A gunshot rang out, and the soldier in the turret to the right ducked down. The other guard opened fire on the crowd.
“God damn it,” Harris snarled. He brought his radio back to his lips. “Eagle 2, I said no shooting!”
“They were fired upon, sir,” came the response.
Harris exhaled a breath and said, “For now tell everyone to hold their fire. We do not want to piss off that hornet’s nest.”
“Little too late for that,” Albert said.
Across the airfield, the crowd surged, slamming into the walls and fences in anger.
Albert stood so close to Charlize that his arm touched her side. “Ma’am,” he whispered, “this is madness. I have to find my sister and get her out of here. She’s…sick.”
Charlize lowered the binos and pivoted away from the ledge. The snipers positioned on the rooftop all kept their barrels angled at the crowd. Albert hadn’t told her much about Jacqueline. She’d tried to picture a female version of Big Al and failed.
“What’s wrong with her?” she asked.
Before he could answer, another shot rang out in the distance and the roar of the crowd surged into a deafening blast.
The civilians who had made it inside the SC stood on the tarmac below, watching the gates. Many of them had their own weapons. Even if Harris ordered his men to stand down and retreat, it was possible those civilians might put up a fight. One way or another, a major battle seemed inevitable.
If the situation here was indicative of what was happening in the other survival centers, Charlize wasn’t sure America had a chance of recovering.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and getting the same results, she thought.
“Captain Harris, how did you handle situations like this in Afghanistan?
“Once, we were forced to kill civilians to get a crowd back. It only made things worse. The next day we were hit by two suicide bombers. That’s why I’m trying to keep my men from stirring the pot.”
Charlize looked down at the hangars. She didn’t know how much food was stored there, but it wasn’t going to do any good just sitting there. If it meant getting them out of this mess without bloodshed, it’d be worth it.
She looked back out over the city. She couldn’t see the railways or the idle trains, but she knew they were out there.
“You know anything about the rail systems in this area?” she asked Harris.
The captain shook his head. “Not really, ma’am. We get most of our supplies from truck convoys. It’s dangerous and slow moving, but that’s all we have. Why?”
“Curiosity. If we could get the rails running again, we would have a form of transportation that could move a lot of supplies and people without fear of attack. Unlike the highways.”
“True, but right now I’m more worried about protecting what we have. Got any ideas?”
She nodded, returning her attention to the hangars below.
“I’m all ears, Secretary Montgomery.”
“We need to get the word out that at nightfall we’re going to bring a container of food outside the gates to be distributed fairly,” Charlize said.
Harris smirked. “One container to feed two hundred thousand people? Ma’am, all due respect but we’ve hardly got enough for the twenty thousand already inside the gates.”
“We have enough for this,” Charlize said, keeping her tone polite. “It will buy us time to bring in more supplies—and give us a distraction.”
Harris stroked his jaw again. “A distraction?”
“Yes, so Albert and a small team can escape the walls and go look for his sister.”
Albert’s hopeful gaze flitted to Harris, then back to Charlize. “But what about you, ma’am?” he asked.
“I’ll stay here and help Harris get things under control. I want to make sure no one dies for a can of beans.”
The radio crackled, and Harris held it up so they could all hear.
“Sir, gate nineteen isn’t going to hold much longer.”
Harris sighed and pushed the radio to his lips. “Washington, I want you to pull a shipping container of MREs and get it ready to drive out through the gates for distribution. Announce it over the loud speakers. At 1900 hours, we’ll use a flatbed to take it outside the gates.”
He ended the transmission and shook his head. “I sure hope this is going to work, Madam Secretary.”
“Me too,” she replied. “Me too.”
***
The doors to the emergency room exploded open, and Sergeant Don Aragon and Officer Sam Hines pushed a gurney inside. Sandra Spears recognized the patient immediately by his bushy beard. It was volunteer firefighter John Palmer, one of the nicest and most genuine men in Estes Park. Blood dripped off the edge of the gurney, splattering the floor.
