He was talking about the implanted zombies that were recruited into The Game. They called them Players.
“There’s still the Infected Undead on the rest of the island,” I pointed out.
Reggie chuffed. “Yeah, like there’d be any IUs left after thirteen years. They’re all dead by now.” He waggled his fingers spookily at me and said, “No brains to feed on.”
“You don’t know that.”
He shook his head. “You’re beginning to sound just like your boyfriend. He says it’s not doable.”
“I didn’t say that.”
Reggie smiled. He was egging me on, and I’d fallen for it. I should’ve known. Whatever Kelly said, Reg always tried to say the opposite. And now that Kelly was saying it was impossible to break into LI, it just made Reg even more determined to say it wasn’t.
Kelly paused his game so he could tick reasons off on his fingers: “Fifty foot wall around the entire island, electrified razor wire, all the bridges demoed, no-fly zones, biometric mines in the East River, electromagnetic barrier—”
“EM, brah? Really? Chillax. I’m not talking about hacking in, I’m talking about breaking in. Remember? The EM’s nothing to worry about.”
“It could fry your implant,” I said.
“Implant, shmimplant.”
“There’s no way,” Kelly insisted. “I’m telling you, it’s impossible.”
“Maybe there is a way,” Micah said, still playing. He was one of those freaky types who could give a hundred percent of his attention to something like Zpocalypto or Warlock Four and yet still be fully involved in a conversation, even while being stoned off his gourd. I could never understand how he did it. The guy was more than just scary smart. It was like he could partition his brain into distinct segments—one for gaming, one for being wasted, one for everything else—yet still use them all at full capacity. He was like a computer. “I’ll give it some thought.”
“I know!” Ashley exclaimed. “We’ll just sprinkle a little fairy dust on our bodies and fly ourselves in.”
“I’ll sprinkle fairy dust over your body if you do mine,” Reggie said.
I snorted.
He looked over at me. “Every time someone disses a fairy, another zombie gets its wings.”
I rolled my eyes, but I was laughing.
“That’s just…stupid!” Kelly snapped. “Besides, you have to get through Manhattan’s restricted zones first. That can be a hassle.”
“That’s true,” I said. I’d gone there on occasion with my brother; he had a special pass. I remembered all the checkpoints and the guards questioning us.
Kelly smiled and nodded at me, thinking I was actually taking his side in the argument. “It’s crazy talk.”
I went over and plopped down on his lap and planted a kiss on his lips. It wasn’t one of our usual hot-n-heavy lip-bruising kisses—I didn’t want to start anything—but I hoped it was enough that he’d not take what I was about to say the wrong way.
“If Reggie says he can come up with a plan, then… Well, I’m in, too.”
Kelly leaned away from me like I was contagious.
Reggie gave a howl of triumph. “See? Didn’t I tell you it was a good idea?”
† † †
That was weeks ago now. How many exactly, I don’t know. I’ve lost count of the days.
Reggie is leaning on me, pushing all of his weight onto the bandage pressed at my side as if he’s afraid my guts are going to come spilling out at any moment. Now he doesn’t look so sure of himself.
“I knew this was bad,” he growls. “Right from the start I knew we shouldn’t have come here. That’s what I tried to tell you guys.”
I look up at Kelly standing outside the glass door looking in—what’s left of him, anyway—and I see now that he was right. He was right all along. I just wish he’d tried harder to stop us.
I don’t blame either of them, though. I don’t blame anyone. Not myself, not even the asshole who first planted the idea in Reggie’s brain. We all had our own private reason for coming. That’s what really drove us to do it. But would we have come if we knew then what we know now? Would we still have agreed to try?
I don’t know. Maybe not.
Then again, maybe.
As I lie here dying, lost somewhere in the Wastes with zombies closing in, wanting nothing more than to feed on those of us still alive, the truth finally hits home: it never really mattered what we wanted or didn’t want. Arc Entertainment had this all planned from the very beginning. They wanted us in The Game. That’s why it was so easy for us to break in.
