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

by Saul Tanpepper

  Easier said than done. I just wish everything would go back to the way it was. Maybe it wasn’t exactly normal, but at least it wasn’t…this.

  I sigh and get up. Grandpa’s already at the table, waiting. So is Mom, which surprises me. She gives me a weak smile when she sees me, more than her usual self-pitying smile. At least she’s trying, but she looks uncomfortable doing it, awkward. She even did her hair up, and her clothes are clean. More surprises on a day when I don’t need them.

  “Everything all right?” I ask. I hand Eric his Link back.

  “Just have a seat, young lady,” Grandpa says. “We’re going to have a nice dinner with all of us for once.” He looks over at my mom, holds her gaze for a moment. It’s a neutral stare—he’s a master of hiding his emotions.

  “I hear you lost your Link again,” he says, after we’ve sat. It’s not an accusation, though it sort of feels like one. “You need to learn to be more responsible.” Yup, definitely an accusation.

  Mom puts her hand on his arm and says, “Ulysses.” She’s the only one who ever calls him that. She’s the only one who can get away with it. To everyone else, he’s simply “The Colonel.” Or Grandpa.

  He raises an eyebrow at her, just a fraction of an inch.

  After the food is dished out and we’re starting to eat, Grandpa turns to me. “Where did you lose it, young lady?”

  “I didn’t lose it. It was stolen.”

  The eyebrow raises another fraction of an inch.

  “So they’ll catch whoever has it. I assume they put a trace on it. They’ll find it, just like they did that last guy.” He stares at me for a moment. “I’m sure no matter where it is, they’ll find it.”

  My face feels brittle, like if I move a muscle, it’ll crumble away and show everything I’m trying to hide.

  I turn my gaze to Eric, who’s also just sitting there, watching me, watching the both of us. I wonder what he’s thinking. He has to know something’s not right. He tried pinging me. He saw the message. He knows the Link’s outside the Stream, meaning either beyond the reach of our communications network or physically destroyed. But why would someone steal it just to destroy it? They wouldn’t, leaving only the other possibility.

  Speaking carefully, he says, “It looks like her Link’s been disabled.”

  “Strange indeed,” Grandpa says.

  He stares at me. From somewhere far away, I’m dimly aware of Mom asking, “Why is that strange?” But Grandpa just sits there, thinking his own thoughts. And I sit here wondering what they are.

  Thankfully, Eric’s Link buzzes right then, startling us out of the moment. I blink and look over.

  “My bad. Thought I’d turned the audible alarm off.” He looks at his screen and frowns. Then he jumps to his feet. “Damn it,” he says. “Got to go. Sorry, Mom.”

  She smiles tenderly at him, and I think I can see some of the mother inside of her peeking out. “It’s all right, dear.”

  “What’s the matter?” I ask.

  “It’s my boss. He needs me to come in.”

  “Why, dear?” Mom asks. Now she looks worried. It’s amazing the emotions she can suddenly express when she’s not numb with alcohol or drugs.

  “There’s a…problem,” he says, shoving another bite of meatloaf into his mouth while he simultaneously tries to scroll through his screen and put on his jacket. “Down in New York. They’re calling in all NCD within a hundred mile radius.”

  “A problem? What kind of problem?”

  “I can’t really say.”

  Mom gasps. “Another outbreak?”

  He shakes his head. “I need to go.” He bends down over Mom and kisses her cheek.

  “Be careful, honey,” she tells him.

  “I will. And, guys, not a word about this to anyone,” he says, holding up his Link. “It’s not made Media yet.”

  “How can we tell anyone something if we don’t know what it is?” I ask.

  Grandpa’s still looking at me, still watching me. His face is a blank slate. Almost a blank slate. Over the years I’ve learned to read of few of his emotions. The slight tilt of his head, for example, just like he’s doing now. I know what it means. He says to Mom, even though his eyes never leave mine, “Well, we know it has something to do with Zulus, don’t we? Otherwise, why would they call Eric in?”

