"Safe in Utah, I hope. They were visiting family there."
There was another silence as they each pondered the frightening possibilities of what might be going on outside Denver. A nation-wide disaster on this scale would mean that recovery was years away, if it ever came. The idea was still too much to handle, and Alicia turned her mind away.
"Jason, right?" Andrews asked. "I met your husband at the Christmas party. And you have a kid?"
"Sadie. Eight years old."
"I'm sure they're fine there. Don't worry about them."
"Yeah, I think they probably are. Jason's parents have a nice place with a few acres."
Andrews handed Alicia the water bottle again. "You should join them," he said in a firm tone. "You should try to get to Utah and be with them."
Alicia thought that over. She had only taken a few seconds all day to remember her loved ones and send a mental prayer their way. She was good at focusing on her work, perhaps too good. Now that her work's future was in question, thoughts and feelings flooded over her that she had kept at bay to remain an effective police sergeant.
No matter what the situation in Utah, Jason would be worried sick about her. He and his parents were probably trying to keep things as normal as possible for Sadie, but she was a perceptive eight-year-old and would immediately know something was wrong. Alicia could hardly bear the thought of her daughter struggling to understand the scary things that were happening. And what would Jason do? Would he be sensible and stay put, or would he try to come back to Denver?
"Really, Sergeant Hendrickson," Andrews pressed. "You need to go find your family. In the morning we'll see if we can get you out to the west, find a working vehicle or a bicycle or something. It's no good staying around here. Jason and Sadie need you now."
Alicia sighed, trying to push her feelings back down where they belonged. "I'm a police sergeant, Andrews. My place is here. At first light we need to get back into the fight."
"No, Sarge. I think... I'm afraid it's every man for himself now."
"What are you saying, Andrews?" Alicia said, louder than she meant to in the confined space of the SUV's interior. "We're police. We don't cut and run just because--"
"We're outgunned, Sergeant. We have no backup, we're running out of ammunition, the city's burning, and we may never get power back again. Did you see how all the cars went dead?" Andrews hit the dashboard to emphasize his point. "Whatever this is, it's total and it's final. We haven't found another living cop all day-- we may be alone. Did you think of that? What if we're the last two cops in Denver? The gunmen targeted our station with fire and bullets; you can bet they sent a lot more firepower to HQ, to the Capitol, to the National Guard. They're making sure nobody is left to restore order."
"Andrews..."
"Sergeant, I hate to be a killjoy, but I've been processing this all day and I've come to my conclusions. I think this is the end. Do you believe in the Bible?"
"Sure," Alicia said, surprised at the question. "I never figured you for a 'rapture' guy though."
"I'm not," Andrews admitted. "I haven't been to church since I was a teenager. And I'm not saying Jesus is coming down here. But destruction and chaos on this scale... I don't see us recovering from this one. I think this might be how America goes down. I think maybe this is our apocalypse."
Alicia didn't like what she was hearing. "Andrews, you need to sleep. We'll make a plan in the morning."
"Okay. But I really do think you should get to your family. If this is as bad as I think it is, Denver won't be a livable place again for a long, long time. It will certainly be no place for a woman cop-- no offense. I know you can hold your own. But if these terrorists do get the upper hand and keep it, policemen probably aren't going to be treated well."
"What about you?"
"Me, I'll go out shooting. I've made my peace with that. But you have a family, and you owe it to them to escape all this."
"Let me handle my own duty to my family, Andrews," Alicia said, irritated at his insistence. "I'm not going to abandon my post so that you can get better closure for your own losses!"
He didn't reply, and she regretted being so cutting. "I'm sorry. Go to sleep, Andrews."
"Good night, Sarge."
Alicia watched the distant glow of fires spreading across the city and pondered the words of her fellow officer. It certainly looked and felt like a biblical judgment on the city. But she didn't feel like Denver was anything like Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible. This was simply the result of some evil men that had the gall to bring death and ruin to others in the name of some cause or other. She didn't even care what they wanted or why they had carried out the attack. She just wanted justice to end up on top.
But she also wanted to see her husband and daughter again. While carrying the children away from the fire earlier, she had felt her own pangs of longing, and almost had tears in her own eyes at the thought of holding Sadie again.
If Denver really was a lost cause, as Andrews thought-- and she would know one way or the other, come morning-- then wasn't her place with her family? The thought stayed with her no matter how she wrestled with it and tried to keep up her police-sergeant persona. She fell asleep arguing the point with herself, and didn't wake until sunlight slanting through the garage hit the car they were in.
From the rooftop the next morning they surveyed the city. The fires had swept uncontested throughout the downtown area, and several other neighborhoods were swathed in smoke, including the blocks directly to their north. The big fire they had experienced seemed to have turned east, but was obviously still burning.