And why getting out has been such a killer.
I slowly reach behind my back, to the cold metal of the gun tucked into my waistband. I’ve got one bullet left. Just one. I know it sounds cliché, but I’ve been saving it for just such a moment.
My fingers wrap around the grip; they find the safety and flick it off. They touch the curve of the trigger, test its resistance. Reggie sees the wince on my face as I pull it free, but he thinks it’s just the infection taking hold. He doesn’t yet see the gun. All he knows is that the disease is spreading inside of me. He knows the agony I’ll soon be going through. He knows the monster I’m about to become.
I cough. “Got any antivenin?” I ask, trying for humor.
He smiles a wistful smile.
I draw the gun out and hold it up. They all see it at the same moment, though it doesn’t register with any of them right away what I’m going to do with it. Then, all at once, they know, and they start yelling for me not to do it.
But I don’t hear them. All I can hear as I aim and pull the trigger is Kelly—my poor, dear, lost Kelly—whispering inside my head how much he loves me.
I guess he was a better player than I realized.
‡
PART ONE
The Plan. Or Rather the Pathetic Lack of One.
Chapter 1
Two days before breaking in.
Thursday mornings during the summer are set aside for free sparring at the dojang. I’ve been studying hapkido since I was nine and recently passed my 1st gup black belt. What prompted my older brother Eric to push me into martial arts was the second outbreak, the one that happened down in DC. He thought a little self-defense training might come in handy.
The problem with that kind of thinking is that nobody believes a bunch of fancy kicks and holds is any kind of defense against the Infected Undead. And especially not against those with implants. I’d seen the Omegaman propaganda videos in school and knew the damage they could do to a person when fully under the control of a functioning L.I.N.C. implant. But since the government only just started making them mandatory about ten years ago, there are still tons of people who don’t have one yet, just waiting to become an IU in the event of another outbreak.
So, yeah, while guns have their shortcomings, I’d rather have one than not.
Despite knowing all that, I decided to stick with the training anyway. I had other reasons for doing so. For one thing, it helped me manage my anger. For another, it kept the bullies who knew my family’s history from kicking my ass.
The first outbreak took place in New York, on Long Island, but I don’t really remember it. I was maybe four at the time. Eric says it was terrible. The one in Washington wasn’t as bad. The military had some experience dealing with thousands of IUs swarming through cities by then. It’s probably why DC was never abandoned like LI was. That, and because the island was already pretty trashed from the flooding earlier in the century. As it turns out, it looks like that flooding may provide us the means to break in.
Ashley pinged me last night during dinner to tell me that Micah and Reg had been working on figuring out a way to access LI without passing through the EM barrier. “They think they’ve come up with a working plan!” She’d sounded excited, breathless. Despite my own doubts, I couldn’t resist getting excited, too.
“And?” I’d asked, trying not to sound impatient. “What is it?”
Eric threw me a dirty look over the table. I ignored him. He’s always tried to take care of me like a parent, given how there was a huge gaping vacuum in our lives in that regard, but he’s barely able to take care of himself, much less me. Even his department-mandated shrink tells him that.
“So,” Ash said, “you know how everyone knows about the wall and no-fly zone, right?”
I grunted. It was all common knowledge. Plus the bridges, which were bombed out years back. I thought about mentioning how the East River was heavily mined, but I knew it would just make me sound like Kelly. And besides, it was a moot point anyway. None of us had a boat, or even access to one, so sailing across the river was out of the question. Mostly, though, I just kept quiet because Eric and Grandpa were sitting right there, trying not to look like they were listening, but not fooling anyone.
I turned my back and held my Link tight against me ear.
“Jessie?” Grandpa said. “Dinnertime is family time, young lady. Disconnect, please.”
“I’m sorry. This is important. I really have to take this.” I got up and slipped out of the kitchen.
