Free World of Ashes II by J.K. Robinson

now!
    Sergeant Graystone pulled Daniel and Kaylee toward a parking lot where a Soldier had already locked the gate, sealing himself inside. “Specialist, open the gate!” She shouted, trying to listen to the radio at the same time.
    “I can’t.” He said, shaking his head, his rifle aiming at anything that moved. “I’m not opening it for anyone. Go to the shelters.”
    “Open the fucking gate, Jeffry, or I’ll climb this fence and fuck your face with a tire iron!” Graystone was furious. People were getting closer. Daniel raised his M4 and shot at a group of them, dropping the teenage zombie chasing folk with a blow to the torso. He started crawling toward the parking lot, eager to attack Daniel now. The terrified Soldier opened the gate before the crawling ghoul got closer. Once he’d re-locked it Daniel punched him in the face, knocking him to the ground.
    “Thanks, asshole.” He said, following Graystone to her car. “We’re not taking him with us. Write me up for speaking out of turn, but I am beginning to think you have really crappy taste in friends, Sergeant.”
    “Me too.” She said, putting the Pontiac Aztec into reverse and peeling out with all the power of a front wheel drive four-banger. They smashed through a gate at the bottom of a hill, something Jeffry the guard would be able to close again after they left, not that either of them cared about his fate now. Kaylee was still silent, probably in mild shock, sitting in the back seat with her Eeyore (the original Emo kid.)
    “Where are we going” Daniel asked.
    “There’s another checkpoint about ten miles from here. If we can get there before this outbreak we can jump a flight out of here. This whole region is about to become a war zone. I was on the radio, that convoy is being swarmed. The Air Force is on standby to pound this valley with thermobaric weapons, it’s already happened in Arizona.”
    Daniel stared at Graystone, “They’re bombing Americans?”
    “We’re teetering dangerously close to Martial Law.” Graystone saw a car coming up behind them on the outlet road, an after-market 90’s model Mustang, the vibration from its exhaust catching up with them before they could even see it. The driver didn’t look at Wendy’s beat up old Pontiac, he was in too big of a hurry to be somewhere else right now. Daniel saw people in the cramped back seats, a pretty woman in the passenger seat, holding something bloody wrapped in pink blankets. He wanted to hope it was just a dog or a pile of clothes, but that was probably unwarranted optimism these days.
    Someone in the back seat pulled the trigger on a gun after the Mustang was a few car lengths ahead of them. Blood and glass sprayed out the passenger window the pretty woman was sitting in. The Mustang swerved, lost traction in the light layer of soft ash covering the road, skidded sideways in what seemed like slow motion and slammed into a small tree on a curve at over a hundred miles per hour. The fuel in the car ignited as it was torn in half by the solid maple tree. Fire engulfed the rear section of the car where the tank was. The two passengers in the back seats had actually been buckled in, surviving the crash somehow, yet the fire burned them alive anyhow. The front half continued on into the field, throwing both the overweight driver and his headless girlfriend in ragdoll-cartwheels out over a cow pasture. The sight was so dramatic, so horrifying, Daniel and Wendy didn’t say anything for a long time. At least Kaylee hadn’t been watching, her toy dinosaur was riding a pink pony right now.
    The next checkpoint was in complete chaos too, a traffic jam a mile long waited to get through it. Graystone still had her radio and tried to make contact with anyone who would answer. She found the channel for the checkpoint at Cheat Lake. The Troop Medical Center was hogging the line with urgent demands for air-evac and she couldn’t get anyone to respond. Another channel found some Cav