Here We Stand (Book 2): Divided (Surviving The Evacuation) by Frank Tayell Page A

scraping of metal, a spinning of wheels. The barricade didn’t move.
    “That way!” Helena yelled at the driver, pointing toward the nearest breach in the chain-link fence. “The fence is broken! Twenty-five yards. Drive that way.”
    The woman behind the wheel nodded. The truck reversed. Helena started to move. Tom grabbed her arm.
    “Wait. Wait to see which way it goes.” It might head for a different breach, and that truck represented the only way they were going to escape. The truck sped backward. There was a trio of dull, meaty thuds as it hit unseen ambulatory death, and then it changed direction.
    “Come on!” Tom yelled, running along the fence, parallel to the truck.
    They reached the breach, but eight zombies had got there first. They were staggering out from the airfield, toward the road. He raised the rifle, firing without aiming, downing four before the truck appeared out of the smoke. It smashed into the remaining creatures, dragging them beneath its wheels. The truck swerved onto the road, and almost into the ditch on the other side. There was a hiss of brakes, a roar from the engine, and it drove off.
    “It didn’t stop,” Helena hissed.
    The truck had crushed the legs of one of the zombies, but the creature wasn’t dead. It raised an arm. Tom fired a quick shot into its head.
    “It didn’t—” Helena began. “It did! It’s stopped.”
    They ran.
    They undead were tumbling out of the airfield, through the now-broken gate, and out of the gaps in the fence. Some wore uniforms, some didn’t, and many looked recently alive.
    Helena reached the truck first. Tom had only one foot on the running board and one hand on the guide-bar before the truck started moving again, accelerating away from the airfield.
     

 
    Chapter 5 - Brothers and Sisters
    Mifflin County, Pennsylvania
     
    Ten minutes later, the truck stopped at an intersection. Tom jumped down, shaking the stiffness out of his wrists.
    “Never done that before,” Helena said. “Not sure I’d have been able to hold on for much longer.”
    “I know what you mean,” he said, but that minor discomfort was forgotten when he looked back the way they’d come. The intersection was on a slight rise that offered a clear view of the inferno engulfing the airfield. Dirty-grey smoke enveloped the runway. Flames had spread to the control tower, licking upward and out.
    “They’re not alive,” Helena said. “They’re not, are they? No. They can’t be.”
    He turned his attention to the figures drifting in and out of the gaps in the fence, heedless of fumes and flames alike. There was a lack of urgency to their movement that confirmed Helena was right. They were undead.
    The truck door slammed closed as the driver climbed out. She had a gun holstered at her belt, a blue scarf tucked into a black leather jacket, and an expression of tightly controlled anxiety on her face.
    “Kaitlin,” she said, half raising her hand. She let it fall before properly offering it.
    “Helena.”
    “Tom.” It was hard to know what to say next. “Um… The guy who ran the airfield, Julio, do you know if… if…” He wasn’t sure how to finish, but Kaitlin knew what he was asking.
    “Don’t know,” she said. “He was a pilot, right?”
    “He owned that place,” Tom said.
    “Then he might have been on one of the planes which got out,” Kaitlin said. “I’m not sure. We only arrived last night. We were the last in, so we were going to be the last out on the last plane to leave.” There was a muffled explosion from the airfield. “Maybe he got out. Was that why you came here?”
    “Kind of,” Helena said.
    The door to the cab opened. A tousle-haired girl stuck her head out. “Is this the crossroads, Katie?”
    “Close the door! Go back inside,” Kaitlin snapped.
    “They said we had to go to the crossroads. Is this it?” the girl asked.
    “Yes. Look,” Kaitlin waved her arms to take in the intersecting roads. As she did, her sleeve rolled