Get Out of Denver (Denver Burning Book 1) (6 page)

“Keep moving!” McLean told them. “And shut up. You’re going to bring everybody in the neighborhood down on us.” He squatted and felt the woman’s pulse, keeping his shotgun ready in his other hand.

“Is she alive?” Carrie asked, kneeling next to him.

“Weak pulse, but she’s alive,” McLean answered. “Let’s keep moving.”

Carrie ignored him. She splashed some water on the fallen woman’s face and tried to revive her. McLean helped her pull the woman onto the grass of the yard she’d collapsed nearest to. The woman muttered something unintelligible but didn’t wake up.

“Carrie, we have to go,” McLean said. “We can’t help everyone. We don’t have the resources to be first responders to every hurt person in Denver. There are probably thousands of them. We just need to move.” He took her arm and gently led her away. Carrie tossed her water bottle on the grass near the woman as they left.

“You might need that later,” McLean warned.

“She’ll need it more than me when she wakes up,” Carrie protested.

“I’m not advocating selfishness,” McLean explained. “But if you don’t take care of yourself first, you’re no good to anyone else. We have to get to safety, establish some kind of stability and collect our resources. Then we can respond to the needs around us without turning into charity cases ourselves.”

David and Shauna were now a hundred feet up the street, but they’d stopped. Distracted by his admonition of Carrie, McLean hadn’t noticed them pause in front of a house that was partially screened by some trees. Now he and Carrie fell silent and hurried to catch up, wondering what they were staring at.

As they cleared the trees and neared the house, they saw two young men dressed in baggy shorts and wifebeaters, with baseball caps and white socks pulled all the way up to their knees. One was on the front lawn and carried a golf club. The other stood on the porch of the home, and he was gripping the arm of a long-haired girl. It was hard to tell exactly what was going on in the meager illumination the moon gave, but McLean could sense an ugly atmosphere brewing. He motioned Carrie back, and brought his gun up.

The thug in the yard took a step toward Shauna. “Where you going so late at night, huh?” the guy asked. He brandished his club. “You got anything to give me for letting you go by?”

Shauna edged closer to David, who also took a step back toward the street.

“Hey, what you staring at?” the one on the porch said, twisting the wrist of the young woman so that she cried out. “This is none of your business. You in the wrong part of the hood, man. Take anything they got, Colby. And whack ‘em in the head if they resist.”

McLean moved up, aiming his shotgun and flicking on the small tactical light mounted next to its barrel. He trained it first on the thug with the golf club, then on the porch, then back again to show that we was covering both of them.

“You! Drop the club,
now
. You on the porch, let that girl go, and both of you get out of here before my finger gets twitchy.”

The gang-banger on the lawn dropped his club, partly from surprise and partly cowed by McLean’s serious-business tone. The one on the porch put a hand behind his shirt and tensed.

“Are you a cop?” he screamed. “Where’d you come from?”

“I told you to let go of the girl and make tracks!” McLean shouted. “I won’t say it again.”

The thug pulled the girl around in front of him. “This is my girlfriend, dude. Well, she used to be. And now she gonna be again! You got no right--”

McLean fired a warning shot at the one in the yard, and he sprinted away into the dark. The one on the porch swore and let go as the girl twisted free of him and scrambled away into the bushes. McLean shined his light right in the guy’s face, forcing him to put up a hand against the glare.

“If you have a gun behind your back, you’d best drop it. Then step away off that porch real slow, and follow your buddy there. Then don’t ever come back, or you won’t get a warning shot. I’ll just kill you.”

The thug slowly came down from the porch and edged around the side of the house toward his confederate’s escape route. McLean saw his arms coming gradually down toward his waist, and rushed forward with a yell, aiming the shotgun at the guy’s head. This broke his nerve, and the thug turned and ran. As he did so, a revolver jostled free of his waistband and fell in the grass.

McLean walked over and kicked it toward the porch, where the girl was emerging from the bushes. “You might want to hang on to this, in case that punk ever comes back,” he told her. “If he does, give it to him. Right in the chest.”

