Take Back Denver (9 page)

Carrie blushed. “I… don’t think he’s said that.”

“
He wants to. And I think you do too. So don’t let him down by getting yourself lost or hurt. Who knows, maybe you’ll run into him at some point.” Maria was echoing what Carrie had laid awake thinking the night before. It was a chance in a thousand, but she would definitely be keeping an eye out for him.

DJ gave Carrie a list of trustworthy radio contacts that would give her a friendly welcome and let her use their gear to contact the ranch with any news. There weren’t many in the region she was headed toward, but several lay along her route coming and going. Her plan was to stay farther south than any of them had been in the past.

With an extra box of ammunition for her Beretta, which she had been practicing with, and a full pack on her back, she took off into the hills and headed east.

The next few days passed very slowly at the ranch. It was quiet with JD and most of the other men gone. DJ occupied his time on the radio, passing information back and forth and trying to learn more about what people were doing to the south and east. Jim and his daughter kept the ranch running with the help of Maria, Mrs. Bailey, and her children, but it was all maintenance-level chores. They were no longer strengthening the ranch or its ability to produce food for wintertime.

The only good news to come in was from Crested Butte. DJ received reports of success with the security situation there. The attackers did indeed return for another try at the little town, but with help from the ranch and from several other men in the area that flocked to their aid, Crested Butte fought them to a standstill. The band of marauders that had been thirty-strong was whittled down to ten overnight, and in the morning a posse pursued the survivors into the hills.

JD and Gordo returned with war stories and boosted confidence in their ability to hold the territory against all threats.

“
When that many of us band together to defend our area,” Gordo explained, “you’d have to have an entire army to get past us. I’m no general, but we learned first-hand that there is real strength in numbers. I think the key to pushing back danger and maybe even re-taking Denver will be in simply getting together enough people to make it happen.”

A week later Ron and Brad returned from Denver on horseback. After splitting up with Rory they had left to get a look at the downtown area, which was an almost completely abandoned ruin, and to visit Brad’s brother in Parker. They stayed there for a couple of days to help out, and then began the journey back to the ranch to share all they’d learned with those at home.

“
All in all, that city is a wreck,” Ron said. “It’s a mess of warring factions without any real authority or order, unless you count the mayor and his cohort. They’re holed up in a compound around what used to be the Capitol, but thank goodness neither they nor any of the other groups are powerful enough to really present a threat to anyone outside their territory. Some of them seem to have started as legitimate attempts to maintain order and safety in their neighborhood, but violence and desperation has forced even the well-meaning ones into a bloody fight for survival. I’m glad we got out when we did.”

“
Roger that,” Brad said. “Not many people would talk to us outsiders, but the few who did knew nothing of a prison or an incoming force. Hopefully McLean gets back soon with some word. We never saw a sign of him on the way back here. And hopefully Carrie’s with him. I don’t like the vulnerability of having our people out on their own like this.”

“
But we’ve got to have eyes and ears out there,” JD objected. “Otherwise we’ll be blind up until the moment we get hit with some overwhelming force.”

“
Not with my radio network in place,” DJ said. “It’s growing fast. I’m communicating daily with Crested Butte, Aspen, Buena Vista, and Gunnison. Each of them has another contact or two farther out, so news trickles down the web toward us. And even some of the smaller areas in between that don’t have radios set up are sending runners back and forth to carry messages.”

“
That’s good,” JD admitted. “I wish Carrie would get word back to us. I wonder where she is right now.”

A moment of silence followed as images flashed through their minds of their friend out in the wild alone. Was she injured, desperate, captured?

They had no way to find out.

Chapter 11  :  Dinner with a Guerrilla

The truth was that at that moment Carrie was enjoying a leisurely dinner with Carl Walsh, the mastermind of the resistance movement in Pueblo. He was a burly man with a dark beard and a bald head. He wore black boots and was usually dressed in a plaid shirt and jeans, although on this night he was wearing a ridiculous Hawaiian shirt with pink hibiscuses all over it. Over the past twenty-four hours Carrie had learned that Carl had a capricious personality despite his role in the harsh and dirty work of guerrilla warfare.

