With this, it was almost like he’d been pulling the sickness and infection out of the guy’s body...and into his own.
Without Noah’s magic, though, Stephen would have been dead by nightfall. The infection had gotten so bad even the strongest antibiotics couldn’t save him. Noah had known that much the second he touched him.
Maybe that was why he kept going, even though he’d felt the sickness oozing into him. If Stephen died after all they’d been through to bring these meds back to him, it would just make everything feel so pointless.
What were they fighting for, anyway, if not for families like Stephen’s to go on and rebuild this world, someday?
No one knew at this point just how many had died across the globe, but based on the number of survivors they’d seen since they first left their homes, Noah had a feeling more than half the world’s population was gone.
And that was being optimistic.
How many more would have to die because he and his friends didn’t know what the hell they were doing?
If they had been sent here to protect this world in case the Dark One awakened someday, why hadn’t they been able to remember everything? Why couldn’t they figure out how to stop her?
What if they never did? Would all of humanity be lost?
Noah pulled the thin blanket tighter around his trembling body. Damn. His mind was spinning. If he didn’t pull himself together, his thoughts would only get darker.
As much as he wanted to just lie here and try to get some rest, he had a feeling that the more he gave into it, the more the sickness would take over.
Just how much of it had he taken on?
Reluctantly, he peeled the blanket off his moist skin and sat up, clutching the edge of the mattress until the room stopped spinning around him.
He laughed to keep from crying.
And he’d thought he was invincible.
Noah made it about three steps toward the door before he collapsed in a heap on the floor.
Six
Karmen
Karmen stood on the rooftop of the compound, staring out over the neighboring houses and wondering if things could ever go back to normal.
She groaned and shook her head. That was the dumbest thing she could think, though, wasn't it? The greater part of the world’s population was walking around trying to eat people.
That wasn't exactly the kind of thing the world was likely to ever recover from.
Even if they did manage to put an end to this witch person who started the virus in the first place, they would have to kill every rotter and clean up the world before they were all safe again. And how many people would be left at that point?
Enough to start over?
And after what they’d already seen from Lily, what were the chances they could survive the Dark One, much less actually defeat her and her army of rotters?
It was impossible.
Parrish had said they’d made a choice a long time ago, in another life, to come to this world and protect them from the Dark One in case she ever went free.
But the thing no one had mentioned yet was why, if they were so strong and capable, had they failed to kill this Dark One all those years ago? Why lock her away and seal her power? Why not just kill her if she was so dangerous?
This had been the question on Karmen’s mind since last night, even though she hadn’t dared speak it out loud.
There was only one answer to that question, anyway.
The only reason they wouldn’t have killed her back then was that they couldn’t. And that was with their full memories and power.
What exactly did they think they were going to do against her now when they had no real clue what their true abilities were or how to effectively use them?
They needed more time. They needed someone to teach them what to do. Karmen was sure she had only scratched the surface of her powers.
Yes, she could somehow reach into people’s minds and command them in some way, but she had a feeling she could do more than that if she really tried. Like listen to their thoughts, maybe.
Or see inside their dreams.
That’s what that witch had done, right? Lily? She’d seen inside Crash’s dreams.
Well, maybe Karmen could do that, too.
And she wanted more time to play around with those abilities before they went charging into a city full of those dead things. Ugh. It sucked that Zoe was trapped in New York, of all places.
Why couldn’t she have been playing her violin in Cincinnati? Or Nashville? Somewhere with less than a million people living there?
Better than Vienna or Paris, where they’d have almost no hope of reaching her, but it still sucked.
Karmen understood why they had to get up there to find Zoe and the fifth before the Dark One could find them, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.
If the others thought a handful of super zombies were difficult to defeat and that they’d barely survived the hospital, what did they think they were going to face in Manhattan?
A million regular rotters. Hundreds, maybe thousands of super zombies. If Lily was really creating them herself, and she was up there now with at least a full day’s head start, she would have plenty of time to create an army of them and place them all around the city.
They were never going to get through all that, and Lily knew it.
But Lily also knew that Parrish wouldn’t be able to resist going after Zoe.
Karmen shook her head and plopped herself down on a concrete block at the edge of the roof. Could she seriously blame Parrish, though?
If she’d had a younger sister, she would have protected that little girl more fiercely than anyone could imagine. There was no way she would have ever
