Omen Operation by Taylor Brooke Page B

hilt of a knife jutted from the Surros temple, cutting its proclamations short.
    It fell toward Brooklyn, and she jumped away. The body slammed face first into the forest floor.
    Amber knelt down and pulled the knife from the Surro’s skull. “More are coming.”
    “More?” Brooklyn whimpered, glancing around to the already overwhelming amount of Surrogates and their bodies that littered the ground.
    “Yeah, we gotta get,” Amber said and bounced back to her feet.
    Porter’s eyes scrunched shut as he tried to lift himself off the ground. He whined under his breath and wasn’t shy about reaching for Brooklyn when she offered to help him up.
    “Where’s Gabriel?” Brooklyn asked after she’d slung Porter’s good arm over her shoulder.
    Amber twirled two knives in each of her hands and bounced from foot to foot.
    “That girl was everywhere,” Amber said. She lifted her hand over her head with one of the small knives tucked between her knuckles and threw it hard at a Surro that was charging toward Rayce. It flew end over end until it met its mark and sank into the thin flesh of the Surros neck.
    Amber took off running toward Rayce to retrieve her knife while Brooklyn lifted her head and wrapped an arm around Porter’s waist to steady him.
    “You’re okay,” she said and nudged him.
    “I need stitches,” he snorted.
    The area around them sounded like a storm, but one voice in particular demanded Brooklyn’s attention.
    “Get back to the bus!” Gabriel yelled, sprinting across the clearing toward Dawson. Her hair fluttered behind her as she leapt over the body of a dead Surro and spun around when another large creature lunged toward her from behind a tree. She was a machine, spinning, kicking, hitting, and crushing everything in her way. Her willowy hands wrapped around the wrists of the Surro, and she used it as a platform to vault herself over its head. Her feet hit the ground behind it, and she yanked its arms cruelly before slamming the sharp edge of her knee into the center of its back.
    Another Surro tried to surprise her. She smashed her elbow into the bridge of its nose, tangled her fingers into its knotted black hair, and slammed its face into the trunk of a tree.
    Brooklyn’s eyes widened when she saw the hoard of Surros running toward them in the distance, a mass of bodies that blocked the light between the trees coming to retrieve them. Her heart was pounding, her mind going a million miles an hour, trying to find a solution or a way out. Something. Anything that could give them more time.
    But this was the end of the line.
    Porter sank heavily against her, and Brooklyn shook him as gently as she could. His eyelashes cracked open, and he swallowed hard. “Get outta here, Brooklyn. You need to get out of here.”
    “Gabriel!” Brooklyn shouted, leaning up on the tips of her toes to try and get her friend’s attention. Porter tried to pull away, but she tightened her grip and shook her head. “I’m not leaving you here,” she said, glancing at him.
    Three Surros clambered toward Porter and Brooklyn. One of them crawled, dragging itself toward them with a broken leg. The other two stalked toward them like predators closing in on prey. She was strong enough to kill them—she knew that. But Porter wouldn’t be able to stand on his own. If she put him down, they could easily get to him.
    Brooklyn growled and backed up, dragging Porter with her. She fumbled for the gun, steadied her breathing, and aimed. But when she pulled the trigger, a tiny click was all that came from the barrel.
    “God dammit,” she cursed and shoved the empty pistol into the back of her pants.
    Brooklyn lifted her leg and kicked one of the nearing Surros in the chest. The other three snapped their teeth and muttered nonsense as they inched closer.
    It seemed like there was no way out.
    Porter kept apologizing to the base of her neck, asking her again and again to leave him behind. She kept backing up until they hit the