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

by Saul Tanpepper

  “There’s a shuttle arriving at seven,” I tell him.

  “I know. And I know where it comes in—down in baggage claim—but we need to hurry if we’re going to get there in time.”

  “How do you know where it is?” I ask.

  “Been watching for days now. They bring meals and supplies each morning. This is a minimal operation here. Always the same two or three people.”

  He gives Ashley a quick hug and nods to Jake and Reg. They both exclaim how glad they are to see him, but already his gaze has passed from them to Micah and finally to Tanya. I can see the questions in his eyes, the sudden suspicion of this stranger in our midst.

  “She’s not a part of this,” I hurriedly say. “But she needs our help.” I don’t mention how it’s my fault she’s here.

  Kelly leads us through the darkened terminal, deep into the bowels of the airport and into places that were once off limits to the public. We probably would have figured out where to go ourselves by following the doors which have been propped open or whose locking mechanisms have been disengaged. If we were thinking clearly. If we had time.

  “After I escaped, I hid out here for a while and kept watch, trying to figure out what they were doing. Trying to figure out how to rescue Jake.” He glances over. “I wanted to try and get you, but I never got the chance with the door locks. I considered destroying the generator, but I didn’t know if it might do more harm than not. Then I saw them wheel the rest of you in a few days ago. I didn’t realize it was you at first—everyone was covered up—but then I overheard this one guy talking, some guy named Harrison, Padraig Harrison. He was talking to this other guy about doing some experiments on a bunch of kids. He mentioned that you were all gamers and hackers, so I knew it had to be you.”

  “It’s Arc,” I tell him. “I don’t know what they’re planning.” I gesture at Tanya’s back and whisper, “I think they were going to volunteer her.”

  Kelly’s jaw clenches. “Fuckers,” he spits. “I didn’t want to believe it was. How could they do this? God damn liars. ‘We serve the people’ my ass.”

  I frown at him. He shakes his head bitterly.

  “What do you mean? What did they lie about?”

  “Nothing, Jess.” He sighs. “Everything. ArcWare, Arc Entertainment, ArcTech. They’ve been fucking lying to us since day one. They’re just out to make money. They don’t care who they screw to do it!”

  “Tanya works for Arc,” I whisper.

  Kelly’s eyes narrow again as he stares at her back. “Remind me again who the hell she is.”

  I quickly tell him about my bus ride to Hartford to get the replacement Link. When he hears this, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out my lost Link and hands it over. I thought I’d be glad to see it, but suddenly it feels dangerous, like a ticking time bomb, no longer a part of me but rather a part of this place. I cradle it in my hands, expecting it to suddenly bite me or something, but it just sits there.

  He reaches over and wakes it. The screen brightens and I see the picture Kelly had sent to me just moments before the zombies attacked us at the fueling station, when I’d lost the Link in the first place.

  I quickly close it. He tries to grab it away again, but I pull away, crossing my arms around my chest.

  “Jessie.”

  “Not now, Kel. Please.”

  “I need to know!”

  “You left me!”

  “I had to.”

  Everyone stops and turns around to stare at us. I keep walking, passing them. We’ve reached the carousels and I have to admit that I don’t know which way to go next. I spy a door standing open across the room, so I head for it.

  “Jessie, please.”

  “Can we talk about this later?”

  “This is our future we’re talking about, Jessie.”

  I stop and slowly turn. “You’re worried about our future? How about worrying about our present?”

  He catches up with me and takes my arm. “Just tell me why not then.”

  I sigh and look around at the others. All of them look back at me—all except Micah, who’s still out cold, and Tanya, whose face looks as blank as if she’d had a lobotomy. Do they all know? Do they expect me to answer Kelly’s question? We’re standing in the middle of an abandoned airport in the middle of the Forbidden Zones on Long Island with an Undead nurse upstairs and people trying to kill us so they can reanimate us. And they all want to know if I’m ready to get married?

  It’s too surreal for me to even contemplate.

  “Kelly, I—”

  But then there’s a heavy clang coming through the open door, a hiss of iron wheels on steel tracks. There’s a squeal and another release of compressed air. We all look at each other. Then we hear the voices.

