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

by Saul Tanpepper

  I grab his pillow and shove it between the door and the jamb to keep it from shutting all the way and locking, then I leave him to figure out how to manage the sheet on his own.

  “Let’s go, Reg,” I yell, as I’m opening the door to the next room. “Any day now.”

  A faint voice calls from inside the room: “Jessie, is that you?” It’s familiar, and for a moment I think it’s Micah. But then I know it’s not. It’s a voice I hadn’t expected to hear in here.

  If ever again.

  Chapter 20

  “Jake?”

  What’s he doing in here? How?

  I hear him laugh with relief. “Yeah, it’s me, Jessie.” Something rattles, metal on metal, another handcuff. “Sorry if I don’t get up, but I’m a little—”

  But I don’t wait for him to finish. I spin around and whirl back out into the hallway.

  “Hey!” he cries. “Where are you—”

  The door closes, cutting him off.

  Jake’s alive. He’s here. I don’t know how that’s possible, but it also means Kelly’s alive and here, too.

  Don’t get your hopes up, girl.

  We’ve already lost one. Don’t want to lose another.

  Who did he mean? Kelly or Micah?

  They’re the only ones left. And there’s only one more room I haven’t checked: the one marked CENTRAL COMMUNICATIONS.

  I stand in front of the door, unwilling and unable to move. If Kelly’s alive, he has to be behind this last door. But if I find Micah instead, then…

  I lower my head and lean it against the door. I don’t want to think about either of those scenarios. I don’t want either of them to be true. I just want them both to be alive and safe and all of us back home.

  Maybe they’re both in there.

  Somehow I know they won’t be.

  I slip the cardkey into the slot. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Reggie coming out of his room. The sheet is wrapped around him toga-style and he’s using his good hand to hold it closed. He’s not doing a completely effective job at it. I get a flash of skin I’d rather not have.

  I gesture at the door between us. “Jake’s in there.”

  “Jake’s here? But how? Where’s…” I can almost hear what’s going through his mind. Where’s Kelly. That’s what he was going to say.

  I shake my head. “This is the last room. They’ve got to be in here.”

  They. Not he.

  Micah and Kelly.

  Or maybe just Kelly.

  But not just Micah.

  Please God, let it be both.

  A thump comes from my room. Reggie spins and takes a step toward it.

  “Don’t go in there!” I yell, startling him. It’s unnecessary for me to shout. Without the cardkey, nobody can open that door.

  “Nurse Bitch?” he says.

  Something scratches on the other side of the door, as if she recognizes her name. Then there’s a low moan, almost inaudible. I feel it more than actually hear it. The hair on my scalp rises. Reggie looks at me in alarm.

  I nod. “I told you it was complicated.”

  He hurries over to me, his mouth working overtime but not saying anything. I can almost see the questions piling up inside his head, all vying to get out, all at the same time. Unfortunately, I don’t have answers to any of them.

  Contingencies. That’s what they’d said. How can anyone volunteer for something like this?

  I pull the key from the lock, turn the handle, and push against the door. But it doesn’t yield. I try the key again. The little red light doesn’t change to green.

  “What the hell?”

  “Backwards?” Reggie suggests.

  I turn it around and retry the lock. Still nothing.

  “Damn it!” I cry, slapping the door in frustration. Three more attempts yield the same result. Now I’m positive Kelly’s on the other side of that door. I can almost taste it in the back of my mouth. He’s there and I can’t get to him. It’s fate getting back at me for killing Mabel. “God damn it!”

  Reggie gently pulls me away. “Let me try.” But then he points out the keypad beside the door. I’d totally missed it.

  “Don’t suppose you know the code?” he asks. I shake my head and he says, “Didn’t think so. Just when we could use Micah to hack something, turns out we have to hack it to find him.”

  I don’t say anything. I don’t want him to know my thoughts, that I hope and pray it’s not Micah on the other side of that door.

  “Which room is Ashley’s?” Reggie asks. “She might be able to crack this fucker.”

  “She won’t be hacking anything for a while. She’s too out of it.”

