by Sarra Cannon
The Dark One studied her, looking deeply into her eyes before she smiled.
“But we won’t have any more of your foolishness, will we? You see it now, don’t you? The beauty of your devotion?”
“I do,” she whispered, knowing she had been given a great gift. A second chance. Love filled her heart. “I will not disappoint you again, Mistress.”
The Dark One leaned close to her ear and placed a shadowy hand on her back.
“It’s all falling into place, and soon, I will go free. The question, my dear, is whether you will still be at my side when I do. Now stand up and get to work. I have given your four guardian friends something to distract them for a while. I need you to find the child. Zoe is the key to everything now.”
The Dark One placed a hand on the witch’s forehead, forcing her eyes to close.
When she opened them a moment later, she found herself lying in a patch of sunlight in the grass, the tall buildings of the city of New York rising against the early afternoon sky.
Nine
Crash
This is insane.
Crash paced the room, willing the IV in Noah’s arm to dump its medicine faster.
Every second that passed was another second they could be out there, fighting to make sure no one lost their lives.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
Noah flexed his arm and nodded. “Better,” he said. “If you guys hadn’t shown up, I’m not sure what would have happened. The infection just started to take over. Do you have any idea how Stephen’s doing?”
Crash shook his head. “I have no idea, but it won’t matter anyway if those zombies break through the barriers,” he said. “How much longer do you think you need with that?”
He motioned toward the IV, which was still half-full.
“I’ll just bring it with me,” Noah said, standing but careful to keep the IV above his arm. “I can feel the medicine fighting the infection, and I think I’ve worked out a way to speed up the process.”
“Let’s hope so,” Crash muttered.
He felt stupid leading Noah toward the Humvee. The guy was sick and attached to a freaking IV for god’s sake. He was likely to be more of a liability than anything else at this point, but as long as he could still aim and shoot, Crash just had to get him to the Hummer.
With minimal effort, they should be able to take out hundreds of rotters pretty quickly.
What concerned him, though, was that when Karmen had been describing it to them back in the room, she’d said it looked like an ocean without an end.
So, how many were there? And would a few hundred be enough to even make a dent in what they were facing?
Once the rotters broke through into the camp, it was over, anyway. They could retreat, put as many people on the roof as possible, and barricade the doors, but with the super zombies, all it would take was one that could scale walls to pretty much wipe out the rest of the survivors.
Damn.
How could they really be facing this so quickly after they got back from the hospital?
The Dark One wasn’t letting up, that was for sure.
Which made him terrified of what they might face if they ever actually did make it to New York, but he couldn’t exactly worry about that now, could he?
Right now, they needed to make sure everyone here was safe and that the four of them lived through it.
He had no idea what might happen to their mission to save the world if one of the five guardians died. Was it game over at that point?
Crash was pretty sure that the man in his dreams from time to time—Tobias—was supposed to be here to train them and take them to the island if it came to this.
How would things have been different if Lily hadn’t come through with him and killed him? None of this would have happened.
But what was done was done, and it wasn’t going to do Crash any good to start worrying about it now. Instead, he pushed forward, navigating through the halls until they had finally reached the front of the building.
He’d been so focused on getting to the Humvee that he hadn’t properly prepared himself for what he would see when he pushed through the door to step outside. In his mind, the rotters were still ambling down the street toward them, and they would have a little time before they were right up close and personal.
The reality of it, though, was that there were already a hundred of those things pressing against the fence and the makeshift steel walls of the barricade, doing everything in their power to claw through.
Just the collective weight of them pressing forward was enough to make the wall bow and bend.
“Oh my God,” Noah said.
“This is bad, man,” Crash said, breaking out in a run toward the truck.
Beside him, Noah ripped the IV from his arm and threw the needle and bag onto the ground. Crash wasn’t sure if he’d finished the medicine or just decided he couldn’t afford to mess with it anymore, but either way, Noah was running faster now and apparently feeling much better.
He outran Crash and practically leaped onto the top of the Hummer, placing himself behind the machine gun setup.
Crash reached out to the truck with his mind, starting it up before he even got there.
All around them, members of the makeshift militia that had been living here in relative safety, emptied their guns into the massive crowd of rotters piling against the weakest point—the front gate.
“I can’t shoot with all these people in the way,” Noah said.
Crash grabbed the CB radio cord and pressed the button on the side. He’d rigged this thing up to a megaphone system a long time ago, but he’d never had an occasion to use it. Well, there was a first for everything.
“Move out of the way,” he shouted. “Get to a higher vantage point, if you can. We’ll take care of these.”
The men and women who’d been fighting at the gate stepped aside quickly, no one doubting their authority, thankfully. Instead, they looked grateful for some kind of leadership or plan.
Their eyes were filled with fear, and he couldn’t blame them.
