S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus

by Saul Tanpepper

  He doesn’t want to say it out loud. He doesn’t have to. We all know it’s very likely Jake would be bitten. There were just too many IUs.

  “I don’t care,” I say. I refuse to believe he’d let himself get taken that easily. “He’ll find a way. If any of us could, it’s him.”

  Kelly slaps the side of the van in frustration. The obvious jealousy on his face just makes me even angrier. He has no reason to be jealous.

  Well, maybe a little.

  “Maybe you wouldn’t make it,” I say, knowing how hurtful I’m being and yet not really caring. “But Jake’s had survival training.”

  “What the hell is it with you two anyway?” Kelly shouts.

  Micah tries to quiet him down.

  “It’s not like that, Kel,” I say. “There’s nothing between us.”

  The worst part about it is, it’s a lie: Jake was hitting on me, back at the dojang where I train in hapkido. At least, in his own awkward way, he was. And I’d been flattered. But then I had to go and mention it to Kelly afterward. I knew even before I said it that it would bother him, but I…

  What?

  I’d wanted to hurt him.

  He’d been acting strangely for a couple weeks by then, ignoring me, becoming moody and distracted. I just wanted him to pay some attention to me.

  Is that why I’m so adamant about going back? Because I want Kelly to be jealous? Am I really that selfish and petty?

  “I wish you’d explain it, then,” Kelly pleads. “Because I’d really, really like to understand why you’re willing to risk your life for this guy.”

  “He’s a friend,” I say. “And it’s just common decency. We can’t just leave him behind.”

  “We can’t risk our own lives again, Jessie,” Reggie quietly says. “Not without proof.”

  “And how do you expect to get it without going back?”

  Reggie doesn’t answer. He knows it’s a classic catch-22.

  “You’d do it for Ashley,” I add. “Even without proof.”

  He gawps for a moment, but then closes his mouth. At least he knows the truth when it hits him square between the eyes.

  “Please,” Ashley sniffs. She’s still shaking like a leaf, but she’s managed to compose herself a bit. “I know we got Jake into this mess, but can we just drop it for a little while? I just can’t think about that right now. We almost died back there.”

  And that finally shuts us all up.

  Micah breaks into Jake’s van by recoding the electronic lock with his Link. We dry ourselves off as best we can and change back into our street clothes. Nobody says anything about the lock. We all just accept it as a matter of course. We’re all used to Micah’s wizardry with just about anything that has a chip in it. His hacking abilities are so much better than any of the rest of ours.

  Nevertheless, it’s this very ease with such matters that reinforces my earlier worries about him.

  It was while we were back on the island. We found out that he’d hacked into our implants. He said it was a necessary step in his plan to hack ArcWare’s codex, the remote zombie controller used in The Game. For hardcore electronic gamers, The Game is the ultimate challenge. But only the rich and well-connected ever get the coveted invite. They’re the only ones who can afford the minimum buy-in price, which includes an implanted zombie—Player—and ArcWare’s cybernetic set-up with which the Player can be controlled. There was no way any of us would ever get to play. Not legitimately, anyway. We were just too poor.

  A few weeks ago we’d tried hacking in, but the program ended up being far too sophisticated, even for Micah. The firewalls are too complex and the coding language too arcane. We got discovered—at least by the program’s built-in safety mechanisms—and it locked us out.

  Micah insisted that all he’d need to complete the job was a backdoor into ArcWare’s codex. A physical hack, in other words. But that could only be obtained from the inside, from the other side of the wall surrounding LI, past the EM barrier that protects the Forbidden Zones.

  We were all secretly counting on Micah to be successful. Once he had access, it was supposed to be a cakewalk to reprogram any gaming device to take control of any Player in Gameland. We would be able to play The Game.

  And the hack to our implants? Just a necessary step that permitted him to subtract our L.I.N.C. signals from any other signals he hoped to pick up while we were there—the Players, in other words. The Controlled Undead. The zombies that those rich prick gamers bought and used to play The Game.

