Free The Exodus Is Over by C. Chase Harwood

piled up enough to create tough obstacle courses. There weren’t a lot of dead people though. For the ones who had been stranded, someone else had either given them a lift or they had walked – or maybe they had been dragged off by the infected to be fed upon in the nearby woods.  
      When they got to the outskirts of Gorham, they steeled themselves for attack and weren’t disappointed. By the time they got to the main intersection of town, Fiends seemed to come running out of every building, every front yard.
      Jon’s feet danced back and forth from gas pedal to brake, swerving around most of them, hitting a few until they broke through the gauntlet on the far side of town. In Berlin they were greeted by a town on fire. At times there was only twenty feet of visibility. Jon turned on the headlights and Nikki flicked the vent to re-circulate the air. Bodies lined the road.   A few Fiends crawled on hands and knees gasping. Others stayed low to the ground below most of the smoke where they could continue to feed on corpses.  
      They had nearly made it out when a lumberjack sized, bloody faced madman charged around a corner and landed on the hood of the car. He held a tire iron and immediately began smashing it against the windshield. Jon and Nikki screamed an involuntary curse.
      Jon floored the car, zigzagging back and forth, but the thing held on. The first couple of swings with the tire iron spider webbed the already fractured windshield. The third blow made a hand sized hole. The snarling creature dropped the tire iron and shoved its whole arm inside, grabbing at Jon’s throat. It reeked of body odor, blood and feces. Jon ducked and weaved and held his head back as far as he could while still reaching the gas pedal.
      Nikki pulled her hunting knife out of the scabbard on her leg.
      “Jesus, don’t stab it, you’ll get infected blood all over us! Lean out the window and shoot it in the head”!
      Nikki unbuckled her seatbelt and pulled out the Beretta. She dropped the window and half leaned out of the car. Just then another Fiend launched itself at the side of the car, grabbing her arm, causing her to drop the gun. “Fuck!” It bit down on the sleeve of her jacket, but only got a mouthful of leather, it’s hands grabbing and pulling as it held on.  
      The Fiend on the hood gnashed its teeth while its bulging eyes scanned all over Jon for a place to grab some flesh. Jon suddenly made a hard left and then jerked right, nearly throwing Nikki out of the window. The maneuver threw the windshield grabber’s lower body off the left side of the hood allowing Jon to scrape it off along a telephone pole.
      Nikki's attacker continued to hold on and she yelled in agony as her arm was bent back while the Fiend dragged along the ground. Jon unholstered his Colt, cocked it while driving with his knees, and slapped it into her flailing left hand. She turned and fired a round point blank into the Fiend’s head and it fell away, rolling like a wet rag doll into the gutter. She pulled herself back inside, closed the window, buckling back up.  
      Jon glanced at her, “You all right? It bite you?”
      Nikki opened the glove box, removed a pair of latex examination gloves and slapped them on. She then pulled up her sleeve and checked her arm. “No bite, but the fucking thing nearly pulled my arm out of the socket.” She massaged her shoulder and reached back into the glove box, pulling out the whiskey and pouring it on her jacket where the Fiend had bit. She snapped off the gloves, tossed them out the window and then doused her hands with the whiskey as well. She tipped some more down her throat and then offered a swig to Jon. “Man, what I’d do for an LAV right now.”
      He took a gulp and handed it back. “Lav? Like a toilet?”
      “L.A.V. – Like a light armored vehicle.”
      "Oh. Right." He glanced at her again. “Still, I’d be happy with the toilet– in a high rise condo… in