Lionhearts (Denver Burning Book 5)

by Algor X. Dennison

  Terry scowled, but Sarah didn’t wait for him to reply.

  “Listen, Mr. Hayes. What you’re doing here is illegal, immoral, and off limits. I’m taking my niece home right this instant, and there isn’t anything you can do to stop us. If you try to hold us against our will for one more minute, I will personally see that every man and woman in this county hears about what you’re doing and understands the extent of the power trip you’re on.

  “I cannot believe that one of our own, a member of our community, would stoop so low and go so far out of his mind as to think it’s okay to suck foolish young men like Jaren into an unsubstantiated, unrecognized militia. And then abuse whatever power you’ve managed to steal so badly that you’re willing to take young ladies prisoner without warrant, authorization, or cause? Frankly, it makes me sick. Now stand aside and let us get out of here, or you will have men like my husband to deal with, good strong men that know how to treat upstanding citizens with respect.”

  Terry’s mouth came open and he started to say something, but stopped again. Then his eyes shifted sideways and he tried a different tack. “We are protecting the community,” he said. “Natural law gives us the power to do whatever it takes to keep everyone safe around here.”

  “And that has exactly what to do with my niece, who is all of fifteen years old?” Sarah said, intentionally low-balling Jess’s age. “You may think you have some power here, Mr. Hayes, but let me tell you what you’ve really got. You’ve got a couple of misguided, weak-willed fellows you’ve rounded up for muscle, and you’ve got a kid in there that’s gonna shoot his own foot if you keep letting him play with guns like this. You’ve got a wannabe prison camp set up in here where honest citizens used to meet for socializing. That’s what you’ve got, and you’ve only managed that much through intimidation and weaseling.”

  Terry growled, but Sarah talked over him before he could refute it.

  “What are you, Napoleon? Hitler? What’s the outcome of all this, Mr. Hayes? Have you even stopped to consider where this ends up? Do you want to live in a place where any fool with a gun and a need for attention can tell everybody else what to do with their property, and even deny them their freedom? Is that what you’re about, Mr. Hayes?”

  Terry stuttered angrily. “The—well—no, of course it isn’t. You’re missing the point, lady. This is about stability and protecting the rights of citizens. Now why don’t you—”

  “Then how about starting by protecting the rights of my niece? Freedom to travel at will, freedom from being pushed around by every thug who’s signed on to your movement. Let’s start with that, Mr. Hayes, and I’ll take care of my family’s safety and prosperity beyond that. Thank you very much!”

  She stepped sideways and began to walk away from the men gathered around the building entrance. “I’m going now. And if I ever hear of you pulling a stunt like this again, you can bet on a backlash from me, my husband, and a whole bunch of other strong families in this community, like Barrett Chamberlain and Jim Travers and Marjorie Bell. You won’t recover from the kind of backlash you’ll get, believe me. The entire community will unite against your movement, and you’ll be finished.”

  She and Jess hurried away down the road. Every step of the way Sarah expected to feel a strong hand clamp down on her from behind, or even to hear the crack of a rifle. But all she heard was the furious murmuring and accusatory grumbling of Terry and his subordinates trying to decide whose fault it was that a woman had been able to storm into their jail and out again with the prisoners, and they couldn’t do much about it.

  As soon as they got out of sight behind some trees and the darkness enveloped them, she pulled Jess several yards into the woods. “Go as quietly as you can, Jess,” she whispered. “In case they get themselves together and come down the road after us.”

  They crept through the woods for a quarter of an hour, but didn’t see or hear anyone. When they got to the area where Sarah had stashed her gun, she approached the road again and retrieved it.

  “I can’t believe you just walked in there without even a gun,” Jess breathed.

  Sarah shrugged. “A woman’s power is in her wits and her spirit, not her arms, Jess. When it comes to interacting with people, I find that common sense always works better than threats. Along with maybe a tiny bit of emotional manipulation and fast-talking.” Jess grinned, and Sarah gave her a hug. “They didn’t hurt you, did they?”

