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

Betrayal (Chapter 32)

BETRAYAL: The Ninth Circle of Hell

Chapter XXXII

Two days later

Tyler led a public tribunal for Eddy and Smitty where shouts for death had erupted within seconds. Tyler passed judgment two minutes later and condemned both to die—not by hanging but by zeds. Not a single person cried for leniency.

It’d taken only three months for society to return to Old Testament ways of thinking.

Tyler delayed the execution one day to make arrangements and assemble volunteers. Jase had been the first to step up. I had been the second, quickly followed by Griz and Tack.

After I checked on Clutch, we headed out from the park in Camp Fox’s heaviest duty truck—a HEMTT—that was nearly impenetrable against zeds. It made Doyle’s garbage trucks look like Tonkas.

Tyler sat up front in the cab with Griz, who drove us to Camp Fox. Tyler rode along because he felt like it was his responsibility to see his decisions through. He’d become a recluse since the trial. I imagined the hard decisions he’d been forced to make were tearing him up inside. Me? I thought Smitty and Eddy had it coming after the pain they’d caused. They’d been idiots to believe there were safe zed-free zones out there, let alone that we could move hundreds of people across states to such zones. Before the outbreak, I never would’ve thought I could become so ruthless. Now, I realized it was the only way to survive.

The rest of us sat in the HEMTT’s open back with the prisoners. The numbers of zeds in fields and on the roads grew as we neared the camp, though we’d already figured most would still be within Camp Fox. Zeds weren’t exactly adventurous unless in a herd. They were lemmings like that. Now if we could only find a giant cliff and lead them to it.

As we passed Doyle’s abandoned camp, I was surprised to find relatively few zeds in the area. I was even more surprised to find the gate closed. “I thought Lendt’s guys had blown open the gate,” I said.

Jase shrugged, not taking his gaze off Eddy sitting across from him. “Guess not.”

The thought nagged at me until we reached Camp Fox. The gate stood wide open from when the base was evacuated, and several zeds wandered around near the guard box. Griz ran over three on his way through.

The HEMTT drove slowly down the road, swerving around bodies, and came to a stop a couple hundred meters inside. We couldn’t risk going too deep into the Camp where the risk of being overtaken by zeds was too high. Even here, I could make out over twenty stragglers wandering around the open grass area.

I stood. “This is it.”

Both Eddy and Smitty looked scared shitless, though Smitty also looked pissed off as though he thought he should be exempt from punishment.

Jase grabbed Eddy’s arm and forced him to stand while Tack and I dragged Smitty to his feet.

Eddy looked across our faces with wide eyes as though one of us could pardon him. He watched me and paled. Then I realized he was looking past me. “Mom?”

Eddy tried to lunge forward, but Jase held him back. “Mom!”

About thirty meters away, a female zed with the same hair color as Eddy cocked its head and sniffed the air. Then it started to shuffle toward the truck.

“Mom.” His lips trembled and tears fell down his face. “I’m so sorry.”

The breath hardened in my lungs. Of all the shitty, rotten luck.