“Liam, I’ll want you with Jorge running shotgun while he sets up an observation post between here and the gang’s current location, and finding a safe route from the O.P. back here. You’ll probably have to go through buildings and behind fences, stay out of sight.”
Liam folded his arms. “Wait a minute, Dad. What about Tara? We have to get out there and find her today. We don’t have time for this stuff.”
Walt looked up from his paper. “Yes, we do need to find Tara as soon as we possibly can. But we’re averting a massacre here, son. Tara has been on her own this long. I believe that she can hold on for a few more hours.”
Liam grunted his disapproval.
“I don’t like it, son, but hard choices have to be made in war. And we’re at war now, in case you didn’t know.”
Mike shook his head. “Dad, I know this is important. But that stuff is going to take all day. Can we just tell these guys what to do, and let them work on it while we go after Tara?”
Walt turned to the old man waiting next to him. “Jorge, would you show them into the courtyard so they can see what Estela showed me this morning? Then bring them back here. Alma should see it too.”
The old man led them through to the inner court of the apartment building, taking out a ring of keys as they approached an iron gate that was heavily padlocked. He didn’t need the keys, however; most of the children were outside in the courtyard, having already finished their meager breakfast. Some were on a battered old slide and swing set, and a few others were continuing the construction of a fort they had evidently begun building the day before out of couch cushions and unused mattresses from the apartments. The sound of children enjoying themselves was delightful, even though these kids were careful not be loud or let out any of the piercing shrieks and laughter that would normally have made the courtyard ring. A few of them wouldn’t allow themselves to make any sound at all, but they played hard nonetheless.
“I was the on-site manager of this place, and this is the best protected area we’ve got,” Jorge said. “The kids all have bedrooms with beds, but they like to sleep together in unit seventeen, for company.”
“Where did they come from?” Alma breathed, her voice catching with emotion as she realized the scope of this complicating factor for her sister’s little community.
“Straggling in by ones and twos from all over,” Jorge said. “Then six of them showed up last week, couldn’t really say where they’re from. Estela didn’t have the heart to turn any youngsters away that wanted a place to stay.”
The group watched the kids playing for another minute. One of the toddlers ran to the gate and waved at Jorge. He smiled and reached through the bars to pat the little fellow on the head.
“I just wonder how many more are still out there, scavenging and living on the streets,” Alma said, her voice choking with emotion.
“Well, we can’t take every orphan in the city in,” Jorge replied. “But this handful is probably all that’s left of many more than didn’t make it.”
They returned to the front apartment, wiping their eyes. Walt finished speaking with a young lady about Alma’s age, who hurried off on an assignment. Then he addressed them.
“So. You see how serious this is now—it’s bigger than Tara, bigger than us. We have to do something for them, or the looters that are on their way here will show them less mercy than the fire and desolation that made those kids homeless in the first place.
“So this is what we’re going to do,” Walt continued. “We’ll get Estela’s people set up to hold this place for a few extra hours, hopefully until nightfall. By then, I’ll have figured out an escape route through the neighborhoods to the north or west. We might even have to go through downtown, which will be hard but maybe less likely to run us into the bad guys. It’s the only chance these people have got. So that’s our plan.”
“It still leaves Tara out in the cold, doesn’t it?” Liam asked. “I get that these kids need saving. But what about my sister? What’s she going to do while we’re playing hero for everybody here?”
Walt looked at him. “I’m not about to leave my daughter to the wolves, Liam. You and Mike are going to take that mission over while I work on the escape route—which will be an escape route for all of us, by the way. Not just for these kids. There are some powerful forces converging on this side of Denver, and we’ll be hard pressed to slip out before it all comes crashing down on us.
“Once you’re done with the tasks I gave you, then you’ll head out and find Tara. I’ll meet you as soon as I can, and then it’s going to be a race against the enemy forces to get out of Denver alive. Now go, and let’s get this done!”
Chapter 22: Making the Run
When Liam returned with Jorge from the observation post they set up, he had bad news.
“We saw them, Dad. The threat is deadly serious. We counted thirty guys, but I’m sure there were more. And they’re heavily armed. They’re still camped around Lowry, but they were packing up some of their stuff like they intended to move out soon.”
Walt sent Jeremy back to man the new OP for the time being. Then he called Mike in from the mining expedition with Alma.
“There’s no more time. You need to head out and find Tara,” he told his sons. “Don’t stop until you do, and don’t take no for an answer—from anybody. Understand?”
Mike and Liam nodded, and Walt gave his two sons a street map that Estela had provided. It was more detailed than the one he’d been using, and had Tara’s address already marked on it as well as the block they were currently set up in. He also took one of the photos of Tara he had brought and handed it to Mike. “You can show this to people when you get into Tara’s neighborhood, to check whether they’ve seen her.”
