Alea Jacta Est: A Novel of the Fall of America (Future History of America Book 1) (34 page)

“Sit
down
,
Henry,” Erik said forcefully.

“Go fuck
yerself, kid,” he shot back.  “You’re gonna get us killed, screwin’ around like
this—stealing from stores.  Shit—they’re probably gonna think
you’re
a
rioter!” he hissed at Alfonse.  “Sendin’ a Goddamn nig—“

Alfonse had
leaped across the council circle to send a strong right uppercut into Henry’s
stomach faster than anyone thought possible.  The complainer went down
sprawling.  He rolled over cussing, then got to his feet, fists balled, shoulders
hunched, ready for a good roll in the dirt.  Alfonse, shocked at himself,
started to back up—he had never been in a fight before, but he couldn’t let
this swine of a man insult him with
that
word while they were all trying
to do what was right for
everyone
.

Erik jumped
up, grabbing his
katana
from the ground next to him.  With that same
faint metal-on-wood rasp that had frozen Brin’s attacker the day before, the
samurai sword came out in one swift, sure movement.  Janine shrieked in fear at
the sight of the sword glinting in the sunlight as Erik drew it and stepped
between Alfonse and Henry.

Henry froze
at the sight of the curved sword pointed at his throat.

“That’s
enough
,
Henry,” Erik said in a commanding voice.  The sword was a not so subtle
reinforcement.  “You’re causing nothing but trouble.  Why do you even want to
be a part of this process?”

“Because I
don’t want to see some little shit like you fuck things up for me and the rest
of us!”  Henry paused to stare at the sword.  “You think you’re so bad with
that fuckin’ sword, huh?” said Henry, fists still clenched.  “Why don’t you
stop bein’ such a pussy and fight me like a man?”

Erik
considered it for a second, waved off Ted, who got to his feet and started to
take off his pistol belt.  He was more than happy to kick Henry’s ass.

“No,
there’s going to be no fighting.  Dammit, Henry, we have to work together—“

“I aint’
workin’ with no fuckin’
kid!
”

“Fine. 
Leave.”

“What?”
asked Henry, incredulous.  “You telling me to leave my home?”

“No, I’m
saying if you don’t want to work with us, then just leave.  Look, you’re either
with us, or against us.  And if you’re against us, we’re not going to concern
ourselves with your safety and whether you eat or not, because you’ll only
distract us from our own survival.  So if you’re against us, get out and go to
the shelters or something, but get the hell out of
here
.” 

Ted looked
at the other members of the Council.  Alfonse immediately nodded.  Noreen
looked unsure but gave a half nod-half shrug of assent.  Janine looked
frightened but had glow about her that said she was more interested in Erik
than anything else.  Ted filed that observation away as a potential problem. 
He glanced at Bernie, who sat on the ground with a slight smile, arms folded
contentedly across his stomach, watching the situation unfold.  He smiled when
he noticed Ted watching him.  Stan was frowning at Henry. 

“Fuck you,
you arrogant little prick!” retorted Henry.

“Henry,
you’re pathetic,” Erik said sadly.  Pity seemed to flow outwards from the
larger man.  Henry noticed this and grew even more angry.

“You can’t
just order me and my kid out of here like some…like a king!  I’ll take it to
the—“

Ted stood
up next to Erik.  “We agree with Erik.”  He looked over his shoulder at the
others.  Alfonse nodded again and joined Ted and Erik.  Noreen stood up slower
but stood beside the men.  She helped old Bernie get to his feet, and the proud
vet stood his tallest and patted Erik on the back in support.  Janine blushed,
realizing she was the last to stand and moved next to Erik, staring at him with
an obvious look in her eyes.  Stan folded his arms and glared at Henry.

“You’re all
in this
together
…fuckin’ bastards…
all of you!
  You’ll see!  He’ll
get you all killed and you’ll
deserve
it, letting a Goddamn kid take
over like this!”  Henry shot one more defiant look at Erik and his companions,
then turned and stumbled across the parking lot.

“Well,”
said Ted cheerfully, “That ought to settle the leadership debate.  Now we can
get down to business.”

Erik
watched Henry until he disappeared inside his own building.  “I hate that it’s
come to this.”

“Huh?”
asked Alfonse.  “Why’s that?  Maybe Henry’ll get the idea that pretty much the
whole complex is against him and he’ll just leave.”

“Or maybe
he’ll just cause even more trouble,” mused Erik, a sense of foreboding dropping
on the already heavy weight of leadership resting on his shoulders.

ERIK TOOK THE box full
of packages of pasta from a volunteer who lived in Alfonse’s building and
placed it in the back of Brin’s company car, a Jeep Liberty.  Most of the cargo
area was already loaded with all kinds of non-perishable food products—largely
pastas and canned goods. 

