100 Days in Deadland (Deadland Saga, #1)(93)

Expecting to find Jase’s lifeless body, I was surprised to find Jase alive and well, and I let out a breath that I felt like I’d been holding since Griz grabbed me.

Then I noticed Jase had a rifle leveled at his best friend. Eddy kneeled on the floor, whimpering, with his wrists restrained behind his back. Tyler stood nearby, his arms folded over his chest.

I frowned. “What’s going on?”

“Eddy couldn’t take the guilt eating away at him anymore,” Jase said with a cutting edge to his voice. “He’d figured his mom was exempt from getting chewed up by zeds. He figured wrong.”

“None of that was supposed to happen. I swear it!” Eddy pleaded. “No one except Colonel Lendt was supposed to get hurt.”

My jaw dropped. Eddy was the traitor? Of all people, a kid betrayed us?

Eddy sobbed. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I was trying to help everyone. I screwed up.”

“What you did is not called screwing up. It’s called treason,” Tyler said coolly. “Your actions brought about the deaths of over three hundred innocent people, including your own mother.”

Eddy lowered his head and sniffled, his body quivering.

“You can start making amends by giving us Doyle’s location,” Tyler said.

Eddy looked up, confused. He shook his head. “I had nothing to do with Doyle. Hawkeye arranged everything, even getting the two Dogs into Camp Fox.”

Tyler frowned. “The AM jockey?”

The blood drained from my head as I finally placed Hawkeye’s voice.

Eddy nodded. “Hawkeye had proof of zed-free zones that welcomed survivors. We could go there and be safe. But he’d said that Lendt didn’t tell us about the zones because he didn’t want to lose his power and control over everything and everyone at Camp Fox.”

“And Hawkeye showed you this proof?”

“Hawkeye told me.”

Tyler slowly shook his head. “Son, you were played for a fool. Hawkeye’s the one interested in power and control. Not Lendt.”

Eddy sniffled before looking across the faces in the room. His gaze stopped at one and morphed into a glare. “It’s your fault. Mom would still be alive if it wasn’t for you.”

The room temp dropped twenty degrees when every pair of eyes turned to Smitty.

Smitty’s gaze darted to Tyler. “I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

Eddy’s glare narrowed. “You said everything would be all right. That we were helping everyone.”

Smitty fidgeted. “Stupid kid thinks to throw a scapegoat out to save his own ass. Don’t try to pull me into this, Eddy. This is all on you.”

Tyler took a step forward and shook his head. “You’ve always been a lousy poker player, Smitty.” He nodded to Tack and Griz who I noticed both already had a pistol aimed at their fellow soldier. “Arrest him. Put him with Eddy.”

Surprisingly, Smitty didn’t rabbit. He stood, jaw clenched, while Tack disarmed and restrained him and Griz held the weapon level on him.

“I don’t get it. Why, Corporal?” Tyler asked.

Smitty snorted. “When I joined up, I vowed to defend this country against all threats, domestic and foreign.”

I rolled my eyes. How cliché. “And how does killing innocents fall under that?”

“None of that was supposed to happen. Hawkeye had said only the leadership had to go, so then everyone could relocate to the zed-free zone. The Dogs must’ve disobeyed orders. Maybe Doyle got wind of their plans and turned them.”


“Hawkeye is Doyle, you idiot,” I said and then walked out.





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.