“
So tell me, Miss Alton,” he asked her before plunging a forkful of beetroot pie into his mouth, “what do you and your friends know of the Correctionist agenda? Have people in your neck of the woods seen anything first-hand, or is it all vague rumors trickling down your way?”

“
Rumors, mostly,” Carrie said. “We’re finally hooked into a decent ham radio circle, but no one seems to know what’s going on for sure. That’s why I’m here.”

“
Right. Of course. Well, allow me to enlighten you.”

After a lot of solo travel and asking around at the small communities east of the mountains, Carrie had been introduced to a shifty little man who wouldn’t tell her his name but came through with an introduction to Carl. Carrie didn’t find out until that evening that Carl was actually the leader of the local resistance fighters. She had spent most of the day with others in the community, helping at Pueblo’s medical center and carefully answering the questions Carl’s second-in-command had for her. Finally she had convinced everyone that she was trustworthy and had nothing to hide, and she got an invitation to dine with Carl.

Carl’s sister, a graceful woman with graying hair, brought a loaf of fresh bread into the dining room of the old house they shared. “Stay and eat with us, Bea,” Carl asked her. “We won’t be discussing anything you’ve haven’t heard before.” Carl’s older sister sat, and the three of them enjoyed the meal together as they spoke.

“
The first we learned of the Correctionists,” Carl continued, “was seven or eight weeks ago when they took Wichita. We got a bunch of escapees coming over here with nothing but the shirts on their backs, telling wild stories about army tanks and wave attacks. A few of us went over to see for ourselves.”

Carl paused, and his sister stopped eating for moment. “Not all of us came back from that trip,” Carl continued with a heavy sigh. “The army tanks were an exaggeration, but the rest was true. The Correctionists-- they have a long official name, but that’s how they’re generally known because they’re trying to correct the nation from its former path-- had apparently been rolling across the plains for the past few months, sending soldiers in trucks out to each town and community center to pacify any uprisings and establish control. Then they leave a skeleton crew behind, often just one or two men, to report on any breaches of their rules. Then they move on. That’s what they did after steamrolling La Junta and then Pueblo. Now the bulk of their forces are in Colorado Springs.”

Carrie nodded. “I saw a soldier earlier today in town. Everyone seemed to be giving him a wide berth, except for the girl on his arm.”

Carl snorted. “That’s Corporal Bernson. As far as he knows, he owns this town. But we’ve got eyes on him twenty-four-seven, and he only knows what we want him to know.”

“
But what exactly are their rules?” Carrie asked. “What are these Correctionists all about? Are they really here to take over, or is this use of force just temporary while they restore order?”

“
That’s what they’d like us to think,” Carl answered, and Bea gave a vehement nod of confirmation. “That’s the message they’re spreading. And that’s precisely what made me nervous early on, because there’s a big difference between what they’re saying and what they’re doing. When they go into an area and take all the guns, restrict the amount of food everyone can store, and demand that everyone answer to their authority in all matters large and small… it starts to look less like a helping hand. These guys will skim any stockpile larger than a few potatoes to feed their troops. They’re the only ones with trucks, so they can get away with it. And that brings us to a mystery that my guys are working on. How is it that these Correctionists have gas and working vehicles, but nobody else does?”

Carrie shrugged. “I see where you’re going with it, but you’d have to find proof to justify such an accusation. Maybe the EMP that fried everything wasn’t so devastating back East, or maybe they had these vehicles stored safely underground.”

Carl nodded. “I agree. We need to find out more facts about what happened in the eastern states, where these guys are really coming from, and who’s directing them. But it’s uncanny how swiftly they moved into power after the grid went down. A girl I know got cozy with one of the soldiers when there were more of them here in town, and he told her that his outfit would have been here a lot sooner if they hadn’t been delayed by some fighting in the Deep South and Texas. It’s like they jumped up the minute the lights went out and got in their trucks to start taking things over.”

Carrie thought for a moment. “I don’t know. Most of the military men and women I’ve known would never participate in illegal oppression.”

