She pocketed the key and hefted the little messenger bag on her shoulder. It contained everything she thought she would need for the next few days. “Okay, guys. Where to?”
Gemma pointed to the intersection east of their apartment. “That way. Then up Central Park Boulevard until we cross the freeway. After that, I think we go a little way into Aurora and we’ll be there.”
Phil and Erik cinched the straps on their own backpacks, much larger and packed full of gear. Tara hoped it would be enough to meet any challenges they faced on the streets that day. Then they all started walking.
Tara turned to look back at their apartment building one last time. She wondered what she’d left behind that she’d regret later. “Hey, should we tell the lady downstairs that we’re leaving?” she asked Gemma.
“I already did,” Gemma replied. “While you were packing. I said we were headed to a safer neighborhood and she should come too, if she didn’t have anywhere else to go. But she said she wanted to stay. Maybe she has kids that will come get her.”
Tara shrugged and they continued up the street.
“Let me and Phil walk in front until we see how things are on the street this morning,” Erik told the two girls. They obliged him. Tara noticed that he had a baseball bat sticking out of his backpack where he could easily reach the handle.
At the intersection, they saw nothing but a few stopped cars, so they headed south toward the boulevard. Soon they were making good time down the sidewalk of the major thoroughfare. No traffic moved, and though they saw a few people behind curtains and blinds inside some of the buildings they passed, no one came out to challenge them.
“This will be easier than I thought,” Phil remarked as they crossed a side street. “The way things were going yesterday, I figured we might run into trouble once we ventured out.”
“I don’t like it,” Erik said. “Too quiet.”
Gemma snorted. “You sound like you’re in a horror movie, Erik.”
“Well, it is,” he defended. Then he stopped and sniffed the air. “And do you smell that? Something stinks, and I swear it’s growing stronger as we move southward.”
“Shut up, Erik,” Phil said. “You’re gonna scare the girls.”
They kept moving, but it wasn’t long before they stopped again, this time with gasps of horror.
As they rounded a curve and came upon a roundabout where two cars had died in the midst of their turns, they saw the bodies. There were at least twenty of them, laid out on the asphalt where they had fallen. Men, women, teenagers, elderly. Dried blood stained the street under and around them all. It was a massacre, and no one had come to clean it up. It seemed that no police presence was to be found in the area at all.
They stared for a while, horrorstruck, unable to speak or move on past. Someone, probably more than one, had obviously climbed up on the center planter box of the roundabout and sprayed bullets at everyone in the area.
“Let’s get out of here. Please, let’s just go,” Tara begged, and the others started moving. They had to cover their mouths and noses as they hurried past all the bodies, and Gemma gagged a couple of times anyway.
“I just can’t even believe all this,” she whined as they got out of sight of the horrible scene. “I didn’t know there were that many evil killers in Denver. What happened to our society, what happened to all the law and order?”
Erik replied quickly. “It doesn’t take that many. I’m not surprised. One or two bad guys in a hundred ordinary civilians and you’ve got mayhem. All that was keeping them in line was the police, the weight of authority, the fear of punishment. Take that away for one day, and you get this.”
Tara shook her head. “You’re creeping me out, Erik. Society has functioned just fine for hundreds of years without needing a million police officers and prisons in every city. There’s something a lot worse going on here. Someone bad is behind all this, and they’ve done something to prevent the good guys from responding.”
He stared back at her. “You’re overestimating human nature. Didn’t you see all the blood back there? People are animals, and sometimes you just have to accept that and fight them off!”
“You’re sick, Erik!” Tara was upset about what they’d seen, and her traveling companion wasn’t helping.
Phil interjected. “All right, that’s enough, you two. Let’s just keep walking.”
The smoke wafting from downtown came in waves that made them cough. Then a breeze would reduce the smoke to a minor irritant, and they could breathe freely for a while. Then it would return again in force, reminding them how bad of shape other parts of the city were in. Tara pulled a sweater out of her bag and wrapped it around her face to block out the smell when it got bad.
