Lionhearts (Denver Burning Book 5) Page 8

  Walt patted the big man on the shoulder. “That’d be fine. Any help you can give to speed us on our way will be paid back in full. You’ll have my eternal gratitude.”

  Max left the house still looking hesitant, and James followed him. Marlin laughed. “Don’t worry about Max,” he told Walt. “He’s a good guy, he’ll get you there. You just gotta treat him gentle sometimes.”

  Walt and Chester negotiated for another twenty minutes about an on-going business relationship that would benefit Walt and his community, and the Wind River Reservation. They agreed to finalize it on Walt’s way back through the rez, and make their first trade as soon as Walt could get back down south with some cattle. Chester and Marlin would look after the Leonhardts’ two horses until they returned.

  A rattling roar outside announced the arrival of Max and his vehicle. Mike and Liam leaped to their feet, eager to see the first moving automobile they’d witnessed in several days.

  When they got outside, though, the contraption that met with their gaze barely lived up to the description of a moving automobile. It was truly a “rez car”, a battered old jalopy from the mid-Eighties that was missing its front fender and was covered in bumper stickers that seemed to be covering not only rust spots but rust holes. The windshield was cracked, the rear windshield was missing entirely, and the car’s sole side mirror dangled forlornly from a cable, clunking against the side of the vehicle as it came to a stop outside Chester’s front door.

  “What… is it?” Mike asked under his breath. “I can’t even tell what the make or model is on that thing.”

  “Sure you can,” Liam said, eager to demonstrate his knowledge of the car industry. “It’s a… I think it’s a Ford… or maybe an Oldsmobile.”

  “That’s not a Ford, dude. I think it’s a Chevy, if it’s American at all.”

  “No it’s not.”

  “Well, that’s what I’m saying—you can’t tell!”

  Max and James got out. Walt noticed that Max left the engine running to avoid having to get it started up again. There was a distinct rattle coming from under the rusting hood.

  “I named her ‘Champ’,” Max said, noting the Leonhardt’s skeptical gazes. “I’ve been driving her for ten years, and say whatever you want about her looks, she came through the Big Fizzle okay. So take it or leave it.”

  Mike looked at his dad. “Maybe we should stick with the horses.”

  Walt shook his head. “Even if this thing cuts out halfway there, it’ll save us a week or more. We’ll pick up our horses on the way back through. We’ll take it, Max, thank you very much!”

  They quickly loaded their gear into the rambling old sedan, which, if battered and uncomfortable, at least had plenty of room for the men and their packs.

  Walt and his boys shared the back seat while James rode shotgun, with an actual shotgun propped against the window. They waved at Chester as Max got the car into gear with an ear-splitting screech and started to pull away.

  “Now would be a good time to say a quick prayer,” Walt whispered to his sons.

  The drive was surprisingly uneventful, largely due to the vast emptiness of the land they were traveling through. Walt’s maps showed several small towns along the highway, but each of them turned out to be little more than a cluster of ranch buildings at the side of the road. The only sizable town they encountered early on was Lander, which Max didn’t dare go near for fear of its inhabitants taking an unhealthy level of interest in his car. They skirted the town entirely by heading west through the hills and emerging only once they were several miles beyond the town.

  Walt exhilarated in the speed of their travel. “This is more like it,” he yelled to his sons over the noise of the engine and the wind roaring at the open window behind them. “It took us days and days to get this far, but now through this act of God we’ll be in Colorado tonight!”

  After Lander, they entered a stretch of open country that was more barren than anything Liam had ever seen. “We never would have made it through all this on horseback,” he shouted to his brother. “Nothing for the horses to eat, no water. It’s a desert!” Mike had to agree. Nothing but scattered sage brush and sunbaked stubble could be seen on either side of the road for miles.