  “Hide!” I whisper.

  But too late we realize that there’s no place to hide in the baggage claim’s wide open space. And once again, we don’t have a plan.

  Chapter 24

  Reggie runs straight toward the door, grabbing Jake and Kelly as he goes. Jake nearly trips over his own feet. The scuffles sound loud in my ears and I can’t believe anyone on the other side of that door didn’t hear it. But the voices—a man’s and a woman’s—don’t stop.

  I hurry over to Micah’s wheelchair and gesture to Ash to grab Tanya. Together, we quickly move to one side, out of direct line of sight of the door. There’s no place to conceal ourselves, not here, but from the way Reggie and the others are crouched against the wall, it doesn’t look like they intend to remain hidden for long anyway.

  We wait, but our captors don’t come through right away. Snatches of conversation reach our ears:

  [Female voice]: “—surance the coder will be ready in time? CUs are dangerous enough…three times as potent.”

  [Male voice, louder, clearer]: “Potency’s not the issue, Novak. We’ve been through this. It’s the ability to maintain more than just basal functions. This is the breakthrough the boss has been aiming for since the first Zulu.”

  [Female voice]: “I’m worried about transmissibility.”

  [Male voice]: “…worry.”

  “What are they talking about?” Ashley whispers to me.

  I gesture for her to be quiet. My guess is they’re talking about the alpha treatment. Tanya stands with her back against the wall, her eyes staring out into the gloom. She has no affect on her face at all. It’s like she’s really not there at all.

  And I don’t like it.

  “Hurry up with that cart!” the male voice suddenly shouts. A second male voice responds from deeper inside the room.

  A shadow falls across the doorway and a moment later a woman walks through, completely absorbed on her Link. She’s followed immediately by a man carrying a small, black case. Jake and Reggie are on them before they know what’s hit them. Kelly slips into the room. I hear him shout at someone inside: “Get your hands up where I can see them. I said up, asshole!”

  A moment later, a young man stumbles out through the doorway, tripping over his own feet. He lands on the floor before Kelly steps through holding a pistol directed at the man’s head. It appears to be the same gun I’d found inside the fueling station in Long Island City. I’m actually glad to see it again.

  Reggie has Miss Novak’s arm wrenched behind her back. He’s holding her up against a column. I can see from the look on her face that she’s not used to this sort of treatment. There’s no fire at all in her eyes, no fight. She gives up too easily.

  The man, however, struggles with Jake. He manages to slip from his grip and spins around with the case, aiming for Jake’s head. The sound of it hitting reverberates across the empty room. Jake staggers backward several steps and trips over the luggage carousel.

  He quickly recovers though, and lunges at the man. But the man’s ready and steps away. Jake stumbles past, looking like an amateur instead of the green belt he really is.

  “How did you boys get out?” the man demands. He grabs a luggage cart and thrusts it at Jake, who defl
ects it. He’s puffing, whereas the man looks like he’s barely exerting himself. “Ah, Mister Corben,” he says, spotting Kelly. “We thought we’d lost you.”

  “Shut up!”

  “Why the hell were we being kept prisoner?” Reggie demands.

  “Prisoner?” The man laughs and jockeys himself around a set of chairs. He still hasn’t seen the four of us huddled in the shadows. “You’re not prisoners. You’re pioneers, the lucky chosen ones in a grand new world order.” His laughter crackles against the walls and makes my ears hurt.

  “I don’t remember signing up for anything, asshole,” Reggie growls. “And I’ve already seen the new world order. It’s no better than the old one. In fact, I think it stinks.”

  “This is your chance to change it, Mister Casey. Soon you’ll see. You’ll be heroes.”

  Kelly’s kneeling on the other guy’s back. I get a good look at his face. He doesn’t appear to be much older than the rest of us. Tanya’s age, maybe. He looks terrified.

  I edge my way around behind the man. I know Jake can see me, because he moves in such a way so that he keeps the man’s back to us.

