My eyes fill with useless tears, blinding me. I swipe at them with my arm but that only makes the problem worse as mud coats my eyelashes.

Jed isn't moving. The Unconsecrated man crawls closer. He's leaning over Jed as I approach.

I'm screaming now, hoping to distract the Unconsecrated, hoping to keep him from biting my brother.

He bends his head down and I throw the heavy branch I'm holding at him. It careens off his head and he glances at me. For a moment I think I've won. I think that I've enticed him enough.

But then, with the ferocity of a feral animal, he hunches over Jed and lowers his head.

I trip then and fall to one knee, the knee I had hit earlier. Pain explodes behind my eyes.

I feel a hand scrabble at my back and I turn and punch a female Unconsecrated with all my might. She staggers back. Long enough for me to realize that I tripped over Jed's scythe.

I wrap my fingers around its smooth wooden handle, remembering the heft of it from when I used it to kill Travis, and swing. I take out the Unconsecrated woman and then I stumble toward Jed and swing at the Unconsecrated man.

It is a messy death and I have no idea if he's bitten Jed. Blood is everywhere, cuts on our arms, faces and legs from our fall down the hill. He is still not conscious but his chest rises and falls.

I tug at him, shake his shoulder. But a pair of Unconsecrated children advance on us. I leave Jed and approach them, my fingers loose around the hilt of the scythe. The Unconsecrated have no avarice, no skill in the hunt. Their only strength is numbers, wearing down the living. And so the two children shamble toward me and it is easy to swipe the blade at them. To watch as it cleaves through the skulls and they each drop, a pile of clothes surrounding desiccated flesh.

“Come on, Jed,” I say. I get back to his side and begin to tug at his arms. “We have to move!” He opens his eyes again but can't get his legs under his body. His movements are slow, uncoordinated. I keep pulling at his arms, bracing myself in the mud, slipping too much to get us anywhere.

More Unconsecrated advance on us and I leave him to keep fighting. It's a never-ending stream of them. I look up to the top of the hill to see even more sliding down.

And I am certain that this is how I will die. That I have chosen wrong. That this was not the path I was supposed to take. The gate was nothing more than a gate. It was not an answer.

There are too many Unconsecrated bearing down on us. Too many for me to defend against.