by Sarra Cannon
Her entire body was going to be scratched all to hell, but as long as she avoided getting bitten, she would be okay. If Noah recovered okay, she’d get him to heal the scratches, no problem.
A few seconds ago, she’d heard the machine gun start up near the gate, and smiled. That had to be Noah and Crash finally getting their butts in gear and helping out, which meant the gate was covered.
Hopefully, Karmen was on the roof holding some of the others back and helping where she could.
Now, it was up to Parrish to create a disturbance in the singular focus of the horde. If she could split their attention, with the advantage of higher ground on top of the bus, she should be able to turn the tide, so to speak.
Well, as long as there weren’t half a dozen super zombies headed straight for her.
One or two, she could probably handle. Anything more than that, and she’d have to move to Plan B.
Which meant she should probably have been trying to figure out a Plan B as she fought her way through the horde.
The only backup plan she could think of, though, was to run. If things got too bad, she’d try to make it back to the gate, where Crash and Noah could help. In reality, though, if she got cornered by a handful of those things all at once, she’d never make it back to that gate in one piece.
So, no real backup plan. She just had to make Plan A work.
It took nearly fifteen minutes for her to get all the way out to the bus, and along the way, she was sure she’d taken down at least 100 or more rotters. Not a bad workout, that’s for sure.
Between yesterday and today, she was going to have some majorly sore muscles. She didn’t even want to think about what that would mean for making her way through the horror of New York City, but she’d cross that bridge when she came to it.
A night of good rest would make all the difference.
The only thing that would have been better was if she had access to a huge garden tub full of piping hot water and scented bubble bath. An unlikely dream at this point, but she let the idea of it fuel her as she sliced through the handful of zombies lingering around the bus.
At this point, so many rotters had pushed forward in waves toward the compound that she’d actually reached the back of the horde. She was grateful, at least, that there was an end to it.
The Dark One—or perhaps Lily—had had all night to gather this ragtag crew of rotters. There could have been thousands in this horde. Instead, she’d brought maybe a thousand in total.
A nightmare, for sure, but it could have been worse.
Parrish was beginning to realize that it could always be worse. Even when you couldn’t imagine anything more horrifying than what you were facing at that moment, there was always a next level when it came to the horrors of this new world.
She climbed on top of the bus in two quick leaps, the muscles in her legs and arms burning from non-stop movement. None of the rotters heading toward the compound had followed her out here, which meant she was right about their general directive to attack the compound.
But the super zombies out there?
They had orders to kill the guardians. She had no doubts about that.
She stood there for a moment, surveying the battle scene and the carnage.
From what she could see up here, none of the rotters had managed to break through the steel barricades on this side of the wall. She couldn’t quite see what was happening inside the front gate, though. She could see a large pile up of dead zombies near the chain-link fence, but it was at the wrong angle to see the Humvee inside or to tell if the gate had been breached.
She listened for the sound of machine-gun fire, but there were too many guns and other explosions going off for her to tell from here.
She had to just trust that her friends were holding their own. Besides, she had a feeling they were so connected now that if something terrible happened to them, she would know it.
After all, she was pretty sure she’d sensed Noah’s nausea while she was in the office with Tank, even though she hadn’t known what it was.
At the time, she thought it was just exhaustion taking hold.
She’d have to ask the others if they had also sensed Noah’s distress at all, even in some small way.
The crew on the roof seemed to be making the biggest impact. Thankfully Tank and his group had managed to gather a lot of guns and ammo early on that they’d stockpiled here inside the compound, but they were going to be decimated after this.
It’s all our fault.
She pushed the thought aside.
Not because it wasn’t true, but because she didn’t have the mental space to worry about it right now.
Their ammo stockpile wouldn’t matter if no one survived the day.
From the looks of it, after only about fifteen minutes, the militia at the compound had managed to take out about half the rotters in total.
But where were the red-eyed zombies? They had to be out there somewhere, and Parrish was sure they would have sent some who could scale walls or break them down, entirely.
Why was it taking so long for them to make themselves known?
Or had they, by some miracle, already been dealt with by the others?
But no, that didn’t seem to be the case.
Parrish’s eyes landed on a set of them about twenty feet away. A man and a woman, both about the same height and build.
It was their arms, though, that made them stand out.
They looked more like tentacles, and after watching them for a minute, it looked like they could extend them out pretty far from their bodies. It was possible they were poisonous, as well, because from here, there looked to be some kind of greenish residue coated on them.
Awesome. Perfect time to be in shorts and a tank top.
All she’d wanted was to be free of blood and guts for a little while. So much for that dream.
She scanned toward the other side of the crowd, searching for more. That’s when she caught a glimpse of several rotters leaping into the air and over the fence at the front gate.