  He sighs, then tries ramming the door with his good shoulder. After that doesn’t work, he kicks viciously at it. But while the door rattles loosely in the frame, it doesn’t budge. And the noise is just agitating Zombie Mabel all the more. She’s slapping on the door now, clawing, trying to push her way through it. The moaning is even louder.

  “Creepy,” Reggie says. He gives her door a worried look before returning his gaze to the one before us. “But if I can’t bust this door down, we know she won’t be coming through hers anytime soon.”

  “It’s not her I’m afraid of getting to us, Reg. It’s the people she worked for, Arc. We’re running out of time.”

  “Arc? They’re the ones who did all this. Christ, we’re fucked. They got their fingers in everything.”

  I slip down the wall until I’m sitting on the floor. I rest my head in my hands and try to think. Reggie stands in front of me being his usual useless self, waiting for someone else to make the tough decisions. I want to yell at him to do something, but I know it’ll only make things worse. Finally, he turns and goes in to check on Ashley. A minute later he comes back out again.

  “She’s blotto.”

  He uses the key to go into Jake’s room.

  I put my head in my arms. “Kelly,” I moan. “Kelly.”

  Mabel calms down again.

  Reggie and Jake come out a few minutes later. Jake’s sheet is wrapped tightly around his own waist. Unlike Reggie’s, it looks pretty secure.

  Standing side by side, Jake looks fitter and stronger than Reggie does. Both their faces are a little leaner than they were almost a week ago, but Jake started off heavier than the rest of us and so doesn’t look quite so bad.

  It’s because he doesn’t have the bruises.

  Jake wasn’t anywhere near the explosion. The Harlem tunnel was blocked; they didn’t go inside.

  So where did they go when their signals disappeared?

  “What do you want to do, Jess?” Jake quietly asks. He kneels down, rubbing the soreness from his wrist.

  Reggie tosses me the cardkey before heading down the hallway to Ashley’s room. He disappears inside.

  Now I get up. I’ve got an idea. It’s not totally original, but, hey, it worked once before.

  “Fire extinguisher,” I say, setting my jaw. I head down the hall past Ashley’s room to where an extinguisher sign hangs from the ceiling.

  “You’re going to burn the door down?”

  “I believe I said extinguisher, not starter. If we’re lucky, there’s an axe.”

  “You and your axes,” he says. He was there on LI when I used one to chop a few zoms down to size.

  But when I get to the end of the hall, there’s no axe, just the extinguisher. I hesitate for half a second before yanking it out of its little glass home. I heft it in my hands and test the weight. It’ll have to do. Jake watches me, understanding dawning on his face.

  I try hitting the door first, but the wood is too hard and the tank just bounces off. The door doesn’t even splinter, though it does dent.

  Jake flinches when Mabel starts going apeshit, but he doesn’t act surprised. “Reggie told me about her,” he explains.

  It’s strange that they’ve both accepted what happened to her so readily—and what I did to make her that way. Or maybe it’s because our whole situation being
here in the first place is just so screwed up to begin with.

  Even so, people don’t just spontaneously turn into zombies when they die. At least, not as far as I’ve ever been told.

  Then again, it wouldn’t be the first time we were lied to about Reanimation.

  Reggie sticks his head out of Ashley’s room to see what the noise is about. “Try the handle,” he suggests. Then he goes back inside.

  I lift the tank over my shoulder, both hands on the neck like I’m strangling it. I hope and pray the thing doesn’t explode on me. Jake must have the same fear, because he raises his arm to protect his face and suggests I empty it first.

  “Good idea,” I reply. “Maybe later, when there’s actually time to think about things.”

  I bring it down with all my force onto the door handle.

  The tank pings off. The handle rattles and bends a little, but it doesn’t break. I try again. This time the handle goes flying off across the hall.

  I push against the door. It doesn’t open.

  “I think I just fucked it up.”

  “Too bad it’s not glass,” Jake says, as he reaches for the tank. “You were a pro breaking glass back there.”

  “Shut up.” But I gladly let him take over.

