Alea Jacta Est: A Novel of the Fall of America (Future History of America Book 1) (39 page)

ERIK SLOWLY WOKE up to
a low rumble, like thunder.  A gentle rain was spattering on the windows of the
bedroom, creating a nice, lulling effect.  He struggled to keep a hold on his
tenuous grasp of consciousness.  When he finally opened his eyes he realized
the rumble wasn’t the gentle rolling sound of the storm.  No, it was a
continuous, throaty roar.  He thought for a second, staring at the rivulets of
water streaming down the windows.  It was dark gray outside, a pre-dawn
shower. 

He sat bolt
upright when he heard the little handheld two way radio squawk next to his
head.  Alfonse had scrounged up enough spare parts to rig up the charger to a
car battery.  He was working on setting up solar cells to run the charging
station for the six walkie-talkies they had liberated from Stan’s restaurant.

“
Motorcycles
at the gate!  Erik, you read me?  Hey, Ted?  Anyone
??”

“
Yeah,
read you five-by-five, quit yelling, dammit!
” cursed Ted’s sleepy voice.  “
On
my way
…”

“I’m coming
too.  Don’t do anything—just stay hidden, Tom!” Erik said quietly while getting
out of bed.  Brin stirred but didn’t wake.

Erik was
still trying to get his poncho on as he reached the corner of the office
building at the gate of Colonial Gardens.  The rain was steady  enough for a
good soaking.  In his right hand he clutched his sheathed
katana
, in his
left, the pistol and holster that Ted had given him.  He was just about to step
around the corner when Ted showed up, splashing water off his face from the run
around the pond.  He was already fully dressed and armed.  Under his Marine
issue combat poncho, thick and camouflaged, Ted was comfortably dry.  He
carried his service shotgun and pistol strapped to his side.

“Motorcycles,”
Erik said, tying down the last strap on his sword and blinking the water from
his eyes.

“Sounds
like a lot of ‘em,” said Ted, straining to hear everything through the muffling
rain.

“Shit…you
think they’re here to—“

Ted looked
at Erik with a grimace on his face.   Someone had shouted something but it was
undecipherable through the rain and the noise of motorcycle engines revving and
roaring.

“Well,
let’s check it out, but from inside,” suggested Ted, blinking under the
raindrops.  Together they entered the rear of the office and moved to the
front, dripping water on the floor as they went.  They were careful to keep
clear of windows so as to not allow whoever it was at the gate to know they
were inside.

The night
guards that Ted had established for their first shift were still at their
posts.  Both were lying on the floor by the big front doors, trying to peek
over the edge of the window sill without being seen.  They had sleeping bags
just around the corners from the doors.  Food and water containers were spread
out between them.  The shortwave radio Erik provided for the guards to monitor
at night was still there, though switched off at the moment. They had followed
orders exactly. 

“Good job
guys…” Ted said, putting his hands on their backs.  Both jumped.

“Dammit,
Ted!  You scared the
shit
out of me!” the older guard complained.

“I’m a
Marine
,
that’s what’s
supposed
to happen when you see me,” Ted replied with an
evil grin.  He shrugged off the poncho and tossed it aside with a wet splash on
the floor, readying his weapons.

“Listen,”
hissed Erik.  He waved a hand for silence.  “They’re shutting off the bikes.” 
Erik stuck his head up real quick, took a fast look and ducked down again.  In
his mind, he counted off the bikes he saw as the water dripped from his
poncho.  “There’s gotta be ten, twelve people out there on motorcycles, all
parked at the gate.”  His mind raced on what to do about this obvious threat. 
A biker gang was something they were decidedly
not
ready to handle.  And
in the rain, of all things!

Ted turned
his head sideways and slowly raised himself so that only one eye and half his
head was visible from the outside, hardly noticeable unless you knew what to
look for, and that when it wasn’t raining.  In this storm Ted was pretty much
invisible.  Unfortunately, his vision was fairly restricted as well. 

