My body ached in every possible way. I didn't recall ever feeling such profound, bone-deep agony in all my years of warfare. Every breath felt like inhaling shards of glass, and my vision swam in a dizzying haze of adrenaline and exhaustion.
"Roar!"
"Go to hell," I grunted, throwing the weight of my torso into a swing. My aluminium club connected with the soft underside of a hyena's jaw, sending the beast reeling. I didn't wait to see it hit the dirt. I pivoted, swinging a backhand blow that caught another monster square in its primary nerve cluster.
I knew that if I stayed to finish the fight out here, I would be buried under a mountain of yellow fur. More monsters were pouring out of the tree line every second, drawn by the scent of fresh blood—specifically mine.
I forced my legs to move, enduring the sickening grind of what I was certain were at least three broken ribs. My left shoulder was a numb, useless weight, likely fractured during the impact with the shed. My clothes were no longer recognisable; the fabric was a patchwork of sweat, dirt, and rapidly expanding stains of crimson.
If I had the luxury of choice, I would have retreated to the shadows to tend to these wounds. But the apocalypse doesn't grant medical leave. Every step I took tore the gashes in my side wider, but I finally reached the heavy steel door of the maintenance room. I slipped inside and slammed the door shut, the frame rattling as the first of the pack slammed into the exterior wall.
The room was small—deliberately cramped to house the machinery—which was its only saving grace. The Void-Hyenas were too massive to force their way through the door all at once. For the next few minutes, the walls would hold, but the beasts outside weren't accepting defeat. I could hear them clawing at the metal siding, their frustrated bellows vibrating the floorboards.
"You..."
I turned, my gaze locking onto Arnold. The "lookout" was standing over the generator, his face twisting into a mask of frantic desperation. He had been trying to figure out how to sabotage the machine when I burst in. He hadn't expected me to survive the gauntlet, let alone reach him so quickly.
"Surprise," I said, my voice a raspy whisper. I stepped toward him, my club trailing on the floor. "Now, get away from that machine. You're a human, Arnold."
"F*ck you!" he screamed.
He didn't listen. Instead, he raised his own wooden club and slammed it down with terrifying strength.
"Stop!" I lunged, but the distance was too great, and my body was too slow.
The wood shattered against the fragile fuel intake line, the rubber tube connecting the generator to the external gasoline reservoirs.
Bang! Bang!
I didn't want to kill him yet—I needed information—but he had committed an unforgivable sin. I swung my club in a horizontal arc, catching him in the back of the head. A gush of dark blood erupted as he collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut.
Then, the generator issued a sickening, metallic screech.
Click.
The mechanical heartbeat of our survival stopped. All at once, the world was plunged into an absolute, suffocating darkness. The blinding white safety of the baseball field vanished, replaced by the abyssal void of the New York night.
"Dammit!" I growled, reaching out blindly to touch the cooling metal of the generator. I could feel the jagged dent where Arnold's strike had landed.
I wasn't a mechanic. To me, this machine was an antique from a forgotten age. I knew the outer casing shouldn't have budged under a wooden club, but Arnold was a Traitor; his stats had been boosted by the System before the quest even began. The fact that he had smashed the fuel line meant his Strength stat was already nearing double digits.
I closed my eyes, counting to three, and reopened them. I forced my pupils to dilate, trying to adapt to the sudden shift. We weren't in total darkness; the distant, bruised purple of the sky provided a faint, ghostly luminescence, but compared to the spotlights, we were practically blind.
Bang! Bang!
The monsters outside were beginning to tear the shed apart. The sound of rending metal was an annoying reminder that my time was up. I fumbled in the dark until I found the torn rubber tube.
Gasoline was already oozing out, soaking my hands and the floor with its pungent, volatile scent. If I had studied this machine for even ten minutes before the apocalypse, I might have known how to bypass the torn line. But I was out of time.
I looked down at the unconscious Arnold.
"I didn't want to kill you," I muttered. "I have a thousand questions about your masters. But I can't carry you, and I can't leave you to wake up."
I had underestimated the Traitors. They were more resourceful and far more embedded than the old man's stories had led me to believe.
Having a prisoner would have been the ultimate strategic advantage. But right now, it was a binary choice: save his pathetic life and risk the lives of everyone on that field, or end him and give the survivors a fighting chance.
"Another opportunity will come," I consoled myself.
I turned my attention to the gasoline storage. Beside the generator sat a dozen suitcase-like metal tanks. I grabbed few of them with my one good arm, grunting as the weight pulled at my shattered ribs.
"It's going to be a hell of a show," I whispered, an evil, jagged smirk tugging at my lips.
I kicked open the buckled door and stepped out into a nightmare. The hyenas were no longer disoriented; with the lights out, they held every advantage. They could see the heat radiating from my wounds; they could smell the iron in my blood.
I didn't run. I carved. My right arm moved in a blur, swaying the club with the muscle memory of a hundred battles. I pushed through the pack, clearing a path through sheer violence until I reached the open field.
The retreat was a gruelling test of will. The hyenas were faster now, their attacks coordinated. I evaded a lunging tusk, feeling the air whistle past my ear, and dumped the first tank of gas. I kept moving, my back drenched in the fuel leaking from the second tank on my shoulder.
Then, a new sound cut through the chaos.
"HOWL!"
My heart skipped a beat. "The wolves..."
I recognised that specific, resonant frequency. These weren't the dumb hyenas. These were Void-Wolves, and they never travelled without an Alpha. An Alpha was a creature with enough intelligence to coordinate a pincer movement.
I checked the golden screen flickering in the corner of my vision. 45:00. Three-quarters of the hour had passed. I only had to survive fifteen more minutes.
"Roar!"
The hyenas, sensing the arrival of the wolves, grew frantic. They formed a living wall around me, circling in dense layers to prevent my retreat toward Isabella and the others. They thought they had trapped me.
"You want to do it here? Fine," I spat, gnashing my teeth, before throwing the second tank, "I've gone far enough anyway."
I didn't show fear. Instead, I looked at the ground. All around me were the splintered remains of the wooden benches and the metallic fragments of the barricades we had built.
"Clang!"
I brought my aluminium club down onto a discarded steel bench frame with everything I had left. The impact sent a jar of pain up my arm, but it produced exactly what I needed: a shower of bright, hot sparks.
In a normal world, a spark would die in the dirt. But this wasn't a normal world, and this dirt was soaked in high-octane fuel.
"Burn in hell, you bastards!"
The sparks caught. A thin, dancing thread of blue and orange flame raced away from me, following the trail of gasoline I had meticulously poured as I ran from the shed. It was a fuse. The fire sprinted back toward the maintenance room, igniting the open tanks I had left behind.