  It was obvious that Jake had been upset to learn his implant had been hacked. He wasn’t a gamer or hacker like the rest of us, so couldn’t truly appreciate the implications like we did. He was along simply for the adventure. But Micah had given everyone his promise that he’d wipe all our numbers from his program once we got back. I intend to make sure he does.

  After we save Jake.

  “What do you think his family’s going to do when he doesn’t show up at home tonight?” I ask. “They’ll report him missing. The van, too. If the cops find it here, it’s just a matter of time before they trace it all back to us. The checkpoints have a record of us coming here. That’s why we need to go back. The longer we wait, that harder it’s going to be to explain.”

  “There’s no family,” Ashley says. “It’s just him and his uncle. And Joe’s going to be in Albany at least until tomorrow.”

  “I’ll deal with him if I have to,” Micah says.

  “How?”

  He shrugs. “I’ll figure something out. Him and the checkpoint records, too,” he adds. He doesn’t elaborate and nobody asks. None of us want to know what he’s planning, especially since that kind of hacking borders on criminally insane. We just want everything fixed.

  “There’s also the problem with my lost Link,” I say. I’d dropped it while trying to get away from those first Infected Undead at the refueling station. It happened right after Kelly sent me the picture of the surprise he’d been planning for me. “How’re we going to get through the checkpoints without it?”

  “They only scanned us coming in,” Reggie says hopefully. “Maybe they won’t check going home.”

  “You think.”

  “Jessie, please.”

  But I’m not done. I lean over the back bumper and pull one of the plastic packing crates to me. It holds a dozen more of the disposable rebreather cartridges, still unused.

  “If we go back now, we could be home—all of us and my Link—by morning. Then there won’t have to be any ‘fixing’ by Micah.”

  Kelly takes the cartridge from my hand and tosses it back in the crate. He pushes the box back into the darkness inside the van. “Nobody’s going anywhere tonight except home.”

  Micah nods. “As much as I know you’re right, Jess, Kelly’s got a point. We need to rest, recover. We’re all exhausted, not thinking straight. If we attempt to go back now—despite all our good intentions—we’ll all just end up zombie meat.”

  “Besides,” Reggie adds, “the tunnel’s blocked, remember?”

  It’s a lame excuse and he knows it. There’s the other bore of the tunnel. There’s no reason to believe it’s blocked, too.

  But I don’t argue. I’m suddenly so bone-weary, struggling just to keep myself from collapsing right there in the parking garage, that I give up. The truth comes crashing down on me: there’s no way any of us would be able to swim the length of a mile-long tunnel for a third time that day—much less turn around to make the return trip. We all need to get some sleep and a warm meal inside of us. Even as well-conditioned as my body is from hapkido training, it isn’t used to what we’ve all just been through.

  Kelly grabs my arms and draws me to him. “I promise, Jessie, we’ll talk it over first thing in the morning.”

  “It’ll be a short talk then, Kel. Just long enough for me to tell you that I’m coming back.” I look around at the rest of them. “With or without the rest of you, I’m coming back. Jake would do the same for us.”

 
Micah nods. “But first sleep and food.”

  “Okay,” Kelly whispers. “You win.”

  He pulls me to him. I rest my head against his chest, pressing my ear right over his heart, and listen to what it tells me. I know in that moment that he’s lying. Once we leave this zone, he knows I won’t be able to come back. The checkpoint guards won’t let me through without my Link. And who knows how long it’ll take for me to get a replacement.

  But I won’t let that stop me. I will come back in the morning. Even if Micah has to hack into every goddamn Link and Stream to do it.

  Even if I have to walk.

  Chapter 2

  The ride back home is quiet and thick with tension. I sit and stare out the passenger window of Jake’s van as Kelly drives. Reggie and Ash are with Micah in his car.

  The abandoned skyscrapers of lower Manhattan yield to the derelict, but still occupied, skyscrapers of central Manhattan and New Wall Street. We cross the Hudson and work our way north along the fringe of New Jersey. Nobody points out the old football stadium this time. Or the ghost town of the Teterboro Airport. Or anything. We only see our nightmare.