  “What do you know about heroes, old man?” Reggie spits, also making sure the man doesn’t see me as I slip from the shadows.

  “I know a lot about them, son. I helped create them.”

  “I’m not your son, so stop calling me that.”

  “Listen to me, boys. I think maybe there’s been a misunderstanding. Let’s start—”

  “Shut the hell up!” Jake suddenly screams.

  The man lunges. He moves so quickly that I barely have a chance to react. I kick out with my foot just as the young man beneath Kelly shouts a warning. My toe manages to catch the other man’s ankle, but it’s enough to throw him off balance. He crashes to the floor and I’m on him in a flash. Jake steps in and begins whaling on the man, kicking him in the side and face. I can feel his foot hitting beneath me, can hear the man’s grunts of pain keeping time with Jake’s grunts of effort.

  “How’s—” huhn “—this—” huhn “—for a—” HUHN “—misunderstanding, asshole?”

  “Stop it!” I scream. I glare at him in shock. Where did this violent streak come from? “Stop!”

  He staggers away.

  “You’ve got it all wrong, son,” the man coughs. He turns his head and when he sees me he smiles. “So, the gang’s all here. Nice to see you again, Miss Daniels. I trust you’ve been keeping well since the last time we spoke.”

  Everyone looks at me, shock on their faces, shock and suspicion.

  “What does he mean, Jess?” Kelly asks. “Do you know his guy?”

  I yank the man’s head up by the hair, the same way I’d done to Nurse Mabel. I’m totally ready to slam his head into the floor, just like I did—

  No!

  It’s the image of that woman, Mabel—that monster I turned her into—that stops me.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, asshole. I’ve never met you before in my life. I’ve never spoken to you.”

  He laugh-coughs, but doesn’t correct me. Instead he asks about my grandfather. “I hope he’s doing well in his old age. One of the fortunate few who’ll never be conscripted.”

  “You look like you might be about conscription age,” I say.

  “Oh, I’m not, really.”

  “Ignore him,” Kelly says.

  Jake appears with some coiled flexible wire that he ripped out of some ancient device. It’s coated in brittle rubber that rubs off on his skin, turning it bright red. He binds the man’s wrists with it, and not very gently either. The wire cuts into the man’s skin.

  I look over and see the young man kneeling now, his hands clasped behind his head. Kelly’s standing behind him. Reggie’s still got the woman shoved against the column.

  “What should we do with them?” Jake asks.

  “Tie her up,” I tell Reggie. “We’ll leave them here.”

  “We should take them back with us.”

  “Actually,” Jake says, “we should kill them.”

  “No,” I say, “I don’t need that on my conscience.”

  There’s already enough weighing it down.

  Theoretically.

  A vision of Mabel comes to me. I want to feel guilt for what I did, but somehow it’s just not there. Maybe it’ll come later. I doubt it. And maybe that’s why I decide to let these two live, so I won’t have to ask myself to feel guilty about doing to them what I did to Mabel. Because I know I won’t be able to. I can’t live like this, torn between how I should feel, and how I actually do feel.

  “We’ll take him,” I say, gesturing to the boy. “For insurance.”

  “You can’t leave,” the man says. It’s not an order or a warning. He says it like he’s simply stating a fact.

  “Shut up,” Jake tells him. “Or I’ll kick your sorry, puny, wimp-shit ass again. And this time I won’t stop until you’re bleeding from every orifice you’ve got, including a few new ones. Do you understand me?”

  I stare at Jake in shock.

  Back when I first met him at the dojang—god, was it only a week ago?—he’d confessed that his previous trainer emphasized brutality and aggression. It was the reason he left his studio for Rupert’s. It looks like that training is kicking in, and it scares the hell out of me.

  “He’s right,” Miss Novak says. “It’ll only make things worse if you leave.”

  “Nothing could be worse than this, lady.”

  Reggie’s still holding her arm behind her back. He looks uncomfortable, like he doesn’t want to hurt her.

  Jake turns to her and says, sneering, “Maybe he won’t kick your ass up through your neck, but I wouldn’t think twice about doing it.”