  Mom winces. She hates that old term, Zulus. Hates it even more than ‘zombie’ and ‘CU’ and ‘IU.’ She hates any reference to the Undead, in fact. But especially Zulu. It was the term in use when her husband was taken away from her.

  Eric squeezes Mom’s shoulder, then straightens and clips his EM pistol to his belt. “Sorry your birthday dinner had to end this way.”

  Chapter 7

  I can’t believe I forgot my mother’s birthday. After all the criticizing I’ve done about my brother being a jerk, at least he remembered.

  “It’s all right, dear,” she tells me after I apologize. She leans over and plants a dry kiss on my cheek, then leaves the dinner table, the food on her plate mostly untouched.

  There’s no cake. No presents.

  I’m a horrible daughter.

  And now this. I can’t help but feel somehow responsible for what’s going on in Manhattan.

  In fact, I know I am.

  A few minutes later I hear Mom talking to someone in her room. Grandpa and I finish our dinners in silence. If I can just not look at him, maybe I can keep my face from giving it all away. The carefully constructed shell I’ve plastered there since coming home yesterday threatens to crumble and expose my secrets.

  While I’m washing the dinner plates—an excuse to hide my shaking hands—I hear a car pull up outside at the curb. It’s not the police, and I breathe a sigh of relief. But then I hear the front door open and see my mother going to out whoever it is, and I suddenly wish it was the cops. At least then she’d stay home.

  Grandpa goes off and leaves me alone, much to my surprise. That look he’d given me earlier had hinted at suspicion. I’m almost afraid of what he’ll find out in the privacy of his office. He still has friends in the government, despite his rather public fall from grace. One call and he’ll know exactly why Eric’s going to New York. Or that we were there, too.

  I finish the dishes and dry my hands, then sit down at the table and wake the house Link. I tune it to Media and search the sub-streams for news. There’s nothing about an outbreak, nothing about Infecteds in lower Manhattan. Nothing at all.

  I keep expecting to see a reference to a couple of kids getting caught coming out of the water near the Midtown tunnel. I don’t.

  Now I’m really worried. My shaking’s become so bad that I’m barely able to scroll through the Link.

  The closest thing I find suggesting something is going on in Manhattan is a small mention on the financial pages about the stock market getting shut down an hour early this afternoon and the building being evacuated due to an unspecified threat.

  These sorts of things happen all the time—terrorists, protestors, random crazies. But this one just feels different. The video capture shows an officer forming a blockade. He holds his hand up to keep the reporter from getting closer. But what I notice is the EM pistol on his hip rather than the standard forty-five caliber police issue. Only NCD officials carry EM pistols. And NCD officers investigate crimes by and against the Undead.

  I think it’s time to talk to Ash and Micah and Reg again.

  “Best you stay home tonight,” Grandpa says, startling me. I hadn’t noticed him standing just inside the doorway. I wonder how long he’s been there, watching me, blocking my way out of the kitchen.

  “Stay home? What do you mean?”

  “Those friends of yours are trouble. I’ve kept my thoughts to myself about them in the past, but now I think it’s time I say what’s on my mind.”

  “Grandpa—”

  “They’re not a good influence on you, young lady.”

  “They’re my friends. You don’t even know them.”

  He
holds something up. It’s my inhaler. “You’re not being responsible. Losing your Link, forgetting to take your medicine like you’re supposed to. Three times a day. How many doses have you missed in the past couple of days?”

  I grab it from his hand. “So I forgot. It’s not like I actually really need it that much.”

  “Six missed doses in four days,” he says, shaking his head.

  “You downloaded my dosing information?” I shout. “You have no right, Grandpa!”

  I expect him to get angry, but he doesn’t. I’ve never seen him lose his temper. Just once I wish he would. Instead, he reminds me of the usual crap about the medicine being an immunity booster. And then, when he finishes, he surprises me by adding, “You’re special, Jessie. You need that medicine so you won’t get sick.”

  “How am I special?”

