Jon tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry. He narrowed his eyes and tilted his head.
You all?
“Ah, so I guess it’s true that you didn’t know. We do quite a good job of hiding our work most of the time. You thought it was the zombies that killed them, didn’t you?”
Jon’s eyes dropped to the ground. His legs nearly gave out from under him, and he felt the tug of the noose at his throat as he went limp.
Judah’s eyes went big, lighting up. “Yes…you did think that. Well, that wasn’t the idea. See, we were going to bring them back to camp with us when we found them wandering in the woods, alone. Your son would have grown into a strong young man. He would have been a lot of help around here. And your wife, she was a pretty one. It would have been nice to have her around. But you know, she had to be stubborn. She had to try to fight and resist us. We didn’t want to kill her, you understand that, Jon. But she gave us no other choice. And those zombies that were nearby…well, I’d hate to have seen what they did to their corpses.”
All this time, he’d been killing the undead in response to the deaths of Carrie and Spencer. But when he’d had the chance to take out those responsible, the man responsible, he’d simply handed himself over to him instead. An utter sickness came to Jon’s stomach, and he couldn’t hold back the tears in his eyes. Tears not of sadness, but of rage and anger.
“It makes me happy that I was able to break you before I watch you die,” Judah said, whispering at a level where only Jon could hear him. “Now, we’ll see if I can make you squeal just like your wife and your bitch son did.”
Jon jerked his head up, wishing he could find the spit in his mouth to launch it into Judah’s face. But there was nothing there.
“Even if you don’t, I’m sure I can make someone else you care about squeal. Maybe when we go back to Hope’s Dawn to finish the job we started.”
And there it was. Judah had been lying the entire time. Jon’s sacrifice would be for nothing. Brooke had called it, and Jon had had some sort of hope that the Vultures would hold to their word if Jon turned himself in. But it would all be for nothing.
“I swear to God,” Jon said, “you are going to die a horrific death, you fucking bastard.”
Jon moved his hands and tried to get himself out of the noose, but nothing happened. The two men then grabbed him, and Judah took a couple of steps back before Jon had the chance to even try to kick at him. Judah laughed while the crowd booed Jon’s attempts to harm him.
Jon continued to kick and curse, but then one of the men punched him in the small of the back and kicked him behind the knee. He coughed from the punch and his leg buckled from the kick. He fell down and the rope caught him, pulling on his neck and choking him. The crowd cheered, and he remained there for around ten seconds before the men picked him back up. Judah then raised his hands.
“Silence,” he commanded, and the crowd went quiet. “We will commence with this public execution, and I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’d like to be able to hear if his neck snaps.”
The crowd cheered for only a few seconds before going quiet again.
Judah came back to Jon. He ran his hand through Jon’s hair and over his face, toying with him and sending a chill up Jon’s spine.
“I promise that I will take good care of your friends at Hope’s Dawn. I won’t make them suffer for too long.”
Jon had nothing to say as Judah stepped to the side. It would all have been futile at this point. So, Jon instead closed his eyes.
When he did, he found himself not only picturing Carrie and Spencer, who he knew he’d see soon, but also Brooke. He could see her smile, which had been the only thing to bring any sort of joy to him since his family’s passing. He lowered his head in shame, trying to fight off more tears in the moments before his death.
I’m sorry I’ve failed you, too.
He waited for the floor beneath him to disappear. To hear the sound of his neck snap. But the next thing to come was neither of those things.
It was an explosion.
35
Jon nearly fell from the surprise of the explosion, but managed to keep himself on his feet. The crowd had turned their attention from the gallows to the shed that was on fire to Jon’s left some thirty yards away. Only, there was no sign of the source of the explosion. Had something inside the shed simply caught fire?
Surprisingly, the Vultures remained calm. It was perhaps how Judah had trained them. The leader stood at the edge of the platform, looking out toward the burning shed. An eerie silence fell over the settlement as everyone waited to hear Judah’s command. All the while, Jon all but hung from the rope, ready for the floor to be thrown out from under him so he could meet his fate.
Judah had started to turn around, presumably to continue with the execution, when an engine roared in the distance. Everyone in the crowd turned around toward the front gate, following the sound.
Squinting, Jon watched as a box truck came barreling toward the camp. It failed to slow down, instead slamming through the gate and breaking it open. The metal fencing shot out on either side of the truck as it came speeding into the camp.
Jon’s eyes went back to the burning shed, and that’s when he saw a bottle flying through the sky. It crashed into a car sitting close to the burning shed. Fire lit up
