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

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