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

by Saul Tanpepper

  ArcWare!

  “We’ll know for sure for before then anyway, sir.”

  “Yes, either the new L.I.N.C. will fully anneal to her cerebral cortex or it won’t. We can always go back to the old one.”

  “Without the failsafe in place? Is that wise?”

  “Like I said, that’s why we have a backup, Mabel. I’m sure you can appreciate that fact more than anyone else right now. You checked her vitals this evening?”

  “Half an hour ago. She’s stable. She was lucky. The blast could’ve done a lot more damage—”

  Blast? What blast?

  “—in the water. There was only minor internal bleeding. The laparoscopic surgeon at NYMC repaired any leaks before your guys extracted her. Everything seems fine now—her fluid input and output, vitals—she just hasn’t come out of the coma.”

  “She will when her body’s ready. I don’t want to rush it. Have we figured out why the kids were even there in the first place?”

  “The other girl, Miss Evans, said something about the tunnel before she clammed up.”

  So Ashley is here! But what does she mean by tunnel?

  “She’s refused to say anything more. Keeps insisting on seeing her parents. She’s trouble, that one. I just know it. She filed a report a couple weeks ago on her grandmother’s conscription.”

  G-ma Junie?

  The man chuckles. “She’s smart is all. They all are. That’s why we recruited them.”

  “She tried to escape last night, so I put her in restraints. But I had to sedate her when I found she’d gotten out of them this morning.”

  “That’s fine.”

  The alarm bells already jangling inside my head are now going crazy. Ashley escape? Sedated? What the hell is going on?

  My mind goes back to what she said about the tunnel. It niggles at me until I manage to coax an image from somewhere deep down inside of my head: a memory of swimming in darkness. More like a dream than anything real. Then, being attacked, needing to escape. Kelly’s there, too. I’m choking.

  What the hell did we do?

  Reggie’s voice echoes inside my head: We should break into Gameland.

  Did we?

  “No doubt they were trying to go back,” the man says, as if he’d somehow heard my thoughts. It confirms my fears: we did break in. The man makes a whooshing sound as he breathes. “And now that whole business in lower Manhattan. They must’ve figured they could to go back in through a different tunnel.”

  And then it all comes back to me in a sudden rush: the maps and the preparation to go, the practice dive at the reservoir, the actual dive to LI through the Midtown tunnel, the narrow escape coming back. The blockage. I remember we had to leave Jake behind. And I remember Kelly telling me I was not to go back.

  Kelly.

  Except he did exactly that. He went back. Without me.

  Did the rest of us try going back?

  Finally the panic that my mind has been damming gushes forth. Kelly never did come back.

  No! He was trying to get out. We were going to meet him.

  Whoever the man is standing out there in the hall, he’s wrong. We weren’t going back to LI, we were waiting for Kelly to return with Jake.

  But something’s still missing, some vital piece that my mind refuses to yield. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to remember. It doesn’t come.

  “I thought the Harlem tunnel was cemented in years ago,” Mabel says.

  The Harlem tunnel?

  There’s a bang as the man slaps the wall, making me jump. “It was! That’s what angers me about it! The coder knew that! Those kids weren’t supposed to be there! They were supposed to stay on the island the first time! Why else would our guys go down there and block the tunnel? But not only did they come back, but they also brought the whole god damn zombie horde with them!” He growls with frustration.

  “What’s the latest on the outbreak?” Mabel asks, clearly eager to change the subject.

  “You know I can’t say anything about that, Mabel.”

  “And you know I’m stuck here. Who am I going to blab to?”

  The man sighs. “Ironic isn’t it? This’ll probably be the safest place to be once the outbreak takes hold. And it will. Fine. I guess you deserve to know. The New Merican Air Defense went in this afternoon and napalmed the shit out of everything. Media’s still in blackout. Jackers are posting every kind of conspiracy theory they can come up with. We shut down the black streams as soon as we can find them, but new ones pop up somewhere else just as quickly. Ask me, the bombing of the tunnels was too public. It was completely mishandled. And it places our entire operation in jeopardy. I told Padraig he should’ve had better control of the operation from the beginning. Logistics is his bailiwick. He was supposed to be our mole in the government. He dropped the ball.”