  We breeze through all of the checkpoints. None of the guards scans us, just as Reggie had predicted. They do, however, search both vehicles and warn us about the curfew before letting us through. Exactly the same as last time.

  While we sit and idle behind Micah’s car at one of the checkpoints, I overhear Reggie asking one of the guards what they’re looking for, but the guy won’t say. He’s all business. They all are. I wonder what there could possibly be in New York that anyone could want to smuggle out. Playboy magazines?

  Kelly pulls up to the curb at my house. He sits for a moment, fiddling with his Link, almost certainly wondering if he should ask about the picture he’d send to me on the island. Can he sense how much I want to avoid answering him?

  He leans over me to kiss me goodbye.

  I turn away. I get out of the van and go inside the house, leaving him sitting at the curb. I don’t feel anything, neither guilt nor anger. I’m totally numb by then. I don’t even stop when Mom passes me in the hallway. She actually looks halfway sober, which is an improvement. She says something, but my mind refuses to translate it. I just go straight up to bed and crawl beneath the covers.

  Eric calls me down for dinner later. I go down and eat and come back upstairs. It’s like a dream I’m watching. I lie down and squeeze my eyes closed. I just want to sleep.

  But no matter how tired I am, no matter how worn down, I just can’t stop thinking about Jake.

  Hours pass. Finally, I get up and wander downstairs. The house is dark. I find Mom’s Link on the table and sit staring at it for several minutes. Before I realize what I’ve done, Kelly’s voice comes through it.

  “Jess? Is everything all right? Why’d you ping me? I saw it was your mom and thought something bad happened.”

  I blink and stare at his worried face on the screen for a moment, wondering why I’m talking to him. Didn’t I leave him behind?

  “Are you…home?” he asks.

  “Kelly?” I hear myself say. Like listening to someone else speaking, except in my own voice. “Can you come over? We need to talk.”

  He hesitates a moment, then nods. “I just put Kyle to bed. He’s feeling a little better than he was this morning.” He peers through the Link at me, studying my face. I know he’s searching for something there, guilt or relief. But I don’t know what he sees. I don’t even know how I feel. “I’ll be right over.”

  Five minutes later, he’s knocking on the front door. I expect my mother to get it, but the house is silent and I realize I’m the only one still awake. Mom’s almost certainly gone out, otherwise she’d be in front of the TV watching Survivalist. She’s forgotten her Link again. She does that a lot.

  I wonder if Grandpa’s gone out, too. Probably. He comes and goes as he pleases, sometimes at odd hours, and never tells me where he’s going. For an old retired guy six years past his life-expectancy—owing to a rare LSC waiver from the government because of his previous service to the country—he keeps himself busy enough. He’s always here for dinner, though, always reminding me to eat right and take my medicine, which I do now, since I forgot earlier.

  “Grandpa?” I call down the hall, quiet enough not to wake Eric, but loud enough that if Grandpa’s awake, he’ll answer. But the house remains silent.

  I open the door and Kelly comes in and wraps his arms around me as soon as he sees me. I breathe in his smell. He’s showered, so it’s mostly just the strong scent of soap. But he’s there, too, his particular scent, faint, familiar, comforting. I hold him tight. Then we’re upstairs and in bed and my skin feels two sizes too small. He’s in me and all I want to do is lose myself in the moment. I want to forget everything: my anger at the world and this feeling of helplessness I’ve carried around inside of me for as long as I can remember.

  And when it’s over, he lies beside me. He combs my hair away from my face, breathing with me, his exhales flowing over me like water.

  “I love you so much, Jess,” he tells me. “I don’t ever want to lose you.”

  I close my eyes. He knows how much I hate when he says things like that, especially right after sex. But I know he isn’t like that. He says what he feels deep down, not what’s just right there on the surface.

  “You won’t lose me,” I say. “I promise.”

