The flight group of four British Airways Jets was bunched up together like sheep being herded across the Atlantic at 30,000 feet by American sheep dogs. Each one of the Sheep carried more than a Company of Army soldiers on their way home to help defend against the imminent invasion of the United States.
“Give ‘em hell, Yanks,” said the co-pilot, from Yorkshire. He watched out the right side cockpit windows as the two remaining F-15s in their covering flight edged forward and took up positions in front of the passenger jet, leading them to America.
“Sheep Lead, this is Dog Four, we’ll be your escorts until the others get back. Just follow us now, we’ll take you right in,” crackled a Texan’s accent over the English pilot’s headset.
“Roger, Dog Four, we’ll follow you. Thanks again.”
Eleven tense minutes passed, without radio contact from the Americans in front of or those who had streaked away from the English jet. The Co-pilot was checking his instruments for the ump-teenth time when the radio came to life again.
“727 Heavy, this is Dog Four, Dog One will be taking over lead position momentarily. Maintain course and speed.”
“Spot on, Yanks, thanks very much.” The Co-Pilot smiled and waved through the cockpit window as the two lead fighters slowed down and resumed position on the passenger jet’s right wing. As the airliner over took the American fighters, one of the pilots waved back through the bubble canopy on the sleek fighter.
At the same time on the other side of the massive airliner, two of the three intercepting Eagles resumed their station on the left wingtip. The flight leader gracefully slid back into position just above and in front of the airliner, resuming his role as ‘nose guard’. The British pilot couldn’t help but notice the obvious fact that the three returning American planes were missing a few missiles.
“Have any trouble, Dog One?” asked the Co-Pilot.
“Nothing we couldn’t handle, sir. Just a few Germans and a Frenchman that decided to go looking for love in all the wrong places,” came the scratchy reply. The two English pilots looked at each other.
“Scare them off, then did you? Good show,” grinned the pilot The copilot smiled back through a sheen of sweat on his forehead.
“No, sir,” replied the dead calm voice of the flight leader. “We’re not much in the mood for scaring people off anymore.”
SARASOTA
Calling Down the Thunder
GOT ANY IDEA why Lentz called this emergency meeting tonight?” asked Erik as he and Hoss warily covered the trash detail team from the ramparts. The three men and one woman below them walked slowly around the corner of the complex walls and headed over to the trash pit about two hundred yards away, dragging the days refuse with them. Erik peered through his binoculars, scanning the area across the field where the dump had been formed up to the surrounded trees.
On the other side of the trees lay a community of suburbanite homes, mostly ransacked and abandoned already. To the west, more trees and homes, of lower price. They were still mostly occupied, the people there living more like cavemen than before, but still there. To the south, further still in line with the trash detail team, the road met an intersection and disappeared into more trees, pines and oaks. The afternoon sun was partially blocked by a high white cloud, giving some reprieve to the heat of the day.
“Nope. Probably has something to do about the fact that we’re running out of food, though,” was the rumbling reply. Hoss was scanning the trees surrounding the trash detail team through the scope mounted on his .22 rifle, one of the five liberated in their shopping spree a week ago. “There ain’t nothin’ out there, man.”
“I don’t see anything either, but that doesn’t mean we get to relax.”
“Word has it that more people are starting to think the National Guard has already gotten things under control…ain’t been no more attacks on us, hardly even seen any of them cars with the funny hand symbols on ‘em either. Not since we went shopping,” Hoss said.. “I mean, a few of those cars went past us earlier this week. No problem.”
“Doing reconnaissance,” Erik muttered. They all had a strange, white symbol on the hoods and doors, like something hand painted with finger-paint. The defenders of the complex had simply watched them drive by and waited for an attack that night that never came. Because the attack never came, more than a few people started calling Erik, Chicken Little. The divide between the Lentz and Larsson factions in the complex were deepening.