The girl grabbed the gun and ran inside the house, shutting the door.

McLean checked to make sure all was clear on the street, and got the others moving again. “Nice neighborhood you’ve got here,” he told David with a hard glare. “We stick together, with me in the lead! Nobody go ahead of me.”

Only two more blocks up they arrived at David’s home. It was the eastern half of a small duplex, with no back yard and nothing but a solitary crab apple tree in front. There were no cars in any of the driveways or on the street. The end of the block opened up into a parking lot for some businesses, beyond which lay the freeway and a commercial district.

David fumbled at the door in the dark, got it open, and led the way inside. Carrie turned on a flashlight and then lit a candle she’d brought, making the place downright cozy after the harrowing trek they’d made through the streets. Shauna flopped down in an easy chair and didn’t get up again. David poked around to make sure everything was as he expected, then went into his bedroom to change his clothes. “See what you can find in the kitchen,” he told the others. “There probably isn’t much. I usually eat out.”

While McLean checked the windows and doors and peered outside, Carrie dug in the cupboards and came up with nothing but a half-eaten box of cereal, a can of tomato juice, and some rice-a-roni. There was a video game console and a big TV, but little else. McLean snorted in disgust. “Not exactly a fortress,” he said. “But hopefully this neighborhood will be overlooked by the real bad guys. There’s probably no reason for them to come here.”

“Be nice,” Carrie replied. “And hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you, how exactly did you become Mr. Lethal Weapon? You told me once that you’d never served in the military, but you could have fooled me back there with the thugs. And yesterday at my car, too.”

McLean leaned his shotgun against the wall and dug another shell out of a pouch on his pack to replace the one he’d spent. “I haven’t been in the Army. But they don’t have a corner on the market for intimidation and weapons expertise. I have spent a lot of time around military and law enforcement guys. And I have some ex-Army friends that have trained me to a certain degree. I wouldn’t know how to operate military equipment or perform infantry maneuvers in a platoon, but I know guns and I know how to handle myself in a squad-level firefight. I’ve gotten myself through some rough encounters over the years.”

David had been in his room for ten minutes and hadn’t come out. McLean, meaning to ask him a few questions about neighborhood defensibility, knocked on the door but heard only a couple of loud snores in reply. Shauna was also dead to the world, sitting in the recliner with her shoes still on. McLean shook his head and glared at Carrie. “These two are dead weight, Carrie. We’re wasting precious time. You and I could be halfway to the mountains by now.”

“We might as well get some rest as long as we’re here,” Carrie sighed. “In the morning we’ll be able to see things better outside.”

“And they’ll be able to see us,” McLean objected. “We’ll probably have to travel even slower and go farther out of our way to avoid being targeted. Those gunmen are still out there. They might sleep in, or they might not.”

Carrie took off one shoe to massage her foot. “We can argue about it later, McLean. I’m very grateful for your help in getting us out of there earlier, and keeping us safe and moving on the way here. But for now this is where we’re staying. Now are you going to be the gentleman and take first watch, or do I have to play soldier myself?”

McLean grinned for the first time that night. “Take first watch? Now you’re catching on. We’ll make a guerrilla fighter out of you yet, Miss Alton.”

Carrie winced and sat down to treat a blister on her foot before it become a problem. “I’ve seen the movies. I even read a couple adventure novels as a teenager. Now do I get to lie down and zonk out, or what?”

“No.”

She looked up at McLean, genuinely startled, to see if he was joking.

“It’s not very gentlemanly, but I’d rather you take first watch,” he explained. “We were just out there, so we know things are fairly quiet for now. As the night wears on, we’ll have less and less of an idea how things are going outside. People will start moving as daylight approaches. I’ll take a catnap now and relieve you before first light, so that I can be awake and ready when danger is most likely to come.”

“What if those gang-bangers come back and make trouble?”

“I don’t think they’ll be back any time soon. Nobody likes to get shot at.”