  I hear him take in a breath and hold it. The word promise holds so much meaning for him right now—so many meanings—that I know he’s wondering exactly which of those meanings I intend. He lets the breath out. It caresses my cheek and my skin tingles.

  “A promise is not a guarantee,” he says. It sounds like a line from a song. I almost groan.

  “There are no guarantees in life,” I say. But as soon as it’s out, I regret even thinking it. I want to pull it back inside of me again.

  “I wish I could tell you how much you mean to me, Jessie,” he says. “How much you mean to all of us.”

  I pull my head away to look at him better. He holds my cheek in his hand, rubbing his thumb across my chin. He looks deep into my face. At first I just see myself in his eyes, my sun-bleached hair, my narrow face. Then I feel myself slipping into the muddy depths of his brown eyes, losing myself in him.

  “You’re our rock, Jessie.”

  He laughs a little when he sees the look on my face. “What I mean to say is, you’re so well-grounded, so…so solid.”

  I shake my head. “Me? You’re the one who’s going to become someone someday. You’ll go to college and make lots of money and—”

  “And marry you.”

  I sigh and turn my head away, but he gently pulls it back.

  “You care about us all. Even people you barely know.”

  He’s talking about Jake.

  I shake my head. “You’re the one who cares deeply, Kel. Not just for me, either. Look at Kyle. Look at everything you do for him.”

  I feel him tense up against me. The line of his jaw hardens and he doesn’t meet my eyes for a moment. He’s always found it hard to talk about his brother. He’s convinced that if they just had a little money they could fix Kyle. He might be right, but it’s a moot point at the moment. That’s why he pushes himself so hard, so he can go to college, so he can have money. That’s why his parents push him, too.

  “I’m not like that,” he whispers.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not as solid as you think I am, either,” I say. He knows about my temper. He knows that’s one reason I take hapkido. It’s cheaper than counseling, anyway, and probably a hell of a lot more effective.

  “I feel like I’ve barely kept things together lately,” he says. “If it wasn’t for you, I probably would’ve given up a long time ago.”

  “Don’t say that, Kel.”

  “It’s true. I mean, we’re all graduating this year and you’re so sure of yourself, going to work for ArcWare—”

  “We serve the people,” I joke. “That’s not
being sure, Kel. That’s facing reality. College isn’t for me.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not so sure about it being for me, either.”

  “If anyone can do it, you can. Certainly not Reggie.”

  Kelly laughs and shakes his head. “I look at him and, I’m sorry, but all I see is a little kid wearing a man’s body. He wants to be liked so badly, to be accepted. He wants to be in charge, but he’s too scared of responsibility. You’re not. You’re fearless. I still can’t believe how well you dealt with all that shit today.”

  “I’d rather not think about that.”

  “And Ash,” he says, going on. “I thought for sure she was going to crumble to pieces. Literally. She’s like Reg in a lot of ways. She wants to be grown up, but she’s got a lot of growing up to do.”

  “Growing up’s overrated.”

  He nods and rubs my lips so gently with his thumb that it sends shivers through my body. Desire for him overwhelms me. I can’t believe just an hour ago I was so tired I was ready to pass out, so fragile I thought I’d crumble to pieces. I can’t believe just a few hours before we were trying not to die.

  Jake’s face flashes before my eyes.

  And now…

  Now I never want to leave this bed. Or Kelly. Or this moment.

  “And then there’s Micah.” Kelly sighs. “I mean, he’s definitely got it going on. But what exactly it is he’s got, I don’t know. He scares me sometimes. He’s so damn smart and capable that I often wonder what the hell he’s doing with his life, sitting in a dark, dank basement playing video games. Getting high and drunk. Hacking government computers, or at least trying to. He’s self-destructive. I’m afraid he’ll end up dragging us all down with him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets conscripted by the time he’s forty. Probably a lot sooner.”

  As soon as he’d said the part about being scared of Micah, I had gasped. I didn’t think anyone else felt the same way about him as I do.

  “But you,” Kelly continues, not noticing, “you just keep chugging along.”

  “Chugging? Really? That’s the best you can come up with to describe me?”