He cried out and fell to his knees on top of the van. He struggled to keep the shield up as the Beast approached Karmen again, but he would not fail his friend.
With his strength and healing, he could take a beating much better than any of them.
At least for a while.
If pain was his greatest burden, he would bear it with pride.
But luckily, he didn’t have to take another hit. The Beast stepped toward Karmen, fist raised, and then stopped as if frozen in place.
“You’re mine, now,” Karmen said, smiling as she stood.
The Beast turned on the swarm of rotters behind him and roared.
Thirty-Eight
Karmen
Karmen smiled at the giant Beast of a man.
She hated that any human had been turned into such a grotesque thing, but at the same time, she’d really hated to leave the other one behind at the compound the other day.
As someone who had always felt small and weak, having this huge Beast on her side, fighting for her, made her feel strong and invincible.
What she would have given to have been able to sic a dude like this on her father. She could have daydreamed about watching this thing tear him apart for months, but right now, she needed to focus on the fight at hand.
They still had a horde to contend with, but her pet would make quick work of it. She commanded him to attack the crowd still surging in from the direction of the alley, and the Beast turned and did exactly what she asked.
Parrish and Crash joined in, both rushing forward to fight hand-to-hand.
“How are you feeling, Noah?” she called out.
“I’m hanging in there,” he said, lifting his shirt to show a large bruise covering his ribcage.
He placed his palm flat against his skin and a blue frost appeared for an instant. He relaxed his shoulders somewhat and lowered his shirt.
“Thanks for the help,” she said, cringing at the sight of that bruise. A hit like that might have killed her, but Noah had seemed to take it all in stride. “I’ll repay you, I promise.”
“I’m counting on it,” he said.
A zombie grabbed the sleeve of her shirt with its bony hand, and she conjured a flame in her palm and stuffed it right in the thing’s face. To be sure it was dead, she also pulled out her hunting knife and slid the blade into its heart.
“You have to aim for the head,” Crash said.
“Do I, though?” she asked as the rotter fell to the ground, its face burned to a crisp.
Crash shrugged. “Well, maybe not when you burn their brains from the inside out.”
She tried not to smile, because fighting zombies wasn’t supposed to be fun. But at the same time, she was fighting with the people she liked most in the world. And she had to appreciate a guy who could make her smile even when her hand was covered in rotter blood.
Still, they needed to pick up the pace a bit and stop fooling around. They’d probably killed at least five hundred zombies since they’d first come off the boat, but they’d only moved a handful of blocks in an hour or so.
At this rate, they’d be fighting long past nightfall.
The group fell back into their rhythm as they fought the horde to the very last and started their way up Third Avenue.
David and Zoe were headed their way, but she wasn’t sure where they’d end up meeting. The key, Parrish said, was just to keep moving. As long as they did that, no matter how slowly, they’d meet up somewhere in the middle and fight their way back to the boat.
If the boat is even still there.
Karmen pushed that thought out of her head, and did her best to focus on holding back another wave of rotters with her growing mind control. It didn’t take as much concentration as it once had, which had to mean something, right?
So far, she was holding up okay, but if they hit the point of exhaustion, they were toast.
Karmen could hardly believe they’d made it this far alive, but they were moving too slow. The wreckage here on Third Avenue was harder to maneuver around, too. Cars were packed together like matchsticks, as if everyone had the same bright idea to flee the city at the same time.
What a mess.
And to think they were just a few blocks from some of the best shopping this town had to offer. She used to come here with her mother every Christmas to shop for gifts and check out the decorations, but there would be no Christmas here this year. No fashion week. No marathon.
Nothing would ever be the same again.
She pushed back the emotions she felt as she stared at the ruined city. There was no time for nostalgia now. They had to keep moving forward.
Karmen tried to keep her eyes off the cars as they all fought their way forward, remembering the small child who’d almost bit her arm the first day of their journey outside their neighborhood. Any zombies still stuck in their cars were going to have to just stay there.
But then, thinking about the piles of cars in the middle of the street gave her a brilliant idea.
“Why don’t we go on top of the cars?” Karmen asked. “We could run across the tops of them, and as long as we don’t get too close to any of the ones trapped inside, none of the others can reach us. The cars are too close together. My pet Beast can take care of any rotters on the sidewalks and stuff.”
“Go,” Parrish said, slicing through a rush of rotters with more than just her sword. Her blue light made it five zombies deep before it faded, and at least twenty or so fell to the ground.
Karmen pulled herself onto the hood of a blue Toyota. The metal bent slightly under her weight, but it held her just