“You’re
close, I count thirteen bikes…looks like a few are doubled up—those three on
the right are women—gotta be…a few bundles are draped over some bikes; look
like they could be bodies.  A couple of ‘em up front look shot up.  Jesus,
they’re packin’, almost to a man.”

“You men
sneak out of here and get back to your buildings.  Find your building Reps and
get ‘em over here—no, wait,” said Erik as the guards graciously got up to
leave.  They didn’t have rain gear, but they looked happy enough to be getting
out of the office.  “Find the Reps then tell ‘em to meet behind the office,”
Erik said with a nod of his head.  “Hurry!”

When Erik
and Ted were alone, Ted lowered his head and looked at his friend.  The rain
spattering on the windows and roof of the small building were the only sounds
either heard.  “This don’t look good at all, man.”

“I
know…they out-gun us right from the start. 
Dammit
, this wasn’t supposed
to happen yet…we haven’t had the time to train anyone more than a few days—“

“Hello?”
called out a deep voice from outside.

“Are you
kidding
me?” whispered Ted.

“Hello?  Is
anyone in there?” called out the voice, louder this time.  The sounds of
someone rattling the heavy gate echoed through the rain.

“Well…what
do you think?” hissed Ted.

Erik
grinned with sudden inspiration.  “Follow my lead,” he whispered.  Cupping his
hands around this mouth he shouted towards the window, opened a few inches to
let in fresh air and keep out the rain.

“Stay where
you are!  All of you are being covered by snipers.  Any sudden moves and you
will be shot.  Any attempt to draw your weapons and you
will
be shot!”

Ted moved
across the hallway and found a better spot behind some furniture to watch the
scene outside unseen.  “They’re frozen.  Nobody’s moving but they’re looking
around—mostly at the bigger buildings,” he reported

“Very well,
then.  What do you want?” shouted Erik.

“We ain’t
here to pick a fight if that’s what you’re worried about.  We’re running from
one.  Some of us got shot up pretty bad and we’re wondering if you can help us
out—we just want to get out of this rain and hide from the sonsabitches that
chased us through town today,” boomed the voice outside.

“Still no
movement, no weapons,” reported Ted.

Erik, with
his back to the wall facing the bikers, thought for a second and listened to
the rain.  “Think they’re telling the truth?”

“Dude,
they’re
bikers
!  I’ve dealt with plenty of ‘em…not nice people
generally.  At least not the ones in gangs…”

“Why the
hell
would you think we’d want to help a biker gang?” shouted Erik.

“Hey, we
ain’t the Hells Angels, if that’s what you’re worried about!  We were riding up
from the Keys after Bike Week when all hell broke loose.  Everybody’s been
takin’ pot shots at us the whole way north.  We can’t rest, we can’t stop, we
can barely get enough gas to get a few miles down the road—We don’t even know
what the hell is going on.   It’s like the whole damn world is falling apart!” 
The desperation in the man’s voice was obvious.

Erik paused
for a second, something in his memory jogged. 
The Keys…I remember the last
time I was in Key West, it was Spring Break, my last year in college…Sean,
Gary, and I went down there to drink our pre-exam worries away and ended up
camping next to some bikers down there for Bike Week…every morning they were
tuning their hogs at dawn, listening to Elvis on the boombox they had—what was
his name?

“Hoss?”
Erik asked.

The biker
cursed in disbelief.  “How the
fuck
do you know my name?  Who are you!?”

“Cover me…”
Erik said.  He hoped that was the right thing to say at the moment.  Ted’s eyes
grew wide.  Before he could respond, Erik rose and opened the front door to the
office, stepping out into the rain and throwing up the hood to his poncho. 
Sweat dripped down between his shoulder blades.  He was taking his life into
his own hands at this point.  He said a quick prayer concerning protecting good
hearted fools and let the bikers see he was armed.

“Who are
you?” asked the biker spokesman, taking a step back from the gate and shielding
his eyes from the rain.

Erik walked
up to the gate through the rain, nice and slow, hands away from his weapons. 
He could see the bikers were a tired, haggard and bloody looking group, but
they were holding true and no weapons were raised.

