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

turned to look behind her and saw the Tall Man. He was on foot four blocks back, but he coming hard, his arms swinging as he sprinted over the dusty street. His children weren’t in sight, but several men in gray camouflage were.
    They were aiming rifles.
    “Uh-oh,” Sadie said.
    The next bullet bounced off the street in front of her, throwing up another dust geyser.
    Sadie pushed the ignition button again, and this time she throttled up the engine so high that when she tapped the gear shifter and let out the clutch, her front tire came off the ground and she nearly went over backwards. More gunshots came, some not suppressed, and she heard shouting.
    Then she was rolling down the middle of the street, zipping between cars as bullets clanged off them.
    The buildings flashed by on both sides of her, and despite the recklessness of putting on speed with so little room for maneuvering or braking, she raced onward.
    Soon the bullets stopped coming. She didn’t slow down, though. The wind in her hair felt good, and now that she was out of danger, she felt—happy. It had been so long since she felt like she was feeling now, and she didn’t want to let it go.
    After putting another ten blocks between herself and the Tall Man, she slowed and downshifted and turned right. She worked her way through downtown, climbing up onto sidewalks when necessary, walking the bike through hazards that blocked the road, or backtracking to find an open path.
    Twenty minutes later she was on the bridge, crossing the Mahoning River, getting ready to make some real time. She weaved between cars and trucks and was soon into south Youngstown.
    Within half an hour of finding the long haired man’s bike, she was out of the city, on her way to Columbus, making the kind of time she could have only dreamed about the day before.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 7
     
    Three hours later, Sadie was a hundred and seven miles out of Youngstown. Night had fallen an hour earlier, but she’d pushed on, moving at ten miles an hour, her headlight stabbing out into the absolute darkness ahead.
    She had to be careful cruising down the middle of the highway. Some of the abandoned their cars were nearly on the center stripe, less than two feet from the cars heading the other direction. Then she had walk the bike between the front and rear bumpers of the abandoned cars and proceed down the shoulder until another gap opened and she could get back to the center.
    Part of her wished she’d gone west toward Akron. At least I-80 might have allowed for faster progress. But after her experience with Youngstown, she wanted nothing to do with any cities anytime soon. She might be heading toward Columbus, but she’d be skirting it from twenty to thirty miles out. There would be no more cities in her immediate future.
    When her nerves could no longer take the intense stress of her nighttime ride, she pulled off the old highway into an open field full of tall dead grass and shrubs.
    She killed the engine.
    The headlamp gave her a good look at what was out in the field ahead, and she tried to memorize the landscape in the glow of the light.
    Then she cut the headlamp, climbed off the bike, and rolled it forward.
    The silence was unnerving after the hours she’d spent with the hum of the Honda’s engine in her ears. Even with the ringing sound echoing in her head, the black and silent darkness made her feel as if she was the last person alive on earth. The only sound left in the world was an occasional wind gust, and the soft rustle as the Honda’s tires, and the thump of her boots crushing the dusty dry grass.
    After rolling the bike out into the darkness she found a clump of bushes she’d seen in the glow of her headlamp. The clump would give good cover in the unlikely event anyone came cruising down the road and spotlighting the fields