Erik grunted. “I don’t like it. I’ve got this feeling in my stomach that something bad is coming…I just don’t know what, or when…” he said scanning the trees to the south with his binoculars. He shifted his shoulders to adjust the .22 rifle slung there. “Maybe it is about food…after all, with Alfonse’s rain collection program and all the showers we’ve been having in the afternoons, we’ve got plenty of water for a few days.”
“Yeah, until it stops raining. Rainy season ends in a couple three months.”
“Good point. But we’re still working on getting those containers that John spotted at the hardware store three days ago. They’re just so damn big!”
“Well, it don’t help the motivation to have the National Guard stop by everyday offering salvation or food and water. Pretty soon we’ll have to take ‘em up on that.”
“God I hope not…” Erik mumbled, his mind imagining the crowded hellhole the shelters must be as his eyes continually looked for dangers. The trash detail team gave a wave, the signal that they were through and on their way back okay. Erik grinned and pulled up the large signal flag and pole kept on this wall. He raised it high and swung the wooden staff—an old broom handle, really—back and forth. The trash detail team continued walking home. He could see them talking and laughing as if there weren’t a care in the world.
“We’re getting lazy. They’re not hurrying like they did a few days ago. What, do they think there’s nothing out there anymore?” he asked.
Hoss swung his rifle over the trash detail team and looked to the east. He was about to move on when he spotted movement. “I got something on the east.” His voice was suddenly tense.
Erik swung his binoculars over to the east quickly, his heat rate picking up. He didn’t see anything at first, then spotted the movement, coming around the corner of the side road about a hundred yards to the southeast from their position. It was something low to the ground and moving fairly fast through the trees. A few seconds past for the shape suddenly emerged on the road.
It was a man in a wheel chair pushing himself for all he was worth. With the binoculars, Erik could see the sweat glisten on the man’s forehead and strong arms. He took a glance over his shoulder and knuckled down, pushing himself even faster. He turned the corner heading towards the complex, lost his balance, teetered for a split second then crashed to the pavement, spilling some gear onto the road. Erik and Hoss could hear his cry of pain carried on the wind.
Hoss laughed. “He’s not much of a threat.”
Erik looked back towards where the man on the wheel chair had come. “No, but they might be. Four people, coming up behind the crippled guy…see ‘em there through that break in the trees? ‘Bout fifty yards behind him. They look like they’ve been following him. I see ‘em laughing.”
“Yep, look like a bunch of punks to me.”
Erik pulled out his emergency-use-only radio. “Response Team to the Gate. Response Team to the Gate. On the Double, this is not a drill!” he barked out.
“Cover the trash team,” Erik said, bolting for the gate ladder. He didn’t wait for Hoss’s affirmative reply but slid down the rough ladder and met his Response Team, already running to meet at the gate. Within a few seconds, all of the men—armed and armored with hockey gear, swords, bows and arrows—assembled.
“Let’s go—open the gate!” he called. Two men from a repair crew ran over and swung back the heavily reinforced gate, allowing the Response Team to charge out like knights sallying forth from the castle.
“Here we g
o, guys…there’s the group of bandits,” Erik informed his troops as they ran for the downed man with the wheelchair, struggling to get up and gather his things a hundred yards down the road. He used the popular term ‘bandits’ that had come to denote anyone unknown that could be a threat. “Down at the intersection—they’re coming after the guy ahead of us. Flank ‘im and let me do the talking!”
The Team grunted replies as they jogged toward the man with no legs. They reached the wheelchair just as the four bandits did. Both groups stopped within ten feet of the legless fellow, caught in no-man’s-land with a look of sheer terror on his face. He looked at Erik and the Response Team, standing at ease with wicked looking swords and garishly painted body armor over their t-shirts and shorts, jeans and fatigues. He could not fail to notice the large pistol strapped to Erik’s left thigh or the discipline the four men behind him seemed to exude as they spread out, two on either side of him, in unison, eyes never moving from the four street toughs.
The handicapped man turned to look then at the punks who had been chasing him. All smirks and airs of superiority were gone from their pimpled faces. They had thought to rough him up, have a little fun with him…maybe find out where he lived and steal what he had. The looks on their faces ranged from surprise to fear to anger at the sight of Erik and his men.