  “No, just threatened me. They hit that guy next to me, though, when he talked back. I think they did it partly just to intimidate me. They seemed to think I was some kind of spy that was going to report to outsiders that there were resources to be had around here.”

  Sarah shook her head. “They’re out of their minds. Completely paranoid.”

  Jess sighed. “I’m so sorry I left. I got all turned around in my mind. I don’t know how I thought I was going to cross all the mountains and get all the way to Oregon on my own.”

  “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it right now,” Sarah said, giving Jess’s arm a squeeze. “We’re going to get you back to the ranch safely.”

  But Jess still wanted to explain. “I tried to turn around when I got to where they were guarding the road, but they came after me and dragged me off to that jail place. Honestly, they might not have bothered except that I think Jaren recognized me. He probably wanted to show Amy how tough he is, by taking her cousin prisoner.” She snorted in derision, and Sarah chuckled. “Well, that kind of backfired, didn’t it?”

  They walked through the darkness, letting the cool night breeze waft past and calm their nerves after the intense encounter outside the militia headquarters.

  “I’m still really worried about my family, though,” Jess said.

  “Jess, I promise you, we’ll make contact with them eventually,” Sarah replied. “I know it’s hard to be away from them for so long. Even in ordinary, peaceful times it would be tough. But they’re probably doing just fine, worrying about you more than you are about them. Just as soon as we can find a way, we’ll get in touch. It might not be until the Spring, unless somebody gets the power on around here enough to get a radio message out. But sooner or later, I promise you, you’ll be reunited.”

  Sarah reached out and took her niece’s hand, and they walked the rest of the way home.

  Amy was ecstatic to see her cousin safe, and the three women stayed up late drinking the last of the hot chocolate and talking over the ridiculous and sometimes dangerous vagaries of human nature.

  Chapter 30: Out of Town

  Half an hour down the canal route, Liam perked up his ears and called for Mike to halt and listen. Pounding footsteps echoed to their ears from about a hundred feet behind in the darkness.

  “Here they come!” Liam knelt and brought his rifle up. Mike ran to the rear group of refugees.

  “You’ve gotta run, now,” he told Alma and Tara. “Take the kids, carry the little ones if you have to. There’s about to be some shooting.”

  Jorge ran back with him and they took up firing positions lying flat on their stomachs.

  “Wait for them to either get close, or for them to take the first shot,” Mike told his brother and the older Latino man. Jorge had a .22 rifle one of the other adults had handed off to him when he took rear duty. “We need to give the others as much time as possible to get away. Once bullets start flying past us, I’m worried they’ll bounce along the canal for quite a way.”

  “Maybe we should stop them from getting any closer, then, so they’re shooting from farther away,” Jorge suggested, but it was too late. The pounding footsteps were almost on them now, and both Liam and Mike felt the pounding of their hearts in their ears almost as loud.

  The men coming up the canal after them were breathing heavily. They had run far and hard to catch up, and they were no longer on their guard. They never saw the slim forms of three men lying in the bottom of the canal, silently aiming at them.

  The first of the attackers was a tall man with dark hair. He ca
rried a shotgun himself, and he wore a bright yellow racing jacket with black stripes. He stood out like a fluorescent sign against the night, and all three of the silent marksmen targeted him. When he got within twenty feet, they opened up, and he went down hard.

  The man behind him also hit the ground and skidded when Liam quickly pivoted and sent a rifle round through his midsection. The noise of the gunshots and the flashes were disorienting and shocking to those firing, but even more so to the pursuers, on whom the tables had suddenly been turned. Two more men crouched against the sloped sides of the canal and began firing desperately into the dark. They had no cover and couldn’t spray bullets fast enough to overwhelm the three men who were focusing on them from the belly of the canal.