  He gestures for me to step back, then he puts all of his weight into slamming the bottom corner of the tank straight at the center of the door. He hits it so hard that his sheet nearly falls off. He gives me a sheepish grin and shrugs, his face turning a bright red. It quickly bleeds away when Mabel crashes into her door.

  “Christ.”

  Jake hurriedly lifts the tank and brings it down on the door again. This time a crack appears. He does it two more times and the crack widens and chips of wood begin to fly.

  “Kelly!” I shout, mostly so I don’t have to listen to that fucked-up moaning. “We’re coming in.”

  But there’s no answer from the other side of the door.

  Jake rests for a minute and I take his place, but now my efforts seem paltry next to his. I manage to scrape a few more chips off the door, but the crack doesn’t get any larger. After two or three more minutes, Jake takes another stab at it.

  Reggie comes out with Ash’s arm draped across his shoulders. I notice he’s abandoned the sling now, though he holds his hurt arm against his chest, favoring his shoulder.

  Ashley’s feet half drag, half walk along with Reggie, and her head rolls crazily against his chest, but at least she’s trying to hold herself up a little. He sets her down on the floor and leans her against the wall. She opens her eyes and blinks a few times, mumbles something incomprehensible, then closes them again.

  “Let me try,” Reggie tells Jake. Jake gladly agrees. As Reggie whales on the door—his one-armed strikes so much more powerful than Jake’s two-handed attempts—Jake carefully kneels down on the other side of Ash and watches me try and revive her.

  “Too bad we don’t have smelling salts,” he says.

  “Idiot!” I cry, slapping my forehead. He watches me get up. “I should’ve thought about that.”

  I run down the hall to Nurse Mabel’s room and start opening the drawers. I finally find what I’m looking for about halfway down: a box of ammonia inhalants. I extract one and run back down the hall squeezing it between my fingers. I feel the glass ampoule inside shatter. A cool liquid soaks the cotton wrapper and the smell of ammonia reaches my nose, making me want to sneeze.

  I shove it right up to Ashley’s nose and wait. At first she does nothing, then her head snaps back. It lolls to one side. I push the ampoule back into her face.

  “Whuh?”

  She lifts a hand and swipes weakly at her face.

  “You’re going to burn her nose hairs off,” Jake says, misplaced concern on his face.

  “You’re worried about nose hairs? She’ll grow them back.” I practically shove the thing into her nostril on the next try.

  “No!” Ashley raises both hands now and pushes. She blinks, her eyes watering. “Whathafug?” she asks. “Jeh?” Her head turns and she sees Jake.

  Reggie bends down. “Hey, babe, it’s me.”

  “Reggggsh? Whazgoingon?”

  He smiles and nods. “Good thinking, guys.” Then he gets back up and starts pounding on the door again, this time with both arms. Ashley winces from the noise. She looks drunk, but it’s a definite improvement from where she was just a few minutes earlier.

  Finally, there’s a splintering sound. Reggie doesn’t stop. He just keeps pounding. He winces every time the tank hits, but he’s a total maniac now, almost impervious to pain. Every once in a while he glances over at us. At Ashley. My heart skips a beat seeing the worry on his face, and I can’t help feeling a little jealous.

  The hole in the door widens. Reggie reaches over and rips the wood with his bare hands. Jake gets up and helps.

  “I can see a bed,” Jake announces, peeking through the opening.

  My heart skips, then sinks. A bed. Not two.

  “No, wait a sec. There’s another.”

  This time my heart takes flight.

  I hurry over, but Reggie pushes us both out of the way to tear away at the door some more.

  He hammers and pulls and kicks. Then a corner of the door bends in. He pulls it free with a loud ripping sound. The hole’s still not large enough for either of them, but I can squeeze through. I do, forcing my way in despite their protests.

  “Careful,” Jake says. “You’ll get splinters.”

  Reggie snickers. At least they’re back to their old selves.

  I get back to my feet once I’m fully inside.

  Just as with Jake’s room, there’s a privacy curtain pulled closed, partially obscuring my view of the two beds. I can see that they’re both occupied. That’s all I need to know.