“We’ve got a gunshot victim!” yelled Doctor Duffy.
“He’s been shot four times,” Hines announced. “Twice in the left arm and twice in the right.”
Palmer, still conscious, groaned as they wheeled him into the emergency room. He tried to raise his head, but Doctor Duffy eased it back down.
“Don’t move,” Duffy said calmly.
Don and Hines were anything but calm. Both men, pale and covered in blood, were breathing heavily.
“He’s lost a lot of blood,” Don wheezed. “I tried to stop it. How the hell did those assholes slip past Colton? Damn it, we lost two men today! When Gail hears about this—”
“Now’s not the time,” Duffy said.
The doctor made a cursory inspection of the wounds, but even from a few paces away, Sandra could tell it was bad. The blanket covering Palmer was soaked.
“We need to get him into surgery,” Duffy said. He waved the team into the other room and, working together, the three men helped move Palmer onto the operating table.
Sandra and Jen, the only two nurses on duty, were already dressed in their operating gowns. Gloves and facemasks were in short supply, but with this much blood, Sandra decided to tap into their supplies.
“We’ve got to get back out there, Doctor,” Don said. “The town is under attack.”
Hines and Don turned to leave, but Duffy called out after them. “What kind of attack?”
Don paused in the open doorway. Keeping his voice low, he said, “Raiders, Doc. They hit one of our checkpoints. Alex Stokes and Mike Evans are dead, and we saw other bodies on the drive here.”
“Better get ready for more injured,” Hines said. “This is what happens when we don’t have strong leadership.”
Duffy looked to Jen. “We need Doctor Newton back here. Go get the word out and then get back here.”
She nodded and took off after Hines and Don, while Sandra stepped up to the table with Duffy.
“Just you and me, Spears,” he said. She could hear the weary smile in his voice even if she couldn’t see it behind his mask.
She worked fast to get a catheter in Palmer’s external jugular vein and connect the IV while Duffy grabbed his instruments. By the time she had finished Palmer was losing consciousness, which was probably for the best. The last thing they needed was to have their patient flopping around on the table. She exposed his chest and quickly placed ECG electrodes to monitor his heart rhythm.
“My family,” he whispered to Sandra. The veins in Palmer’s neck bulged.
“Your family is fine,” she replied. She infused a liter of normal saline, talking as she worked. “Please, don’t move. Just try to stay calm, okay?”
Palmer’s eyelids slowly closed and Duffy cut away Palmer’s shirt to expose his wounds. The officers had already applied a tourniquet on both arms, which had probably saved his life, but the work had been done hastily, and Sandra had a feeling Duffy would want new ones.
“Ulnar artery was clipped. I need to resect it, but first let’s use the BP cuffs to cut off the blood flow,” Duffy said.
She helped remove the old tourniquets. Blood gushed out of the wounds, and Palmer’s chest heaved with a ragged breath. Working to
gether, Duffy and Sandra quickly used blood pressure cuffs on both arms, inflating them to cut off the flow almost instantly.
“Does he have a femoral pulse?” Duffy said. He went to work on stitching up the torn artery while Sandra tried to stabilize Palmer. Her gloved fingers, slippery with blood, searched for the pulse in Palmer’s femoral artery. Weak, but still palpable at the same rate as the heart monitor’s rapid beeping. She tried not to let her thoughts distract her, but she couldn’t help picturing Palmer’s wife and kids waiting for him to come home.
She knew that feeling all too well these days.
Allie was safe inside the medical center, hanging out as usual in Teddy’s room, but Raven was out there in the thick of things. She had a feeling he was hunting down whoever shot Palmer.
Her damn fool brother was always trying to play the hero while she worked to save the innocent people caught in the crossfire. One of these days, he was going to be the one on the table. She had pulled so many double shifts at the hospital she barely had a chance to talk to him about the guilt he was carrying like a millstone around his neck. It was going to get him killed.
