Get Out of Denver (Denver Burning Book 1) (11 page)

A shout drew McLean’s attention to the part of the road coming from Denver. A young couple had been spotted approaching the curve the gunmen were occupying, but had turned around and fled. “Go after them!” the shotgun man called to his cronies by the dead body. “See what they got on them!” Two of them took off down the road with their guns raised, hooting and hollering.

McLean lowered his binoculars and let out a long breath. Then he saw Carrie next to him, staring down at the scene below with an expression of tight horror on her face.

“What are they doing to that poor…” she whispered, trailing off with a shudder. Her eyes strayed to McLean’s rifle. “Shoot them, McLean!” she mouthed, nudging him in the side. “Do something! We can’t let them do that to these people.”

McLean shook his head and his mouth puckered in bitter pain. “Can’t. There are at least eight of them down there. If they see or hear us, we’re all dead. Let’s go.” Silently, he backed away from the edge of the rocks and, keeping low, moved back through the bushes and up the hill through the trees.

Minutes later they were back at the horses. McLean quietly told the others what they’d seen, and they gathered themselves for the long, hard slog back up the trail to the mountain pass.

The rain came down even harder.

Day four of their journey brought the riders near the Keystone ski resort. McLean was confident it would be abandoned, but still wanted to avoid roads, so they kept to the forested hills until they had to cross the Blue River Valley. Here they stopped to scope out the area with binoculars. They didn’t see any traffic near the highway, although they could be reasonably sure that there were inhabited cabins in the area.

While they were stopped, Carrie suddenly shushed JD and DJ, who were bickering about who could construct a better survival bow and arrows. “Do you hear that?”

They all listened. Gradually a distant buzz, very faint, resolved itself into the sound of an aircraft. McLean scanned the skies with his binoculars but couldn’t see anything.

“It’s got to be pretty high up,” DJ said.

“There! I see it,” JD pointed. A tiny speck was moving overhead, far above the white clouds that were scudding by on the wind.

McLean focused on it. “It’s not a military jet… but it doesn’t look like a passenger liner either. What is that thing?” He passed the binoculars around to the others.

“Its wings are really long… hang on, it’s banking slightly,” DJ said, spinning the focus knob. “Whoa! It has no cockpit!”

McLean grabbed the binoculars again. “What do you mean, no cockpit? Hey, you’re right, just a smooth gray lobe in front. No other windows or markings, either. At least not that I can make out at this distance.”

“Gotta be a drone,” DJ said. The others looked at him.

“Yeah,  you’re right,” McLean said. “A surveillance drone, probably. Because I don’t see any armaments on it. You think it’s seen us?”

“Too late to hide now,” DJ said. “If we scramble for cover the movement will be easier to spot. Everybody stay still until it’s well past us. Of course, if it has infrared cameras then it’s already seen us and there’s nowhere we can hide.”

The drone continued on its way, flying over the mountains toward Denver. Within minutes it was out of sight.

“What does that mean?” JD asked. “Was it a U.S. plane?”

“I’m pretty sure it was,” DJ said. “Although some other countries probably have them too. Somebody’s still fielding aircraft, anyway.”

“Or it was just out of the EMP radius somehow, and is flying blind until it runs out of fuel?” McLean mused.

“No way could it still be up there after four days,” JD said. “It would have had to refuel at least a couple times, or have been launched recently. Gosh dang, what if it’s Chinese? What if we’ve been invaded?”

McLean rolled his eyes. “Knock it off with the China stuff, will you, JD? You’re going to end up shooting DJ just because he looks Asian. Until we see foreign soldiers in uniform actually shooting at us, I forbid you to point your gun at anyone.”

JD grunted, and they moved out after making sure the coast was clear. To avoid the freeway, they traveled south of the resort town of Breckenridge and came around to the west again, camping that night in the mountains due east of Aspen. There were some people on mountain bikes making their way up highway 9 toward the cabins communities near the resorts, but they were easily avoided.

The wanderers turned south again the following morning and spent most of the fifth day of their journey meandering between the huge mountain slopes that made up this part of the Rockies. In a car they could have gotten through all this in a few hours, or passed over it in minutes with a plane. But having to chart a course over and around every rock, hump, and canyon made it agonizingly slow.

