Take Back Denver by Algor X. Dennison Page B

for a few quick shots. He half turned and saw the man who had come down the draw stop and take a bead on him. McLean fired twice while still running, desperate to put the shooter on the defensive. Both two shots went hopelessly high, but out of the corner of his eye he nonetheless saw his pursuer go down.
    Was his luck finally returning? That was impossible. He was sure his shots hadn’t gone anywhere near their target. A second later he realized he’d heard a rifle report from the hilltop above him, almost simultaneous with his own shots. He stopped and crouched, looking back to confirm that his nearest pursuer was down, and then looking up the hill. Who was up there? Could Bosin have come to the rescue with his scoped rifle?
    He saw three dark shapes kneeling behind rocks and fallen trees near the crest of the hill. Two more came into view on the side he was heading toward, and he heard another approaching farther down the draw to his left. Had more Correctionists, boxing him in from the west, just shot their own man? The questions came fast and thick, and he had no answers, so he remained crouching where he was, unwilling to go up the hill into the arms of the shooters there, but pinned down from all other directions as well.
    Expecting any moment to be hit with a bullet, he held his pistol tightly and tried his best to melt into the ground at his feet. He briefly wondered if raising his hands and surrendering would do him any good, but the adrenaline pumping through him wouldn’t allow it. He couldn’t bring himself to loosen his grip on his pistol or say anything at all.
    The shooters on the hill fired again, four-five-six shots in quick succession. McLean flinched, but the muzzle flashes were aimed over his head to the trail behind him. He watched as the other soldiers that had been chasing him scattered. Two went back the way they had come. One got behind a boulder and returned fire, but another hail of gunfire from the hilltop convinced him he didn’t have as good a position as he needed to engage a group of sharpshooters on higher ground. He dived into a copse of trees and disappeared.
    “ Friendly?” McLean called out, voice quavering horribly.
    “ Bosin, is that you?” one the sharpshooters called back.
    “ I’m not Bosin,” McLean replied, relief flooding his system. “But I’ve been with him all afternoon. Are you on his side?”
    Two of the gun-toting figures ahead of him on the hill came toward him and at this closer distance he could see they weren’t wearing uniforms. One was a short woman carrying a hunting crossbow. The other was a large bear of a man with dark paint on his face.
    “ I thought Bosin was alone,” the man said. “We were supposed to rendezvous with him at some point. Who are you?”
    “ Name’s McLean. I ran into him while scoping out the prison, and we worked together for a while. Then we split up again.”
    The man turned around. “Anybody know a McLean?” He turned back. “Did you escape from the prison or something?”
    Before McLean could answer, another figure came rushing toward him along the side of the hill. It was another woman, taller this time and carrying a rifle, with a black scarf wrapped around her face to hide it from the moonlight. The way she moved was familiar, and when she pulled the cloth down around her neck, McLean recognized her. It was the one woman he most wanted, but least expected to see, in the whole world.
    Carrie paused a few feet from him to verify that her ears and eyes weren’t just giving in to wishful thinking, and then slammed into him with a hug so fierce that he almost went over backwards.
    “ Carrie?”
    “ McLean!”
    He dropped his pistol on the ground in his shock and gripped Carrie by the shoulders. “Is it really you? What in the world--”
    “ I came to find you! Well, to find these guys, but I hoped-- I can’t believe-- oh, McLean!” She buried her face in his jacket and clung to him desperately.
    “ Okay,” the