Her heart skipped a beat. What the hell was that? There were definitely three or more of them, whatever they were.
She thought back to the crouching one they’d faced in D.C. These were probably similar. Regular humans turned into disgusting, dog-like creatures with fangs or scissors for hands.
There were no words for how horrible the Dark One was, using people who had once been fathers, sons, mothers, or daughters, for her own twisted game.
Parrish prayed there was no part of who they used to be still locked away inside of them. Hopefully, they were nothing more than mindless shells of the people they used to be.
She wanted to go to Crash and Noah and help them with the dog-like rotters she’d just seen leaping toward them, but she could do nothing from here. All she could do was continue on with her plan and hope to draw some of the others away.
Not seeing any other potential threats than the couple in front of her, Parrish took a deep, centering breath and solidified her stance, sword drawn.
She focused on the power deep inside, drawing it to the surface until her blade seemed to be engulfed in an icy-blue light. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was capable of accomplishing with this magic, but she remembered that very first time she’d cut down the large trench-coat zombie inside the office building the night they met Crash and Lily.
She’d somehow controlled a blast of blue light that was focused to a single point.
Today, though, she was going to try something a bit different, because if she wanted to get their attention, she was going to have to do something big and bold.
Something really freaking dangerous but hopefully also effective.
She played through the move in her mind several times before she was ready, and then she drew her sword back, pouring even more of her power into its blue light.
With a yell, she sliced her sword horizontally across the air, imagining the light spreading out across the sea of rotters still h
eaded for the compound. She kept her intention toward the middle of their bodies, hoping to take down as many of them as possible, and not entirely knowing what it would do to them.
To her surprise, it worked, too.
Every zombie her blue light touched fell to the ground, its bottom half severed from its body.
Including the super zombies.
Only, while the regular zombies who had fallen stayed where they were, the tentacle twins began pulling themselves toward her, their tentacles lengthening and extending over the tops of the other writhing on the ground.
She steadied her sword and readied another blast, but before she had a chance to unleash it, a flash of silver appeared in her peripheral vision.
Parrish didn’t even fully have time to process what was happening, but her instincts kicked in before her brain did, her sword gliding through the air toward the figure.
Only, the blade didn’t slice through the rotter’s flesh like she expected.
Even though she’d landed a direct hit, all she heard was the sound of steel clanging against steel.
The zombie, red-eyed and covered in some kind of silvery metal that acted like a shell or armor over its entire body, had caught the blade of her sword in its left hand. With a strangled cry, Parrish tried to leap back, pulling on her sword with all of her power.
But the rotter wasn’t letting her go that easy.
It pulled her sword from her hands with one swift movement and tossed it to the ground with a clatter. Parrish gathered her blue light in her hands and was about to unleash it toward the silver zombie when the thing quickly drew back its metallic fist and punched her in the gut.
Parrish went flying off the top of the bus, landing with a crack on the hard asphalt below, a pair of poisoned tentacles dangerously close.
And getting closer.
She’d been stupid to believe she could handle this all on her own, and now she was going to pay for it with her life.
Twelve
Karmen
“What the hell was that?”
Everyone on the roof stopped shooting and ran to the opposite side of the roof. Karmen had just barely caught the flash of blue light in the binoculars, but she didn’t have to see it to know what it was.
She stepped onto a milk crate nearby and lifted the binoculars to her eyes, scanning the area for Parrish.
Just as she suspected, the girl was standing on top of a dang bus over a hundred yards away at the back of the horde. What was she trying to pull here?
But then Karmen noticed the sheer number of rotters who’d been grounded by Parrish’s magic. She’d somehow used her light magic to sever their legs from their bodies, so even though they were still alive, they couldn’t move without dragging themselves forward with their hands.
She’d severely crippled their numbers with one swift move, which was pretty badass, even if Karmen wouldn’t have admitted it to her face.
Only, before Karmen could fully appreciate Parrish’s use of magic and intelligence, something leapt at the top of the bus from out of nowhere.
Red eyes flashed as a silver-coated zombie yanked Parrish’s sword from her hand and hit her so hard, she went flying like a ragdoll to the pavement.
Karmen’s stomach churned.
This was bad.
She spun around, seeking out the four super zombies she’d managed to turn to their side so far. She imagined creating a web between them, kind of like a mental group text.
That was the best way she had for making sense of it in her head, anyway.
As soon as she could feel the connection between her own mind and the four of theirs, she gave them a new directive.
Find Parrish. Save her. Destroy everything in your path.
She quickly gave each of them directions for how to find Parrish from where they were standing, and she was relieved when each of them broke out in a run. Well, all of them except the Beast. She wasn’t even sure he could run without breaking the ground beneath his feet, but he did manage to move quickly, smashing heads as he made his way around the compound’s steel barrier, in front of the gate, and toward Parrish on the other side.
