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

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