They were just stopping for the night, pulling their packs off the horses and searching for a good spot for the fire, when they heard a rifle shot. JD went prone, and DJ ducked behind his horse.

McLean and Carrie froze where they were, listening. The sun was down behind the mountains already and the sky was darkening rapidly. They couldn’t see a threat, and although the sound of the shot echoed around the valley they were in, it hadn’t sounded terribly close. It was muffled, as if there were a ridge or a forest in between them and the shooter.

“Let’s move on,” McLean said, speaking low so that only his companions would hear. “We can’t stay here tonight. Guns out, walk the horses for the first mile to keep our noise down. Except for you, DJ. But walk your horse slowly.”

They quickly slung their packs back on the saddle and headed farther down the valley, looking all around. McLean and JD carried their rifles in their hands.

“I wish I had some night vision goggles,” JD remarked. “My skin crawls. I’m sure we’re being watched.”

“If they haven’t shot at us yet, they either can’t or don’t intend to,” McLean said. “If they saw or heard us, they’re probably just waiting for us to go. Let’s oblige them. We don’t need to meet whoever that was, and they obviously don’t want to meet us.”

“What if it was just a hunter?” DJ asked. “Somebody shooting their dinner? We don’t know that they’re hostile.”

“That’s right,” McLean answered. “But the reason we’re alive while many in Denver are not is because we don’t take chances. The fewer people we meet out here, the better. There will be time later for making connections. When we can do it from a position of power.”

They continued on well past dark, until they were satisfied that they had left the shooter far behind. When they finally stopped, it was cold and they couldn’t find any water, so they just tied the horses up in some trees. The horses weren’t very comfortable in this place, whinnying and snorting as if they were ready to keep moving on. But everyone was tired and wanted to save their strength for daylight, when they could make much better time on the trail.

They spread their sleeping bags on top of their un-pitched tents so they could just wriggle inside if it started raining. At McLean’s insistence they took turns staying up to watch, and this saved them.

Carrie was on duty, sitting up in her bag to stay warm while JD drifted back into blissful slumber. She had to will herself not to ease back down even for a minute, since she knew she’d go out like a light.

She never heard a sound, but when she blinked and lazily shifted her gaze over toward the trees where the horses were, she suddenly realized that someone was standing there in the darkness. Her eyes widened as she stared, heart skipping a beat, trying to cut through the night and identify the figure. She couldn’t; her traveling companions were all still in their sleeping bags. Now she realized why the horses had never quieted down as they usually did, even though it was nearly eleven o’clock. Someone had been gradually, stealthily creeping up on them for the past hour.

“Hey!” she shouted, sitting up straight and reaching for her backpack. “There’s somebody by the horses!”

The men sat up in shock and began reaching for guns and flashlights. The figure by the horses crouched and rapidly scuttled for cover. From behind a clump of trees a young man’s voice rang out. “Stay where you are! There are snipers aiming at you!”

JD paused, halfway to his feet and still shirtless, and DJ did his best to disappear into the ground where he lay. McLean rolled over twice and came up with a pistol in his hands, aiming it first toward the horses, then sweeping it around the campsite in an arc, looking for targets.

The horses stamped and whinnied. Carrie slipped from her sleeping bag and took cover behind the tree she’d been leaning on, looking around and hoping the snipers weren’t behind her in the brush. She frantically dug through her backpack for her own gun.

McLean moved quickly toward the horses. “Get away from there!” he roared. “Drop your weapons!”

There was a yelp from behind DJ’s mare, and the young man raised his hands high. “Don’t shoot me, man!”

McLean grabbed the guy by the back of his shirt and hauled him bodily out into the moonlight, holding him in front as a deterrent for any shooters. “Where are the others? Tell them to drop their weapons, now!”

The kid, who looked and sounded about seventeen, just whimpered in fear. McLean called out to JD, who was already halfway into the trees with his rifle out, “JD, sweep the area! Quick!”

“On it,” JD replied, disappearing into the brush.

“Carrie, are you okay?” McLean asked.

“Yes,” she answered from behind her tree. She had finally gotten her pistol out and was fumbling with the safety, trying to remember in the dark how it worked.

“Cover JD if you can.” McLean shook the kid and jammed his gun against the small of the kid’s back. “Where are they? How many? Answer, now!”