  The hand on the knob rises halfway up the door. A finger with a large ring on it taps the wood. I can almost see the man thinking. The crack shrinks to a finger’s width, letting in less light.

  “Should I put her in restraints, just in case?” Mabel asks.

  “No, just keep the motion detectors on the floor around the bed. That should be enough to alert you if she wakes and tries to get up again. But keep a close watch. I don’t want to lose another one.”

  “Maybe if I had some assistance—”

  “Soon, Mabel. Patience. Once I get the committee fully on board, I’ll bring in some more help. Not everyone understands the delicacy of this situation, much less the importance, as you do. We don’t get very many…volunteers, such as you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Okay. I’m going home. Been a long day. I’ll be here in…twelve hours. Keep monitoring her. Miss Daniels is our best hope for success. And our biggest risk. I don’t want to think about what will happen if she ends up being our biggest failure, too.”

  “We still have the other girl. Her new implant is a hundred percent annealed.”

  “Yeah, but her connection to the target is still unclear. And unless she’s also related to the good father…” He chuckles. “Anyway, everyone’s expendable. It’d be better to just terminate—”

  A door slams closed further down the hall, followed by the sound of approaching footsteps.

  “Speaking of expendable, there’s Padraig now. Why is he never on time?”

  The fingers slip off the door. It clicks shut. Darkness and silence envelop the room.

  Chapter 15

  Terminate what? The project? Me? And who’s the target? Or, for that matter, the good father? Is it Dad?

  I reach my hand up to the back of my neck. There’s a bandage there, stiff and crinkly. Why would they replace my implant? What’s the new one for? What does it do?

  And why is my body rejecting it?

  An inch above the edge of the bandage, my hair has been shaved away. From the feel of the new bristles coming in, the surgery couldn’t have been more than a couple days ago.

  The questions flood into me, foremost among them: What is the alpha injection? Is it anything like the Zulu Process?

  I shiver, dreading that it might be.

  Back when reanimation was first discovered, living humans were turned into zombies to create an army of the Undead for national defense purposes. The process was code-named Zulu. Back then, only death-row prisoners were conscripted. The program was so successful that the murder rate dropped like a rock. Then, when the military started running out of suitable candidates, they began taking life-without-parole inmates. They said it solved two problems with one stroke: it beefed up our security forces—depleted after the Middle East conflicts of the first two decades of the century—and eased prison overcrowding.

  Of course, Zuluization generated new problems for the country. Intended to stop global strife, the program only brought it home to us. The Southern States Coalition demanded that they have more say in which citizens could be turned into Zulus and how they were to be used. When the federal government refused, the SSC seceded. A civil w
ar followed. The remaining thirty-six states became New Merica, isolating itself from the rest of the world.

  After the Life Service Law passed eleven years ago, the government finally dropped the term Zulu and began formerly calling them conscriptees. There were the Omegamen, placed into the military to fight and protect against our enemies. Then there were all the rest, the Controlled Undead. CUs. These do the jobs nobody else wants. But no matter what they do, most people just call them what they are: zombies.

  Then Arc properties entered the picture. They wanted access to CUs for a wholly new purpose—entertainment—and they were willing to pay well for them.

  Is that what they’re doing to us? Are we to become Players in The Game?

  I lower my hand and slip it back under the covers just as the lock clicks and the door opens. I shut my eyes and pretend to be asleep, but my heart is hammering inside my chest, threatening to give me away.

  The nurse—Mabel, I remind myself—comes in and slips a cuff on my arm to check my blood pressure and pulse. As she works, she talks to herself. She says my name once or twice. I don’t respond. I pretend to be unconscious. I try to lie still and impassive. I force myself to sink away into the deepest part of me.