  Two more went down and another fled, feet slapping the pavement as he ran for his life. Jorge sent one final round after him, and then the three of them jumped up. The Leonhardt boys ran after their departing group, but Jorge had the presence of mind to dash forward and relieve some of the fallen attackers of their weaponry. Mike and Liam heard the thwack of an additional .22 round as he mercilessly dispatched a man who’d been hit but wasn’t dead yet.

  Down the canal there were loud shouts, and a flashlight beam split the night. Jorge was caught in it briefly, but he ducked and then ran with his cargo of guns and ammunition, scampering through the shadows to where the others were. He had a huge pistol, an extra .22 rifle, and a bandolier of shotgun shells.

  “That guy in the yellow jacket, his shotgun was smashed, but I got this for you, Mike Leonhardt,” he said, grinning and handing Mike the bandolier. “Take it compliments of Mario Azevedo, Estela’s ex-boyfriend. He won’t be coming after her anymore.”

  They ran up the canal bed until they caught up with Tara and Alma, who were frantically ushering the orphaned children along as fast as they could go. Each of the women held a toddler in either arm.

  “Well, we fought them back,” Liam reported. “But now I think they’re really mad. If they don’t turn back now, it means they’re really out for blood and they’ll pursue us all the way to the edge of town.”

  Five minutes up the path, the group came to an underpass where a section of road passed over the canal. A dark shape loomed on top, a stopped vehicle on the roadway above. Someone was moving around on the far side of the underpass, working quietly with a coil of rope.

  It was Walt, they saw when they got close. He impatiently waved them through. “Don’t stop,” he said. “I’m setting up a surprise for our pursuers. How long do I have until they get here?”

  “No more than five or six minutes,” Mike said. “We got the best of them back there, as you probably heard. But they’ll be rushing after us now with a vengeance.”

  “Good,” was all Walt said in reply.

  On the other side of the underpass, Mike and Liam made sure the others were moving quickly ahead. Tara and Alma took the kids through and hurried onward to catch up with Estela’s group if they could. Jorge passed them to reach the others first and distribute his ill-gotten arms to the other adults.

  Once they had all made it past Walt’s location, Mike and Liam stopped to see if they could help with whatever their father was planning. From this side they could see that the dark shape above was a full-length semi-truck. It had slid nearly off the road, no doubt when the power went out and everyone’s cars stopped working, and it had taken out a section of fence and guard rail. Now it was hanging precariously off the side of the overpass, held there only by two remaining fence posts that were bent nearly double under the weight. It looked to have been in that position ever since.

  Walt was busy running a length of rope from his pack around one of the semi’s wheels and back down to a point in the underpass where the group of refugees had passed through moments before.

  “Are you trying to pull that thing down to block the way?” Liam asked. “They’ll just climb past it, won’t they?”

  “Not if they’re standing right here when it falls,” Walt explained. “This rope is going to be the trip-wire. They come running under here, pull the rope, and slide the whole truck down on top of them. Come on, I need one of you to tear away the fencepost on this side. It’s already loose. But don’t do it until I say it’s ready!”

  They worked in near-silence for a couple more minutes, running the rope under a reasonably rounded chunk of the guard rail and then across the canal bed at shin-height. Walt tied it off with a good knot, then scrambled up to the fence posts that were holding up the weight of the precariously-balanced semi.

  “Okay, now put your boot on it and slowly start bending it farther. We need this on a hair trigger, but don’t go too far or you’ll ruin the whole thing.”

  Liam nodded and climbed out onto the fence post, a folded steel bar that was sagging out into the empty space at the side of the overpass. He held on to a section of the chain-link fence that had previously been keeping drivers and pedestrians from throwing trash into the canal. Then he bounced up and down gently on the post until there was a loud creaking.

  “Whoa! Careful,” Mike said, reaching out to grab his brother.