  But he backs away, leaving the way clear for me to leave. “Someday you’ll see. Just…stay in tonight, Jessie. It’s not a good night for you to be going out.”

  Chapter 8

  I’m sitting in the darkened living room and Grandpa’s in bed asleep when Eric comes in several hours later. I know it’s Eric and not Mom, despite there being just the light from the street filtering in through the curtains, because I recognize the sound of his Jeep when it pulls into the driveway. Kelly keeps telling him that he’s got bad brushes in the motor, which gives it a sort of characteristic chuffing sound when it runs. Like Kelly even knows what brushes are.

  Eric walks in and quietly closes the door and carefully locks it.

  I clear my throat.

  “Jessie? Why are you still up?” He walks over. The light from the streetlamp shines on his face. It’s smudged with dirt.

  “Is everything okay?” I ask.

  He takes another step into the room, stops, then lays his jacket and holster carefully onto the arm of the chair. He moves through the gloom like a ghost before settling heavily on the couch next to me.

  “There’s…” He exhales, trying to remember what he was going to say. But then he must change his mind because when he speaks next, it’s to ask a question. And not just any question, a shocker: “What do you know about Dad’s death?”

  I blink into the darkness for a few seconds, trying to process what he’s asking. I shrug. “Not much.”

  I actually have no recollection of my father. He was murdered when I was two. No one in the family talks much about it, though that doesn’t mean I haven’t heard a lot about it. All through grade school I was tormented by kids who claimed they knew what had happened, had been told by their parents. I’d always just assumed the taunting was the standard animosity that rose up against my family after the outbreaks.

  Eric was hounded, too, from what I understood, but by then he was already out of school and the people harassing him were much older and the taunting much more serious. There were death threats. And all because of Grandpa.

  He was the man responsible for pushing the whole Undead project with the government. Everything that happened since—the Zulus and Omegamen, the Life Service laws, Forbidden Zones and the war, then Arc Properties and Gameland—traces back to that project. But the truth was, Grandpa had very little to do with all that. He’d already left the government in disgrace by then. And he’s never been associated with Arc Properties, not as far as I’ve ever known. So while he may have been the seed and zombies the tree that grew from it, he’d always disavowed the rotten fruit it bore.

  “I know he was killed by an Infected,” I answer, “and that he never came back because most of his brain was eaten.”

  Eric’s wince is so visceral, so intense, that I actually feel the couch move. I don’t experience the depth of emotions that he does about it, though. I know I should. Emotionally, I should be more sensitive about the whole thing because of who we’re talking about, but I can’t feel anything. It’s like we’re talking about a complete stranger. I never knew the guy.

  Eric, on the other hand, was ten when Dad died. He has memories. For him, Dad’s death is all too real and personal.

  “I don’t know many of the actual details, either,” he admits. “So much of it was classified and Grandpa… Well, you know I can’t talk to him. We’re like oil and water. That’s what my quack shrink says anyway.”

  I smile in the darkness. I know he’s just saying that for my benefit. He knows what I think about psychiatrists. A hapkido master is all the counseling I need.

  “And what I remember…” He coughs. “Like you, I’ve heard a lot about what happened over the years, from people who think they know.”

  “Yeah,” I mumble. It feels strange to be talking with Eric like this, to be…bonding. It happens so rarely.

  He jumps up, shattering the moment. “Go to bed, Jess. Forget I ever brought it up. It was stupid of me to dig up the past.”

  “Is it the past?” I ask. Then, when he doesn’t answer, I say, “What happened down in Manhattan?”

  He gives me a strange look. “How did you know it was Manhattan?”

  “That’s what you said before you left.”

  “I said New York.”

  I’m glad it’s dark in the room, otherwise I’m sure he’d see my face flush. “New York, Manhattan,” I quickly say. “It’s all the same to me.”

  He grunts, but instead of answering, he turns and gathers up his EM pistol and jacket. He’s about to leave when he reconsiders. He comes back over and stops in front of me, hovering, a dark featureless shadow.