They came to a canal, still full, its current flowing gently by. Gemma picked the head off a tall stem of grass as they passed and carelessly flicked it into the water. "At least we won't run out of water as long as we're near this," she remarked.
Phil shook his head. "Can't drink that stuff. Not without a filter. You don't want to get sick now, especially, with no doctors or pharmacies functioning."
Gemma was silent for a moment. "Well, yeah, we'd have to filter it," she quietly agreed.
"And we don't have a filter."
"Couldn't we boil it or something?" Tara asked. "If we had to?"
"That might take care of the bacteria, but there's all kinds of other garbage in there that boiling would leave intact," Erik said. "Best not to use it except maybe to wash in. But not to clean a wound with."
It seemed that each conversation the group started became more sobering than the last, so they all remained silent for the next few minutes of walking.
They were just about to leave the canal where it came out from an underground culvert when Gemma suddenly sank to her knees and began vomiting on the ground. Tara set down her backpack and put a hand on her shoulder to steady her.
"Oh my gosh. Is she okay?" Phil asked.
Gemma couldn't reply, but pointed with a shaky finger toward the water in the canal. Streaks of red and pink ran through it, drifting gently with the currents. Tara's eyes traveled upstream to the source.
Caught against the grate that blocked access to the culvert were two bodies. Tara couldn't bear to look at them for more than one second. She didn't want to see the terrible wounds that were draining so much blood into the canal. She felt like throwing up herself, and her mind swam. She sat down next to Gemma, dizzy.
"What kind of sick, perverted maniac..." Phil began, but couldn't finish.
Erik took a good look, then exhaled sharply. "I told you not to drink the water."
Gemma vomited again, and Tara looked up at Erik with open hatred.
"Let's keep going," Phil suggested. "This is no place to stop and rest. Let's just get up ahead a hundred yards. Come on, Gemma, you can lean on my shoulder."
Gemma nodded and rose to her feet, as did Tara. They moved off, silent and aching inside.
"I just don't understand how someone could go from being an ordinary person one day to a brutal murderer the next," Tara remarked as they passed an abandoned bicycle farther down the road. Its tires were slashed and it looked like it had been run over by something bigger.
Erik almost took the bait again, but Phil gave him a glare that silenced him.
Finally they arrived at the crossroads where they were supposed to turn east. There was an old hardware store at the corner, and they skirted through its parking lot. As they rounded the corner, they came across three young men sitting sprawled against the wall in the parking lot. One glance from the smashed-in back door to the open spray paint cans was enough to see what they were there for.
One of them looked up at Tara with glazed eyes and giggled. The other two got to their feet.
"Seriously?" Phil called out in disgust. "The city's burning up, and all you guys can think to do is break into a hardware store and huff some paint?"
"Yeah, man," one of the young men said, who looked all of s
eventeen and sported a black tee shirt with a skull on it. "Maybe you should try some, it kind of makes you forget everything for a minute. Of course, you'd have to pay for your share... what do you guys have on you?"
Tara didn't like the way the two young men were looking at her backpack. The one who hadn't spoken yet was the biggest, had chains hanging out of his pockets, and wore a stubbly goatee on his chin that made him look older and tougher than he probably was. The third was still sitting on the ground and appeared to be no threat.
Tara noticed that the hoodlum in the black tee kept one hand in a pocket and seemed to be clutching something there. Her eyes flicked to Phil and Erik, who had stopped and were standing defensively. The blind corner had brought them out into the parking lot dangerously near the punk kids. Tara and Gemma edged away, but Erik and Phil were apparently unwilling to turn their backs on the threat or make a move that could be considered ceding ground.
The larger punk with the goatee made a sudden move toward Phil and reached out to grab him. Erik whipped his baseball bat out of his backpack and dealt the younger man in the black tee a vicious blow that crumpled him to the ground. Then he turned and began beating the goateed one about the head and shoulders until he let go of Phil and backed away.