  “I got it, I got it,” Liam said. He slowly put more of his weight on the post, sliding out toward the end of it where it protruded away from the semi’s overturned cab. Another couple of bounces and the entire truck gave out a groan of straining metal. The cab began to slide along the post with an ear-splitting grating sound.

  “Okay! That’s good,” Walt said. “Now loop the rope around the end of the post, if you can reach it.”

  Liam, clinging desperately to the fencing and hanging out over fifteen feet of darkness, took the rope and eased a loop of it around the post’s end. He cautiously pulled it tight, causing the truck’s cab to slide another couple of inches over the edge as he did so. Then he looped it around the side mirror of the cab for good measure, and climbed back to the overpass.

  “Perfect. Now let’s tie this off and get out of here!” Walt said.

  Seconds later they had left the area and were running flat-out along the canal bed after the rest of the departing refugees.

  “Shouldn’t we stay and watch?” Mike asked, huffing as he ran. “Make sure it goes off, and take a few shots at any survivors?”

  “No,” Walt replied. “I’d love to see it go, but we don’t want to get pinned down or we’ll never make it out of this city.”

  Still, each of them listened intently and occasionally looked back over their shoulder hoping to get a glimpse of the semi trap in the moonlight. It was a straight shot now, the canal angling due west without bends or turns.

  They were only a minute and a half up the path when they heard it. There was a sharp screech of metal on metal and then a metallic snap as a post under incredible pressure let go. After a split second of dead silence, a thunderous crash echoed up the canal in three parts as the length of the heavy semi hit, slid, and rolled to a rest on the bed of the canal.

  Mike let out a whoop. Walt listened carefully, wondering if the thing had just slid and fallen on its own, prematurely. But the trap did its work fully: as the last smashing sound echoed after them, the three Leonhardt men also heard an agonized squeal, not unlike the “Wilhelm scream” from the movies, and a single gunshot rang out as someone lost control of their weapon.

  “Okay, that’s it,” Walt said. “Show’s over. Let’s catch up to the others so I can take point again, and you two guard the rear. We may just make it out of Denver yet!”

  “Aren’t you getting tired, Dad?” Liam asked, impressed at his father’s stamina. “You’ve been running flat-out for several hours now.”

  “I’ll be tired once everyone is safe,” Walt answered, “and not a minute before.”

  Chapter 31: Heading North

  Alma Rojas came out to the side yard of the house she’d secured in Boulder, holding a cardboard box full of extra jackets, gloves, and hats. She stopped outside a tent where Mike, Liam, and Tara Leonhardt were sitting, making repairs to some of their gear and cleanin
g their firearms.

  “You guys get first dibs on this stuff,” she told them. “And your father, too. Donations from the citizens around here. You’re going to need some warmer stuff if you’re traveling all the way into Montana. Mrs. Kellerman thinks the first snow is only a few weeks away.”

  The Leonhardts stood and looked through the assortment of cold-weather items.

  “That’s awfully kind of them,” Tara said, selecting a thick gray scarf. “Nice people around here.”

  Alma sniffed. “Some of them. Then there are the morons pushing people around, making up new rules, setting up checkpoints so we can’t move around freely after dark. But they’re still outnumbered, I think. If we can keep most of the rules based on common-sense and keep the power-hungry types from going overboard, I think we’ll be all right here long-term.”

  The group had been staying in Boulder for two days now, since arriving the day after their nighttime exodus from Denver. There had been a few close calls on the way out of the city, but each was averted by quick thinking and the occasional brandishing of several weapons. When they finally left the canal and started through the streets, they were in an abandoned section of town and only had a few blocks to go before they broke out and crossed the highway into the open land outside of city limits.

  From there it had been a matter of hiking. Alma and Walt kept the group from running into any of the armed camps along the road, and they’d made it to Golden for a rest by the time the children were complaining of fatigue. After a couple of hours, they pushed on to Boulder, and Alma went ahead to get help from the refugees already living there, along with friends like Mrs. Kellerman.