Free Get Out of Denver (Denver Burning Book 1) by Algor X. Dennison Page A

recliner’s footrest with a deafening bang and stumbled to her feet. “What is it? Where are we, what’s going on?” she muttered sleepily.
    Carrie was at David’s door drumming on it as quietly as she could. “David! David, wake up. We have to go!” she called softly.
    “Out the back window!” McLean whispered hoarsely to the two women behind him. “These are bad guys with guns, maybe tipped off by those hoods I ran off. Go now, and don’t stop running!”
    The men outside had heard enough to know the place wasn’t empty, and they trotted to the front door, guns raised. McLean pulled his pack behind the only concealment he had, the easy chair Shauna had been sleeping in, and crouched there with his shotgun ready.
    Two seconds later, the gunmen broke the door in. They must have had a lot of recent practice, because one kicked it in almost effortlessly, dead bolt and all, and the other rushed through with his AK leveled for action. This was no casual visit; it was a tactical assault.
    McLean’s shotgun blast took the man in the stomach, and he stumbled back onto the porch and fell down. The other one leaned through the doorway without exposing himself and sprayed several shots into the room.
    McLean heard a grunt of surprise behind him and turned to see David standing in his bedroom doorway, shirt untucked, with a bloodstain spreading rapidly across his chest. He also glimpsed Carrie and Shauna frantically wrestling with a kitchen window, just out of sight from the front door. Then McLean turned back and fired three shots through the open doorway. None of them hit the enemy, as the gunman had pulled back behind cover, but they kept his head down for the moment.
    McLean got to his feet and swung his pack onto his back, then ducked into the hallway to put a wall between himself and the front door. He pulled four shells from the strap on his gun’s butt and rapidly fed them into the receiver.
    By this time the shooting had brought the rest of the gunmen to the duplex. McLean caught sight of two heading around to the side of the house, and fired through the front window at them. They scattered and he thought he might have hit one.
    The sound of shattering glass made him swivel toward the kitchen. Carrie had picked up a chair and smashed the entire window out. She cleared the edges of jagged fragments and then began to boost Shauna out the window. There was a wooden fence a few feet from the rear of the duplex, but it wasn’t high and could be scaled easily enough.
    McLean risked a glance over at David and saw him bleeding out on the floor, eyes already wide and staring. Determined not to be caught in the deathtrap, he hefted his backpack and moved across the room toward the kitchen, firing two shots as he went. The sound of return fire from outside told him at least three or four gunmen were in the front concentrating on the living room.
    In the kitchen, Carrie was on the windowsill climbing through. McLean could see Shauna already halfway over the fence outside, suddenly spry and active compared to the night before. He leaned around the corner of the wall and fired another round out the front door, then slung the shotgun on his shoulder and climbed through the window.
    Carrie’s back side disappeared over the fence, and in one smooth heave McLean vaulted over it himself. They landed in a neighbor’s back yard, fruit trees and a hammock the only thing standing between them and a gate to the front yard. Shauna was already running for it.
    They gained the street one block to the west of David’s house and sprinted past two more houses, across a parking lot, and behind a single-story office building. They paused there to catch their breath and see if they were being pursued. McLean didn’t see anyone coming, and after reloading he motioned them onward.
    “I-85 is over there, and then a golf course. Let’s get past those and then we’ll see where we stand.”
    “Where’s David?” Shauna asked.
    “He didn’t