That spiked Sarah’s worry again in a hurry. “What are you talking about, Amy? Start from the beginning, please.”
Jess came out from behind the house to meet them, and heard the rest of the story.
“Jaren’s letter said he’s involved in this militia that some men are forming in Bozeman, and around the region. He was all excited about it and wanted me to sign up on some kind of list so we could be protected. I guess they’re going around and forming alliances and stuff. The people that don’t want to participate don’t get the protection of the group, and the ones that do have to show up for meetings and drills. Jaren was just at one last night, and he said they practiced a response plan in case anybody attacks one of their homes or ranches.”
“Okay, that sounds a little overzealous, maybe,” Sarah said, “but organizing for defense is probably reasonable. I don’t see—”
“The response plan was to surround and kill everybody!” Amy blurted out, horrified at what she’d heard earlier. “He said they can’t afford to take any prisoners because there aren’t enough resources to hold them, and they would hunt down and kill anybody that was involved once the attack was stopped. It’s crazy! He even said they’re making rules for what happens to people caught stealing or trespassing on the property of the members of the militia. He wouldn’t tell me what the rules actually were, but he made it sound like they’d be super scary.”
Sarah sighed. “Okay. You’re right. This sounds a real problem. Let’s go inside and calm down, have some lunch. Then we probably ought to go talk to Jim Travers or Barrett Chamberlain about it.”
“Why is Jaren involved in it?” Jess asked. “I thought of him as a nice guy, kind of nerdy but pretty nice and low-key.”
“That’s the problem,” Amy said, tears starting up again. “They’re sucking him in because he wants to be a hero or something. They say they’re going to have control over everything around here and he can be some kind of hotshot later on, with a gun and everything. They’ve gotten into his head, and he’s just saying crazy stuff!”
“All right, girls, inside. Lunch. We’ll talk more about this later when we all have calmer heads.”
Sarah ushered the two teens into the house and locked the door behind her, leaning the gun up against the wall near the window.
As if she needed more to worry about, she thought. Where was Walt now, and what would he do about it if he were there?
Chapter 17: Into the City
Walt, Mike, and Liam were standing with Alma Rojas atop a sizable hill, North Table Mountain Park, overlooking the outskirts of Denver to the east. They had traveled south from Boulder that morning, along the edge of the mountains until they reached Golden. Alma’s experience coming away from Denver indicated that the main highways were treacherous and the only way through the National Guard’s cordon was to the south, so they had been trying to reach a point where they could enter the city unmolested. What they were now seeing through Walt’s binoculars, however, painted a slightly different picture.
There were remnants of a ragged military line along the freeway, but it was mostly broken up now. A few burned-out hulks that had been painted Army green until fire scorched them black were resting along the roadway. One old bulldozer was left intact, but the word “Nope” was scrawled across its yellow side as a final verdict on its efficacy (and likely that of the military force in general).
Patches of collapsed tents and mounds of abandoned crates showed where soldiers had taken up their positions, only to leave them empty and undefended shortly afte. Here and there a pair of worn-out boots with a broken rifle or a cross made of sticks still protruded from the grass to mark the death of a soldier.
Two miles to the northeast there was a small camp populated by men that wore bits and pieces of uniforms. They had two dead Army trucks incorporated into the rough barrier that stood between them and the city proper. But Walt was unsure if they were really affiliated with an actual military unit. If so, they certainly weren’t advancing anywhere or containing anyone.
“Lot of fighting has gone on here over the past couple of weeks,” Walt said.
“How can you tell?” Liam asked. He’d always begged his father for war stories, but Walt wasn’t proud enough of anything he’d done or seen in the military to brag about it to his son. This was the closest Liam had ever gotten to seeing his father as a warrior hero.
“Well, there’s the bodies, for one thing,” Walt said. Liam reached for the binoculars but Walt held on to them. “No, you don’t need to see that. There are plenty of them down there, though, in the grass along the road. Many more unmarked fallen than ones that got a marker. Only about half seem to have been soldiers. And then there are the pock marks all over the roadway. Bullet ricochets might have left some of those, but it looks like somebody set up a mortar or something. Grenades, maybe.”
“All quiet now, though,” Alma murmured. “Much better than when I came through. We ran it at night, and I kept waiting for a bullet to catch me in the back. But we made it to the hills okay, all of us. A miracle, an answer to prayers for sure.”
Walt nodded. “Although if we do get into a scrap now, everyone will hear it in this silence. I almost wish there was a distraction going on to keep anyone from spotting us.”
“I could make a distraction,” Mike grinned, looked north-eastward to the camp that was still populated. “Light a firecracker over there tonight and I’d bet those guys would keep blazing away at the darkness until morning.”
Walt grinned back and grunted. “No, we don’t want to start anything we can’t control the outcome of. I think we’ll just creep forward until dark and then make a run for the city while the moon’s behind a cloud or something.”