But would it be enough? Karmen wasn’t sure she’d be able to get them there fast enough, but she at least had to try.
There was no way she could move fast enough to get down the stairs and over to where Parrish was before whatever that silver thing was got to her, but she could do her best to stop it from here.
To at least buy her some time.
Karmen pushed a few men out of the way so she could get to the edge of the roof on that side. She’d already used up so much of her energy, and she had a feeling using too much of it at once might make her pass out the way Crash had done back at his apartment when he’d been running all those computers and trying to make phone calls to New York, but she couldn’t just leave Parrish out there to die.
As much as she liked to give the girl crap, she had really come to love her. In fact, she had a feeling they’d all be totally lost without her.
Karmen focused her mind on the silver rotter standing on top of the bus. She’d become pretty good at tapping into their minds in the past fifteen minutes or so of practicing it over and over again, but this one was different, somehow.
Maybe it was the silver shell around its body? Or maybe this one was just further away?
It could have been any number of things, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to connect with this one’s mind at all.
That’s when she noticed the tentacled zombies quickly crawling their way across the parking lot toward Parrish.
Karmen shuddered. How disgusting could these things get?
There was no telling what they’d do to Parrish once they got close enough to her to wrap those giant tentacles around her, and without her sword, she was practically powerless.
True to form, though, it didn’t look like Parrish was giving up anytime soon.
Despite how hard she appeared to have been hit, she stood up quickly and began to gather more blue light in the palms of her hands. She also made a run for her sword.
Sadly, that only seemed to spur the silver rotter to move faster. It jumped down beside the sword and kicked it under the bus, as if toying with her.
Yes, this one definitely had more agency. Karmen wasn’t sure if it was truly a mind of its own or if the Dark One had somehow gotten her claws really deeply into this one’s mind, but she decided to let Parrish sort that one out.
Instead, she turned her focus on the two tentacled zombies still inching toward Parrish. Their minds should be easier to hack.
This better work.
Parrish’s life—and the lives of all the humans left alive in this god-forsaken world—depended on it.
Thirteen
Crash
The dog-like rotters snarled at him as he reached back inside the truck to grab the microphone.
“Everyone out here by the gate, get inside now,” he shouted. “Run and barricade the doors with whatever you can find.”
Confused, one of the women near the gate holding a shotgun held up her hands in a questioning gesture. Obviously, she hadn’t taken his tone of voice seriously.
Instead of trying to calmly and politely explain the situation to her, he hooked his thumb toward the five red-eyed zombies crouched and ready to pounce.
She followed his gesture, squinted in confusion, and then grabbed the man next to her by the arm and told him to move his ass. The dogs seemed to follow the others with their eyes, but they made no move to leap after them. Instead, they trained their eyes on the Hummer.
Which could only mean one thing. These guys had been specifically looking for them, and they most likely had been given orders to kill or infect on sight.
Crash slammed the door of the Hummer, shutting himself inside for a moment as he crawled through to the back and opened the bench seat he’d taken careful steps to install before the pandemic even began. He’d hidden tons of extra ammo and supplies in th
ere, so he quickly grabbed a couple of grenades, a loaded machine gun, and a hunting knife.
Of course, he had to be careful with the grenades. If he destroyed the gate or the fence itself, there would be hell to pay.
He hooked them onto his belt, anyway, though. Just in case.
He also handed Noah extra ammo for the gun on top of the Hummer, though he had a feeling guns weren’t going to be enough against these things.
With the super zombies, there was no real way to know what they were capable of until you were actually fighting them. Then, you had to kind of figure it out on your own. They could have poisonous fangs, stoneskin, or a giant tongue that came out of their mouths and tried to lick you to death.
So, who knew about these guys?
He wasn’t going to find out hiding here in the truck like a pansy, though. He’d been a gamer all his life, and this wasn’t so much different from that. The first time you fought any major boss in a video game, you had to figure it out for yourself. Find their weaknesses.
He’d been training for this his whole life.
Crash grabbed his AR-15 and threw open the back door just as something heavy hit the truck from the front. Crash stumbled to the ground and turned to see two of the dogs crouching on the hood of the truck, inches away from where Noah stood.
He was pounding them with bullets, and while the impact knocked them back slightly, even direct headshots didn’t seem to be making any difference.
Which would have been bad enough, but then the other three dogs decided it was time to join the party. They leaped over the fence, but this time, they landed closer to him.
“Hey, how come you only get two and I got to deal with three of these things?”
Noah laughed. “This Dark One person must not realize who the real boss is out here.”
Crash lifted his machine gun into the air. “Oh yeah. Well, we’ll see about that.”