Get Out of Denver (Denver Burning Book 1) (5 page)

McLean shook his head and went to the door. “I’m going out for a few minutes to look around. We need some situational awareness so we don’t get boxed in. When I come back I’ll flash my light at the window twice slow if I’m okay, three times fast if I’m in a hurry. If it’s the latter, be ready to move!”

Carrying his shotgun, and with his pistol and flashlight on his hip, he opened the door and stepped out into the cold night air. Waiting until he heard Carrie replace the bar across the door behind him, he crept down the stairs and across the grass in front of the apartment building. Senses alert for any sound, sight, or smell of danger, he kept to the shade of trees and buildings where the meager starlight and moon glow didn’t even penetrate.

When he reached the street corner, he could hear noise in the distance. It was difficult to pick out individual sounds, but there was the occasional report of a gun and many thumps, crashes, and the obvious tinkling of broken glass. A woman’s high, shrill scream warbled out across the breeze, then cut off suddenly. Some very bad things were happening in the city, and not too far away.

McLean hurried down the street two blocks until he reached the larger street that fed traffic into the neighborhood. No cars were moving on its entire length, although he could see the moon glinting off the mirrors and fenders of several dead ones. Crouching in some ground cover near a fence by the corner, he waited for a few moments. There wasn’t much activity in this area, but a half mile or so to the west the noise was more discernible.

One solitary figure, a teenager judging by his slight frame, wandered up the street in the darkness. After he passed, McLean stepped out and called after the kid.

“Hey, can I ask you a question? It’s okay, I’m friendly.”

The kid, a boy of maybe sixteen, skipped away several yards, tensed to run, but stopped when he saw there was just a one man and no one blocking him.

McLean continued. “What going on over that way? It sounds terrible.”

“They’re stealing everything, hurting people,” the kid’s voice came back. It was high pitched, with fear and with youth. “Everybody’s going crazy.”

“Is it just looters, or men in black with guns?” McLean asked.

“Men in black? I don’t know. Lots of bad guys with guns. They’re hurting people.”

“How did you get away?”

“I sneaked out the back way. They’re going house to house down the street, and I got out before they came to my house. My dad said to run. He’s still back there.”

“How many bad guys did you see? Are there a lot of them?” McLean asked.

“Yeah, there are a lot. I tried to go two streets over, to my friend’s house, but they’re over that way too. Do you know what’s going on?”

“No, sorry.” McLean cursed under his breath. Things were worse than he’d anticipated. It seemed like every time he pushed his paranoia down and tried to accept the possibility that things might stabilize, he was proved wrong.

“Where should I go?” the boy asked.

“Uh... ,” McLean hesitated, knowing that any advice he might give could get the boy killed. “You probably better find a place to hide. Hide somewhere really hard to get to, somewhere nobody would bother looking, and wait until morning. Then, if the bad guys are all gone, go check out your house and try to find your dad. Hopefully they won’t come back to a place they’ve already been through.”

He turned and headed back toward the apartment, trying not to let any emotions cloud his judgment. The boy and his dad and the women’s screams in the background would not be the last people in trouble he would encounter. He had to stay on task, focus on surviving and helping the people he’d already decided were most important to him.

He ran back to the apartment, aiming his flashlight at the window without slowing, and pulsing it three times.

At the top of the stairs he called through to Carrie, “It’s McLean. Open up, please.”

He went inside and helped Carrie lock the door behind him. Three pale faces were turned toward him, and six pairs of wide, dark eyes glittered in the candlelight.

“It’s bad,” he said. “They’re invading neighborhoods, looting and killing a few streets over. We need to get out of here, now.”

Carrie gasped. David sat on the couch and put his head in his hands, staring down at his scuffed dress shoes.

“Where’s my boyfriend?” Shauna whimpered. “I need him now. Oh, I hope he’s okay.”

“We’re going to be on the run for a while, so only bring things you’ll absolutely need,” McLean said, ignoring Shauna. “Nothing heavy. Everybody needs a bottle of water, one of those energy bars we picked up at the gas station earlier, and a flashlight or candle. Put on a dark-colored jacket, take off any shiny jewelry. Hurry.”

