Sorrow's Gift

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Karmen

"Turn around," Parrish yelled. "Get us out of here."

Karmen leaned forward to look out the front windows and screamed. There was a line of rotters ahead of them, making their way through the smoke.

"Already on it," Crash shouted, putting the vehicle in reverse and pushing down on the gas so hard it thrust her forward.

Something thudded against the back of the Humvee and Karmen screamed as her head banged against the metal side of the vehicle.

She spun around in her seat. Rotting hands clawed at the small window in the back of the Humvee. She scooted down the bench to get a closer look and gasped.

"We're surrounded," she said. "They must have just come out of the woods behind us. They must have heard the sound of the engine."

"Shit," Crash mumbled. "Everybody hold on."

Karmen grabbed the canvas loop above her head and pressed her feet hard into the floorboard as he turned the wheel and gunned it. Crash took them off the highway and into the grass on the shoulder. It was tough to see exactly what they were up against because of the smoke, but the line of rotters covering the road extended out toward the woods and there didn't seem to be any way around them.

Crash stepped on the gas and plowed into the bodies. Some of them were still on fire. Some of them were barely more than skeletons. Rotters flew up on the hood of the Humvee as Crash moved through them. The vehicle bumped and jerked as they ran over the bodies of the undead. Others clawed at the sides of the windows and doors as they passed.

Karmen kept her eyes open against her will. She needed to see what was going on in case they got stuck and had to fight, but she wanted to just shut it out. These were images she really didn't want invading her dreams later.

Crash jerked the wheel of the vehicle, barely missing the back end of a semi's trailer that had turned over and was blocking most of the road and the shoulder. He traveled beside it, continuing to plow down the bodies of the dead. He had to go across the median and up onto the other side of the highway to get around the truck, but as soon as they made it back onto the road, he slammed on the brakes. There was no way through.

Cars spread out across all four lanes and into the median. There were wrecked cars piled up on the far shoulder all the way to the treeline. In the smoke, it was hard to see any way out of this, but they had to do something. The rotters were banging on the outside of the Humvee now that they were stopped, and Karmen could hear their hungry groans. If they didn't move soon, they would be overwhelmed by them.

There was no telling how many rotters were out there. It could be thousands for all they knew.

"What do we do?" Parrish asked.

Crash gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white. "I don't know," he said. "We could try going back the way we came and finding a way around, but if we get stuck somewhere in the middle of that horde, we're screwed."

"Well, we can't go this way," Karmen said. "And the longer we sit here, the more likely we are to get stuck."

"Do you think you could use your mind control to clear a path?" Crash asked, turning around in his seat to meet her eyes.

"You could do it," Parrish said. "If Crash drives slowly and you switch to sitting up front, maybe you could connect with the ones in front of us and get them to move out of the way."

Tears spilled down Karmen's cheeks and she shook her head. "I can't do it. There are too many of them," she said. "I'm too scared."

Parrish grabbed Karmen's face and forced her eyes upward. "You have to or we're going to get trapped here," she said. "You can do this."