“This it?”
asked Erik.

“No way,
man—there’s a
ton
of stuff in there.  Lot of canned stuff.  Stan’s in
there saying we should take chairs and things too…”

Erik had a
thought.  “Hey, it’s Tom isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“when you
go back in, ask Stan if this place had walkie-talkies for the waiters.  If so,
grab all the ones and their chargers and batteries you can find.”

“You got
it.”

Erik turned
away as the volunteer disappeared back into the darkened restaurant.  Most of
the stained glass windows had been smashed out by vandals and there was some
spray paint defacing the sides of the building, but it had been left pretty
much alone.  He hoped that the two convicts who had followed Stan home from the
restaurant had been the only ones who had taken notice of this place.

Blocking
the only entrance to the parking lot was Ted’s police cruiser.  Not that there
was a lot of traffic—indeed there had been only three cars that had driven by
since the small group of men from Colonial Gardens pulled up in Brin’s Liberty
and Ted’s Crown Vic.  Abandoned cars were still parked in the congested streets
where people had left them last week after the initial panic.  Where the people
went, no one knew.  Erik figured they made their way to the local safe zone or
storm shelter. 

When the
few passerby cars saw the cop car and a man with a shotgun standing next to it,
they sped up and exited the area not wanting to find out what was going on. 
One of the men brought his Ford F250 along and it was being quickly loaded with
five gallon water jugs.

Erik was
concerned about using the precious gas they had in the apartment complex
vehicles, but he saw no other way to haul as much loot as possible without
making a hundred trips.  It was just plain faster and safer to use the load
bearing cars and trucks, get it all over with in one or two trips and get back
home.  He chided himself for considering the food and water ‘loot’.  After all,
he himself was holding the detailed list of everything they were liberating. 
He would go place it on the counter inside the restaurant before they left and
locked up.

He looked
around the deserted parking lot.  A few homes across the street were charred
and looked partially burned.  There were some people walking about, plastic
bags in hand, as if they were scavenging for anything they might be able to use
or eat.  More than one person limped by, obviously wounded in some manner.  The
general movement of people was bringing them from west to east, away from the
downtown area of Sarasota.  They all gave Ted and his shotgun plenty of room as
they passed.  Erik could see the half dozen or so light plumes of smoke coming
from the north west.

“Looks like
fires downtown…” Stan said behind him.

“Yeah.”

“Makes you
glad we live in the suburbs.”

Erik looked
over his shoulder.  “I’d rather be in the boonies, man.  Away from all this
shit,” he said, pointing at the spray paint on the side of the restaurant.  Big
fancy colored in letters and arrows and such.  Typical gibberish placed there
by uncaring ignorant youths.

“We’re
almost done.  Tom checked in with me about the walkie-talkies.  I totally
forgot about them.  We had about fifteen little radios,” said Stan, handing one
over to Erik.  It was a Wally-World special, the cheapie little 2-way FRS
radios that can be had for anywhere between $20 and $50.

“Awesome…”
said Erik, examining the radio.  He turned it on and the radio responded with a
little chirp.  “Batteries?” he asked, shutting the radio off again.  No sense wasting
what you had until you needed it.

“Only a
handful.  Maybe enough for one set for each radio.  We mostly just used the
recharging stands,” Stan shrugged.

“Well,
they’re great, no matter what,” Erik replied, writing down on his list the
radios.  He began thinking of ways to generate electricity.  He wiped his
forehead in the morning heat.  Glancing up at the cloudless sky, Erik thought,
Solar? 
Where do we get the photo-cells though?

“I think
we’ll be all done here in about a half hour, Erik.”

“Great,
thanks Stan—the sooner we load up and get back home, the safer we all are.”

Ted’s head
never stayed still for more than a few seconds.  He was constantly watching
both directions of the main drag through town, keeping a wary eye out for
cars.  He was also watching the side streets for people on foot or bikes.  Any
time he spotted a group of more than two or three people, he changed his stance
to be ready to bring the police shotgun to target.  Mostly the people he saw
just looked bored and hungry and dirty. 

There were
a few kids who went by, teenagers really, who had a look in their eyes that he
didn’t like, but they didn’t start anything, just kept moving.  Every now and
then he could see people trudging south on the main highway leading right
through downtown Sarasota, U.S. 41.  They casually checked the door handles on
cars they passed. 

Every now
and then one would open and the scavengers would disappear inside for a few
moments.  Mostly they found nothing, but a few were still stealing radios.  Ted
shook his head at the idiocy.  They were following the road along the coast,
heading out of town and away from whatever it was that was causing the fires.

