Free World of Ashes by J.K. Robinson

throwback monstrosity would swallow him into the cushions like a fat Army wife’s ample cleavage.
                  "After we cook up a battle plan." Ethan was letting on how much the girl's state had upset him too. "I'm not letting this go. They raped her, and that is worse than anything you could ever do to someone. Worse than being a zombie…”
                  "Any response to the emails?" Keith changed the subject, disturbed as well. Ethan had been emailing all of his friends and family obsessively for days. When they weren't on patrol they were tirelessly watching news feeds and trying to contact relatives. When the last regular broadcast from CNN went dark, most of the traffic on the highway, dead and living, dried up. Most people in the U.S. and Canada had gone to the hundreds of illicit FEMA “Refugee Camps” in the early days of the panic, dark hellholes where internet and phone use were almost nonexistent, and always monitored by the government. Emails rumored to be opened and edited by the spooks at the National Security Agency abounded, but these were just rumors, right?
                  "No." He answered quietly.
                  They arrived at the police station where about twenty off duty deputies were filling out reports by the light of a construction lamp. The police station's air conditioner had given out, apparently due to mechanical failure unrelated to the apocalypse, and the place was stifling in this midsummer’s nightmare. A strong wind blew from the West, the smell of death and fire assailed them. Ethan closed his eyes, his heart and mind unable to prevent the flashbacks from the desert he’d been sent to rot in years before. The smell of ten thousand years of death, violence, trash, and oil was omnipresent in Iraq. The smells the wind carried there made you pray for a still day where only the heat was making your skin feel like it was on fire, and not the sandy winds. This breeze made it all that much worse, polluting the one peaceful aroma of the Missouri forests.
                  The skinny cop, Newton, walked up to them. Ethan copped a low and quick salute. Not necessary, but more of a greeting. "We found a guy wondering through the woods about an hour before dusk. North block didn't report it right away because the radio operator had diarrhea." Newton rolled his eyes, as if he were sharing a joke with close friends. "Anyhow, he's from Union. Says the town’s gone now, and the river's crawling with ‘em. Washington’s been abandoned too. Also said there are men in UN blue on watercraft patrolling the river, but not helping or engaging the infected. He said they’re just watching like we’re all already fucked. I say we go make em stop for us.”
                  Ethan and Keith just stared at Newton like he was stupid. Ample evidence was mounting that he might actually be. "So there’s still an organized government somewhere?” Ethan prompted.
                  "Probably." Newton shrugged. "Rowe and Reynolds are getting more from him at the truck stop. He refuses to be taken to the hospital, he's want’n to be let go so he can keep moving South. Says he doesn’t wanna be here at all. That all them we shot last night was just the tip of the ice-burg.”
                  "We've no right to keep him." Ethan shrugged. He didn’t know why he was having to tell Newton about civil rights, but then times had been especially trying for some people more than others. That, or it could have been simple conversation making, something Ethan already knew Newton wasn’t good at. He looked at his hand and noticed fluffy, fresh ash was falling from the sky again. There was no light on the horizon, Union had stopped burning as the fires consumed their fuel through the low income housing and industrial areas.
                  “I agree. I’ll see to it.” Newton walked off. Ethan got the eerie