GAMELAND Episodes 1-2: Deep Into the Game + Failsafe (S. W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND)

by Saul Tanpepper

  I know what he’s thinking. Although I’m not flat-chested, I’m definitely not well-endowed, either. And he obviously hasn’t seen my fat ass.

  But pointing these things out to him isn’t going to make things any better. We’re already stressed enough.

  He reapplies my belt, checks to make sure it’s snug, then waves me back toward the water. “Just let yourself relax,” he says confidently.

  Without Kelly standing right there, his nervousness has vanished.

  I look out over the surface of the lake to where the others are still paddling around and find Kelly’s faded blue swim trunks and his lily-white legs. He hasn’t even noticed I’m not there with him. So much for buddying up.

  After the belt adjustment, staying at the surface turns out to be so much easier. Diving down to the bottom and coming back up for air takes very little effort, too. It’s only ten or twelve feet down and, with the flippers, only three or four quick kicks before I’m there. Once I get to the bottom, I relax. My body just sort of sits there, swaying gently with the movement of the water, neither rising nor sinking. It’s just as I imagined being weightless would be like.

  After a brief break and a light snack, we try out the rebreathers. Ash immediately gets into trouble with hers, complaining that she keeps forgetting and exhaling out through her nose, which means she has to surface to get a fresh lungful of air. I can see it in everyone’s eyes: What we’re doing isn’t just dangerous, it could be fatal if we don’t pay attention.

  After about the fourth or fifth time this happens, Micah lays into her. He tells her there won’t be air pockets inside the tunnels. The frustration is written all over his face. He’s worried about her, but I can see that he’s only trying to scare her into remembering. “You need to remember not to exhale through your nose, Ash,” he practically shouts, “or else you’ll be in deep shit.”

  “I’ll try,” she says. Her lip quivers. I want to go over and protect her, but I know it’s for her own good. She needs to try harder.

  “No,” Micah snaps. “Don’t try. You have to remember. Do whatever you need to do to remember, even if that means sticking corks up your nose.”

  Ash glares at him and we all stop and wait for it, the inevitable outburst. I can tell she’s close to breaking. If there’s anything I know about her, it’s that she hates appearing weak. That’s why she’s always got this tough-as-nails exterior. Inside, though, she’s fragile.

  But then she snorts and laughs. “Anyone got any ABC gum? You know, already been chewed? I can stick that up my nose.” And the tension melts away.

  After another twenty minutes, during which Ash stays completely submerged, Jake takes us to the other end of the levee. There are some ruins, giving us a chance to explore a little while practicing moving around and through obstacles.

  “Make sure you always know where your partner is. The idea is to get used to swimming while watching out for each other. And remember, we’re not here to become underwater salvage experts or anything. No wandering off.”

  He hands us each a waterproof flashlight and tells us to follow him. We all obey, grimly glancing around at each other, yet barely able to restrain our excitement. Even Kelly’s eager to give it a go. There’s a glint in his eyes that wasn’t there earlier, despite his initial reluctance. I smile tentatively at him. He takes my hand and asks me if I’m having fun yet.

  “I am now.” And I give his hand a squeeze. We quickly kiss, then splash into the water. We’re the last pair in.

  The ruins are surreal, nothing like anything I’ve ever seen before! I mean, they’re only an old two story commercial structure that happened to be built on a low point of land before the flood, but still. For the first time, I really begin to appreciate the old buildings and stuff we lost when the waters rose and covered the Wastes. Whole worlds of forgotten places where, just a single generation before us, people lived and worked and played. They slept in these buildings. They made love and they…

  They died.

  My heart falters. I wonder if anyone died in here. Or drowned. I wonder if a person who had drowned would return. What would a zombie do after reanimating underwater?

  We emerge from the one ruin and float over to the upper story windows of a second building. All of the glass has been broken out, most likely by the rising waters themselves, but maybe also by scavenger divers and thrill seekers. Nothing’s left inside. All the old furniture and fixtures are gone, leaving just an empty shell, which is now caked with mud and lake debris and storm wash.