They were horrified to see two dead bodies lying in the street below, which they had missed in the dark the night before. Most of the cars on the street had their windows smashed.
"Those terrorist gunmen didn't even have to do anything," Andrews murmured. "The city is ripping itself apart. Between the fire, the chaos, and the fear, they might as well have stayed out of it."
They couldn't see any aircraft, any sign of help arriving from outside the region. It was a stark and horrible call to reality. No vehicles were moving, no loudspeakers were instructing the populace how to find help.
In fact, they couldn't see more than a handful of people moving around at all. Everyone seemed to be hiding. Most of them had probably put two and two together some time during the night-- no help was coming. The entire country was down for the foreseeable future.
"Sergeant, we have to get you out of town," Andrews said. "I'm as certain as I was last night. You need to join your family. It's the only thing we still have some control over."
"Andrews, I told you I don't need you to be my hero," Alicia began. "There's still a lot we don't know, and as much as I'd like to join Jason and Sadie in Utah, I need to--"
"Sergeant! You've done all you can here. Your husband and daughter need you. They're freaking out right now, wondering if mommy is going to make it out of Denver alive. I can't save Simmins, or Mason, or those two corpses down there on the street. And of course I can't do anything for my own family anymore..." Andrews' voice became raw with emotion and strain. "And without backup or any expectation of more manpower, I can't take down these bad guys myself. But there's one thing I can do, one little girl whose mom I can keep alive." He sniffed. "You're going."
"Don't make me your crutch," Alicia said, more harshly than she meant. She was on the verge of tears herself. "If I leave, it will be because I've decided I'm no longer capable of being any good to anyone here."
"Sarge, I'm getting you out of here if it's the last thing I do. I'll carry you if I have to. Having everything stripped away from you isn't easy, I know. You don't have anyone to command anymore, no one here looking to you as their savior. But you still have people that need you. Not as a police sergeant. But as a mom, a wife."
Alicia felt the hot tears leave her eyes and surge down her face. It hurt and felt good at the same time. "What's your plan, then? Are you coming with me, all the way to Utah?"
"I don't have anything in Utah. But I'll go as far with you as need be."
Alicia nodded. "We'll move west, then. But if we run into anyone, see anything that makes me think we still have a chance here... I'll keep fighting. I'll die here if I can do any good."
Andrews opened his mouth to speak, but then shut it and nodded back at her.
They left the garage and walked several blocks west until they came to a canal. Several people were gathered there, filling buckets with water and talking. They eyed the two ragged, ash-covered police uniforms with suspicion.
"Where are you two going?" a woman called out. "What happened to this place? When are we gonna get the power back on?"
Andrews shrugged and kept moving. Alicia answered, "We don't know anything. I'm sorry. We're doing our best to get things under control."
Her attempt was met with derisive laughter from the people along the canal's banks. "Yeah, get out of here!" a man yelled. "Don't come back, we don't want you or need you. You're done!"
Andrews kept walking, ignoring them, leading the way until they were out of sight and passing through a couple of upscale neighborhoods that hadn't been hit as hard as the ones in their police district.
Even fewer people were stirring in this part of town. They saw a few faces peeking out from house windows, and one old man came out of his garage to watch them go by, holding a pistol in one hand. Most people were staying off the roads, and the two officers soon found out why.
Four dead bodies, strewn down the street toward a big intersection served as a warning, but they didn't heed it until too late. When they got within a hundred feet of the intersection, they saw two trucks that had been pushed perpendicular to the traffic lanes. There were bicycles in the back of one of the open trucks, along with a case of bottled water.
Suddenly a gunshot rang out. Andrews sank to one knee.
All the adrenaline of the previous day came rushing back into Alicia's body, flooding the weariness out and bringing the entire intersection into crisp focus. The two trucks were a roadblock, the bicycles and water a trap to lure people in. The shot had come from the second-story window of a store that overlooked the intersection. A dark shape in the window pinpointed the shooter. And now she saw three more men coming out of the store's ground-level doorway.
As Alicia threw herself sideways behind a cluster of cars parked along the curb, Andrews' handgun barked out a staccato series of return fire. He had seen the shooter upstairs and his shots shattered the window and sent the rifleman tumbling to the street below.
He was still kneeling in the street. Alicia thought he hadn't seen the ambushers downstairs and was about to shout a warning, but then she saw the blood. Looking out from the cover of a delivery truck that sheltered her from the storefront and its blockade, she realized with horror that she had just abandoned her only ally in the street. She could see more blood running down his arm even as he raised it to shoot again.
He fired once, twice, and then his magazine was empty. The men who had come out of the store dodged behind the trucks but soon came out when they realized Andrews was empty. Holding an AK-47 up to his shoulder, a man in black cargo pants approached the policeman. Alicia recognized him even without the red bandanna.