Without even glancing at the punks, Erik strode forward and knelt to help the stranger back into his chair and pick up the pieces of electronic equipment—they looked to Erik like hand held radios and some books—that had spilled onto the hot black pavement.
“Here you go, sir, let me help you with that. You alright?” Erik asked, kneeling.
“Thank you, son…” said the stranger, smiling in genuine relief. He was out of breath from the chase and took a moment to calm himself before continuing. “These kids here were chasing me…I was…uh, going to go see the people in that apartment complex there,” he said, examining the armor on Erik’s chest. The logo said Bauer Hockey right under a little American flag.
“Well, that’s us,” Erik said with a smile. Almost as an afterthought, he glanced up at the punks, all of which held faces contorted with impotent anger. “Oh, y’all can leave now.”
“Fuck you man!” spat one of the kids. The others started teen-aged taunting that came with their age group.
“Yeah, he’s ours! We saw ‘im first, asshole!”
“Nice costumes! Where’s the party, jackass?”
Erik’s men unsheathed swords and notched arrows in compound hunting bows. Erik glanced at his men and lowered his hands, signaling them to stand down. He turned and looked at the punks again. He smiled the smile of a man that knows a very dirty secret. Very deliberately, he stepped in front of the man in the wheelchair, putting himself in front of the punks.
“This man is now under the protection of the Colonial Gardens Freehold,” he said. Colonial Garden Apartment Complex just sounds too…complex. Freehold sounds cool…have to see what the others think now. “There’s no need for trouble here, so like I said, go on home now.”
“Like I said,” the punks’ leader said, laughing and stepping forwad. “Go fuck yerself and your Freehold.” He poked a slim dirty finger onto Erik’s hockey armor to emphasis his words.
“I gotcha Freehold right here, mothafucka!” exclaimed the biggest of the four as he grabbed his crotch with a dirt stained hand.
Erik listened to the buzz of the insects in the trees to the left, just off the road for a few seconds to calm himself. It took everything he had to not grab the little asshole’s hand and break the finger that poked his chest. Behind him, he knew that Hoss was watching the situation through his rifle scope. Erik’s radio crackled, the ear-bud in his ear speaking with Ted’s voice in a low whisper.
“Erik,” he said, panting. “I’m in position on the ramparts with Hoss. We got two of ‘em in the scope, buddy. Just don’t go any closer and we can take ‘em from here. Ones on the right and left flanks. Raise your arm then drop it if you want us to fire. You can call down the thunder when you’re ready.”
Erik nodded to let the riflemen know he understood. Behind him, he heard the aim of the two bowmen shift to cover the two punks closest to Erik, making sure all four could go down in seconds. The two men with swords unsheathed them slowly. One had a katana, the other had Erik’s Viking sword.
“I’ll give you kids one last chance to leave,” Erik said, his best poker face set.
“Or what, shitface?” asked the leader.
“Someone with that many pimples shouldn’t be calling anyone else names, kid,” Erik said with a smile.
“They ain’t so tough, let’s cut ‘em,” said the biggest punk, pulling out of his pants pocket a large folding knife. The others quickly followed suit with knives of various sizes, from a ridiculous pocketknife held like a dagger to a sizeable Bowie knife strapped to a shin.
Erik raised his arm. “Okay, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Goodbye, assholes.” He dropped his arm. Almost instantaneously, two arrows whizzed past his head, sending a chill down his spine he hadn’t anticipated. One arrow thudded into the big punk’s chest and he reeled backwards onto the ground, writhing in pain. The other arrow hit its target square in the face, dropping the youth faster than King Harold at the Battle of Hastings.
Before the other two could react, one took a .22lr round to the forehead and fell backwards with a wet splat. The last remaining punk took a round in the right shoulder, screamed in pain and fell sideways off the road and into the drainage ditch.
Erik let his men take care of the cleanup. He got behind the wheelchair-bound man and began to push him towards the apartment walls. He took off his helmet, popped the earbud out and let the cord dangle from his chest. “Thanks for the backup, Ted, Hoss. You guys did great. But Hoss…” he said into the radio.