  But then she runs something hard along the sole of my foot. The sensation is almost too much to bear and I draw it away, curling my toes and nearly yelping with pain. I bite my tongue. She appears to be satisfied that this is a normal reflex, even for someone unconscious, as she doesn’t make any remark.

  She returns to the head of the bed and gently lifts my left eyelid open. I’m barely able to brace myself before she shines a harsh light into my eye. I try not to flinch or pull away. She repeats this with the other eye.

  Finally, she draws the sheet completely off my body. The air is cool, but not cold. Still, I shiver and become aware of my nakedness. I stiffen. I sense her hesitate, as if she notices something’s amiss. I sense her eyes on me, judging me, inspecting my every movement, from the flutter of my eyelids to the rise and fall of my chest.

  “Jessica?” she says, testing. “Miss Daniels?”

  I don’t answer.

  “Are you there? Can you hear me, honey? It’s okay. I’m here to help you.”

  I’m so tempted to respond, to plead with her to help me. But I don’t.

  She sighs and pulls on my right shoulder and leg, rolling me toward her. She checks the sheets beneath me. I’m so ashamed, so embarrassed for anyone to see me like this, that I want to tell her to stop. But I remind myself that I’m a prisoner here, a guinea pig, and that it’s not just me. My friends are also in danger. Letting Nurse Mabel know I’m awake will undoubtedly only make things worse for all of us.

  She rolls me back. I let my arm and leg flop back to the bed. The bone in my wrist hits the metal rail on the side of the bed and I wince. Thankfully, she’s not looking at my face.

  “Changing your catheter, honey,” she murmurs. “This won’t hurt a bit.” She apparently talks just to hear herself speak. From what I can gather, she’s the only one on duty here. She must be lonely. I almost feel sorry for her.

  She doesn’t deserve your sympathy.

  I crack open my eyelids and watch as she pulls a syringe out of her smock pocket. She turns her back so I can’t see what she’s doing. I feel her reach down and draw my knees apart. I feel the tube wiggle against my skin. It makes my skin crawl.

  When she straightens again a moment later I can see that the syringe is full of some kind of clear liquid, presumably withdrawn from whatever is inside of me. She sets this onto the table beside me. I then feel her tug on the tube. It slips easily out of me, but the sensation makes me want to pee so badly that I almost whimper.

  She reaches over and slips a new tube from a plastic package and lets it unfurl like a dead snake.

  “Okay, young lady. This might hurt a little going in.”

  And I swear I’m not imagining it, but there seems to be the faintest hint of a smile in her voice when she says it.

  Chapter 16

  I have to get the hell out of here.

  I have no clue where I am and why I’m here. I don’t even know who my captors are. I just know I need to escape.

  I need to find Ashley. I need to save her.

  I wonder if any of the others are here, too. How can I save us all?

  The man said they lost one of us already. What did he mean by that? And which one was it? Reggie? Micah?

  Please, God. Make it not be Kelly.

  I wish I could remember more. I wish I knew what they meant by the blast.

  But remembering is a luxury that I just can’t afford right now. I don’t need to know what happened to bring me here in order to escape. I only need to know that I have to get away.

  I wait until Mabel leaves the room, watching her carefully through slitted eyes as she inserts the cardkey attached to her belt into a slot above the doorknob. There’s a beep when the release activates. She exits and the door clicks shut behind her. Then I wait some more, just in case she’s forgotten something and decides to come back in.

  Move! my mind screams.

  But my body refuses to obey. I know the longer I wait, the more likely it is that she’ll return, but I’m suddenly paralyzed with fear. I don’t even let myself cry, though I want to. I want to break down and give up. I want to crawl into a corner and roll up into a ball and cry. Let someone else take care of me for once.

  But there isn’t anyone to do that. There never has been.