He ignored the complaints, protests, and terrified murmurs from Shauna and David, who were already at the end of their ropes and couldn’t face the prospect of fleeing again. Carrie, he was pleased to note, quietly gathered up supplies not only for herself but also for the other two, and filled a couple of backpacks and bags with them.

McLean also noticed that she threw in not just the food and water he’d recommended, but a roll of toilet paper and a handful of other bathroom items, a sturdy knife from the kitchen with its blade wrapped up, and a first aid kit with several additional bottles of medication. She put on athletic shoes herself and made Shauna change from her trendy flats into more sturdy footwear.

Five minutes later McLean and Carrie stepped outside together, pulling Shauna and David behind them, and locked the door. Then they descended the stairs and headed off into the night in the opposite direction of the gunshots and screams, which were now noticeably nearer than before.

McLean led the way, shotgun in hand, with his pack strapped on his back and belted around his waist. He took the small group out the east end of the neighborhood, stopping only for Carrie to knock on a couple of doors and warn the occupants of what was coming. They took a quiet street south from there, beginning a long curve to the southwest that would take them toward the mountains and skirt the more densely populated areas of Denver proper.

They passed one neighborhood with a whole row of homes that were brightly lit, through some quirk of the electrical grid or through some ingenuity with a working generator. McLean gave it a wide berth, knowing it would be a beacon to the marauders, drawing violence down upon it like flies to a jar of honey. Already they could hear the sounds of violence echoing after them, staccato gunshots piercing the night air.

“Who
are
those people?” David asked McLean, walking alongside him. “Is it, like, an invading army?”

“How would I know?”

David tried to read McLean’s face in the dark. “You seem like you know a lot about this stuff.”

McLean shrugged. “I doubt it. If they were a foreign army they’d they’d have some heavier weaponry, probably be taking more strategic positions to control the city. These guys seem like they’re just trying to foment panic and instability. But they could be agents of some larger force. We can’t really know at this point; nothing like this has ever happened before in America.”

They walked for two hours in darkness, with little talking and no one impeding their progress. It seemed that the chaos radiating out from the city center hadn’t reached most areas yet. As they crossed from Aurora into Englewood, however, they began to see glowing lights on the horizon. Shauna thought it was the sunrise until Carrie corrected her.

“That’s west, Shauna, toward the mountains. The sun rises in the east.”

“Well, then what’s that glow in the sky?”

Nobody wanted to answer, and they walked on in silence, letting the truth slowly settle on their blonde companion. Downtown Denver was burning-- all of it. Shauna started to cry quietly and Carrie put an arm around her shoulder as they walked. “Where are we going?” Shauna asked through her tears. “I don’t think I can… I just want to lie down somewhere and die.”

“We’re going somewhere safe,” McLean answered. “But we have to keep walking until dawn.”

They passed a couple of dead bodies near an intersection with dark pools of blood around them. McLean hurried the group past on the far side of the street so no one would see the bodies in the darkness. He could smell the blood.

They crossed a street and walked up a road that curved along the edge of a hill to where they got a view of several neighborhoods. A house was on fire several blocks away, and they could see a crowd moving around it in the fire’s glow, fruitlessly trying to quench the flames by hand with water that the people would need for drinking in the coming days. They got a better view of the fires downtown, which lit up the face of one skyscraper like the set of a macabre play. Shadows and smoke played off of it in a terrible dance. They also passed a lot of cars sitting dead in the road, doors locked and owners long gone.

Following the edge of Cherry Creek State Park, they used its tree cover and grass to avoid the roads for a while. Eventually they came to Highway 87, which was a prominent enough landmark and thoroughfare that even though no cars were traveling, a fair number of people were walking up and down it in both lanes, or resting in and around cars.

McLean scoped the area out as well as he could in the dark, listening to the voices of the people wandering around the highway. Most seemed quietly despondent, but some wailed in obvious mental distress. One man was repeatedly smashing a car with some heavy object, but if he was trying to gain entry he wasn’t doing a very good job. McLean wondered if he was drunk or had just snapped.