“Yeah?” was the reply. Erik could see the silhouetted shapes on the wall ahead of him.
“You only hit the kids shoulder. Now we’ve got to let him go. I’m having George make him drag the bodies into the ditch then send him on his way with a warning.”
“Damn…sorry man, I’ll nail it next time.” Ted’s laughter rang in the background.
“I must say, I’m rather shocked at how callous you treated the deaths of those young men…” said the wheelchair bound man as Erik pushed him forward at a casual pace.
“Yeah, well, you get over it pretty quickly. We’ve had to get over pretty quickly. Wouldn’t be here if we didn’t…” Erik said, looking down at the older man.
They moved on in silence, listening to the buzzing insects. “My name’s Art Carillon, by the way.” Erik leaned over and shook his hand.
“Erik Larsson. Nice to meet ya.”
“So…ah, you’re from the apartment complex then? What did you call it? The Freehold?”
“Yeah…I’m in charge of…well, I’m sort of like our chief of security I guess. Though I used to be the leader of the whole place.”
“I can see I’m going to have lots of questions…”
“Don’t worry, we’ll get back, get a drink and talk all you want. We don’t get many visitors other than the ones that are either trying to force their way in or beg their way in.”
“That’s precisely what I want to talk to you about…”
“I’m afraid our resources are pretty much strained to the limit as it is, Mr. Carillon—“
“Art, please, you just saved my life!”
Erik grinned. “Art it is. We just can’t take everyone in that wants in…we’re barely able to feed ourselves as it is.”
“I see,” said Art, head drooping in defeat. “The chase those kids gave me finally got it through my head that I can’t live by myself in this new world anymore.” He sighed.
“I mean, we can make exceptions,” Erik said, quoting the guidelines made up at the last meeting. “For people who have talents that we can use.” Art’s head snapped up with hope. “But,” Erik said quickly. “We have everyone we need pretty much, unless you’re
a surgeon.”
Art could see clearly at that point the larger buildings sticking up over the stucco walls and ramparts of wood that surrounded the Freehold. He searched quickly and saw no antennae. “So how’s your comm gear?”
Erik paused, taken aback and missed a step. “Pardon?”
“Your communications…with the outside world?” Art asked, twisting around in his seat to look up at Erik. “You know, can you or can’t you communicate with the outside world?”
Erik blinked in the sunlight and looked at the roof of Building One, where Alfonse had installed the makeshift solar array to recharge some of the smaller electronic devices they used, primarily the hand-held radios.
“We have a few short-wave radios, so we can get the news from the BBC and other foreign—“
“Got a HAM?”
Erik paused, hope beginning to rise in him like was in Art. “No, we don’t…we have an electronics guy, but no HAM gear or training…”
“You got one now, if you’ll have me,” Art said with a smile. He recognized deep down in himself that he liked the way the men from the Freehold had handled those punks that had chased him half to death.
It’s a rough new world with rough new rules, I suppose, he thought to himself. “I’ve got antennae, gear, solar power, battery backup, the works, all back at my house. I’ve got more’n ten years experience, contacts all over the country and I’ve been a ARES volunteer now for years.”
Erik knew exactly what being an ARES—the Amateur Radio Emergency Service—volunteer entailed: sacrifice, dedication, and commitment to helping others in emergencies. Above all it meant being prepared, 24 hours a day for whenever a disaster or emergency struck. In a heartbeat, Erik knew that Art would be a valuable and welcome addition to the Freehold community.
“Well, I got in trouble the last time I let people in without asking, so this time I’ll have put it to the vote, but I have a feeling you’ll be welcome to join us. I can’t tell you how happy I am to meet you, Art…being cut off from talking with anyone outside…” Erik began to think of the possibilities. HAMs were everywhere. He might be able to get Art to contact someone up north, maybe get word of his folks and his sister or Brin’s family…
Alea Jacta Est: A Novel of the Fall of America (Future History of America Book 1) Page 46