“Jessie!” Eric called. “It can’t be that important.”
I heard Grandpa tell him to control himself, which, of course, led to another argument between them. I never understood the animosity the two shared for each other—frankly, I couldn’t care less—except for being aware that it had something to do with my father dying when I was two. Eric had been fourteen at the time, so he still has memories of Dad and all that happened after his death. It really messed him up.
Pretty much everything in my family traces back to that singular event, like it was some kind of Big Bang event or something: my mom’s nervous breakdown, Eric’s pacifist days followed by his stint in the Marines followed by his creepy obsession with the Undead, Grandpa’s scandal and then coming to live with us. I’d never known my father—except by reputation—so I never really felt much interest in learning about him and the circumstances surrounding how he’d died. At least he had the good sense to be murdered before the Life Service law was passed. Not that the government would’ve had much to work with in his case; from what little I knew, most of his brain had never been found. And without a brain, there’s no chance of reanimation.
I hurried down the hall and slipped into the bathroom and closed the door. Ash was saying something about tunnels. I barely caught the tail-end of it.
“What tunnels?”
“Micah thinks he can get his hands on some of the old subway maps and traffic tunnels connecting Manhattan and Long Island.”
“From where? How?”
As far as I knew, all of the old plans and schematics had been collected and destroyed after LI was militarized and the wall was built. It was against the law to possess anything related to them. I think it was more an act of denial by the government than one of defiance or security. They probably would’ve gone in and nuked the place if they could’ve gotten away with it, if the radioactive ash cloud didn’t take out a million more people, making them ripe for reanimation.
“Micah says nothing’s ever totally lost, not once it’s been in the Stream. There are off-line archives. Someone somewhere is bound to have their own file. Or hardcopy. It just takes a little time to find someone willing to sell the information.”
“Where are we going to get the money? And isn’t that illegal?”
“Shh!”
I thought about this for a moment, then shook my head. “I’m sure the tunnels are all bombed out or filled in. It wouldn’t make sense to just leave them open for zombies to walk through to Manhattan. Otherwise, we’d be seeing a lot more of them, right?”
“First of all, Jess, I think Reggie’s right: there aren’t any more IUs alive on the island. Second of all, the tunnels were flooded before the first outbreak. Remember? And everyone knows zombies can’t swim.”
I snorted. Duh. She was right, of course. After that massive ice shelf broke off of Antarctica nearly thirty years ago and caused the sea levels to surge higher by thirty feet, most of the underground transportation networks in coastal cities had to be abandoned. I guess I hadn’t really paid very close attention in history class that day.
“What about the tunnel openings?” I asked. “They’d still be above water, wouldn’t they? Surely when the wall was built, they would’ve closed them—”
“The wall was built ten years ago.”
“Okay…”
“Don’t you see? After the second flood. The openings would’ve been totally underwater already. Micah thinks they wouldn’t have bothered blockading them since they’d be covered by a good twenty feet of Atlantic Ocean. Out of sight, out of mind, as he says. What’s even better, if they’re still open, then we can totally bypass the EM barrier by going under it! No walls, no razor wire. It’s perfect!”
I shook my head. “I don’t know… It sounds like wishful thinking to me. And anyway, the last time I checked, I didn’t have gills. And neither do you or anyone else I know.”
“Reggie’s looking into that.”
“Reggie? What’s he going to do, rent us a sub or something?”
Ash laughed. “No, silly. The sensors would totally detect something that big, even going through the tunnels. He’s thinking a bit…smaller, something more personalized.”
I asked her what, but she wouldn’t elucidate.
It seemed plausible, and yet I still had my doubts. It was almost too easy. If one of us could come up with a solution like that so quickly, then surely others would have already done so as well.
But then I realized why that wasn’t likely. Most normal people avoided lower Manhattan like the plague. And even if you had to go there, the closer you got to LI, the harder it was with all the checkpoints you had to cross. Besides, who in their right mind would seriously think about breaking in? No one was crazy enough to actually want to. They called them Forbidden Zones for a reason, not Disney-Arc Land.