“Uh… uh, there’s two of them,” the kid said, voice trembling wildly. “They have guns!”

“Where?”

“Up there, on the ridge,” the kid answered. His voice was filled with uncertainty, but not deceit.

“On the ridge, JD!” McLean shouted.

Carrie had her flashlight on now, and shined it up at the ridge in question, a piece of high rocky ground that overlooked the camp site. DJ had his rifle out and aimed it at the ridge. The tension was so palpable that Carrie’s hands shook. At any moment bullets could fly out of the darkness at them.

There were several more moments of darkness and confusion, but finally JD came back into the camp. “I circled the place twice, guys. There’s nobody up there. This boy’s lying.”

“No, I swear,” the kid protested. “They’re up there. Well, they
were…
”

McLean dumped him in the middle of the camp site, where he was surrounded by four guns. The kid crumpled to the ground.

“Now,” McLean said, “you are going to tell us exactly who you are, what you thought you were doing here, and where you came from. You’re lucky you didn’t get shot just now!”

“It’s not my fault,” sniveled the kid. “They made me do it. We just wanted your horses.”

Carrie came over, still aiming her pistol at the boy. “Who did?” she shouted at him, nerves still singing with adrenaline. A slow rage was boiling up inside her that she hadn’t felt before, and she couldn’t shake the idea that this person might also have been involved in the atrocities she’d seen at the highway, or in Denver. His skinny, pale face reminded her of some of the guys that had tried to come after her in the parking lot outside the Rescue Mission several days prior.

“Uh, the man’s called Jackson, and his girlfriend is Marie. I don’t even know them! I just met them yesterday, and they made me go for your horses. This wasn’t even my idea. Please don’t hurt me, okay?”

“And who are you?” JD asked, poking his rifle into the kid’s ribs.

“Jake Parlan. I’m just… I was just up here at a cabin for the week, when everything went dark and the car died. My friends split, but I stayed around here. I found Jackson and Marie in somebody’s cabin, and they gave me some food, but they wouldn’t share anything else. Then we saw you guys, and they said if I could steal the horses, I could have one.”

McLean rolled his eyes. “Did one of you shoot to scare us off earlier?”

“Uh, yeah, that was Marie. Jackson was pissed at her for it. She was just trying to get you to move on so you wouldn’t find our camp, but Jackson said he wanted your horses. So we followed you and I sneaked up on the horses while they got into position up on the ridge.”

McLean asked Carrie and JD to go search the area more carefully for signs of the other would-be robbers. He and DJ kept the kid under guard and continued questioning him.

Jake was just a dumb high-schooler from Denver who had been partying with friends in the cabin of one of their parents. When his friends decided to start walking back to the city in spite of the dangers they’d already seen on the road, Jake opted to hide out in the area. He’d obviously fallen in with a couple of opportunists with loose morals, who, it seemed, had fled at the first sign of resistance from the group.

JD and Carrie found a spot on the ridge where their flashlights revealed crushed grass and a box half full of .22 ammo that had been left on the ground. They turned off their lights and looked around for ten more minutes, but there was no one left in the area. Jake had been left on his own.

They came back to the camp and started packing up. Tired or not, they couldn’t stay to be attacked again.

“You’re a real stupid kid,” McLean told Jake when they were ready to go. “You got lucky this time. Next time, you’ll probably die. I’d stay away from those two you took up with, if I were you. They’ll know you ratted on them, and they won’t appreciate it.”
Jake nodded. “So you’re not going to…?”

“What, kill you?” McLean laughed. “For being stupid? Nah. But don’t you try to follow us, or steal from us again, or you will regret it. Now get out of here.”

Jake stood up. “Okay. Uh… could I have a gun? Or some--”

“Get out of here!” Carrie screamed at him, incensed. The kid backed away in surprise, eyes locked on Carrie’s hand, which had strayed to the gun on her leg. “And don’t stop running until your scrawny butt is all the way back where it came from,” she added angrily, nearly spitting after the kid as he high-tailed it out of the camp and into the night. Her hand lingered on her hip holster.

Finally she turned back to her horse. She sullenly jerked her saddle straps tight and climbed up onto her horse. Then she noticed McLean staring at her.

“What?” she snapped.

“Usually you’re the patient, kindly one,” McLean said. “You feeling okay?”