“You don’t think she’ll be at her apartment?” Mike asked.
“I doubt it,” Walt admitted. “Tara’s lifestyle is such that I’m sure her apartment is the least useful place to hunker down in. I’ve been working on the assumption that she’ll have been smart enough to head out to another location that offers better protection and supply. Hopefully with other people she can trust.
“Now, I’m heading out soon to recon the potential escape routes,” he told them. “You won’t hear from me until you either return here with Tara, or I come and find you out there. Keep in mind that speed is now much more important than it was before. Not only are we worried about Tara’s safety, but there’s a war about to break out here and we have a narrow window that’s closing on us.
“Travel fast, don’t let anyone stop you, and do whatever it takes to find Tara. Then we’ll either link up at one of the two rendezvous marked on the map—A is here, B is to the west, and C is to the southwest—or you just go west out of the city, and we’ll find each other en route to Montana. Got it?”
Liam seemed to have something in his eye and didn’t want to look at the others, but Mike just nodded grimly. “Count on us, Dad.”
Walt took his older son by the hand. “I know I can. That’s why we came here together. And God willing, we’ll leave together as well.” Then he clapped Liam on the shoulder, turned, and began instructing two young women on what to pack up and what to leave behind for the coming exodus.
“Come on,” Mike said, pulling Liam along. “We gotta move. Don’t worry, we’ll be back. We’ll see each other again, don’t even think for a minute that we won’t.”
Liam nodded and the two burst into a run, clearing the neighborhood quickly and checking the map to see which way to go from there.
Mike was surprised at how completely his father had slipped back into command mode, taking on a persona he’d shed long ago upon leaving the military. Walt’s family had seen bits of it come out of him here and there as commander of his ranch: once, when an angry steer had kicked Walt in the stomach and broken a rib, the orders he’d barked out through gritted teeth had sent his children scampering to obey. But now it was like he was back in Vietnam again, and whatever blood relationship Mike and Liam share
d with their father, at the moment they were simply recon soldiers on a mission to extract a friendly.
Their hiking boots pounded the pavement as they covered one, two, three blocks west of the neighborhood Alma had led them to the night before. Then Mike pointed right, and they turned south down another street. This one was more heavily populated than the empty zone they’d just passed through, and several ragged-looking people looked up in alarm as the two young men jogged past carrying rifles and packs.
“How far?” Liam asked, gesturing at the map Mike still clutched in his hand. “How many city blocks?”
Mike glanced at the map again. “Shoot, I don’t know. We’re not close enough for that yet. Probably forty or fifty. It’s at least three miles, maybe four.”
They slowed their pace a little when they passed the populated block, and took their time to pick their way through an abandoned section of apartments that were burned, smashed, and desolate. On the other end they came to a barricade that looked freshly erected. Mike stopped. There was no good way around the barricade without backtracking at least two blocks, which was of course the point of putting a barricade at this intersection.
“There’s somebody there,” Liam whispered, pointing to a pair of legs sticking out from an alcove in the center of the barricade made from two cars that had been pushed together in a V shape. A sheet of plywood was laid across the top and screwed down into the cars’ roofs.
“Okay. Here’s our first ‘don’t take no for an answer’ moment,” Mike breathed. They both shouldered their rifles and pushed forward.
Liam decided not to wait for a challenge. “Hey you, look out! We’re just passing through, all right?”
“Don’t bother us, and we won’t bother you,” Mike added as they strode through a gap in the barrier and came within line of sight of the man sitting on the ground between the cars.
The man didn’t move, and as they passed near enough to see the interior of the little alcove, Mike looked down his shotgun barrel and saw that the man was slumped against the wheel well of one car, limp and lifeless.
“Okay,” he said. “Guess that’s one down.”
They hurried away, scanning the buildings and sidewalks for any challengers, but no one was around. They left the dead sentry behind to continue his silent vigil and passed an apartment building that had three layers of chest-high razor wire surrounding it. From the roof, a woman watched them pass through the scope of a high-powered hunting rifle, but she kept her finger off the trigger. The two young men made it clear that they had no desire to tangle with her territory, and soon they were out of sight.
“This place is crazy, Mike,” Liam said, shaking his head. “It’s just insane.”
“The whole world is insane now,” Mike agreed. “Maybe this is how it is in Iraq and those places—we’re in the American Warzone now. But without the drones and gunships overhead, thank goodness.”
“Heads up,” Liam interrupted. He pointed to a shape moving rapidly toward them down the otherwise deserted street. It was a tall, gaunt man with a scruff of dirty hair sticking up through some kind of headband. He was on a bicycle and was pedaling pell-mell at the two young travelers.
“Hey! Hey, whoa!” Mike yelled, but the man kept coming.