As it turned out, though, a distraction came to them. The Leonhardts and Alma had settled down to rest in a secluded part of South Table Mountain Park, just across the highway, when gunfire in the distance got them up a little before sundown. Walt looked through his binoculars. There was enough sunlight to see by, although a little obscured by the lingering haze from fires in the city, and just enough darkness coming on to see muzzle flashes like pinpricks in the shadow that was overtaking the valley.
“It’s those fools in the camp, all right,” he told the others, handing the binocs to Mike so he could have a look. “A whole group of people are coming along the freeway on foot, and they’ve opened up on each other.”
“Maybe we should get going,” Alma said. “I don’t see anybody else out there near the road. I bet we can get into the neighborhoods pretty easily.”
Walt considered for a moment. “Okay,” he finally said, “let’s do it. I want to get in there and track down my daughter sooner rather than later. Hopefully the areas around the edge of the city are broken up enough now that we won’t meet any organized resistance. You said there are neighborhood militias, though. Right, Miss Rojas?”
Alma grinned. “Just call me Alma, okay? I don’t know if you’d call them militias, more like protective gangs of homeowners fighting off the terrorists that shot up the city. But honestly, I didn’t see any of the bad guys on our way out. It’s like they all melted away somewhere, and all we really had to worry about was the fires, the looters, and the over-excited neighborhood guys that would shoot at anyone setting foot on their lawns.”
“All right, then. Let’s go.”
They gathered their packs and quickly moved down the slope to the foot of the hill that was South Table Mountain. They had to skirt the backyard of one home that looked occupied, and then passed a daycare center that had been empty for some time. That took them right up to the freeway’s edge.
Walt motioned for the others to keep their heads down as they scanned the roadway up and down its length, paying special attention to the shoulders and the buildings and trees on either side. There seemed to be no one around this particular patch. Walt motioned them onward, and they each trotted swiftly across.
“So far, so good,” Alma said.
“From he
re on, we’re in heavily populated residential areas,” Walt said. “Keep your eyes open. We’ll just walk quickly and purposefully along the edges. Try to look confident and a little mean, but not threatening. If anybody tries to stop us, let me take the lead. If they start shooting at us, run for it. With this many people around in such close quarters, there will be very few circumstances under which we could win a gunfight. Best just to get out of there as fast as we can and find a different way through.”
They checked around the corner of a quiet street that had a barrier blocking access, and then squeezed past. The first several homes were all abandoned, with weeds growing knee-high in their yards and trash piled in heaps along the curb. When they reached the first few occupied homes, they saw reinforced doors and fences. The ground-floor windows were mostly boarded up.
A thin man was standing at the corner of the street one block up, and when he saw the approaching travelers he bolted away and disappeared between two houses farther on. They ignored him and continued on their way, quickly coming to a larger street that led straight to the east.
“Okay, looks like this is Colfax,” Walt said, checking his map as they walked. He had it folded so that the relevant portion was facing out while the rest was collapsed behind it. “It should take us right past downtown to where we’re headed. Right, Alma?”
“Yeah. But it’s a major street. Maybe we should avoid it, you know? On our way out of town, we tried to stick to the neighborhoods.”
“It’s been a couple weeks, though. I’m thinking that by now people have realized that the roads are pretty useless, dangerous places to hang out. All the commercial places will have been looted and abandoned, right? So maybe Colfax is the empty zone now, and we’ll run into far fewer people than if we cross through populated neighborhoods with all the barriers and trigger-happy defenders.”
“It’s a theory, Dad,” Mike said. “Let’s give Colfax a try. If we’re wrong, we’ll head back into the neighborhoods. But if you’re right, we should be able to travel a lot quicker than by constantly having to cut through people’s yards and go around house blocks.”
They moved along the street, staying close to the buildings on one side, and peeking around every corner before they blundered across into the opening. As Walt had suspected, there weren’t many people around the empty businesses lining the street. They spotted a few scavengers and dogs, but both would scatter at the sight of the four armed people long before they reached them.
As the shadows deepened and the redness of the sunset sank into the west, they spotted the glow of a fire insight a shopping mall. Walt could see a group of people camped inside around the fire, and they didn’t look friendly. He rushed the others onward up the street until they were well past the mall.
After a while the commercialized section died off and the street was once more surrounded by homes. Looking down each residential street as they passed, they could see armed men patrolling some clusters of homes. The sunset had faded into night now, and they could see the occasional flashlight beam aimed out at them. But they stuck to the road, and no one harassed them.
They left the residential area again and emerged into a more heavily industrialized zone. The outer buildings in this area were quiet and the place felt eerily sterile—there were none of the scavenging animals or desperate-looking skulkers about.
“Maybe everybody’s turned in for the night,” Mike guessed. The night was truly dark now, and in the city everything was harder to see than out in the open country where moonlight and starlight could filter across everything. The lingering wisps of smoke that clung to the city didn’t help.
When they got deeper into the area, they saw why the place felt so desolate. Fire had swept the heart of this business district, leveling many of the larger buildings entirely. Other structures had been ravaged by flames that had long since cooled, but the place still reeked of char and melted plastic. There was nothing left to loot, nothing for a dog or a rat to sniff or lick. It was an urban wasteland.