  I bite away the tears. It’s better that way. If she sees them on my cheeks, she’ll know I’m awake. She’ll tie me to the bed. She’ll sedate me and inject me with whatever they’re planning on giving to Ash. I can’t let that happen to either of us.

  So why aren’t I moving? Why do I just lie here, frozen, choking on sobs my body doesn’t seem to remember how to let out?

  Finally, just when I’ve managed to push the fear far enough away that I can move, the door opens again and Mabel comes in. The terror I’ve so desperately pushed away comes flooding back in again.

  “Don’t know why I have do this every hour,” she mumbles unhappily to herself.

  She goes through the same routine, all the while talking to herself. Despite my panic and loathing for her, I find myself drifting in the sound of her voice. She checks my blood pressure and eyes, stimulates my foot, takes my temperature. It’s easier this time to keep still, now that I know what to expect.

  I watch her between the slit of my eyelids as she bends down out of sight. She talks to the catheter bag as she measures and empties it. She moves to the head of the bed and does something to my IV. I hear the rustle of her clothes, smell the soap on her skin and the slight tang of body odor. Then she goes and stands at the foot of the bed and records her findings on the medical Link. She clicks it back to the bed frame when she’s done.

  “Back in another hour, honey.” Then, with a dry chuckle, she adds: “Don’t go anywhere.”

  Finally she leaves.

  Don’t go anywhere?

  I want to throttle her.

  I try to remember Kwanjangnim Rupert’s wise advice. Patience and pliability. Strength in waiting for just the right moment to act. A skilled hapkido expert will always bend to adapt to his situation.

  So I lie in the darkness for several more minutes, thinking about my situation—what little I know about it. I consider my enemy’s skills and strengths—not just hers, but who I assume she works for: ArcWare. I assess their known and presumed disadvantages. I strain my ears for any hint of a sound outside the room.

  But there’s nothing, just the quiet clicks of the IV drip and the occasional ticks and creaks of the bed as I breathe.

  Fifteen minutes have passed since she came in. I measure this by the digital readout on the instruments beside me.

  Ever so slowly, I sit up. I reach down and find the Link and turn the screen to me and wake it. It tells me it’s Friday, eleven twenty three in the evening. Almost a week has passed since we first
broke into LI, probably three days that I’ve been in this place. Eric must be going frantic by now—assuming he doesn’t know.

  He doesn’t. That’s what my instincts tell me.

  I wonder if Grandpa knows.

  My instincts remain silent on that one, as they do regarding whether Mom has realized I’m gone.

  I want to apologize to her. I want to tell her she’s not as bad of a mother as I always believed. It’s me who’s bad.

  I scroll through the Link, blinking away tears that aren’t there, and find the initial admittance report. The basic information is there: my name and age, height and weight, blood type, viral infection status (clean), implant status (version 4a, intact, latent), and life expectancy. Then there’s the triage nurse’s report at the emergency room at the New York Medical Center:

  <<17Y/O F ADMITTED POST TRAUMA (EXPLOSION)>>

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  << CXR, ABD/NECK/HD CT SCANS, IV RINGERS. CBC, TYPE & CROSS. 3 UNITS.>>

  Most of this is incomprehensible to me, just a bunch of medical mumbo jumbo, but I get the basic gist of it. There was an explosion, just as the man and nurse said there was. The cuts and bruises all over my body are proof enough of that.

  Why can’t I remember?

  I look, but there’s no mention of any of my friends.

  No mention of us being in East Harlem.

  Third tunnel.

  Kelly and Jake were coming back. We were going to meet up with them. That’s it. They were trying a different way back to avoid the zombies around the midtown. That’s why we were there, to meet them, not to go through ourselves. We were in a boat. Reggie was rowing. And then…

  Something happened. Planes. Flying over us. A bomb. Napalmed the shit out of everything. That’s what the man had said. A sob escapes from my throat. Kelly and Jake had been in the tunnel when it was bombed. Already lost one subject.

  Who died?

  No! I can’t let this stop me.