“
That’s debatable. Don’t get me wrong, my grand-daddy was in the Marines, and I respect most of the soldiers I’ve known as well. But you have to admit, they always do as they’re told, don’t they? And if the people in charge change the laws so that oppression sounds more like restoring order and helping the country back to its feet, it wouldn’t take much for a young man to start marching. Especially when the best way for him to feed himself and get some money or supplies to his family is to follow orders. I’m sure many refused and went AWOL, but I’d bet that their ranks were quickly filled up again by those eager for a chance at taking some spoils. In fact, judging from the quality of the troops we’ve encountered so far, they’re eighty percent recent sign-ups and only a handful of real veterans from the old days.”

Carrie sighed. “I still think most Americans would never behave as you’re suggesting, blindly following the commands of some tyrannical regime. There’s got to be something deeper behind all this.”

“
If you can figure it out, I’m all ears,” Carl replied. “But the facts as I see them are these: the goons that shot up a lot of the big cities in the immediate aftermath of the grid-down event just melted away before the Correctionists. Each time they went into a city, there were suddenly no more gunmen to be found. Oh, they caught a couple, of course, so they could hold a show trial and make examples of them, executing them on the spot. But rumors have leaked that it was all set up and the goons were cooperating. That’s how it went down in Wichita, anyway. Rumor has it that most of the guys that took down the local government on day one are now wearing uniforms and pushing people around from the other side of the law.”

“
That’s just insane,” Carrie said. “How could an attack be carried out on that scale, coordinating that many people around the nation, without everyone hearing about it?”

“
I hope to some day be able to tell you how,” Carl said. “What I can tell you right now is how
I’d
do it. If I were some power-hungry, half crazy terrorist dictator that wanted America down for the count, I’d figure out how to take down the grid. Then I’d get hold of a lot of guns and ammo and maybe some explosives or chemical weapons or something, and ship them to criminal elements all over the country, high-profile anarchists and mob bosses and gang leaders. The really ugly, desperate ones that wouldn’t hesitate to use it. I’d time the shipments so that they arrived a day or so before the EMP goes off. With the arms, which wouldn’t be hard to get if you had access to the right channels, I’d put a message, something like this:

“
It’s coming. We are going to bring down the house. 9/11 will look like cupcakes after this. You can be part of it: when the lights go out, go into action with whoever you’ve got, wherever you are. They will not be able to stop you. The lights are not coming back on, not for a long time, and when they do, there will be no authority left.” Carl stared into Carrie’s eyes as he recited the words without a single pause.

Chilled, Carrie pushed her plate away. “What is that?”

Carl pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. It was covered in packing tape and was weathered, but the printed words were still legible. “This was found jammed in a 5.56mm magazine that somehow made its way into the hands of a soldier my men killed outside of Crowley. Probably fell there by accident at some point and was overlooked. I’m not surprised it’s the only one we’ve ever found; it’s not the kind of thing you’d want to leave lying around if you were the guy receiving an illegal arms shipment.”

Carl sat back as his sister stood and began clearing the dishes. “It’s a clue. But hardly the proof you’re talking about. Certainly not enough to convince a whole country of anything, especially one that’s gone half mad. But it’s enough for me. These Correctionists advertise that their leadership is an even mix of liberal and conservative, military and civilian, urban and rural, and that they’re committed to restoring the nation to a position of strength. All of that may be true. But I don’t like what they’re doing or how they’re doing it. And so I’m fighting back.

“
If you want in, Miss Alton, we can use you. We can use as many good men and women as we can get. If we don’t get more than we have now, Denver will soon be a lost cause. And if that happens, you and your friends may find yourselves deep in enemy territory. It happened to us; it could soon happen to you.

“
We’re heading up to Colorado Springs tonight to see if we can stir up some trouble. Want to come along?”

Chapter 12  :  Prison Surveillance

McLean brushed a hazel twig out of his way and refocused his binoculars on the sentries outside the prison fence. He was very glad he was on the outside looking in; judging by the haggard, beaten look of those on the other side of the razorwire, they weren’t getting a lot of food or exercise or human decency. The guards, on the other hand, were chatting merrily and trading cigarettes, candy bars, and beer bottles.