Denver Overrun (Denver Burning Book 4) by Algor X. Dennison Page A

the others around the TV. “They said the White House was attacked. Is this for real?” No one had a reply.
    Several seconds went by, and the lights still didn’t come on. It seemed that the backup generator wasn’t responding, which had grave implications for the 911 dispatch center in the corner.
    Alicia, troubling feelings swirling in her chest, decided it was time for her to act. She peered at the shadowy figures surrounding her. “Okay, police! Let’s find out what’s going on here. Raise somebody on the radio. Winstone, see if you can get online with a smartphone and figure out how widespread this is. Officer Porter, try to get through to the power company. The rest of you, step outside for some air, but remain cautious, please. And somebody find a flashlight!”
    She turned to retrieve her personal phone from her office, but Winstone put an unsteady hand on her shoulder. He was looking at his phone. “I’m sorry, Sergeant,” he said, voice cracking. “There’s no connection. Cell towers must be down too.”
    That didn’t bode well. Alicia went to her office, cautiously feeling her way through the darkened doorway so she didn’t bark her knuckles on the doorknob. She buckled on her sidearm, a .40 Smith and Wesson revolver, and grabbed her police jacket. She slipped her phone into her pants pocket even though she could see it had no signal.  
    Finally, she opened her desk drawer and felt around in the darkness until her fingers closed on a small book. It was a pocket bible. She hadn’t opened it in several months, but it had a few twenty-dollar bills tucked away in its pages, as well as a photo of her husband, Jason, and her eight-year-old daughter Sadie, who were visiting Jason’s parents in Salt Lake City.
    Then she stepped back out into the main room and made her way through the suddenly-imposed twilight to the dispatcher’s desk.
    “Carlisle, can you get anybody on the radio?”
    “No, Sergeant. All silent.”
    “Highway Patrol? Aurora?”
    “No, I can’t even get a buzz of static,” the portly dispatch officer replied. “The equipment’s dead.”
    “Did you try--”
    “Yeah, I’m trying everything. The battery backup is doing no good at all, at least on our end.”
    “Okay, keep trying. Give a shout if you hear anything.”
    Alicia stepped outside with the others. The sunlight outside was reassuring, and she did a quick scan of her officers. There were eight of them here, plus four staffers. She probably had twenty officers out on the streets as well, now cut off from their district headquarters. She wondered if any of them knew what was going on. Surely someone, somewhere did.
    Andrews, a tall officer with graying hair, pointed up at the sky. Everyone looked and there were gasps of horror as they tracked, in unison, the fall of an airliner right into the city. It wasn’t diving, wasn’t losing altitude. It was tumbling, whirling, dropping to the earth like a stone.  
    The knowledge that over a hundred people were on board and about to die, and that she couldn’t do a thing to stop it, stung Alicia like a whip. Then the plane disappeared behind a building that blocked their view, and it almost felt like a mercy not to have to see it. But the sound, and the orange flash, and the smoke that billowed up were awful enough.
    Another plane was falling in the distance. Alicia noticed for the first time that all the cars were stopped in the street, and not just stopped to rubberneck at the sight of the downed aircraft. They were dead in the middle of the road. People were coming out of the buildings up and down the street, looking around in confusion and dismay.
    She snapped into action. “All right, this is big and it's bad, officers. My guess is a major terrorist attack--who knows how widespread it could be. Until we can get direction from up top, we’re on our own to try to make contact with our boys out on patrol, and to keep order in the district. This is a code red scramble, I want