pop
of Ted's M4. Scattered throughout the screams and shouts from Shanty Town, he heard people screaming for others to duck and get down—Maggie's squad was making their way to the fort.
 

His eyes focused straight ahead as the Colonel stepped over Carl's twitching body and yelled at Erik to follow. The old man stormed straight into the fort, turned left and fired two times. Erik jumped into action and raced after the Colonel.
 
He turned left, bringing the shotgun to bear on the body of another guard sprawled in the dirt.
 

Two down…

"Officer’s barracks!" the Colonel hollered, pointing west.
 

Erik followed the Colonel and zeroed in on the central faded red door of the old stone barracks.
 
The chaos they'd unleashed in Shanty Town sounded like a full-blown prison riot what with the crackling gunshots and screams coming from within and outside the fort.
 
All too frequently a bullet ricocheted off a wall or little puffs of dirt erupted at his feet.
 
It was hard not to flinch despite knowing the people outside were shooting not at him but at the guards.
 

By the time he and the Colonel had crossed the cluttered parade ground and slammed up against the faded red door—the middle of three on the ground floor—the gunfire outside the fort had intensified. Erik risked a glance and spotted three guards still atop the walls, shooting down into Shanty Town with shotguns—it sounded like canon fire.
 

As he watched, he heard a three-round burst from Ted's M4.
 
Pop-pop-pop.
 
One of the guards disappeared over the walls. The other two ducked down, yelling at each other and gesturing with hands.
 

One pointed at Erik.
 

He turned and grabbed the Colonel's shoulder, throwing the faded red wooden door open with his other hand. "Go!" he said, shoving the older man inside just before pellets peppered the stairs leading up to the second level. Erik dove left, and the Colonel fell to the right.
 

Erik coughed in the dust and quickly got to his feet, snatching up his shotgun.
 
The room had been converted into an office—he'd remembered years ago seeing rustic wood-framed beds and a picnic table the last time he'd been to the fort.
 
Now, it held a desk, some chairs and someone had plastered maps on the walls.
 
Empty liquor bottles filled the fireplace and a large hole had been carved out of the far wall, connecting the room with the next living quarters.

As Erik stared in disbelief at the crude remodeling, two convicts rushed through the hole. One brandished a silver revolver and took aim at the Colonel.
 
The second dove around the first, wielding a large knife.

 
The Colonel's pistol barked, affected his opponent's aim. The convict's shiny revolver expelled fire and smoke as it shifted toward the ceiling and its owner fell to the floor screaming.

The one with the knife ignored the gunfight and charged the Colonel, stopping short only when Erik stepped around the old man and leveled the shotgun at his chest. Without hesitation, Erik pulled the trigger and the knife wielding man froze in his tracks, wincing.

Click
.

Erik looked at the shotgun at the same time his enemy did. They locked eyes again and the bald man with the knife grinned. His crooked, stained teeth and deep-set eyes made his general appearance even more menacing. He screamed and charged, raising the knife with his heavily tattooed arm.
 

Out of options, Erik swung the shotgun's stock forward, catching the convict's knife arm at the elbow. With a satisfying crunch, the arm buckled, and the knife went flying. Erik then used his momentum to swing inside the convict's attack range and ram the shotgun barrel into his face.

The convict staggered back with blood gushing from his broken nose, screaming obscenities and yelling a warning.

The Colonel roared something about Spike. Erik spun, bringing the shotgun up like a club, expecting to find a giant in the doorway behind him. He flinched when the Colonel emptied his magazine, the flash lighting up the room. Erik spun back around again in time to see the convict with the smashed nose collapse to the floor in a cloud of dust and blood.

The old Colonel kept trying to fire his gun into the corpse at his feet, even though the slide had locked back exposing an empty chamber. "That's for Vi, you son-of-a-whore!"

Erik stared at the body on the floor. He matched the description. Bald head, heavily muscled, lots of tattoos.
 
Spike
.

He looked at the Colonel and back down at the body. Something was off. Jeffrey, in fear of his life and with no reason to lie, had explained that Spike was the biggest white man he'd ever seen—even bigger than Erik.

He'd expected to find someone close to 7 feet. Yet the man laying on the floor in an expanding pool of blood at his feet could not have stood any taller than 6 feet.