He was sure his own eyes looked the same.
“Blast ‘em, Noah,” he said, and a split second later, the machine gun sprayed bullets into the crowd pressing against the fence.
With Noah in control, though, it wasn’t like when Crash had just randomly shot into the crowd and hit a few by default. This time, each bullet seemed to land a direct headshot. How Noah was controlling each bullet individually when they were coming out so fast, Crash had no idea, but he wasn’t complaining about it, that’s for sure.
“Hell, yeah,” he said, thumping the roof as he watched almost a hundred zombies at the gate fall dead in a matter of seconds.
This was going to be a piece of cake.
In fact, they might be able to essentially build a barrier of dead rotters that would keep the others from pressing forward. Or, at least, that’s how he saw it going in his mind as he reached for his own weapon.
Only, as he stepped out to add his own bullets to the barrage, he caught a glimpse of something terrifying climbing over the mass of dead bodies piling at the gate.
A pair of red, glowing eyes.
And then another set crawling up behind that one.
And another.
Until five red-eyed super z’s, each hunched over and crawling on all fours like dogs were lined up on top of the bodies, staring directly at him.
Ten
Karmen
The roof was a madhouse.
People threw grenades over the side of the steel barricade, while others lined up in a straight line across all edges of the rooftop, using whatever long-range weapons they had available to shoot down rotters as they approached.
The problem was there didn’t seem to be an end to the parade of zombies pouring through the side streets in this neighborhood. It was just one endless stream of them, so no matter how many they killed, more appeared to take their places.
Dead bodies piled up
at the barricade and new zombies began to claw their way on top of them, creating a kind of ladder that was slowly scaling the wall.
Karmen ran over to Tank, who was standing by a type of command center of walkies and crates of ammo where people were continually running over for refills.
“Do you see what’s happening here?” she asked.
“Stand aside or grab a gun,” he shouted, dismissing her and giving orders to a group of women who’d just appeared with shotguns from below.
Karmen gritted her teeth, but she did her best to hold back her temper.
“Tank, you need to see this, or it’s about to get ugly,” she said, following him to another station.
He barked out another set of orders, and then briefly turned to her.
“Can’t you see I’m dealing with this attack as best I can?” he said. “I don’t have time to sit here and talk strategy with a teenager, so if you’ll excuse me.”
Karmen took a deep breath as he walked away from her again.
It wasn’t like it was all that unusual for adults—and men in particular—to dismiss her as just another dumb blonde. Or a stupid teen girl who couldn’t possibly have something important or helpful to say.
Most of her life, she’d been treated like a decoration, there to be seen and not heard.
And she’d built her life around that in some ways, making sure she looked exactly the way she needed in order to get people’s attention. But she wasn’t stupid. And if Tank couldn’t see what was really happening with the pileups of bodies out there, he was going to lose more than just his temper.
She took another deep breath and closed her eyes.
She focused solely on Tank in that moment, making sure she could feel a connection to him. Since he was just right there a few steps away, it was fast and easy to connect to his mind, but she could feel the frantic energy inside him. Getting through that was going to be a bit tougher.
In a way, she could sense the volume of noise in his head the way you could see it on a phone or computer screen. She imagined herself turning it up or down.
She couldn’t exactly hear his thoughts, but she could sense their nature.
Fear was the loudest noise in his head, but he was keeping it together, coming up with strategy, too. Being a real leader.
Carefully, she turned down the volume of his fear and placed a message of her own inside his mind.
Look at the bodies around the barriers. The others are climbing them like a ladder. They’ll get over the top of it in ten minutes if we don’t start thinking this through.
Tank stopped and shook his head for a moment, but then he looked up, finally noticing what was going on with the rotters who died right by the steel walls.
He cursed and immediately pulled a group of friends over. He pointed to the walls, and gradually raised his hand higher and higher.
Karmen breathed a sigh of relief. She had no idea what they were going to do about it, but at least they were aware of the threat.
Having the power to reach inside people’s mind was becoming a pretty handy skill to have, but now that they were working on a solution to the pile-up thing, she needed to start working on a plan to get some of these rotters to turn around or fight each other.
Reaching inside the mind of one rotter or person was easy enough for her now. Reaching into multiple people’s minds took a little more concentration and effort.
But the only time she’d attempted a large crowd was that day on the road when they’d gotten surrounded by the rotters fleeing the fires in Baltimore.
Back then, she wasn’t even sure if she could do it or not, but Lily had helped her somehow. Touched her and focused her mind.
Karmen was fairly certain that Lily’s powers were similar to her own. Some kind of mind control and manipulation, maybe.
She tried to remember exactly how it had felt when she’d reached out to an entire group of those things. That power was inside of her. She didn’t need Lily’s or anyone else to tell her that. What she needed was to figure out the mechanics of how it all worked.