  An hour later they passed a sign pointing the way down an exit toward a Mormon Handcart Visitors Center. “There but for the grace of God, go we!” Walt said, pointing the sign out to his boys. “Without this beautiful late-model limousine we’re riding in, we’d be little better off on this trek than the Mormon pioneers!”

  It was a sobering thought, considering how many Mormons had died en route to make it out west.

  The barren land stretched on for another hour, until they turned right at a small abandoned service station. Soon after that they approached Rawlins, another sizable town. Max turned off the main highway and took a dirt road toward the hills on their left, again skirting the populated area by a wide enough margin to avoid being seen or heard.

  “How come you know all these side roads so well?” Mike asked the big man in the driver’s seat.

  Max and James looked at each other uncomfortably for a moment. Finally James replied. “Max has had to make this drive several times when he, uh, didn’t want his license plate to get picked up on any cop car’s scanner.”

  “Ah. We’ll leave it at that,” Mike said. He didn’t try for any more conversation after that.

  At Rawlins they joined I-80. Max was concerned that the interstate would expose them to more people that might try to stop them, but James pointed out that until they reached Laramie, this stretch of freeway was almost as desolate as the country they were leaving behind.

  Another hour’s driving brought them to Laramie. Max pulled the car off the road before they got near the city, stopping under the shade of a tree to check the engine and add some fluids as needed. The others got out and stretched their legs, and James walked up the road a hundred yards to siphon some gas from an abandoned car they had passed.

  “Well, she’s still a champ,” Max said proudly. “You want me to take you on into Fort Collins? It’s only another hour, and we won’t be on the interstate any more so we shouldn’t run into anybody.”

  Walt took him up on the offer, and soon they had crossed the state line and entered Colorado. After a final stretch during which both Mike and Liam fell asleep, they neared the largest population center they had seen since leaving Bozeman. The sun had already set and the sky was getting dark. Although they couldn’t see any lights up ahead, the landscape around the road and the increasing number of buildings to either side signaled that they would soon be in the city proper.

  “All right, man,” Max said. “This is as close as I can getcha without getting into heavily populated areas. You got about sixty miles to go ‘til Denver, but you can maybe get a ride with somebody else from here.”

  “How are we going to do that?” Walt asked. “I doubt any cars are running here, and if they are they’re probably being fought over.”

  “Maybe, but I don’t want ‘em fighting over mine,” Max replied, slowing and pulling off the road near an industrial plant that looked abandoned. “My chances of getting out of here after this are just about nothing.”

  “We can’t walk sixty miles,” Walt said. “Come on, just take us as far as Boulder, at least.”

  Max shook his head firmly, but suddenly a gunshot rang out and something pinged off the hood of the car. All five men in the car ducked and swiveled their heads around in every direction, trying to figure out who was shooting at them.

  “By those buildings!” James shouted. The others looked and saw a small group of men advancing from the industrial facility toward the car that had pulled off the road. They were just visible in the fading light, and were all dressed in dark clothing.

  Without a word, Max floored it and the old car strained to get back up to speed. They heard two more shots but nothing hit the car, and soon they were hurtling along the highway again, headed south into Fort Collins. Onc
e Max had gained some distance, he began cursing, and didn’t stop for several minutes. But he also didn’t let off the gas.

  Chapter 13: Break

  Tara’s group had been wandering the streets of south-east Denver all afternoon, and they still hadn’t found the neighborhood where Gemma thought they could take refuge. She thought they were close at one point, but then a very angry man with a shotgun turned them away from the street they needed to go down.

  “It’s somewhere in that direction,” Gemma said, gesturing eastward. “On Partridge Street, which is just off of Harrison Avenue. If we can get over near that, we’ll be able to get into the gated community.” She stumbled against a curb and spun in a circle, then leaned against a fence for a moment. Then she moved off down the street, staring down at her feet the entire time.

  Tara took a drink of water from the bottle in her backpack. She peered into the bottom of the bottle and noted that there was only one, maybe two swallows left. The sun was less than an hour from setting. “You guys, we’ve got to find shelter soon. It will not be safe on these streets after dark.”