“Follow closely,” he told the others. “We don’t want to expose ourselves near the roadway any longer than we have to. We’ll be much better off in the quieter areas away from the road.” He led them a hundred yards away from the car-smasher, and then approached the highway at a dark spot. They quickly filed across, avoiding contact with a cluster of people picking their way between cars northward, and followed the grassy bank of a canal that flowed perpendicular to the highway. They were no more than a hundred yards distant when gunshots rang out back on the road.

Ducking down between the canal’s bank and the fence of a backyard that abutted it, they stared back the way they had come. Someone was screaming in pain near the road, and more people were scattering away from it like panicked rabbits.

“Who’s shooting?” David whispered hoarsely. “Why does everybody keep shooting at people?”

“Go, go!” McLean motioned them onward, and they ran along the canal until they were out of sight of the highway. Then Shauna begged for a rest, so they stopped at a picnic bench in a small neighborhood park that was completely dark.

“Where is all this violence coming from?” Carrie asked McLean as they sipped water. “In disasters people pull together, they don’t start shooting each other. This is insane.”

“It is,” McLean agreed. “And I don’t have all the answers I wish I had. Somebody is deliberately preventing authorities from working to mitigate this crisis, and they’re not letting people calm down and work together either. They seem to want to ensure chaos reigns supreme for now. Those gunmen I saw at the Capitol are a good bet, but their numbers have to be limited. Some larger force has got to be behind all this. I don’t know what.”

Back on the move, McLean avoided major streets, choosing instead to wind through neighborhoods, parks, and school grounds. This kept them safer from detection but slowed their progress down. Shauna couldn’t go much faster anyway, and David was dragging as well. They hadn’t slept since the night before and the stress and physical strain was taking its toll.

Filtering his flashlight through his fingers to glance at his map, McLean judged that they’d done about ten miles in three hours. It was 3:30 in the morning now, and the foothills were another ten miles due west. They wouldn’t be able to make a straight shot, though, so unless they could pick up the pace significantly, they wouldn’t make it out of the city by sunrise.

There was no way Shauna and David could walk faster. He didn’t like the idea of holing up in an unfamiliar place, but if gunmen were still roaming the roads by daylight it could become too dangerous to move. A bunch of bicycles would come in very handy at that moment, but short of breaking into a bike store it just wasn’t going to happen.

Shauna and David were hanging back several yards, heads drooping and feet scuffing on the pavement. McLean slowed until Carrie was next to him. She was still going strong with a backpack twice as heavy as her roommate’s.

“Carrie, I need to ask you something. Don’t hate me for this. I’m just trying to optimize our chances of getting to safety.” He nodded toward the two stragglers behind them. “We may need to split up at some point. A larger group is more conspicuous and needs larger hiding places, more resources. Two by two, we might have an easier time getting through Denver. For instance, if we come across an abandoned bike, one or two of us could make it out of here fast. All four together makes it harder.”

“What are you asking me?” Carrie responded, trying to see McLean’s eyes through the night shadows.

“We could split up and let those two go at their own pace, hiding and moving as they’re able to. Meanwhile you and I move ahead faster and find a safe hiding place outside the city, somewhere in the foothills. We could wait there for them to catch up. When we see them coming, we join up again and all head into the mountains together.”

“They’d never make it, McLean. What would we do if they never showed up?”

“We’d have to continue on.”

Carrie shook her head. “I can’t believe you’d suggest abandoning them.”

McLean sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that. But would they come back for you? Are you willing to get all of us killed to keep the group together? Because if we aren’t off the streets by daybreak, it might come to that. We can’t save everyone we come across. I made a commitment to you, and I’ll stick to it. But they weren’t part of it, and they’re making it a lot harder. We could at least ask them and see what they say.”

“No. We stick together as long as we need to. I know there’s danger, McLean, but if we stop caring for one another, then what’s the point of it all?”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll try to figure something else out,” McLean said. But he wasn’t actually sorry. He knew that unless they had incredible luck, the two hangers-on would get them all killed.