  “I suppose what I can tell you is what I think’ll be on the Stream in the morning: Some of the IUs from Long Island got into Manhattan. NCD’s running the investigation, but they’ve brought in the military to carry out the cleansing operation.” He must hear my startled gasp, because he adds, “Don’t worry. We’re pretty sure we’ve rounded them all up.”

  His EM pistol glints in the darkness. It’s probably just my imagination, but I can smell ozone, like something burning. I wonder how many times he fired it tonight. I wonder if maybe he used it on anyone still living. I’m afraid to ask.

  He folds his jacket over the pistol and says, “We didn’t use these tonight. They don’t work as well on IUs as on zoms with implants.” His eyes unfocus and he shudders. “They issued us shotguns. Blasted anything that moved that didn’t have a reflective vest on.”

  I know how much he hates guns—real guns, anyway, with real bullets.

  He exhales and rubs his shoulder, wincing. “I’m going upstairs to take a shower to get this stink of me. Then I’m going to bed. You should, too.”

  I stand up. His words bounce through my head like boulders: Blasted anything that moved.

  I hope to God that doesn’t include Kelly and Jake.

  Chapter 9

  The next morning there’s still no word from Kelly and Jake.

  My nerves are shot.

  After last night, I’m scared to death of what might’ve happened to them. And every time a car drives down the street, I keep expecting it to be the cops.

  I didn’t get any sleep. I pray they’re not hurt. I hope they weren’t caught up in the sweep last night. I hope they don’t try coming through the tunnel until things settle down. I fear…

  I don’t even want to think of the possibilities.

  “Just act normally,” Micah had said. And Ash had added, “Don’t give the cops too many details if they talk to you. Keep it simple.” It makes me wonder how many times she’s been in this sort of situation. Despite her tough exterior, I doubt she has any experience dealing with the cops. Not this kind of experience, anyway. None of us has.

  Act normally? How the hell am I supposed to do that?

  But there’s nothing else to do, at least until we either get word that Kelly and Jake are safe, or they show up again. So I grab my gear bag and head for the dojang. I’ll probably be useless during my forms, but getting my ass kicked in sparring is still better than sitting around at home waiting and imagining worst case scenarios.

  The police drive up just as I head
down the front steps, almost as if they’d been waiting for me to come outside. Two officers get out of the car: the first is younger, blond and trim; the other older, graying and sloppy in his appearance.

  The contrast is almost cliché, and I can tell just by looking at them that the younger one is going to be all business as he tries to impress his partner, while the partner is going to stand back and let him intimidate me before he comes to the rescue. He’ll appear amused, then embarrassed. Finally he’ll get impatient and step in with an apology. Good cop, bad cop.

  But I get it all wrong: It’s the older cop who’s bad.

  “Mind if we go inside, ma’am?” he asks. “It’s a tad warm out here.” He sticks a finger inside his collar and adjusts it.

  “I’m going to be late for my class.”

  “This’ll only take a few minutes.”

  We go back inside. I consider offering them coffee, but that would only drag this out longer, and I’m not sure my nerves can handle it. Besides, it’s a hundred degrees outside. Nobody wants coffee.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have any java, would you?”

  I give him an incredulous look. “No.”

  He sighs heavily, like it’s a great imposition. He holds up his department-issued Link and says, “We’ll be recording this.”

  “Shouldn’t a parent be here?”

  “Any reason one should be?” he asks. When I hesitate, he quickly adds, “It’s just a few innocent questions about your friend Kelly Corben. He is your friend, right?”

  I nod.

  “Just a friend?”

  “We’re seeing each other. What’s this about?”

  They ask when I saw him last, or talked with him, or heard from him. They don’t mention Micah or Ash. They don’t say anything about the hacking. It’s all about Kel. At least at first.

  I give them the vaguest answers I can think of: I saw Kelly a few days before, Saturday; he said something about planning a surprise for me; no, I don’t have any idea what kind of a surprise, but that was the last I’d heard from him.