  Jake guides us through the rooms. I feel like I’m in the belly of a sleeping beast. Then a big, black hole opens up before us, an elevator shaft, gaping like the beast’s gullet. We crowd around him as he enters it.

  He waits until we’re all there, then he shines his light down and we hover over the darkness that fills the space below like heavy water. We all look at each other and wonder the same thing: What’s down there? Jake’s beam of light gets soaked up before it hits bottom. It looks like a bottomless pit. Anything could be hiding in it.

  He signals, flips over, kicks and begins to descend. Almost as effortlessly, Micah does the same and follows. Then go Reggie and Ash, just as smoothly, and I think that Jake was right, this is a lot easier than I’d expected. Kelly tugs on my arm and we head down.

  The shaft continues for what seems like forever. I can feel my ears popping from the pressure. Some of the others can feel it too, because they’re puffing out their cheeks to clear our ears as Jake had shown us earlier. We rest for a moment until everyone’s ready again. I notice that Kelly keeps drifting upward and kicking himself back down. I make a note to remind him to use more weight tomorrow. I don’t want him to have to waste energy keeping himself down.

  Suddenly, a thousand bubbles of air dance their way past me. I look down and see Ashley’s panicked face. Her flashlight, now forgotten, drifts down into the inky darkness as her hands flutter near her mask. Now I can see her trying to suck air out of a canister that’s mostly empty. Her eyes widen and she starts to kick herself up. She shoves Micah aside. But I can already guess that she’ll never make it out in time. We’re too far inside the building.

  Jake shoots past us and grabs her leg. She kicks and kicks, but he doesn’t let go. I feel Kelly brush past me, aiming for Jake, thinking he’s trying to keep her from saving herself. But before he reaches him, Jake has yanked Ash’s goggles off and is holding it below her face. His thumb pushes the blue clearing button and a rush of air surges out and envelops her head. I see her open her mouth. She stops struggling.

  After a moment, Jake gestures upward and we begin to surface. I take one last look down into the depths, to where Ashley’s flashlight has settled on the bottom of the shaft, its beam stabbing weakly into the unseen chambers. Then I follow.

  “I can’t do this,” Ashley gasps, as soon as her head pops up out of the water. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  Reggie swims over to her and grabs the front of her wetsuit and pulls her close to him. “You can,” he says. “You’re tougher than the rest of us put together, Ash. You’re tougher than me. You can do this.”

  She looks around at us and we all dutifully nod. None of us wants her to back out now, least of all me. I don’t want to be the only girl in the group. But I’m also worried, and not just for her. I don’t think Reggie truly understands how difficult and risky this will be.

  But to me it’s clear. Our margin of error is thinner than the edge of a razor.

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  Chapter 10

  After returning from our practice dive, we laze around in Micah’s basement. Micah’s halfway through a bottle of his parent’s scotch. Kelly’s back to playing Zpocalypto and Reggie and Ashley have disappeared.

  Jake’s there, but he’s sitting on a folding chair on the other side of the room, watching from the shadows. Kelly reamed him on the way back for not telling us we could use the air in the goggles in an emergency. Jake claimed he was going to, that he wanted to drill into ou
r heads not to rely on it, but it’s clear that Kelly doesn’t believe him. “What else have you forgotten to tell us?”

  “Nothing.”

  The tension is thick in the room, and I can tell Kelly’s just waiting for another excuse to say we’re all nuts for trying this. I’m relieved when Ash and Reg return and she grabs my arm and drags me upstairs to find something to eat.

  I look for anything with protein, but all I can find is an open bag of stale peanuts. I take a handful and start munching on them. Meanwhile, Ash digs into a carton of mint chip ice cream.

  “Want some, Jess?” she asks, holding it out so I can see how badly freezer burned it is. I shake my head and mumble something about keeping my girlish figure. Sugar and I don’t play well together. A moment on the lips, as they say, forty minutes on the treadmill. With my metabolism, even three solid hours a week of high intensity hapkido training can’t keep an ounce of chocolate from turning into a pound of butt-lard.