They walked on in silence for another hour. They heard distant gunshots and saw the glow of two fires about a mile off. But their route took them through quiet, mostly deserted streets and no one bothered them except for one guy, a heavily bearded man with a couple of electric guitars under one arm. He looked drunk, or high, and hailed them from across the street, but when he saw McLean’s shotgun he wandered off without saying anything more.

They came to a cross street in Englewood, and David looked up. “Hey, guys, this isn’t too far from my place!”

They all stopped, and Shauna sat down on the sidewalk.

“How far?” McLean asked David.

“It’s probably eight or nine blocks from here. I didn’t realize we were in my part of town already.”

Carrie looked at McLean to see what his response would be.

McLean wanted to tell David to go and take Shauna with him, but he knew Carrie would object. “It’s a lot quieter on this side of town than the northeast. Are you going to go?”

“Yeah,” David replied. “Any of you want to come? I don’t have a lot to offer, it’s just a bachelor pad. But we could all crash there.”

“Which way is it?” McLean asked.

David pointed north, straight toward downtown Denver. “That way. On Galapago, near Jefferson Street.”

McLean consulted his map, then looked up at the road heading north. “It looks like your way is clear. But that’s sixteen blocks, not eight, and it’s awfully close to the interchange, as well as an industrial area with city offices. I’d prefer to keep to the quiet residential streets down here. If we keep going west, we can go through two golf courses, around Marston Lake which should also be quiet and dark, and then we’re almost to the hills. That’s where I’m headed.” He put the map away and looked at Carrie.

“Shauna, what do you think?” Carrie asked. “Do you want to go to David’s place and try to shelter there, or keep heading west to the mountains?”

“Mountains?” Shauna ejaculated. “Why would we want to go there?”

McLean rolled his eyes, but no one saw him in the darkness.

“It’s probably safer,” Carrie explained. “Nobody there to attack us, no fires, no looting.”

“But there are bears! And where would we sleep? Anyway, my boyfriend is here in the valley somewhere. He’s in the National Guard, and he’s probably helping get all this under control as we speak.”

McLean huffed. “Carrie, we can’t stand here all night discussing what all of us should have thought through long ago. Please decide if you’d rather go west and try to make it out of town before daylight, which I suggest, or take our chances at David’s place for the near future.”

David started walking north up the sidewalk. “I’m going back to my place. You can come if you want.”

Shauna wearily stood up. “Wait, I’m coming! If you have somewhere I can lie down and not get shot, I’m coming with you!”

Carrie stood, indecisive, for another moment. Then she beckoned to McLean. “Come on. Let’s check out David’s place. I’d rather not leave the city if we don’t have to. Maybe we’ll be safe there for the next day or two, until things settle down.”

McLean followed, but grumbled loudly enough for Carrie to hear as they walked after the others. “And if things don’t settle down? Power’s out, police and military are out of commission, Denver is burning, and there’s shooting in the streets. I think it’s past time to bug out of here. These two fools are going to be the death of us.”

Carrie didn’t say anything. She looked uncomfortable, but kept walking after David and Shauna. McLean felt a twinge of regret as he realized he’d spoken more harshly than he should have, and chalked it up to sleep deprivation. He hurried ahead to walk next to David, scanning the street for threats.

They walked a mile deeper into David’s neighborhood. The smell of smoke from the fires raging downtown grew stronger. “It’s quiet,” David said. “Usually I can hear the noise from the freeway around here. It’s eerie.”

They passed a house with a lantern glowing in the front window. Inside, an old man watched them go by through the window, standing in the glare of the lantern so they could see his rifle. It looked like an old .22 and he didn’t make any move to come outside or point it at them, so McLean ignored him. Across the street and several houses farther up, a woman sat huddled on her porch steps, rocking back and forth and muttering to herself.

A few blocks farther they nearly tripped over a woman who had collapsed on the curb. She was obese, had no shoes on, and still clutched a large purse in her hand. David swore loudly and Shauna let out a yelp when she saw the body.