  Erik was ranging ahead, checking where a side street led. Phil hadn’t spoken for a long time. Tara touched his arm. “Hey, Phil. You okay?”

  Phil shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Everything’s… crazy.”

  “I know,” Tara said. “Gemma is losing it. And Erik’s gone off the deep end.”

  Erik whirled and came back up the street. “Hey, I haven’t gone anywhere! Are we gonna find that neighborhood, or not?”

  “How did he even hear you?” Phil whispered to Tara.

  She shrugged. “Hey, Gemma,” she shouted. “What if we cut through that—”

  Tara never finished her sentence. By raising her voice to get Gemma’s attention, she had also gotten the attention of someone else.

  A large man with shaggy hair poked his head out of the back of a truck across the street. If Tara and the others had paid closer attention, they would have noticed the side windows of the topper on the truck bed cracked open, and perhaps heard its occupant snoring. Now the man clambered out the back of the truck and stood, swaying on his bare feet. He wore camo pattern pants and his face was puffy from sleep and a probable hangover.

  “Hey, what are you…” he began, but couldn’t finish the thought. He seemed only semi-coherent.

  Tara shrank back against Phil. She had seen a small pistol in the man’s hand. It was pointed at the ground, wavering as the man shifted his balance, but his finger was on the trigger.

  The man saw Tara’s frightened gaze locked on the weapon in his hand, and he looked down and noticed it anew for himself. Then a feral grin took over his face, and he looked back up at Tara. Slowly he raised the pistol until it was pointed at her and Phil. “Come over here,” he called in thick, slightly slurred words. “Come here and let me see you.”

  Tara and Phil started to back away in the direction Gemma had headed. Erik had stopped in his tracks in the middle of the street.

  Suddenly the man fired his gun, and the bullet whizzed past Tara and put a small hole in a wooden fence behind her. She screamed.

  “Come here,” the man said again. “I just wanna talk to you, I swear.”

  “Run!” Tara whispered to Phil.

  “No, he’ll shoot us in the back,” Phil shakily replied.

  The man walked toward them, struggling to keep his balance. The gun was still pointed right at Tara. Her own hands were trembling and she couldn’t move her feet.

  Suddenly, she felt rage boiling up inside. Her mind revolted at the idea that this barefoot, nasty drunk could threaten three able-bodied young adults in broad daylight just because he had a gun and didn’t think anyone was around to prevent him from using it. She balled her fist and waited for the man to come nearer.

  “You kids shouldn’t have come here,” the man began. “Now you’re gonna have to—”

  Tara hit him in the side of the head as hard as she could, simultaneously reaching down and pushing his gun-hand away so that it fired harmlessly into the asphalt. Then she tried to kick his leg, thinking to land a painful enough blow that he would collapse. She missed.

  The pistol fired again, but its bullet ricocheted away down the gutter.

  Then Erik was on him. The baseball bat came out again, and in three heavy blows the man was down. Erik stooped to shove his knife into the man’s chest, and then took the pistol from his failing grip. He backed away, leaving the knife in the man, who was writhing and choking.

  Erik checked the pistol and pointed it at the man, but then thought better of it. The guy was totally incapacitated. “Save the bullets,” Erik muttered.

  Phil stared at his roommate with a look that wavered between fear and awe. Tara opened her mouth to tell Erik what a sick, violent person he was, but realized that it was she who had initiated the attack against the man who was now dying on the pavement in front of them.

  No, that wasn’t right, she thought. The man had started it, had even fired his weapon at her. He deserved what had happened to him. But how could she say that of anyone who’d just been stabbed and beaten? She was caught between conflicting gut-level truths and couldn’t decide which one was right.

  Tara’s mouth was so dry she couldn’t swallow. She needed a drink badly, and fumbled in her pack for her bottle. She couldn’t think of anything else.