She clutched her revolver, cursing herself a mile a minute for being dumb enough to walk right down the street in the open, for leaving Andrews exposed, and for forgetting so quickly how dangerous these gunmen could be. She quickly checked her cylinder, remembering this time that she wasn't full.
Three chambers were filled with .40 cartridges. There were three men walking toward Andrews. All of them had guns.
Without time to worry or think it through, she began to creep stealthily around the side of the truck, keeping her feet and body hidden from the view of the men in the street.
"Oh, look at this, we got a cop!" one of the gunmen called out. "Mister thin-blue-line, running for his life to get out of town." It was the man next to the AK-toting terrorist, Alicia saw as she peered around the front fender of the truck. A large man with a shotgun and combat boots. His voice abruptly changed from glee to menace. "Too late, pig!"
The third man, a thin man in jeans, laughed raucously. The man with the AK, silent until now, pointed his weapon at Andrews' chest. "I saw you yesterday."
Andrews calmly nodded, but seemed unable to speak. Alicia crept out from behind the truck, staying well out of the three terrorists' peripheral vision.
The larger man with the shotgun crowed. "This must be the last cop in Denver. Haw! Tell you what, pig, this city is never coming back-- lights are out for good, police all gone, and the governor butchered right there in his office downtown. Neither is the rest of the country, not for a long time. We own the night, baby!" He sounded drunk.
Alicia stepped toward the three gunmen, revolver raised. "Own this," she said, and fired three times. The gun bucked and centered again each time. One bullet into the upper spinal column of each man, before they had time to turn fully around to see the woman standing in the street behind them.
Her hearing was gone for a moment, and the men seemed to fall in slow motion, pitching forward as if they were actors in a Spaghetti Western. The large man never moved again. The thin one gurgled for a few seconds, bleeding out through a hole in his clavicle, and then went quiet.
The terrorist with the AK rolled over and lifted himself up with one arm, staring at Alicia in alarm. She was afraid he might bring up his rifle to shoot, and she had no more ammo, so she stepped forward to plant a boot on his chest and bludgeoned him on the side of the head with her heavy revolver. He sank back down and lay still, blood fanning out across the pavement underneath him.
Andrews sat back, holding himself steady with his hands, gun fallen and forgotten. "That was... a surprise," he said, looking up at Alicia. She bent down to check him, and noticed that his face was pale and his shirt soaked with blood. "You... all three," he added. "Wow."
"Where are you hit?" Alicia asked, running a hand over his chest.
He couldn't answer. Within seconds, he slumped back and died.
Alicia sat there for a few minutes wondering what to do, what she could have done, what, if anything, could make a difference now. Was she the last cop in Denver? Did she owe the city a sacrifice like Andrews had made? Or did her other duties take precedence now?
Up the street the way she and Andrews had come, she spotted six men walking toward the ambush intersection. They were walking quickly, responding to the gunfire, and they were carrying weapons themselves. But they were not police.
That made her decision for her. She jumped up and ran to the trucks, empty revolver still clutched firmly in her hand. Pulling a bicycle down from the truck bed, she tore a bottle from the case of water and shoved it into the bike's carrier. Then she mounted the bike and took off.
She rode west, dodging through a vacant lot and behind a warehouse, then down another street and over a canal. She pedaled on, past startled people with dirty faces and frightened looks in their eyes.
She didn't stop even when she got tired, when her legs burned and her feet got sore. There was somewhere she had to get to, people that needed her and who she needed just as much. If she stopped now she might never make it out of Denver.
The city had been overrun, but she wouldn't be.
Algor Dennison lives in Idaho, where everyone else is going to go when the world ends. If you enjoyed this novella, he welcomes criticism, witticism, and reviews at Amazon.com, and you can sign up to be notified of future releases here.
Also available in the Denver Burning series:
Get Out of Denver (Part One of the Denver Burning series)
When planes fall from the sky and the streets of Denver erupt into violent chaos, McLean faces a choice. He can drop everything and run for his mountain retreat, or he can go back for the woman he's begun to care about.
Take Back Denver (Part Two of the Denver Burning series)
Having fought their way to safety in the mountains, M
cLean and Carrie now face not only the long struggle for survival in the new post-grid world, but a grave new threat that’s headed their way. They can fight now or they can fight later, but the fight is coming.
Coming soon:
Deep Thaw (Part Three of the Denver Burning series)
For Carson, a sleeper agent on a top-secret task force that has never been called into action, the doomsday events that tore Denver apart shouldn’t have come as a surprise. But when the signal alerts him to the reality that he is now active, he has to play catch-up to figure out who he can trust and what his true objectives are in the post-grid world. Fortunately, he’s in a unique position to get to the bottom of the conspiracy that brought his country to its knees.
Denver Overrun (Denver Burning Book 4) Page 4