Screaming curse words, Erik pursued the man, hitting him as hard as he could with the bat. The man grunted in pain when one blow landed on his ribs, and he turned and ran into the hardware store. Erik came back to the black tee kid and hit him again while he was lying on the asphalt, groaning. "Don't you dare push us!" he yelled, hitting the kid again and again. He paused to point the bat at the third guy, still sitting and staring dazedly at the scene. "We'll kill you! You do not mess with us!" The paint-huffer got unsteadily to his feet and followed his buddy through the door into the store. Erik continued his violent work on the one on the ground.
Phil raised a hand. "Whoa, Erik, hold on!" But his roommate continued bludgeoning the young hoodlum until he lost consciousness. Only then, with blood on the ground, did Erik stop. He hunched down and reached into the pocket of his victim, pulling out a folding knife. He stood up and held the knife in his hands, flicking the blade open and then closed again. Phil, Tara, and Gemma all stared at him, shocked at the violence they had just witnessed.
Erik looked up at them, then at the kid on the ground. "Guy had a weapon. He was gonna jump us."
"Geeze, it was just a little knife, though," Phil said. "I think you killed him, man!"
Erik kicked the limp form on the ground. "Of course I did. He had a freaking knife! Did you wanna get stabbed? Who's gonna stitch you up if you do, Phil? Huh? Who?" He pocketed the knife and patted his baseball bat. "You're welcome! I showed these punks they better not come after us, and now you can sleep somewhere tonight without waking up with this knife in you. Now let's go before we attract any more attention."
He led the way out of the parking lot, and the other followed, leaving the body behind on the asphalt. Tara and Phil shared a horrified gaze, but Gemma wouldn't look either of them in the eye.
Tara felt even sicker after the brutal fight than she had at the canal. Erik seemed to have assumed control of their little group, whether they had asked for a leader or not. But now she wasn't sure if he'd be leading them to safety or into something far worse.
Chapter 8: Moving Out
Walt and Liam rode due south from Bozeman, following the highway toward the northern edge of Yellowstone National Park. It took them two and a half days to reach the park, camping in the hills outside of Big Sky along the way.
They saw no one, although there were scattered cars abandoned along the highways. The two men wondered where their occupants had gone. It was a long way on foot to anywhere, in these mountains.
“Shouldn’t we head farther east?” Liam questioned in the early afternoon as they approached the northwest corner of the park. “Denver is pretty far east of here. If we keep going south we’re going to have to turn that way anyway.”
Walt replied slowly, nudging his horse to keep pace with Liam’s. “There are some very big mountains along the eastern side of the park, son. I’d rather spare our horses and take the more even route south, then cut east after Yellowstone Lake. And I guess I just have a feeling that we’ll do better along this route.”
Later, as the horses bypassed the road barriers and trotted past an unoccupied entrance station, Liam joked. “Do we still have to pay the thirty bucks, dad? I know you brought a bunch of cash.”
Walt shook his head. “For one thing, on horseback I believe we get in free, or at least discount rate. But for another, that cash is for serious necessity, if it’s even worth anything now. We’re not tourists, we’re through travelers!”
They camped and then continued through the wilderness between Gardiner and West Yellowstone. The country was gorgeous, with fall really settling in and the crisp air causing the horses to blow puffs of steam from their nostrils in the morning. Pines rose on every slope, but there was plenty of grass along the roadways and the banks of the frequent streams and river tributaries they crossed so they slowed to let the horses fill themselves on the late summer growth.
On the fourth day from home they came across a young couple making their way north on foot. They were unarmed and looked nice enough, so Walt and Liam stopped to talk.
“My wife and I are from Idaho Falls, headed for Billings,” the young man replied when Walt asked. “Her parents are there.”
“You don’t happen to have a spare pair of socks, do you?” the young lady asked wistfully. “We’ve been walking for a very long time, and the ones I brought are worn through.”