Carrie thought it over, and finally nodded. “Fair enough. Give me your gun. I’ll sit by the front window.”

McLean didn’t move. “When’s the last time you fired a shotgun?”

“Probably… nine or ten years ago.”

“I’ll keep the gun. You use your eyes and ears, and if anything moves out there, just wake me.”

Carrie took up her post near the window, sitting on a hard dining room chair that wouldn’t allow her enough comfort to be lulled to sleep. McLean stretched out next to his pack on the carpet, shotgun and flashlight close to hand, and closed his eyes. It took about four seconds for him to fall into a shallow, fitful sleep.

The attack came just before dawn.

McLean had traded places with Carrie at five o’clock, allowing her to rest for an hour as well. Just as the sun was turning the sky outside from black to gray, McLean heard footsteps from the direction of the parking lot at the corner. They were loud, and sounded like multiple sets of boots marching steadily.

He couldn’t see past the tree outside, so he ducked down and shook Carrie awake. “Somebody coming,” he whispered. “Wake the others--
quietly
.” Carrie quickly crawled over to wake Shauna.

Someone outside gave a command to the others, a man’s voice saying “Take that side”. For a moment McLean felt a glimmer of hope that it might be police or military, someone come to restore order. Who else would be marching around at dawn, giving orders? But then the men came into view and their black cargo pants, black vests, and red face masks told him exactly who they were.

All had guns, mostly AR-15s and AK-47s with some smaller weaponry. The one in the lead of the group of seven gestured for two of them to take David’s house, two the one across the street. They split off and the others kept marching.

At that moment Shauna collapsed her recliner’s footrest with a deafening bang and stumbled to her feet. “What is it? Where are we, what’s going on?” she muttered sleepily.

Carrie was at David’s door drumming on it as quietly as she could. “David! David, wake up. We have to go!” she called softly.

“Out the back window!” McLean whispered hoarsely to the two women behind him. “These are bad guys with guns, maybe tipped off by those hoods I ran off. Go now, and don’t stop running!”

The men outside had heard enough to know the place wasn’t empty, and they trotted to the front door, guns raised. McLean pulled his pack behind the only concealment he had, the easy chair Shauna had been sleeping in, and crouched there with his shotgun ready.

Two seconds later, the gunmen broke the door in. They must have had a lot of recent practice, because one kicked it in almost effortlessly, dead bolt and all, and the other rushed through with his AK leveled for action. This was no casual visit; it was a tactical assault.

McLean’s shotgun blast took the man in the stomach, and he stumbled back onto the porch and fell down. The other one leaned through the doorway without exposing himself and sprayed several shots into the room.

McLean heard a grunt of surprise behind him and turned to see David standing in his bedroom doorway, shirt untucked, with a bloodstain spreading rapidly across his chest. He also glimpsed Carrie and Shauna frantically wrestling with a kitchen window, just out of sight from the front door. Then McLean turned back and fired three shots through the open doorway. None of them hit the enemy, as the gunman had pulled back behind cover, but they kept his head down for the moment.

McLean got to his feet and swung his pack onto his back, then ducked into the hallway to put a wall between himself and the front door. He pulled four shells from the strap on his gun’s butt and rapidly fed them into the receiver.

By this time the shooting had brought the rest of the gunmen to the duplex. McLean caught sight of two heading around to the side of the house, and fired through the front window at them. They scattered and he thought he might have hit one.

The sound of shattering glass made him swivel toward the kitchen. Carrie had picked up a chair and smashed the entire window out. She cleared the edges of jagged fragments and then began to boost Shauna out the window. There was a wooden fence a few feet from the rear of the duplex, but it wasn’t high and could be scaled easily enough.

McLean risked a glance over at David and saw him bleeding out on the floor, eyes already wide and staring. Determined not to be caught in the deathtrap, he hefted his backpack and moved across the room toward the kitchen, firing two shots as he went. The sound of return fire from outside told him at least three or four gunmen were in the front concentrating on the living room.