As he neared them, the man held a long black-metal machete out to the side and aimed his handlebars so as to bring himself close enough to swipe at Mike. The mad cyclist was moving fast, but they could see him coming and had time to leap back out of harm’s way. The man let out a wild cackle as he passed, blade whistling through the air, and then pedaled onward without pausing to look back.
Both Liam and Mike took a bead on the man’s back, but neither fired. Liam put down his rifle to scan their surroundings, but he saw nothing else moving. It seemed the cyclist was alone and utterly unhinged.
“That guy is going to get shot right off his stupid bike,” Mike said, shaking his head. “But I’m not going to be the one to do it. Not unless he comes back.”
They left that street and traveled onward for another mile and a half without any serious encounters. They passed a ditch grown over with weeds, and the smell emanating from the place nearly made them gag. Apparently there were unburied bodies in the ditch, either the victims of disease or violence. It answered the question that had been at the back of Liam’s mind of what had happened to the population of the area. They passed a lot of empty houses and apartments which would formerly have been full of city-dwellers. Now they were all quiet and dark.
On a livelier street to the south of that grisly ditch they spotted several people peering out from behind corners and through windows, but few seemed to want to get in their way. One old man came out from his house waving and calling to them, wanting to talk, but Mike shook his head and kept on moving.
“We’re not close enough to Tara’s place for any of these people to have useful info,” he murmured to Liam. “We can’t waste any time until we get to her apartment and see what’s up.”
Another half-mile southwest brought them to the main street that was closest to the apartment where their sister lived. From there, the map showed a series of smaller residential streets. Tara’s place was in the middle of it.
Four blocks shy of their target location, they were confronted by a single strand of yellow cable stretched horizontally waist-high from the railing of one apartment building to the median in the street, where it wrapped around a tree, and then continued onward around the corner of the house across the street. Every ten yards or so, small strips of purple cloth or plastic were tied to the cable, making it impossible to ignore.
“What is this?” Mike asked.
They both looked around and noticed that the yellow cable continued on the other side of the apartment building, where it was soon replaced by a length of shiny wire, but still with the purple streamers attached every ten yards.
“Somebody marking their territory in a serious way,” Liam guessed. “Either that, or a quarantine boundary.”
Mike frowned. They couldn’t get to Tara’s apartment without crossing into the purple-flagged zone. “Nah. Not quarantine. They’d put skull-and-crossbones up for that, or yellow and black maybe, like the nuclear biohazard signs. This must be some kind of gang border.” He frowned even deeper. “If they’re organized enough to maintain a marked boundary, it probably means they have the manpower and the tactical skill to patrol it. I don’t like this. We could get into some serious hurt, here.”
Liam pursed his lips. “Well, Tara’s in there, so we’re not going to let a little purple ribbon stop us, are we?”
He lifted the cable and stepped under it, letting the taut cord snap back into place behind him. Hefting his rifle, he looked around the street. “They don’t keep up the place very well, whoever they are,” he pointed out. Weeds grew on all sides and there were bags of trash along the curbs, cars with smashed windows and doors left hanging open, and one black crow sitting atop a nearby roof silently observing them.
Taking one last look around, Mike crossed the boundary line after his little brother, and they both cautiously advanced down the street toward Tara’s place.
Chapter 23: Wild City
The warning shot came silently, hitting an abandoned Buick next to Liam and neatly puncturing the glossy burgundy sheet metal of its driver-side door. He flinched and moved sideways, bumping into Mike. They each stared at the short, yellow-fletched arrow sticking out of the car door.
Then they looked up and saw a tough-looking woman standing on the balcony of an apartment fifteen yards away, cradling a large hunting crossbow. They also saw three other women in various combat positions around the street where before there had been empty buildings and silent yards. Each of the other women carried a firearm, and all of them were trained on the two young men. Gradually, several more markswomen were revealed. One slowly rose from the bed of a truck across the street behind Mike and Liam, and stared down the barrel of a nickel-plated revolver she extended slowly out to point at them.
Mike and Liam remained frozen in place, aware of every single gun barrel pointed at them. Their eyes simultaneously slid sideways at each other, then out to the obstacles nearest their position. There wasn’t much cover close to hand.
“Hey! Did you hear me? On the ground, boys. Weapons down, or my sisters and I will fill you full of holes. We’ve done it a lot over the last couple weeks, so don’t think you can fast-talk your way out of this.”
The two young men were standing close to one another, since Liam had leaped away from the initial crossbow shot. Mike whispered to Liam, “Holy crap, who are these ladies? Did we just stumble into a tribe of Amazon warriors?”
“No-no-no! Don’t be whispering at each other,” another woman nearby shouted. She was large and had her thick black hair in dreds, and a small self-defense pistol was gripped in both hands. A skinnier blonde woman advanced on the two interlopers next to her larger compatriot, aiming a .22 rifle at them. “You do what the boss said, or we kill you. Easy as that.”
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