She switched to Palmer’s right leg and finally found the femoral pulse. It was weak, but it was there. Palmer was a strong man, but even the strongest of men would have a hard time surviving his wounds. If he made it through the surgery, he would still have an uphill battle against infection. She relayed her findings to Duffy as he continued working.
“Looks like his right humerus is shattered, and so is his left radius,” Duffy said. “Damn, they really did a number on…”
Duffy’s words trailed off as he focused on the task at hand. They worked together methodically, Sandra passing instruments, hanging more IV fluids and monitoring vitals while Duffy repaired the shredded artery and removed a bullet that had lodged in Palmer’s bicep. Ten minutes after Palmer had been dropped off, shouts rang out in the hospital lobby. Doctor Newton pushed open the doors to the emergency room, panting as he jogged at the head of a gurney.
“We’ve got more gunshot victims,” he said.
Duffy looked up. “How many?”
“Five.” Newton met Sandra’s gaze. “One of them is your brother.”
— 5 —
“General, we’ve got company!” Carson shouted, jolting Fenix out of his uneasy doze.
Fenix jumped out of his chair and grabbed for his M4, accidentally knocking the gun over. It clanked on the floor. He threw on his coat, laced his boots, and then plucked the carbine off the ground.
Nearly stumbling in the darkness, he hurried outside the cabin into the chilled night. Carson and a dozen other Sons of Liberty soldiers had been hanging out around a small campfire, but it had been doused recently. The men fanned out across the snow in the waning glow of the dying embers.
Fenix scanned the horizon above the pine trees towering over the buildings, but he didn’t see any suspicious lights in the starry sky.
“Where?” he shouted to Carson.
“On the road! It’s one of ours!”
Fenix charged across the camp, still emerging from the fog of sleep. They weren’t under attack from above, as he’d feared, but a vehicle was making its way down the road. He followed his men toward the checkpoint they’d established at the southern edge of the camp. A dozen soldiers were already there with their rifles raised at a pickup truck rattling down the road. Fenix stopped a few feet behind them, sucking in icy breaths. He was out of shape, and it was getting too damn cold up in these mountains. He needed to step his game up and set an example for his men.
“Is it Butzen?” Fenix asked when he’d caught his breath.
Carson shrugged. “Not sure. Can’t see.”
The truck puttered down the pass and stopped about one hundred feet from the barriers. Flashlight beams painted the pickup, and Fenix saw two men sitting inside. A dozen rifles followed the rays of light while the soldiers waited for the driver and passenger to identify themselves.
“I thought each team was sent out with three men?” Fenix said, turning to Carson.
“They were, sir. Something must have happened to the third.”
A large man dressed in a camo green coat and black stocking cap hopped out of the cab, leaving the engine running. Flashlight beams illuminated the rough face of Aaron Butzen, one of Fenix’s most loyal soldiers.
“I sure hope you got Raven’s corpse in the bed of that truck,” Fenix called out. He stepped around his men and made his way to the checkpoint.
The other soldiers all lowered their weapons and several moved the barrier out of the way. The others returned to finish off their supper, leaving Carson and Fenix with Butzen and his passenger—a man named Rich Blake, if Fenix remembered correctly.
“Where’s your other comrade?” Fenix asked.
“Shot,” Butzen replied. He hocked spit onto the snow and wiped his mustache with a sleeve.
“And left behind?” Carson said.
Butzen nodded. “Didn’t have a choice.”
“You better have a good goddamn story and an excuse for not bringing me Raven Spears,” Fenix said. He zipped his collar up to his chin to keep out the chill.
“The roads east of the Rocky Mountains are pretty well blocked off, and Estes Park is dug in with multiple defenses,” Butzen said. “We also scoped out that FEMA camp near Loveland and then proceeded to Fort Collins. It was there that Maxon took a sniper bullet to the forehead. Blew his fucking brains out all over the road, man. It was nasty.”
“Never saw the shooter,” Rich added. He snorted out an icy breath.
