Free Here We Stand (Book 2): Divided (Surviving The Evacuation) by Frank Tayell

the alternatives? Go back to that town, try to get them to help?”
    “I don’t know. Farley has to be stopped. Did I do all I could to stop him? No, that’s the truth, and this is the result. We’re dying. The nation, the world, our species. Person by person, day by day, we’re using up the supplies that are left. Soon they’ll be gone, and soon after that, so will we.”
    “Self-pity’s a luxury we don’t have time for,” she said. “If you want to hold yourself responsible for the outbreak, and for the cabal, fine. It doesn’t change what happened, or where we are. None of us get the future we want, but the one in front of us is a choice between giving up or going on, just as it’s always been. But the choice immediately in front of us is to continue to the airfield, or go back to that town and tell them that whoever was here last night has gone. Personally, I’d say the airfield because it’s odd that those people didn’t know that the military had left this place.”
    “Maybe they did, and just wanted to push the problem further down the road.”
    “Right, so you’re voting for the airfield, too? Good. Even if the planes are gone, maybe there’s some other people, or at least a proper bed and some decent food. We can get a few hours’ rest and—” She stopped.
    Tom had heard it, too. He stood. The sound came from the nearest tent at the base of the off-ramp. The flaps were closed, though he now wondered if sealed would be a more accurate description. The walls bulged as if someone was trying to push through them. He raised the rifle. The canvas undulated as the bulge moved toward the doors.
    “Shout something,” he said. “We need to know it’s undead.”
    “Hello!” Helena called. The material tore with a rip that seemed louder than her uncertain yell. A head appeared. Even from that distance, Tom knew it was dead. Tattered skin hung from ragged muscle on a face missing nose, lips, and cheeks. He fired. The shot set off a cacophony as birds erupted from nearby trees. Beating wings drowned out the sound of the tent collapsing as the twice-dead creature disappeared from view.
    “Ugh!” Helena shuddered. “Feel better? Because I don’t.” She picked up the fuel can. “And I won’t until we’re at least a hundred miles from—”
    The sound came again. It was the same as before; the whispering of cloth, the expulsion of rank air from dead lungs, the snapping of metal supports as the tents collapsed. And it was tents, plural. Unlike before, this wasn’t just one solitary creature. The sound came from every tent as hundreds of undead limbs pushed and tore their way out into the daylight. Tom shifted the rifle from target to target, but there were too many.
    “We need to go,” he said, but Helena was already halfway toward the row of vehicles. Tom backed away, unable to tear his eyes from the zombies bursting from the collapsing tents. Some wore uniforms, but most didn’t. The young, the old, men, women, and children, they turned their sightless toward him.
    “No keys! No keys! No keys!” Helena yelled. The words cut through the horror. He turned and ran. She was dashing between the vehicles, trying car doors, peering at the ignition on the motorbikes.
    “This one,” she said. Gasoline spilled around its tires as she sloshed fuel into a bike’s tank.
    “Slow down. We’ve got time,” Tom said, forcing calm into his voice. “There are too many to fight, but they move slow.”
    She gritted her teeth, but poured more slowly, until the fuel can was empty. “Now can we go?”
    He climbed on behind her. “Drive slowly,” he said. “We can lure the zombies away from that town.”
    Even as he said it, he knew how futile it was. They might draw some of the zombies away, but not all, and there had to be thousands in those tents. If the people in that town legitimately believed that a military evacuation center existed five miles from them, then someone would come and look. They would