  Shouts echoed down the street, drawing her gaze to the intersection they had come from. Four men and a woman were running toward them. One carried a rifle, and from the rough way they were dressed they didn’t look like they wanted to help.

  “Let’s go!” Erik shouted. He took off running, and Tara suddenly found herself following at top speed. Phil hesitated and then came sprinting after them.

  “Where’s Gemma?” Tara shrieked as they ran. Her friend was nowhere in sight.

  “Doesn’t matter!” Erik snarled. “We gotta get out of here.”

  They turned the corner and saw Gemma up ahead, sitting on the curb. Erik ran right past her, but Tara and Phil stopped briefly to pull the girl to her feet and drag her along with them.

  They ran for several minutes. The people they had left behind could no longer be heard, and they hadn’t seen anyone else. If anyone had been out and about, they had cleared the street quickly after hearing shots fired. Erik stopped at a residential intersection, pistol still in hand, looking up and down the streets to figure out which way to go.

  “Hey! That’s Harrison!” Gemma called out between gasps for breath. “Crestwood will be up that way.”

  They turned in the direction she pointed and hurried onward. They spotted a boy and his dog walking up the sidewalk, but both scattered into the bushes to get out of the way of the three fast-moving adults.

  The sun had just touched the horizon when they arrived at the gate of the Crestwood neighborhood.

  “I told you it was here,” Gemma triumphantly remarked as they paused outside to catch their breath. “We made it.”

  Tara patted her on the back. “Good job, Gemma. You’re doing great. We’re gonna make it.”

  The iron gate was pretty heavy-duty and stretched entirely across the road, but it had been reinforced with planks of wood and wire, with some boxes piled inside near the ends to prevent people from climbing under. A six-foot stone wall extended around the rest of the block.

  “Hey, what do you want?” a voice called through the fence. They couldn’t see the speaker, but it sounded like a young man. He seemed to be hiding just inside behind some of the wood planks. “Get out of here or you’ll be shot!”

  Gemma, badly startled, backed away from the gate, but Erik pressed forward, trying to see past the planking. “We came to talk to a guy who lives here. Let us in so we can find him.”

  There was no reply, but a moment later footsteps hurriedly approached on the far side. It sounded like there were a couple more people behind the gate now.

  “Who are you, and what business do you have in
Crestwood?” a man’s voice shouted. “If you don’t live here, then beat it! We’re armed and dangerous.”

  Erik scowled and looked at the others. Gemma stepped forward.

  “We’re looking for John Royston,” she said. “He’s my boss, he lives here. Can you let us in so we can talk to him?”

  “Who?” the man called out. “I don’t know your boss.”

  “John Royston,” Gemma repeated. “He lives on, uh, Partridge Street, one oh nine, I think. Or maybe one-nineteen. Can you go get him?”

  There was muted muttering behind the gate and finally the man replied, “Stay there. Don’t try to get in. We’ll see about this guy you say you know.”

  They waited there a long time. Erik paced back and forth, watching the street for anyone approaching. Gemma sat on the dry grass, head in her hands. Phil and Tara leaned against the stone wall and drank the last of their water as the sun sank out of sight and dusk once more covered the city.

  “You think we’ll get in?” Phil asked.

  Tara shrugged. “Gemma always talks about how much her boss likes her. We’ll see.”

  “We’ll get in,” Erik said, loudly. As he walked over, Tara noticed that he was still holding the pistol he had taken and hadn’t let go of for a second. “We’ll get in. Trust me.”

  A few minutes later there was more noise on the other side of the barricade, and part of it moved outward. A man came out, pistol strapped to his hip. He looked warily at the four interlopers.

  “Which one of you knew Royston?” he asked.

  Gemma got up and came forward. “I’m one of the hygienists at his dental office. Where is he?”

  The man cleared his throat and glanced behind him to where a couple of others peered out through the gate. “I’m sorry to tell you that Mr. Royston is dead.”