“Damn shame,” Fenix said a bit too quickly. His mind was already on other matters. “That FEMA camp. How well guarded is it?”
Rich shrugged. “About fifty National Guard soldiers and some wannabe cops. I think we could take ’em. Thing is, that sniper wasn’t part of the camp. There are vigilantes in that area. Makes things even more dangerous.”
“Estes Park is probably a better target,” Butzen said. “We intercepted a few refugees who claimed the town got a government supply drop.”
Fenix narrowed his eyes. “That’s where Raven Spears lives, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir,” Carson replied.
The intel seemed too good to be true. Raven Spears was number one on Fenix’s hit list, and if the town had supplies, then it made Estes Park a plum target. He considered putting together a platoon of men to take the town, but before that happened, they needed more information.
Motion in the sky distracted Fenix. He squinted at a light crossing the horizon to the east of the mountains. Looked like an aircraft, which meant trouble.
“Shit,” Fenix muttered. He turned to his men. “Get everyone to their stations!”
***
Static crackled over the radio with a chilling message from the FEMA camp outside Loveland.
“We’re under attack by an unknown number of hostiles,” reported the operator. “To anyone listening, please stay where you are and do not attempt to approach the gates until we’ve given the all-clear.”
Colton shook his head and leaned over a table covered in maps, sweat beading his forehead despite the chilly room. A drop plopped over the marker for the Lawn Lake trailhead, spreading out like a miniature lake over the paper. That was where this madness had started back in September, when Raven and Colton had set off on the trailhead to find Melissa Stone.
So much had happened in the past month, and Colton feared that society would only continue to crumble. Desperation brought out the worst of humanity. Once again there was a killer loose in Estes Park, the police were down two more officers, and three civilians were dead. To top of it off, Palmer was in critical condition and Raven was unconscious in the hospital. But his people weren’t the only ones facing violence. The FEMA camp sounded like it had even bigger problems.
Hurried footfalls rang out in the hallway, and Colton looked up as Lindsey entered the room, Don right behind her.
“Those new refugees are all rounded up and wait
ing for us to talk to them in Bond Park,” Lindsey said.
Don pulled off his cowboy hat. “We got two guards on them. None of them are going anywhere until we figure out what’s going on. But you already know my opinion…”
“Mayor Andrews and Administrator Feagen are on their way,” Margaret said. She was waiting in the hallway, mascara bleeding down her cheeks from sobbing. Mike Evans had been her brother-in-law.
Colton brought his hands up from the war table and folded his arms across his chest. He was even more convinced now they were going to need allies. People like John Kirkus of Storm Mountain, or Sheriff Gerrard. They were all facing the same enemies these days, and the only way he could see to survive was to join forces.
He exhaled and prepared himself for the conversation with the mayor and her second in command. Things were going to get heated, and Colton was thankful there weren’t more officers in the room. Tension and emotions were already running high. Colton had sent almost everyone to guard the roads or look for the raider Raven had injured. At least Raven had taken his advice about wearing a vest; he’d taken three rounds to the chest that afternoon, and bruised ribs were a hell of a lot better than bullet holes.
“Where are we at in our search for the shooter?” Colton asked.
“Last sighting of our suspect was here.” Don pointed at the map, and Colton drew a red line from Riverside Drive to Trout Haven Fishing Pond. He dropped his pen and balled his hand in anger.
“How the hell has this guy slipped through our nets?” he growled in a voice that would have given Jake a run for his money. “This bastard’s managed to get from the east side of Prospect Mountain all the way to the west.”
No one else spoke, and Colton took that as a cue to continue. “We’ve lost five people today. Five. With another five injured.”
Margaret hovered in the doorway, wringing her hands, and Lindsey brushed a strand of red hair over an ear without meeting Colton’s eyes. Don simply stared at the map. His left hand, still covered in Palmer’s blood, was shaking by his side. Colton closed his eyes for a second and then snapped them open. Now was not the time to take out his frustration on anyone else. They were all in this together.
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