  I barely notice the stuff piled up on the floor around me, the packs and clothes. I barely notice the stacks of old computer servers softly humming away on the left, their lights blinking green. I barely notice how cool it is in here. But I do notice, and causes me to wonder what the hell all this equipment is for.

  “Are they there?” Reggie shouts through the opening. He yelps and says something about splinters.

  “I told you,” Jake says.

  I pull the curtain open and find Micah lying in the first bed. He looks like hell. His eyes flutter open and he sees me and whispers my name.

  “Sa noise about?” he mumbles. “Thought we were being bomb again.”

  “Micah’s here,” I shout excitedly. “He’s…” I notice the bandages around his head and the burns on his arms. “He’s okay.”

  Then I turn to the other bed and see the face of the person lying in it, still as death.

  And this time I can’t stop my heart from breaking.

  Chapter 21

  “Jessie?” Reggie asks. “Is it…?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I say, as I sink to the floor between the beds.

  I can hear them quietly murmuring to each other outside the room, trying to decide what to do. They finish clearing away the rest of the door and come in

  “I’m sorry, Jess,” Reggie tells me. He gives the figure in the other bed a baleful glance but doesn’t say anything.

  When I don’t move, he joins Jake over by our packs and begins sorting our clothes.

  “What the hell happened to you guys?” Jake quietly asks. “How’d you end up here?”

  “I’d ask the same about you and Kelly.”

  “Long story.”

  “So’s mine.”

  “I asked first.”

  Reggie exhales with a sigh and looks over at me. Then at Micah, who appears to be sleeping again. He shakes his head and rubs his sore shoulder.

  “We came down because Micah said you were coming out through the tunnel. He got the hack to work and was tracking you as you moved northeast toward the Harlem tunnel. We were in a boat. The bomb hit about a hundred yards from us.”

  He holds up a shirt—Micah’s, I think. I can’t quite
remember what Micah was wearing. My mind’s a blank. The fabric’s all stiff from dried mud and blood. It’s torn—even burnt in places.

  “Damn blast knocked us all into the water. I saw Micah get thrown. I was sure he was a goner.”

  I squeeze my eyes closed as the full memory finally comes back to me, the final pieces my mind has been holding back. And as soon as the picture’s complete, I wish I could erase it all over again: the bomb hitting the water, the water bulging upward, shattering into a billion pieces, the boat lifting, the five of us flying through the air.

  The sickening thud as Micah’s body hit the sign we were tied up to.

  The color of the water.

  So much blood.

  “God, we were so stupid!” Reggie cries. “Right from the god damn beginning.”

  “Bomb?” Jake asks.

  “The planes were dropping them. We didn’t know they were targeting the tunnels, collapsing them. First the Brooklyn Battery. We heard the explosions but didn’t know what they were at the time. Then the Midtown. Those we saw, but even then it was too far away to know. We didn’t even guess what the hell was happening until it was too late. Then those god damn planes were right over us, dropping the bombs.”

  He pauses and turns his head and gives Jake a strange look. “What I can’t figure is how the hell you survived? You were supposed to be inside the tunnel. How’d you get out?”

  Jake frowns. “We weren’t in any tunnel. We planned to go through the Battery further south, but… Why would you think we were in the Harlem tunnel?”

  Reggie looks over at me. I don’t move. I’m still trying to understand how it could be Kelly we’ve lost.

  “It’s like I said. We were tracking you. Well, Micah was, on his Link. He and Ash cracked the codex. Your signal was moving north before it disappeared. He said it was because you were inside the Harlem tunnel by then, underneath the EM barrier. The signal was blocked.”

  Jake shakes his head. “The Harlem wouldn’t have been my next choice. After the Midtown tunnel collapsed and separated us, I came back. I just holed up for the night. I mean, I barely even managed to get out of the water—those zombies were everywhere. But then I found this drainage pipe and went through it. I came out in this access shaft and climbed up, but the opening was covered by a metal plate. I thought I was trapped. I finally managed to get it off and climb out before the zoms heard me.”