Looking out at the seemingly endless wave of rotters coming toward them, she wasn’t even sure she knew where to start or how big of a group to hope for.
Whatever she did, if it was too big or obvious, was going to throw Tank and his buddies for a loop. She was certain of that.
Parrish and the others seemed to realize that they probably wouldn’t be able to hide their strange abilities from the people here after today, anyway, so why not just go big?
The best way to test yourself, after all, was under pressure, right?
Karmen surveyed the horde again, searching for one of those things with red, glowing eyes.
If she could turn down the noise inside Tank’s brain, then maybe she could do the same thing with one of these rotters. If she could reach inside it and turn down the Dark One’s control, maybe she could take over.
She had no doubt one of those special rotters could take out a bunch of the regular ones if it were working on their side.
It didn’t take her long to locate one. A beast of a dude with half his face ripped off. He was a little toward the back, but as he made his way to the compound, he merely flung the normal-sized rotters out of his way, like they were dust-bunnies.
You’ll do nicely, she thought.
She stretched out a hand, giving herself over to instinct. After all, even though no one had properly trained them on how to use their abilities, some part of her had to remember.
She focused on the Beast, stretching her magic toward him and sinking it deep inside his mind.
Unlike Tank’s mind, this one was mostly empty. There was no strategy to speak of. There was only hunger and a strong, clear desire imprinted on its brain.
Find and infect the guardians.
The fervor behind it made her shiver. This thing wanted them dead with a vengeance, but he was not going to get his way today.
Karmen pushed her power into its mind and turned the Dark One’s orders down so soft, the sound of them almost disappeared entirely. Instead, she filled its head with a new thought.
Protect the compound at all costs. Keep the people safe.
The Beast stopped mid-stride, pounded his flat palm against his forehead two or three times, and then shook his head, as if trying to shake her voice out of his mind.
Karmen dug deeper, finding a well of power inside her that she imagined plugging into. She took one deep, centering breath in, and then let it out slowly, imagining her power traveling across the top of the zombie horde to reach the Beast. She plugged the other end of that power into his head and tried again.
First, she suppressed the orders from the Dark One, making them as quiet as she possibly could.
Then, she gave her own command, pouring all of her own confidence and passion into it.
Protect the compound at all costs. Keep the people safe.
The Beast pounded his head with his own fists several times and then let out a roar that shook the ground slightly. Everyone on the roof stopped for a moment, searching for the source of the sound.
Someone screamed.
“What is that?”
Karmen ignored the chaos and waited, knowing that she’d either just turned the tide, or doomed them all by pissing that thing off.
When the Beast finally started moving again, though, he grabbed rotters by the skull, one in each hand, and crushed them with a single, easy motion, and dropped them to the ground at his feet. Then, he moved onto the next two he could grab, until a mountain of them lay around him.
Karmen let out the breath she’d been holding.
Somehow, she’d managed to turn the tide at least a little bit. For how long? She didn’t know. She had no idea if the Dark One could turn him back to her will in an instant, or if he belonged to Karmen for good, but what she did know was that for now, they had a Beast on their side.
She picked a pair of binoculars off the ground and scanned the crowd again, searching for another s
et of red eyes.
Eleven
Parrish
Parrish scaled the chain-link fence near the guard’s hut, ignoring the men who yelled for her to stop.
They probably thought she was crazy, but she was beyond caring what anyone else thought of her right now. They’d been so careful to keep their powers hidden, too. All that was about to be for nothing, because the way Parrish figured, these zombies were really here for them, right?
So, what better way to make sure the compound stayed safe than to leave it and then let them all know where to find her? If she could at least draw the super zombies away, she could buy the rest of the compound time to deal with the normal ones.
Of course, she probably should have come out here with a better plan than just to wade through an ocean of rotters, searching for red eyes. There were more of them than she’d anticipated, and they were so close together she hardly had any elbow room to even swing her sword.
She had a few tricks up her sleeve when it came to her magic, but she didn’t want to have to use it when she was still so close to the compound. Instead, she took her time, carving small pockets of space for herself in the crowd, using whatever means necessary.
Kicks, jabs, punches.
At one point, she even had to use one of the rotters as a shield against a group that pressed in too close for comfort.
She didn’t stop moving, even for a split second.
Hands grabbed at her, tugging on her clothing and her braid, but she pressed on, setting her sights on a city bus that had been abandoned and parked at the other end of the street across from the mall.
Parrish had no idea what she would do if she just happened to run into a crazy powerful super zombie somewhere in this throng, but she was in too deep to turn back now.
She really wished she’d had the good sense to change into a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt before she came running out here, but instead she was wearing a pair of black workout shorts and a black tank top, neither one of which provided even minimal protection against these things.