  Ashley, on the other hand, seems to be able to subsist almost exclusively on a diet of sugar and caffeine. She never exercises, much to my amazement, and yet never seems to gain a pound. Granted, the girl isn’t exactly skinny to begin with, but neither is she fat. Her five-foot-five, hundred and twenty pound curvy frame is one hundred percent energy. She burns more calories just breathing for five minutes than I do over an entire tourney weekend.

  “Besides, it looks too much like zombie flesh,” I tell her.

  “Mmm, yum,” Ash replies, and we both laugh, even though it’s obvious why zombies happen to be on my mind. “You’d think Micah’s parents would have more food around,” she complains. “At least not expired food. Even the milk in here is old and chunky. What does Micah eat, anyway?”

  “Duh. Take out,” I say, pointing to the overflowing trashcan.

  I’ve never met his parents. Micah says his father is constantly away on business and his mother is constantly out of the country visiting relatives in Texas or Arkansas. According to him, she’s pretty useless.

  I know all about useless mothers, have had plenty of experience with one myself, but it seems to me that Micah’s really only half correct: If his mom is useless, then didn’t that make his father just as bad? He’s never around either.

  I’d once privately mentioned this to Kelly, but he just changed the subject. Of course, he’d had his hand stuck up my shirt at the time, so I couldn’t be sure his response actually counted for anything.

  “Honestly,” I said, as he struggled with my bra, “has anyone ever seen his parents?”

  “Really, Jess?” he complained. “You really want to talk about Micah now?”

  “Not him, his parents.”

  “They’re real. Don’t worry about it.”

  There’s certainly enough evidence supporting their existence: the pictures hanging on the walls and sitting on shelves, the female hygiene products in the bathroom (yeah, I’m nosy, so just shoot me). Micah’s an only child so they can’t be anyone else’s but his mother’s. Plus, the packages addressed to them that I occasionally see sitting around on the counter.

  Ashley gazes mournfully into the empty ice cream carton. “Think we should make a run to the grocery store?”

  I shake my head. “It’s almost dinnertime.”

  She shrugs, then sets the carton carefully down on top of the trash bin, being careful that it doesn’t topple the unsteady heap. I’m tempted to go over and gather the top of the bag and take it outside, but I know Ash would just tease me about being so motherly.

  She grabs my hand as we head back downstairs. “I’m nervous about tomorrow,” she says. But before I can respond, we’re back downstairs, and I can sense she doesn’t want me to say anything about her confession. Still, I squeeze her hand to let her know that I understand and feel the same way.

  The party breaks up shortly after that.

  “Meet back here by seven tomorrow morning,” Reggie tells us. “High tide peaks at four, so we’ll have till about ten to take advantage of the outgoing current. That means we should be suited up and in the water by eight thirty. Nine, at the absolute latest.”

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  Chapter 11

  I don’t sleep a wink all night, so I’m dragging when I finally get up at five thirty the next morning after checking the clock a dozen times over the space of about ten minutes. A cold shower doesn’t even help. I don’t feel rested at all. I just feel jumpy.

  The house is quiet when I creep down the stairs. Eric’s already gone to work, his lone breakfast bowl in the sink waiting for him to wash it after his shift at the police station.

  Grandpa doesn’t eat breakfast. I don’t know if he ever did, now that I think about it. I can’t ever remember him doing anything but going out to the back porch for a smoke, his extra large mug of coffee in his hand, steaming into the air. Rain or shine. It feels like such an old habit that it makes me wonder if he’s always done that, even back when it would snow. It’s been twenty years since Connecticut was cold enough to get any. I bet he did.

  I learned long ago to just leave him be. He doesn’t like company when he goes out to the railing. He just stands there looking out past our backyard and all the other backyards in the neighborhood. Looking south. He never talks about what he’s thinking. He never shares his secrets.

  What does he see?

  I don’t know.

  But he’s not downstairs yet, so I grab myself some cornflakes and juice and sit down at the table to do a quick check on the Media stream.

  Then I raid the cabinets.