  “That’s enough!” I gasp.

  “You can’t leave,” she repeats, daring Jake to act on his threat.

  He looks at me, grunts once and turns away.

  I stand up quick and get in her face. “I’m going home,” I tell her, snapping my words. She doesn’t even flinch. “We all are. You can too, when you get yourself free. If I weren’t so forgiving, I’d have you all killed and stuffed.”

  “Tell us how the shuttle works,” Jake demands. “Tell us and we won’t hurt you.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. Since when does he make the rules?

  “It’s a simple switch,” the young man answers. “The tram rides a track through a tunnel under the East River. Push the lever one way and the tram moves in that direction; push it the other and it goes in the opposite direction. In the middle it stops. But—”

  “What’s on the other side?”

  “The tunnel opens up in a warehouse in Hunts Point. It’s abandoned now, of course.”

  “Is it guarded?”

  “No,” the woman says.

  “Don’t you fucking lie to me.” I walk over to Kelly and grab the gun away from him and point it at her head. She still doesn’t flinch. Now I realize what I’d mistaken for fright is just composure.

  I swing it over to the young man’s head instead. “Is it guarded?”

  “N-no,” he answers. “It’s not. Honestly.”

  “Gather everything up,” I tell Kelly. I glance over at the man still lying on the floor. “I don’t know what the hell you people are doing, but we’re going home. Leave us alone! Understand? If I ever see any of you again, I won’t hesitate to kill you.”

  The man just stares.

  “Are we ready?” I ask everyone. Jake nods grimly. So do Kelly and Reg.

  “But you can’t go,” Miss Novak insists, as Reggie ties her up.

  “Miss Novak,” the man grunts. He chuckles. “Let them go. It’s not the end of the world for us. There’s always the backup plan.”

  “What does he mean by that?” Jake asks. “What the fuck do you mean backup plan?”

  “Nothing, Jake. He’s just screwing with your mind.”

  I go over and kick the man in the kidney. Then I lean down so my mouth is inches from his ear. I wa
nt to tell him he’s an asshole. I want to say he has no right to live.

  Instead, I just say: “You’ll find Mabel in Room Three. I think she’ll be happy to see you.”

  Chapter 25

  “Tie up his hands, but not his feet,” I say, pointing at the man kneeling on the floor. “Let’s get out of this pit.”

  Kelly bends down and grabs his arm and yanks him upright. The guy starts to protest, but Jake glares at him and he quickly quiets down.

  I march through the doorway into the dimly lit room beyond. It must’ve been an old transportation link for airport employees. Railcars sit on tracks that lead into several different tunnels. A colorful map on the wall shows lines connecting the various concourses and terminals. I wonder if they all still work.

  “What’s your name?” I demand.

  “S-stephen,” the man answers.

  “Well, Stephen, which one gets us out of here?”

  He gestures with his bound hands to a two-car tram along the far wall. The door to the engineer’s compartment stands open. I walk over and look inside. The controls are lit up with a faint green glow.

  “Can someone call this remotely from the other end?”

  He shakes his head.

  “How about from this end?” Another shake. “Good.”

  I instruct Jake to grab the cart that Stephen was pushing in when we ambushed them. The smell of Insta-Meals wafts from inside and my stomach grumbles. My knees shake, but I ignore them. We need to get on the train car and get moving first. I’ll think about my own personal needs once we’re on our way.

  A black satchel sits on top of the cart. A stethoscope dangles out. The bag probably holds the injection Miss Novak had been planning to give to Tanya. I wonder if they intended the same injection for any of the rest of us or if we were going to be used for some other plan.

  We have our backup.

  If there were more time, I’d tell him to explain. I’m even having second thoughts about leaving them behind, but now’s not the time to be second guessing my own decisions.

  I watch Jake roll the cart toward the tram. I have to resist the urge to get the injection out and administer it to one of them instead. But who knows what horror that would unleash. I doubt that Stephen is completely aware of what Arc is doing. He must think he’s in over his head by now, wondering what nasty shit he’s gotten into. I wish I knew, too.