100 Days in Deadland (part 1 of the Deadland Saga)

Violence (Chapter 14)

VIOLENCE: The Seventh Circle of Hell

Chapter XIV

I rolled over, kicking away from the zed, and stabbed it through its eye before I realized that someone had already shot it from behind. Brown sludge seeped from the eye like half-set pudding, and I fell onto my butt, gagging at the stench.

“You okay?”

I looked up to see Griz standing before me.

“I am now,” I said.

He held out a hand and pulled me up. “Hoorah,” he grunted before heading after another zed that needed put down.

I stood near the third barrack—what remained of it, anyway—which was now a giant campfire, with flickers of embers and glints of soot showering us. Corpses covered the ground around me. Most lay unmoving. One zed had a blade through its mouth, pinning it to the ground. It chewed at the handle even while it convulsed and spasmed.

Someone had turned the sirens off, but the remaining sounds—cries of the dying—were heart-wrenching. A woman’s weeping drew me to the shadows to my left. I edged closer, keeping the knife ready. She lay amid the corpses, her shoulder and leg badly chewed. She didn’t have long before she turned, not with injuries that bad. She was clawing at the dirt with wretched, bloody hands, trying to pull herself toward something. “My baby,” she cried over and over.

I frowned and looked to where she was trying to drag herself. A tiny body lay unmoving on the ground, its limbs twisted in unnatural ways.

I kept the knife ready in case the infant had turned, though I supposed it’d have no teeth to bite with. I rolled the baby over to find myself looking at the lifeless eyes of an infant, his fear frozen in his features at death. With such severe injuries, if he were going to turn, he would’ve by now. I’d seen a handful of people who’d died instead of turning. Maybe their bodies weren’t strong enough to support the virus, maybe they had some kind of immunity, who knew. I figured those were the lucky ones.

I lifted the baby’s broken body as gently as I could and carried him over to his mother. She reached out with her uninjured arm and pulled him to her. She buried her face in his hair and rocked him, murmuring loving words into his ears.

I left her alone while I went back to where Nick lay propped against the building and got what I needed.

I reloaded the Beretta as I walked toward the woman. Tears blurred my aim, but I was close enough it wouldn’t matter. I fired twice at point blank.

Her suffering was over.

A hand touched my shoulder, and I snapped around to see Tyler.

He grabbed my free hand. “Come with me.”

He led me down the block. He only let go to shoot a stray zed.

At the end of the block, he commandeered a Jeep. He drove in silence, taking me through the winding roads. As we approached the open square, I stared at the silhouette of the lone gallows under the moonlight.

“You were going to hang me?” I asked. “Is that part of your so-called justice system?”

“It wasn’t for you,” Tyler said quickly. “It was for a convict who killed one civilian and injured another when they caught him stealing food.”

I rode numbly as Tyler drove us to an area of the camp where several large garages stood. In the fence was a gate that had been blasted open.

Tyler parked and looked me over. “Lendt’s a stickler for rules, so even though you helped tonight, he’ll still have you stand trial. I agree with him that you should stand trial, but the game’s changed. But, I also think that, sometimes, the rules need to be broken. With all the chaos, it would’ve been easy for you to escape.”