Tires
squealing from the east caught his attention.  He spun around, shotgun already
at his shoulder, looking for a target.  A car had just turned onto his street
from a side street a few blocks east.  It was heading east, towards him and
gaining speed, racing along the lines of stopped vehicles.  After a second or
so, he could tell it was another police cruiser—a Sheriff’s department car. 
The dome lights were all skewed on the roof, like they had been half blown off
the car.  As it gained speed and grew ever closer, Ted could see a gash in the
partially crumpled hood and some black marks that could only be bullet holes.

“
Crap
,” he said
to himself.  Over his shoulder, he called out, “Erik!  We got company!  Get a
move on!”  He could hear Erik shouting out directions and commands from inside
the restaurant, urging the others to hurry in their efforts.

The cop car
barreling down the road started swerving.  It looked to Ted’s practiced eyes
that the driver was losing control.  The car behaved like one under the control
of a person falling asleep at the wheel.  It was generally going straight, then
slowly started pulling one way or the other, then jerked back straight, then
slowly pulled the other way.  At the speed it was going, quick movements could
cause an accident.

Ted double
checked the safety on his shotgun, it was on.  He adjusted his grip, thumbed
off the safety and aimed at the car, waiting for a shot.  If that was a cop, he
was either drunk or wounded.  If it wasn’t a cop, the driver had no business in
that car and Ted was damned well going to do something about
that
.

The cop car
pulled to the right as it neared Ted, heading for the other side of the road. 
The driver—Ted could see only a lumpy form in the driver’s seat and so he
didn’t fire—jerked the wheel too much, causing the front tires to skip off the
pavement momentarily.  Traction thus lost, the car went into a flat spin,
catching a parked car in the middle of the street with its rear bumper. 

At the
speed it was traveling, the forward momentum was just too much to keep the car
straight.  The battered police cruiser twisted and flipped on its side,
crashing into a telephone post and spraying the area with bits of broken glass
and plastic.  It finally came to rest against two other abandoned cars, setting
off a car alarm in the process.

The noise
of the crash and wailing alarm brought most of the men inside the restaurant
out to see what had happened.  Ted held his shotgun aimed at the car but
quickly scanned the surrounding area to see if it was just a diversion.  No
other movement besides a few curious homeowners across the street stepping
outside of their darkened dwellings to see what the latest catastrophe was. 
The rear tire on the ruined cop car was slowly spinning itself out as Ted
cautiously crept forward to get a closer look, his shotgun still at shoulder
level and ready to fire.

“Come on, get
the rest of that stuff so we can get the hell out of here!” said Erik to the
gawking volunteers.  They saw Ted move forward with the shotgun and looked
around nervously, waiting for more convicts to appear.

“Stan, get
‘em finished up—“ Erik started to say when he heard the loud pop of Ted’s
shotgun.  Most of the volunteers dove for cover, a few ran back inside the
restaurant.  Erik ducked and peered around the corner of the building, his hand
on his
katana
, strapped to his right side.

“Go!  We
may not have much time, get the last of it!” Erik said, waving his arm to get
Stan moving.  When Stan disappeared back inside, Erik saw Ted trotting back
across the street, weaving in between cars.

“We gotta
get moving, man, like now!” said Ted, keeping an eye on the street.

“What the
hell was that?  Did you shoot someone?”

“Some
gang-banger was driving that thing.  He’d been shot up pretty good.  Mostly
bled to death in the front seat anyway.  That explained his driving skills.  He
said there was a bunch of people Downtown doing a lot of looting and beatin’
the shit out of people.  Said they came in from the north.”

“Why did
you shoot him?” Erik asked.  “Sounds like he had info—“

“’Cause the
dumbass
pulled a
gun on me and tried to shoot me,” Ted replied.  He handed Erik a shiny
revolver.  “That’s a .357, man.  He would have dropped me pretty quick if I
hadn’t already had this pointed at ‘im,” Ted continued, holding the shotgun
up.  “My vest is good, but not that good at point blank range,” Ted said,
tapping his chest, covered by a blue bullet-proof vest.

“This looks
pretty nice for a street thug…” Erik said, looking at the brand new handgun. 
It only had two rounds chambered, he noticed.

“Someone
must’ve knocked off a gun shop by now…I knew it would only be a matter of
time.”  Ted looked up the street again.  “Look, I think we need to get the hell
out of here.  We got all of it yet?”

Stan came
out of the building carrying one half empty box.  “This is…yeah.  There’s only
a few more water jugs left.”   The volunteers started coming out after Stan, a
few checking the area to see if it was safe first.

“Erik, we
need to get people trained on weapons…we need someone other than just me and
you armed,” Ted said, nodding at Erik’s sword.

“Right…You’ll
have to teach us all.  We’ll get started this afternoon.”  To the gathered
volunteers, he said, “Okay, let’s get the last of the water on the truck there
and go home!”