“Letho, you can’t!”

But Letho had already disappeared through the window.

FIVE - Light Our Darkest Hour

Just as Saladin had said, the throng of mutants currently converging on the north side of the school building was significantly thinner than the horde he had seen on the south side—the horde that would burst through the windowed wall at any time. Letho knew that if those creatures broke through before his friends could get out, there would be no one for him to regroup with.

As he watched the mutants stumbling and scrabbling toward him, Letho’s thoughts turned to a show he had once seen from Eursus’s golden age of television, in which the enemy was an unfathomable sea of undead creatures who always seemed to show up just when the intrepid group of survivors were at their breaking point, or when there was a convenient failure in the defensive wall around wherever they were taking shelter. Letho often thought it rather pathetic when one of the characters on the show was captured and eaten by a group of the slow-shambling dead people. How hard is it to escape a bad guy with the coordination of a drunk teenager and the reflexes of a brick wall?

Those visions of televised horror dissipated, replaced with the living nightmare Letho now faced. As he watched the creatures’ numbers ever increase and saw the moonlight glinting off tooth and claw, he began to regret his decision, as most do when faced with the repercussions of a brash choice. But then he thought about Deacon, and his flagging resolve returned tenfold.

He dashed toward a group of roughly ten mutants and bowled into them like a freight truck. The sheer force of the impact shattered two of his ribs and sent several of the monsters tumbling up and away. He sat atop one of the creatures, who was mewling and brandishing a mangled arm, trying to ward him away. Letho silenced the mutant’s cries with a downward stab from Saladin. Two more of the creatures grappled him about the arms and shoulders, pulling him up and attempting to throw him on his back. But with a twist of his shoulders, Letho was able to wrest himself from their clutches. He spun and extended Saladin in one fluid motion, severing their heads just above their quivering mouths.

More came, an endless tide, drawn by the smell of their brethren’s blood and pitiful cries. Letho positioned himself so that his back faced the copse of ruined trees. He kept slashing, slowly edging back toward the trees as he swung his sword over and over again. Blood was everywhere: in his eyes, hair, nostrils, and in his mouth, a taste like burnt copper.

Thresha was the first out, bursting from the same window through which Letho had exited, her gun blazing. A few Tarsi followed suit through other windows, and he saw even more escaping through a side exit he hadn’t even known was there. At last Bayorn and Maka emerged. Bayorn was carrying Deacon over one shoulder, his left arm wrapped around the man’s limp body, his other clutching an assault rifle. It looked like a toy replica in his hands, and Deacon looked like a napping child thrown over his shoulder.

The Tarsi and Thresha began to spread out, heading in different directions, drawing the mutants after them. But to Letho’s dismay, even more mutants began to pour out of the windows behind his friends; they had broken through the windows on the southern wall of the building after all. Another wave was now coming around the corners of the building, spilling toward him like a tidal flow.

Letho was no military strategist, but one didn’t have to be to see that the field was about to be lost, swept clean by an army of ravenous, malformed lunatics with no plan or commander. He had hoped that the barricade on the southern wall would have kept them occupied longer, that many of them would have forced their way through and into the various bottlenecks and dead-end hallways that the school building would have provided. But as he watched them tumbling over one another, and felt the clouds of dust they were kicking up, the grit lodging in his eyes and between his teeth, he knew that this was not the case.

“BAYORN! GO!” Letho roared. The sound of his voice shattered the atmosphere like a thunderclap and shredded his vocal cords so that his voice began to rasp and he tasted his own blood at the back of his throat. Bayorn froze in apparent agony and looked at Letho for a moment. But after what seemed like an eternity, he respected Letho’s wish and bolted for a gap in the mad mutant horde.

“HEAD FOR THE TREES!” Letho shouted after them.

Letho agonized over whether he should follow after Bayorn, Maka, and Deacon, or run to Thresha, who was alone and would likely die that way. But the decision was made for him, as the horde quickly encircled him. Even if he bulldozed them it would not be enough to get through the tightly packed wall of diseased meat all around him.

“Come on, you bastards! I’m ready. I’ll get you asses!”

He had just enough time to laugh a breathless, madman’s cackle at his failure to properly execute what he believed would be his last words, and then they were on him, pulling, clutching, slashing. He screamed as a set of claws clutched a length of his hair and yanked. Still other hands latched onto his jumpsuit and began to tear, eager for the tender flesh beneath. The creatures bore him down, piled on top of him. Elbows, knees, shoulders, teeth, and slobber became his reality. No part of his body was safe from the rain of blows and jostles as the creatures squirmed atop him, jockeying for position to be the first to taste his flesh. Letho kept waiting for intrepid claws to find an artery and open it, for teeth to sink into thick muscle tissue, but the creatures were too busy fighting among themselves and on top of him. He couldn’t breathe; the press of their sinewy flesh and the putrid heat from their bodies smothered him. The whole-body panic sensation of asphyxiation overtook him, and he began to thrash, to no avail. He only hoped that he had provided enough diversion so that his friends had been able to escape.

Letho’s mind screamed in panic. He was dimly aware that Saladin was attempting to tell him something about an approaching vehicle, but Letho’s thoughts had gone rogue—his brain was apparently not receiving messages at the moment. Telltale tendrils of black began to appear at the corners of his vision, followed by a cavalcade of spots and stars. He was losing consciousness.

Several flat cracking sounds. Blinding light.

The writhing mass of inhumanity on top of him broke into a collective scream that shattered his eardrums and filled him with terror. He felt the weight of them begin to lessen, and he gasped like a beached sea creature, his lungs screaming for air. At last he was able to move, but as he attempted to turn over, his body screamed out in agony. Bones were broken in every limb, ribs were shattered, and his ability to heal hadn’t kicked in yet. The thought crossed his mind that perhaps this healing ability was a finite resource; maybe it had already been squandered.

The sound of unfamiliar voices, both male and female, shouting and cursing, drew his attention, and it was at that moment that he realized he couldn’t see. The brilliant blast of white light had blinded him. He rubbed his eyes with a closed fist, fearing that he would find the liquid remains of ruined eyes on his cheeks. The vigorous rubbing did nothing to return his vision, but at least he found no eye-jelly there. Small arms fire crackled around him, muffled by the ring in his ears. He heard mutants shrieking as they fell under a withering wave of automatic fire.

Wait. Something wasn’t right. When he had rubbed his eyes, only one hand had reported for duty. A dull, thudding ache, like someone repeatedly striking him with a sledgehammer, wracked the entire left side of his body.