In the kitchen, Carrie was on the windowsill climbing through. McLean could see Shauna already halfway over the fence outside, suddenly spry and active compared to the night before. He leaned around the corner of the wall and fired another round out the front door, then slung the shotgun on his shoulder and climbed through the window.

Carrie’s back side disappeared over the fence, and in one smooth heave McLean vaulted over it himself. They landed in a neighbor’s back yard, fruit trees and a hammock the only thing standing between them and a gate to the front yard. Shauna was already running for it.

They gained the street one block to the west of David’s house and sprinted past two more houses, across a parking lot, and behind a single-story office building. They paused there to catch their breath and see if they were being pursued. McLean didn’t see anyone coming, and after reloading he motioned them onward.

“I-85 is over there, and then a golf course. Let’s get past those and then we’ll see where we stand.”

“Where’s David?” Shauna asked.

“He didn’t make it.”

“Is he dead?”

“Very. Let’s keep moving, or we will be too.”

As they jogged through the abandoned office district just off the freeway, McLean checked the two women over for visible injuries. Neither was bleeding, although Shauna ran with a slight limp, probably the same ankle problem that had pained her the night before. Carrie was running as smoothly as an athlete, backpack swinging lightly behind her.

“How’s that trip to my ranch sounding right now?” McLean asked.

“It’s sounding better than anything I’ve ever heard in my life,” Carrie replied, eyes still wide with adrenaline. “Let’s get out of this city. It’s a killing ground. I never want to come back here.”

They walked on as the sun rose behind them, crossing the freeway which was choked with dead cars, and moving on through a series of parking lots. To the north there was a Target store with its front doors lying broken on the ground in front. A few people were coming and going with boxes in their arms. McLean assumed they had missed the initial rush of looters, and these were the gleaners coming after to pick up whatever was left. He steered his dwindling group clear of the Target and all other commercial buildings that might attract looters, beggars, and shooters.

No one could stomach the idea of breakfast so soon after their brush with violent death at David’s house, but they sipped water and stopped occasionally for McLean to check his map. Daylight was bringing more people out onto the streets. Some were tentatively examining the state of the world outside their homes and talking to their neighbors. Some, much more bedraggled, were traveling back toward their homes after having spent the night in desperate circumstances.

One man, a large bearded fellow in a trucker hat, carried a .45 pistol in his hands. Shauna shrank back from him, but he passed the group on the far side of the road without showing any interest in them. He was obviously not one of the terroristic gunmen that had attacked them and seemed to be marauding openly throughout the city. Just another citizen with a weapon who might live another day by his own strength, or might invite a violent confrontation by showing his willingness to use force. He’d made it so far, so McLean liked his chances. But it made him wonder if toting a shotgun in plain view was putting a big red X on his own back. The way things had been going, though, he’d rather have it than not.

They reached the golf course and trekked across its manicured lawns undisturbed. Birds were out and singing despite the haze of smoke from the fires, which was encouraging. But reminders of the crisis that was gripping the city weren’t hard to find. Three dogs ran past, chasing each other with no owner in sight, and several golf carts sat abandoned on the fairway. McLean tried to turn one on, but it was as dead as all the other vehicles they’d seen.

He stopped at the water hazard to refill his bottle, which had a built-in filter. The women splashed water on their faces and rubbed it on their arms and necks to wake them up and get rid of some of the sweat and grime that had built up during their journey so far.

Another half hour through some less tightly-packed neighborhoods on the other side of the golf course brought them to Marston Lake. There they joined a ragged stream of refugees walking around the lake on a paved nature trail. Most were silent, staring at the ground or straight ahead, still in shock at what they’d been through. A few eyed McLean’s gun fearfully, but he kept it pointed down at the ground and nodded respectfully at those they passed.

On the other side of the lake they followed a quiet road that bordered a comfortably spread-out residential area and some open fields. Up ahead they could see the mountains rising attainably close, and quickened their pace. The road started to parallel another freeway that curved down from the north. On the chance that the main routes were being watched, they turned south and then continued west through a large subdivision.

