Denver Overrun (Denver Burning Book 4) (6 page)

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
Amazon.com
, and you can sign up to be notified of future releases
here
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
(
Take Back Denver
Part Two of the Denver Burning series)

Having fought their way to safety in the mountains, McLean 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.