“Okay, we should probably bear south now,” Walt said, stopping to look over his map. He cupped the fingers of one hand over his flashlight so only a sliver of dim light glowed across the page. “I don’t want to get too near downtown.”
“That’s a very good idea,” Alma said. “I haven’t actually been downtown since it all happened, but those who had said it was one big charnel house. Most of the bodies were burned in the fires, but it was still a place to stay away from when I left.”
They left Colfax and made their way south through blocks that became gradually less commercial and more residential.
Then the night exploded into fireworks, deafening all four of them and nearly making their hearts leap up their throats. A barrage of gunfire erupted all around them, and the whine of bullets splitting the air underscored the crescendo of impacts and ricochets that sent debris flying into their faces.
It felt like there were hundreds of machine guns aimed at them. In reality, there were less than ten shooters on each side, and the small arms were shooting sporadically across the street. But the fact was that the Leonhardts had walked right into the middle of a turf war between competing groups of looters, and they only had seconds to get out of the line of fire.
Chapter 18: Eye of the Storm
Mike Leonhardt had no idea where the shooting was coming from or what was happening. The darkness and the noise was disorienting, but he kept just enough presence of mind to look out for his brother. Grabbing Liam’s backpack from behind, he dived to the ground sideways and pulled Liam with him. Alma was just behind Mike, and dodged the other way to get out of the kill zone. She hit the ground and tried desperately to push herself into a tiny crack in the pavement, unfortunately with limited success.
Walt immediately crouched and swung his rifle from his shoulder where he had been carrying it with a sling. He saw muzzle flashes in a nearby alley and from behind some abandoned cars along the street, but could barely keep his wits enough to distinguish them from the stars overhead and the stars he was seeing in his peripheral vision as a result of the sudden and terrifying noise. His instinct kept him from shooting back, which was just as well since he had no idea what the targets might be.
“Follow me!” he yelled to the others, and began fast-crawling up the curb and into a patch of black shadow that didn’t seem to have any flashes or bangs coming from it.
Walt’s two boys and Alma moved very quickly after him, and in a moment the little group was huddled together in an alcove by a doorway that led into a closed business. Shouts and curses rang out all around the street and the shooting continued, although with less ferocity than before. A dark figure ran into the middle of the street, stopped, and fired a long gun from the hip. Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam! Then the figure dashed away to the other side of the street, but before it reached the safety of the buildings on the far side, the figure gave a startled yelp and fell to the ground.
“We’ve gotta get off this street!” Mike whispered hoarsely.
Walt looked around at the door he was leaning against. It was glass. “Through here!” he told the others. Turning, he rammed the butt of his rifle into the plate glass of the door. The gun rebounded and didn’t even crack the thick glass.
Mike got to his knees and aimed his shotgun at the door. “Cover your ears!” he shouted.
The shotgun blast wasn’t exactly unnoticeable among the other gunfire going on in the street, but at least it didn’t immediately draw fire their way. The glass blew inward and only sprayed a few shattered beads at the desperate people crowded against it.
Ears ringing despite having hastily covered them, Walt and Liam crawled through the doorway under the metal push-bar that still spanned the opening. Their boots crunched as they got to their feet inside and hurried deeper into the building. Mike pulled Alma with him and soon they were hidden from the street by several walls and corners. The noise from the fighting outside was muffled, although one bullet zipped right through the door they had broken into
and hit something wooden in the darkened room, sending splinters pattering over the floor nearby.
“Keep going!” Walt said, pushing Liam ahead. “Don’t stop in here. We need to find a way through to the other side of this building.”
It appeared to be a rental shop for some kind of small equipment, but all the racks they could see in the dim moonlight filtering in through the windows were bare. They stumbled past a desk and a hallway, and Walt shoved a rolling chair out of his way.
“There’s a back door!” Liam said, and led the others toward it. The outline of an alley on the far side of the building could be seen as a slightly lighter patch of darkness. They stopped and looked through this second glass door, but saw nothing moving outside.
“It’s locked,” Liam told the others. “Should we shoot this one too?”
“No!” Alma cried.
“No,” Walt seconded. “For heaven’s sake, there are easier ways of getting through a door!”
He put a hand on Liam’s shoulder to move him aside, and then planted a boot on the door’s handle bar where its latch connected with the frame. He tested the door’s strength, then backed up and threw his weight into a kick that made the door shudder. He kicked it again, and then again.
“One more time,” he breathed. Judging his final kick so it carried the maximum weight without hurting himself, Walt broke the latch through and the door went flying open into the alleyway.
They hurried outside and moved to the left along a parking garage’s rear wall. Coming to a corner where another alley led through to the street where they’d nearly been pinned down, they went the other way and ran in the opposite direction from the sounds of fighting.
“What happened there?” Alma asked breathlessly. “Was it an ambush? Who was trying to kill us?”
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