Preview.

Rough preview of the first pages of my new original story--full first chapter should be up this week. 

Once, the 91 freeway seemed like a never-ending parking lot,Maria thought as she zipped down the freeway, her jeep bouncing whenever she hit a pothole or chunk of fragments. Now it is.  In front of her, dead cars littered the freeway, most of them stalled out in the Big Zap. A good chunk were shattered, burned out, either by the panic or when the bugs came through.

But it meant that she had to keep weaving around the wrecks, since the days of AAA and tow trucks were long gone. And that meant the people behind her, on the motorcycles, were able to keep up with her. They had to weave around the cars, but they could do it faster than she could, and there were twenty of them.

She involuntarily jerked her head to the side as a bullet zipped by her head. Pure chance. You didn’t, contrary to movies, shoot accurately from a bike.

Dammit, dammit, dammit. Doc, this had better be worth it! Maria reached down and grabbed a grenade, pulled the pin, and tossed it out of the jeep.

She wasn’t accurate, but a grenade didn’t have to be accurate. The explosion sounded, and moments later, she heard a scream. Maria took the risk of checking her rearview mirror and nodded. A couple of bikes were down.

This was clear last week! The Demons had been controlling it, but they’d been smashed by Corona Vigilance committee, which had been taken out in a bug sweep, leaving the area, as far as Maria had known, empty save for your usual lone bandits, and she was well prepared for them.

Not thirty guys on bikes.

Maria turned to the right to avoid an overturned truck, and that let some of the guys catch up to her. She hit the gas, and just barely got out of the way as one biker opened up on her with some kind of revolver.

His shots didn’t even hit the car, let alone her.  But sooner or later, the law of averages said that she’d get hit. So… Maria reached down and fumbled for the P90 she’d found off of a dead survivalist when everything started going south, sticking it on her lap. There was a place up here where a bunch of cars had slammed together under the bridge to the tollway, but the offramp to the surface road was still intact, and she could get onto it, and give her pursuers a little surprise.

Maria hit the gas, risking slamming into the dead cars on the freeway. The others backed off.

Bet you figure I’m gonna hit something sooner or later.

And then there was the offramp it looked impassible, jammed full of burned-out cars from the first panic, but Maria gunned her car for the shoulder, the mirror getting knocked off by a truck, her front bumper grinding against the retaining wall.

C’mon, c’mon… The guys behind her were bunching up, eager to get her. If they fell too far behind, she might get away.

Or worse, they might bump into another gang. If you were real hardasses, you wouldn’t be hanging out here. Probably another bunch that figured they could rule the roost but…

Maria slammed down on the brakes, and the gang behind her started to slow up, just as she spun around in the seat and opened fire with the P90. Maria wasn’t the best shot, but she had stopped and they were all tangled together. She fired rapidly, and suddenly some of the band behind her were falling, red stains blooming on their ratty shirts. Then she turned around and hit the gas pedal, shooting forward while she tossed her last grenade behind her. There were more screams, but as Maria turned onto the road, she didn’t see anyone following her.

But she kept her eye out until she was several miles away, the endless mixture of abandoned and burned-out businesses and houses passing by the jeep under the burning Southern California sun.

Just another day after the end of the world.