Free Crisis Event: Gray Dawn by Greg Shows, Zachary Womack Page A

like she was losing one of her limbs.
    But knowing that fact didn’t make her feel one bit better.
    The best choice of all the businesses and buildings surrounding her seemed like the thrift store on the corner of the block ahead. It was a short walk, and she would likely find an old coat or dress inside she could rig up with weights to drag along behind her to hide her tracks—or at least disguise them and make them more difficult to follow.
    She’d already taken a dozen steps toward it when the flash of blue caught her eye. She turned to look and saw a little blue triangle sticking up out of the gray dust. It was next to a dust-covered Hyundai parked on the side of the street next to a parking meter. Fresh dog tracks surrounded the car.
    Sadie ran over to the half-buried car, feeling the excitement growing in her chest, somehow knowing what the triangle signified.
    Sure enough, the little blue triangle was the edge of a plastic tarp someone had partially buried in dust to hide it. She gave it a tug, and a thin layer of gray grit cascaded off it, showing her that it was old and faded and full of holes. Shiny metal gleamed through the holes.
    Sadie pulled hard at the tarp, and it slid forward, spilling the rest of the dust off and revealing the motorcycle beneath.
    The bike was a Honda.
    A Nighthawk 750 with saddlebags.
    Strapped to the back was a red plastic gas can, half full. The tank was full.
    She pulled the key out of her pocket and stared at it.
    Moment of truth .
    When she shoved the key into the ignition and turned it a quarter turn, the display lights lit up.
    “Score!” she said softly, and without much enthusiasm. She was happy she’d actually found the thing, but now a warning voice in her head began to tell her to leave the bike and run.
    Gasoline started going bad months ago .
    She noticed the change as she’d travelled, finding the gasoline she’d scrounged to be darker and harder to ignite as she’d moved west. If someone was rolling with fresh gas in their tank, they were probably connected to people she didn’t want to make angry.
    Then there was the whole problem of all the attention she’d attract to herself with the bike.
    Everyone would want it, and they’d try to take it. But the idea of travelling a hundred or more miles a day, getting all the way to Texas in two weeks or less...it was too much temptation. Despite her grandfather’s admonition to take things slow, she put the bike in neutral and rolled it forward, away from the abandoned Hyundai.
    When she got the bike out to the middle of the street she put the kickstand down. She took off her pack again and pulled out one of the long haired man’s masks. It slipped over her head easily, and didn’t feel too bad against her face. Next she replaced the cartridges on the respirator and strapped it over her face.
    As her breath huffed in and out in ominous wheezes, she tied her rifle to her pack with paracord and slipped it back onto her shoulders so that she could climb onto the bike.
    She felt bulky and uncomfortable when she threw a leg over the bike and stood straddling it. But she knew she’d get used to the feeling, probably long before she’d put fifty miles between herself and this hellhole town.
    When she pushed the ignition button the engine roared and rumbled. The vibration between her legs when she sat down was far from unpleasant, and she smiled.
    When was the last time she’d felt anything like that?
    The image of her useless bohemian boyfriend popped into her head.
    “Well, he wasn’t completely useless,” she admitted as she revved the engine.
    She hadn’t been on a bike in years, so she wasn’t surprised when she stalled it out the first time she tried to get it into gear.
    “Crap,” she said, at the precise moment the little geyser of dust puffed up next to her right foot. The soft “fwoosht” sound came to her a second later—nothing like what suppressed gunfire sounded like on old television shows.
    She