Fate's Surrender (Eternal Sorrows Book 3) by Sarra Cannon (android based ebook reader txt) 📕

“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