I mentioned this to Ash.
“That’s where your brother might come in handy,” she said.
I knew exactly what she was talking about: Eric’s permit. But before I could argue about it there was a knock on the door. “Jess?” It was my grandfather. “Come out here, young lady, and finish your dinner.”
“Just a sec,” I yelled. “Ash, I got to go.” I lowered my voice to a whisper and added, “You know how the Colonel gets.”
“Yes sir!” Ash said, giggling. “I’ll get right on spit shining my dinner plate with my tongue, sir!”
I laughed and told her I’d think about it, then we disconnected.
When I stepped out of the bathroom, Grandpa was just making his way back down the hallway. He turned and gave me a stern look and told me to go finish my dinner. I was so excited that I almost shouted, “Yes sir!” just like Ash had done.
I love Grandpa, but there’s one thing you never do and that’s antagonize him. You take your life into your own hands. The only reason Eric gets away with it is because he’s just as bullheaded as Grandpa is.
And, honestly? I think Grandpa’s a little afraid of him.
† † †
It’s a beautiful August morning by the time I leave the house for the dojang. The sun’s still low on the horizon and it’s not too muggy out. Not yet, anyway. The cicadas are singing in the trees. I almost feel like skipping all the way there.
The studio opens at seven, though I usually don’t show up until around eight thirty. This morning, however, I’d been too wound up to sleep in, as thoughts about actually getting to see a part of the Forbidden Zones suddenly take on a more realistic feel to them. I’m earlier than usual—only the third person to arrive—so I’m left without a sparring partner and will have to wait.
Kwanjangnim Rupert is with some guy I don’t know, a green belt. They’re walking off the mat as I sign in, looking like they’ve just finished up their first sparring exercises. They go straight into their meditations. I can hear the master talking about Yu, the water principle: “The
stream flows around and surrounds its obstacles,” he quietly says, “and so passes them. Dripping water patiently makes its way through the hardest stone. This is how your strength flows in and through and around your opponents.”
I smile privately, thinking about the coincidence that the kwanjangnim’s message for today would be about water, since that was all Ash could talk about last night. But while Yu teaches us patience and flow, one thing it doesn’t explain is how to breathe in an airless environment. If the tunnels turn out to be a valid option, then we’ll have to figure out how to get through them.
As far as I know, none of the five of us has ever been scuba diving. In fact, I’ve never even been snorkeling, except in the neighbor’s pool when I was five, but that doesn’t really count.
I settle on the bench and pull out my Link and ping Kelly to see if he’s awake yet. It sends me straight to his message box, so he’s either playing or still asleep.
“Sunbae,” Kwanjangnim Rupert calls over at me, startling me out of my thoughts. He walks over and stands before me with his hands on his hips. I exit the app and slide the Link into my bag. I’ll try again later or just stop by his house after I’m done here.
“Yes sir!” I shout, as I jump to my feet.
“You’re early.” He smiles knowingly. I have a reputation for being a late-sleeper.
“I wanted to get today’s exercises out of the way, Kwanjangnim.”
He gives me a strange look and asks, “What could be more important than your training?”
I quickly backtrack. “I mean, it looks like it’s going to be another hot one today. I figured I’d beat the crowds.”
“Is this the beginning of a new Jessie?”
The boy looks up from where he’s stretching on the mat and his eyes widen. He’s tall for his age, blond, big-boned, bordering on heavyset. He has this ruggedness about him, like he’d be a football or rugby player if they weren’t illegal sports. He looks a little familiar, but I can’t seem to place him. I think he might be in the grade below me, although I know that’s not the real reason for my ignorance. Ashley’s a grade below, too. The real truth is he’s not part of our circle, our gang of gamers and hackers. I don’t do much socializing with anyone outside of it. Not even with other hapkido students.
S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus Page 2
