"Hoss bought the farm stopping that truck." Ted glanced at the heinous wreck. "But I don't see any others..."
"He wasn't a kamikaze type, Ted..." replied Erik, shocked at his friends demise.
"I know. I think..." he swallowed hard. "I think that was an act of desperation."
Erik followed Ted's gaze and examined the wreck. His mind suddenly clicked. "He was trying to stop whoever was riding that truck from getting in. He knew what was about to go down. So why didn't the guards?"
"Cooper, point. Riojas and Jones, follow him, let's get to that building to the north," the Lieutenant barked. Erik and Ted had no choice but to follow, each lost in his own thoughts and questions.
"Roger that," said the soldier in the lead. He kept his rifle up and leaned forward before he quartered the corner and moved quickly on to the next building. The two other men followed him, one scanned high through the shattered windows of the building they approached, the other looked low for movement around corners.
They paused at the next building, then, on no sign of anyone but more bodies, they signaled all clear. "Alright, let's go. Quickly, eyes sharp. Stay frosty people," the Lieutenant whispered.
The rest of the squad and Erik and Ted moved efficiently over the open space of the parking lot and around a few burned out cars. Erik recognized a few bodies in the grass. One was just a child, the daughter of one of his guards. He had trouble with her name all of a sudden.
Allison? He viciously suppressed the wave of fear that suddenly washed over his soul. Whatever happened here, Brin was better prepared to handle it than anyone else here. Remember that!
He risked a glance at Ted as they moved on to the next building, engulfed in flames. Ted wore a mask of non-emotion. It was as if he was a machine. Erik knew he recognized some of the bodies as well, but it didn't seem to affect him at all. More dark skinned bodies mixed with tattooed ex-cons, highlighted in the light of the fire were scattered on the ground in small groups. They were concentrated at the entrance to the building on fire.
They skirted that building—if anyone was in there, there was nothing they could do. Smoke poured out of every ground floor window and door. The heat was so intense they could not even get within twenty feet of the doomed structure. They moved on to the next building, one away from where Erik and Ted lived.
More bodies littered the parking lot. "So many," whispered Erik. "Where the hell did they all come from?" He noticed an especially large black man, face up, in what looked like a very clean, expensive suit. He had designer sunglasses on and his hands even looked manicured. He didn't look dead, just asleep. There was no sign of struggle or anything.
It was as if this mysterious man just laid down and went to sleep in the middle of the parking lot. As they pass closer, Erik could see why. The man's chest was dark with blood. There was a circular ring of scorched cloth in the middle of his torso. Someone had put a gun to his chest and pulled the trigger. It must have been someone he knew or trusted, Erik figured. The man had been completely taken by surprise, and the consequences was scattered on the pavement next to his head. But this stranger wasn't in the Freehold. He came with the attackers. A doublecross.
The hair on the back of his neck went up. Erik could not explain why, but he was more alert than he had ever been in his entire life. Something was not right and his instinct shouted at him to find cover, find Brin, and get the hell out of Dodge.
It was like something out of a dream. The bodies were everywhere. Those of their friends and neighbors were only a blessed few compared to the score or more of black men with a few Hispanics and a dozen or so heavily tattooed whites tossed in for good measure.
Someone had planned the attack. They had won the confidence of the guards and gained entrance by surprise. Otherwise those men Erik had trained wouldn't have died at their posts, shot in the back. He glanced down at the well dressed man at his feet.
And this guy...the leader? Someone didn't like what he was doing and capped him, right here in the parking lot, mid attack. That means the attackers were unstable or doped up. Maybe disorganized enough to give our people a chance to regroup?
They paused at the corner of the next building. The anxiety was almost enough to make him vomit. Just thirty yards away, around the corner was his home. Ted's home. Brin, Susan, the kids. That would be where they were when all this went down. Ted took a quick look and popped back around the corner, his back against the wall. "Lentz."
"What?" asked Erik in a surprised whisper.
"At the corner, slumped against the wall. Someone beat him halfway to hamburger."
Erik gripped his rifle tight. "If that damn fool had something to do with this," he began.
"He's already paid for it, in spades. Trust me," replied Ted with a serious look. "What you're about to see..."
"I need to find her," said Erik.
"Just...prepare yourself," was all Ted muttered. Erik saw the skin around Ted's eyes was drawn tight.
"Voices," called out Cooper from his position on one knee by a large bush next to the corner of the building. He had an unobstructed view down the walkway, but was easily hidden from the view of anyone not behind their building.
The driver turned and jogged around opposite corner behind them. Another soldier peeled off to cover him. The Lieutenant made eye contact with Cooper and pointed at him. Cooper nodded and moved slowly forward, looking for the source of the voices he heard. The rest of them slowly followed.
Cooper suddenly held up his hand in a fist. Everyone froze and crouched. He pointed off ahead of them to the right. There was some movement in the windows of Erik's apartment.
His heart raced and he took an involuntary step forward before Ted's arm pinned him to the wall like a steel rod. Erik didn't see the look of warning on Ted's face. His eyes were locked on to the window of his bedroom with tunnel vision. He saw movement, a flash of white. Was it skin?
Someone was thrown through the window with a crash. Lots of white skin. A dark head poked through and yelled something that echoed between the buildings. Erik paused. It sounded like the man was…laughing? No. Barking.
What the hell?
Two more men came around the corner and howled. They pounced on the figured squirming in the grass and glass. Kicks flew, punches, a few swings of a bat. Grunts and groans and screams and then barking again. A few more men came from the biggest building in the center of the complex.
Erik remembered the plan he and Lentz had put together. Get the women and children to the top floor of the main building, turn it into a last ditch shelter. The Keep, like a castle's last line of defense. They had cleared the lower floors and booby trapped doors. He closed his eyes and silently prayed that Brin, Susan and the kids had made it to the Keep and locked themselves in on the top floor. Maybe someone made it to safety or they got word out for help. After all, Art’s radio shack was up there on the top floor too.
But who would, or could help? asked his rational mind in a whisper. You're with the National Guard!
When he opened his eyes, there were maybe ten men, some no older than teenagers, all attacking the person thrown out of Erik's apartment. He could tell by the grunts of pain that it wasn't Brin. It was...he squinted. He couldn't quite tell.
"Bernie," hissed Ted through clenched teeth.
For the first time, Erik noticed the number of bodies that littered the ground just outside his apartment. It left a clear path of travel. Everything the attackers did focused on his apartment building. His mind made the connection although he couldn't quite believe it. "They were after me. Look, all the bodies are leading in this direction."
"Grimes," Ted said with a nod of recognition. ‘He could have got past the guards, got people in. He knew where we lived."
"And I threw him and his daughter out..." Erik found himself locked in a stare on the ground at his feet. He slipped into a state of mind beyond the berserker rage of his ancestors, beyond the swordsman who cut down Brin's attacker what seemed like a year ago.
Ted watched the sea change on his young friend's face. Erik went from a young man who had put everything he had into putting on the air of bravery to...what, exactly? Not the Viking he saw cut the prisoner in half so long ago...no, this was something different. Much more dangerous. Ted smiled. Erik looked like a Marine. He followed Erik's gaze back to the scene of Bernie's attack.
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, H
enry 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.
Alea Jacta Est: A Novel of the Fall of America (Future History of America Book 1) Page 64