Just as they were about to exit it into more open land, they were challenged by a homeowner who brandished a shotgun just like McLean’s. He had two teenage boys with him that were carrying hunting rifles.

“Hey! You can’t come through here, especially not with that gun,” the man said, pointing at McLean’s shotgun. He obviously didn’t feel threatened by the sight of a man escorting two unarmed women through the neighborhood, so he wasn’t pointing his weapon at McLean. But the group had come up behind the informal checkpoint, which was probably meant to restrict access into the subdivision from outside, and they had surprised the man.

“It’s okay. We’re headed out toward the foothills,” McLean told him, keeping his gun in a non-threatening position. “You’re doing very well to guard your neighborhood, but I’ll share some information with you, if I may.”

The man nodded for him to continue.

“I don’t know how much you’ve seen of the rest of the city. It’s a mess, and gunmen have been attacking civilians and police, both downtown and in some of the suburbs. It looks like they haven’t bothered you here yet, but if they come, you’ll need more men to keep them out. The ones we saw were in groups of six and seven, and they had some level of training. You’d better get your neighbors up and armed if you plan on boxing yourself in here. And make sure you post some people at the other end of your neighborhood; we came through without anyone even seeing us, much less trying to stop us. If you don’t have anybody guarding the other entrances to the area, they may get in behind you like we did.”

The man’s eyes had grown wide as McLean relayed the gravity of his situation. “Aren’t the police doing anything? Where’s the National Guard?”

McLean shrugged. “Probably home with their families trying to find a working power generator. Or dead. The gunmen I saw were dressed in black, carried tactical rifles, and seemed to be actively preventing any coordinated response.” He kept the girls moving and left the man behind to figure out his defenses.

In his younger days, McLean might have attempted to share more of his skills. He probably could have helped to organize the people around him and maximize their ability to withstand the destruction that was upon them. But he was no commander, and he had been let down by other people too many times, seen people fail to shift for themselves on too many occasions.

He knew if he got bogged down here or in any one of the other thousand little battlefields raging across Denver that day, his friends in the mountains wouldn’t be able to count on him. It was every man’s responsibility to guard his own home now, and McLean had a very defensible one waiting for him to return to it. Denver was on its own.

The subdivision’s exit had put them in an open area fronting the freeway that ran north and south along the mountains. To the north was another east-west freeway, one of the arteries that would have led him home through the mountains if he had been in his truck. On foot, he wanted to avoid it until he was clear of the valley.

To the south was a small reservoir. Their way forward to the mountains was between the freeway and the reservoir, across a mile-wide strip of open land that ended in a foothills subdivision. If they could make it that far safely, they’d be able to wind their way up into the foothills without any further danger of attack.

“Okay, ladies,” he said, crouching with the other two in the grass just outside the subdivision and scoping out the area with some mini-binoculars from his bag. “We have to cross all this open ground, get into that neighborhood, and then up into the hills. It looks clear enough from here, but there’s always the chance that snipers are covering the entrances into Denver, and might spot us. Or something equally as bad. So we need to move carefully, but keep moving until we get across. Are you ready? Stay with me, and if I say ‘drop’, you drop to the ground and crawl to the nearest cover. If I say freeze, crouch down where you are so our movement doesn’t attract attention.”

Shauna nodded, her blonde curls bouncing around her round face. A smudge of dirt marred her otherwise pale countenance, and she trembled slightly. McLean wondered how much longer she could hold up before shock, stress, and physical strain broke her. What would they do if she broke down out there, at the worst possible moment? He didn’t think he could physically carry her very far.

Carrie crouched quietly and steadily, bouncing lightly on her haunches to keep limber and ready. McLean admired her more than ever before. Instead of getting worn down by the emergency they were facing, she was increasing her personal ability to the level of the need. Again he felt deep down that he’d picked a good woman to help. Her hair was somehow still tightly tucked up despite all their running, and her lively blue eyes sparkled in the sun over her cute nose. It wasn’t a moment for idle thoughts, but he was simply in awe of her.