(http://www.tribute.ca/tribute_objects/images/stars/cherry_jones.jpg)<br/><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 18pt;"><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">CLAIRE ANDERSON</span></span><br/><strong>Location:</strong>Police cruiser, driving into Wellington<br/><strong>With:</strong>Charlie, Lily and Olivia<br/><br/>It had been a terrible night, like so many of the terrible nights before it with<em>them</em>outside, the noises they made, the moans and grunts and howls and mutterings. Over the last two weeks those noises had almost driven me mad. I won't go into the details of the siege here. I don't think I can even do that right now, I just want to put it all behind me, both mentally and physically. We were one of the groups who voted to break out. It was done agreeably, mostly. Many wanted to stay, so we left them behind with their shared out portion of the food and ammo and water. The share of these was pitifully small for the three of us; me, Charlie and Lily. Charlie is a soldier, Lily... just a victim, I guess. An innocent girl caught up in a crazy nightmare and just doing her best to keep it together.<br/><br/>We were lucky that the police station had a secure underground parking lot with mesh doors. There were nearly two dozen vehicles down there - cop cars, a prison minibus, several impounded civilian cars, two delivery vans. The people who had voted to break out formed themselves into vehicle sized teams and we shared out the car keys in a lottery. I was lucky in that I had brought my four wheel drive cruiser (http://www.motorbase.com/pictures/contributions/991201/std_1998_jeep_cherokee_4wd_police_cruiser.jpg) into Denver a month ago...<em>A month? Was it really that long? My word...</em>And so I had a reserved vehicle. Charlie and Lily voted to join me. It wasn't a hard decision since we three had kind of gravitated together over the last few days.<br/><br/>I was surprised how amicable the split was. Over fifty people chose to remain in the precinct building and wait it out. Forty decided to leave; ten vehicle loads, leaving half the vehicles for those who stayed. We shared out what remained of the food and each of us had a bottle of drinking water. What ammo remained was shared out too and then we shook hands, nodded in a kind of grim silence and went out, knowing we'd never see each other again.<br/><br/>We went at night. The...<em>creatures</em>- I won't call them people - seem quieter at night, no-one knows why. Everyone got in their cars and started their engines at the same time and we all drove out and up the ramp as quickly as we could, the wire mesh electic gate being lifted from the control desk. We were lucky that the precinct building still had electricity from its back-up generators. Without those the fridges would have stopped working and we'd all been out of edible food days ago.<br/><br/>We left at 11:00 p.m. As we went, cars and cruisers and vans turned left and right and went weaving through the deserted Denver streets, cars and busses and dead bodies scattered all about.<br/><br/>I drove west, then north, pushing towards the Rockies and avoiding the main roads. We saw a few of<em>them</em>shambling about, drawn to the sound of the engine. Wheat Ridge, Arvada, Meadowglen, Broomfield, Lafayette... Heading north. I kept the speed low, we rarely exceeded twenty miles per hour except for short distances where the road was clear, which wasn't often. At times a wrecked truck or other vehicle might block the road completely and then I'd have to U-turn and work my way around.<br/><br/>We broke out of the city at around 1:00 a.m. and made our way north through Longmont and Loveland, trying to keep well to the west and avoiding the conjested ruin we guessed that Interstate 25 would be. In Loveland we came across Olivia. She was a lucky lady. Well, unlucky, I guess, like all of us, but lucky that Charlie saw her. There was movement in the periphery of the headlights behind a garden picket fence. Charlie called out and I stopped the car. Charlie swung the passenger side floodlamp around and there in the bushes of a suburban garden was a woman. She looked a mess but she was definitely human, not infected. A short conversation followed and we got her trust I think, perhaps it was that the car had two women in and I was in my uniform, but after a short and hesitant conversation the woman scrambled out of the bushes and got in the vacant back seat beside Lily. Olivia was a nurse and she had a bag of medical supplies. We shared greetings and then the conversation trailed off. There wasn't really that much to say, I expect her story was similar to ours.<br/><br/>We pressed on, avoiding Fort Collins by taking North County Road 23 along the east shore of Horsetooth Reservoir and then moving back north-east past all the smaller reservoirs south of Wellington: Terry Lake, Windsor No.8, Poudre No.6, Bee Lake No.5... I didn't know them but the maps in the cruiser's glove box listed them all. We hit North County Road No.9 and at around 6:00 a.m. as the winter sun was coming up we hit Wellington. It had taken us seven hours to drive 70 miles. Not good. We needed to get better at putting distance behind us.<br/><br/>We struck the dormitory suburb of Denver at the south-east corner. I stopped the car and shut off the engine. The ground was flat, dusty, an empty wasteland. To me the township looked like a dump and from the No.9 road nothing but average suburban houses could be seen. They'd all have lacked power for a fortnight and all their fridge freezers would be full of rotting filth. Charlie, though, said there would be canned and dry goods in dozens of houses and being a suburb the numbers of... them would be lower. Not everybody became one of them when the virus struck, many simply died. Given that the outbreak had happened in the middle of a working day, many of the people who lived in Wellington would be at work in Fort Collins and Denver, so Wellington<em>should</em>be quiet.<br/><br/>I got out of the car and stretched, easing my back. It was bitterly cold outside. Charlie stepped out the other side and scanned the nearby houses carefully. The two girls were quiet in the back. I glanced in. They were both dozing.<br/><br/>We held a short discussion. Eventually Charlie swayed me over - the town should be quiet and towards the Interstate there should be gas stops and motels, perhaps a 7-11. There could be a police station, maybe weapons and ammo.<br/><br/><strong>"Maybe survivors who just want to be left alone too, Charlie. They'll have their guns and their cans of beans and we'll be as much a threat as a... as one of them."</strong><br/><br/>Charlie was pragmatic. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, was the gist of his reply. If we don't scavenge somewhere, we'll run out of food.<br/><br/>We both got back in the cruiser and I started the motor and we rolled forwards, turning off County No.9 at the off-ramp that curved east into town and became Cleveland Avenue. I let the car roll slowly along, not much faster than a man can comfortably jog, 8 to 10 miles an hour, guiding it carefully around wrecks and other obstacles. The sun was well up now and the frosts on the lawns was melting where its golden light fell. In the shadowed side it clung on stubbornly. We had the windows down, listening for sounds. The tension increased and this somehow woke the girls up and they were apprehensively looking out of their windows too.<br/><br/><strong>"Everyone keep your eyes peeled. Say if you spot anything... alive or dead. If you see anything that looks like a gun barrel poking out a window, call out. I don't want us getting sniped."</strong><br/><br/>The cruiser continued to roll slowly east into the heart of town. We wanted a gas station, a shopping mall, a hotel... anything.