“You down
in Key West two years ago, late March?”

“Yeah…”
replied the biker, nervously.  “Why?”

“You
remember staying in that campsite off Mallory Square?” Erik asked, his heart
racing. 
Could it be the same group?

The man
thought for a second, looking miserable in the rain.  He looked down, rubbing
the matted, wet beard on his chin.  Suddenly he looked up with a smile. 
“Yeah…there were these three guys, said they were in school up north somewhere,
stayin’ in a tent.  They tied the damn thing to their car because they couldn’t
drive the stakes into ground because—“

“It was a
gravel covered parking lot!” said Erik with a hearty guffaw.

The biker
roared with laughter.  “You three kids got drunk as ticks every night and we
woke your asses up at dawn every day workin’ on our bikes—“

“But we
weren’t all that upset because we got to start drinkin’ again.”

The two men
shook hands through the gate gripping forearms instead of hands, laughing. 
“This here’s…hang on…lemme think,” Hoss said to his crew.  “Erik!  Erik, with a
‘k’, like the Vikings.”  The tension broke at once.  The other bikers just
stared, watching and hoping.

“What the
hell are you doing here?” asked Erik.  “Where’s your wife?” Erik smiled, left
hand coming off his pistol finally.  His smile froze when he saw the look of
pained anguish flash across the face of Hoss.  The big man’s shoulder’s slumped
ever so slightly.  The rain fell in sheets off his forehead.

“We got
ambushed down in Fort Myers…we were just trying to get some food; we weren’t
trying to steal or anything.  Had plenty of cash, because no one was taking it,
but they didn’t care…they started shootin’ at us.  Sally took one…in the…” the
biker’s face seemed to crack in grief.  He put one hand to his face in a very
non-biker pose and stifled a sob.  Slowly he gained control over himself in the
gentle rain.  He looked up, a man more haggard and road weary Erik had never seen. 
“She didn’t make it.”

“Oh God,
Hoss, I’m so sorry…”

“We lost
six more just today…” he was trying to get his composure back, his voice still
thick with pain.  His hand gripped the slippery post of the gate.  “We could
only manage to bring three back with us out of Osprey this morning.  Known ‘em
all for years…God damn it…what the
hell
is going on in this state? 
Everyone’s shooting at us for no reason and no one’s taking the time to explain
why
!”  Hoss gripped the vertical iron bars of the gate to support his
weight.  His knuckles were white and for a second Erik thought the big man
might break the gate in half.

Erik could
see Hoss was spent, physically and emotionally.  His mind made a snap decision
that came more from his heart.  He knew, deep down in his soul that this man
could be trusted.  But the others…

“Hoss,
who’s all these guys you’re riding with?”

“We were
all at Bike Week this year together.  We all came down from Montana,”  Erik
remembered then that Hoss and his wife represented a riding club out of
Billings.

“They’re
good people Erik.  You knew Sally, even if only for a few days.  She don’t
tolerate assholes.  Didn’t…”

Even
through the dim light of the dawn filtered through the rain, Erik could see the
white knuckled grip on the iron bar of the gate waver.  His hands slid down the
rain slick bars slowly.  Hoss was at his breaking point.  Erik scanned the
other bikers, silently watching the parlay with hope and desperation in their
eyes.  They were all exhausted and worn down.  More than one sodden head was
simply lowered.  They were at the end of their trails.

“Well, I
can’t let y’all sit out here in the rain, then,” Erik said, moving towards the
little guard shack to unlatch the gate.  He thought idly that in better times,
when the power was still on, the old man who manned the gate at nights probably
would have called the cops had he seen Hoss and his crew ride up like they had.

He and Hoss
physically pushed the heavy gate just wide enough to allow the bikers to enter
the complex two at a time.  Erik took a quick glance and could see more than a
few windows in the closer buildings of the complex with lights glowing.  The
residents were starting to wake at all the noise and were trying to see what
was going on.  Erik made a mental note to talk to Ted about blacking out the
windows after dark…