“Yep, her blisters are getting really bad,” the young man added.
Liam gave them each a pair of his spares. Walt had made sure they each brought plenty, knowing the importance of good socks from his experience in the military.
“Idaho Falls, huh?” Walt asked. “My other boy was going to school there. I wondered if he’d be traveling this way as well. You haven’t seen him, by chance? About your height, brown hair, probably with a colorful brand-name pack. He’s been backpacking since he was a kid.”
The young man looked at his wife. “We saw a couple of guys that might fit that description, right here in the park. They were kind of far off and had hats on, but it could be one of them, I guess. What was that, honey, two days ago?”
“Just yesterday evening,” she corrected. “Just east of West Yellowstone. We waved at each other, but they were on the other side of the river and, well, we’ve been trying to keep to ourselves as much as possible. Until we decided to try you for some socks. I think they’re still behind us somewhere.”
Walt thanked them for the information and advised them on the route north. Then he and Liam continued riding south.
“You think that might have been Mike and a buddy they saw?” Liam asked when they stopped to rest the horses.
“Probably not. I imagine he’d be traveling alone, and he probably would have outpaced that couple easily. It’d be a chance in a thousand,” Walt replied, but his tone was still hopeful.
“Nah, not a thousand. We’ve only seen two people since entering the park,” Liam pointed out. “And we know Mike is probably traveling north from Idaho Falls. I think it was him.”
“Maybe,” Walt said. “I told you I had a feeling we should come this way. Maybe we’ll run into him yet.”
They began to set up camp that night in the trees near a sulfur spring. It was a confined space, with large trees all around them providing plenty of cover and solitude. Indeed, it felt like there was nothing but thick wilderness for a thousand miles. It was a little unnerving to gaze off into the darkness between the trees.
The sulfur smell was powerful, but the warmth boiling out of the ground kept the night chill away. It was convenient, since they’d continued on past sunset so they could maximize their chances of spotting Michael. They’d seen no one, no tracks or campfire columns, despite staying out later. At least the sulfur spring meant
they wouldn’t need to bother with a fire themselves.
“On our way back, we may need these geothermal hotspots to keep warm,” Walt mused as they began unloading their gear. “It will likely have snowed by then, and these will be the only places where we don’t have to fight through a snow crust and build shelters every night to keep off the bitter wind.”
Liam said nothing; he hadn’t thought that far ahead and wasn’t enjoying the idea of being away from home long enough to see snowfall.
As Walt pulled a blanket roll off the back of his saddle, they heard a long howl in the distance. Both men froze, and the horses perked up their ears and whinnied nervously.
“Coyote?” Liam asked.
“No, that was a wolf,” Walt remarked. “A real, wild timber wolf. I imagine they’re feeling pretty free these days. No tourists, no rangers. Maybe we should build a fire tonight, after all.”
Liam went to gather wood while Walt set up a tent, but before either of them finished their tasks, the horses were stamping and snorting in fear.
“What’s wrong with them?” Liam asked, coming back with an armful of pine sticks. The two animals were rearing wildly enough that Walt had gone to secure their lead ropes to a larger tree branch.
“Smelt something alarming, though how they can smell anything at all past this sulfur I don’t know.”
“I heard two more howls while I was off in the trees. Kind of creeped me out.” Liam looked at his father for direction and confidence. Walt was lost in thought.
Suddenly Liam’s horse, Banjo, whirled violently and laid his ears back. Walt followed the gelding’s gaze into the darkness between the trees.
Was that a slim gray form just disappearing behind one towering pine? It was hard to tell by starlight alone.
Walt shined a flashlight into the trees, saw nothing. Then he pulled his rifle out and fired a shot into the air. It echoed over the trees far longer than either of them expected it to. When the echoes finally died away, they didn’t see any more of the wolf, but the horses wouldn’t calm down.
Lionhearts (Denver Burning Book 5) Page 5