  I look for anything that won’t get ruined if it gets wet: granola bars hermetically sealed in plastic, a bunch of emergency waters in disposable bag containers, a couple oranges. I’m busy packing them into my backpack when I hear someone’s throat clear.

  “Mom?”

  She stands at the entry to the kitchen looking miserable, like a hangover that just won’t end, and I realize that pretty much sums things up with her—has pretty much summed them up for the past fifteen years. Her hair’s a mess and her nightshirt is stained and worn and has holes in the collar. She smacks her lips unappealingly, then scratches the underside of her left breast.

  A shadow shifts behind her and some guy appears and brushes into the kitchen. He slaps her ass and grunts. It’s a different guy than the one she brought home yesterday afternoon.

  Hey! I want to scream at him. He looks like the wife-beater type, but I could probably take him easily, knock him down a few rungs. “Never be the aggressor,” Master Rupert’s voice councils me. But my anger shouts even louder: Don’t treat my mother that way.

  She grunts, and I think, Why do I even bother? If she doesn’t care about herself, why should I?

  “What’re you doing, honey?” she asks me. The man, thinking she’s talking to him, mumbles something about beer.

  I sigh. “Just getting some snacks for later.” I stare daggers at the man’s back, but they bounce harmlessly off. “I don’t know if I’ll have time to come home for lunch. In fact, I may be late for dinner.”

  She slips from the wall, tilting like gravity can’t make up its mind today which way to pull. She seems to fall into the kitchen. For a split second I expect her to land splat on her face, and my heart almost stops. But she catches herself. She manages to limp to the table and sink into a chair.

  Meanwhile, Mister Penis-du-jour is bent over in front of the fridge, probably confused by the milk jug sitting directly in front of the incomplete six pack of Hudson River Pilsner. Micah calls it Piss-ner and refuses to drink it. It’s that bad.

  “Did you hear me?” I ask. “I might not be home for dinner.”

  “Okay, honey.”

  I give her a chuff of disgust before I snatch my backpack from the chair and whirl out of the room. As I do, I hear the top of a beer can pop open. Then a second. The front door slams behind me as I flee.

  Kelly sees me from his bedroom window before I turn up his front walk. He intercepts me with a whistle. I tilt my head up and blink aga
inst the bright sunlight reflecting off the glass.

  “Be right down, J,” he whisper-shouts.

  I stand in the coolness of the porch overhang and wait. It’s already warm. The temperature is supposed to peak at just under a hundred today, and humidity is high. Just another average August day in Greenwich, and the thought of slipping into that cool water actually takes the edge off the fear gnawing at my gut.

  The door creaks open and Kelly slips out. He gently closes it behind him, acting as if the soft click of the latch is as loud as a gunshot. I give him a questioning look and he exhales through his pursed lips. He gives me a quick shake of the head. I notice dark circles under his eyes.

  When we get to the sidewalk, I ask, “You couldn’t sleep either?”

  “It’s Kyle,” he says. “He’s finally sleeping now, but he had another rough night last night.”

  I nod. Kyle’s had a tough go of it. He had kidney failure when he was barely two and almost died. He managed to get a new one, but he’s always sick. He often has these spells where he spikes a fever and screams as if he’s in terrible pain. Nobody knows why. The only thing that makes it stop is exhaustion. But he’s a light sleeper and even the slightest disruption can rouse him, starting it all over again.

  I can see the strain of this most recent episode on Kelly’s face.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” I ask. “I’ll stay home with you instead of going. They don’t need us.”

  He turns to me, but the look on his face isn’t one of relief. Instead, he shakes his head and says. “No, I’m going.” Then he adds, “Someone’s got to pay the bills.” I know what he’s referring to, just not what he means. It’s such a random thing that all I can do is simply dismiss it, chalking it up to his fatigue.

  The financial strain on the Corbens has been almost unbearable for them. Kelly’s dad works two jobs and his mom stays home to care for Kyle. Kelly has offered to start working a part time job—he’s also hinted that maybe he should go work for ArcWare after graduating—but his parents are adamant about him going to college.