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

by Saul Tanpepper

  Once we get back to the mainland, I’ll turn him over to the cops. He’s weak. He’ll give up Arc. Hopefully, it’ll be enough to put them permanently out of business.

  Reggie comes through the door pushing Micah. Tanya follows behind him like a drone, blinking and shuffling. I wish I knew what they’ve done to her. She should’ve gotten over her shock by now. She’s nothing like the bubbly woman I briefly met on the bus.

  “I’ll drive,” Reggie volunteers. He’s back to his old self, that’s for sure.

  I shrug, and no one argues with him. They all make their way to the open car. Everyone just wants to get back home.

  I take Micah’s wheelchair from Reggie and enter the car, finding a space that’s not in the way. Jake brings the cart in and positions it next to Micah. Then he settles himself down in the adjacent seat, smoldering. I wait until Ashley brings Tanya in, leading her by the elbow. They sit down across the aisle from the boys. Jake watches them both for a moment, rubbing the bandage on the back of his neck. He suddenly looks completely depleted. They all do, especially Kelly.

  Stephen stumbles in, Kelly poking him in the back with the pistol. “Sit down and don’t move!” he snarls. But even I can tell it’s more bark than bite.

  Stephen just lowers his head into his hands and tries to wrap himself up. He looks like a man condemned to early conscription. A bubble of sympathy floats through me before I remember what he’s a party to. Even if not entirely aware of all the details, he’s still guilty of some complicity.

  I join Reggie in the engineer’s compartment and tell him we’re ready to go. I watch him as he turns a key. Dials spring to life. A half dozen gauges do their brief jiggity electrical dances before steadying. We have power and brake pressure and who knows what else. It’s old tech and I don’t really understand much of it. It reminds me a lot of Micah’s old Ford. All I know it that it still works, so somebody must’ve been maintaining it all this time.

  A low hum vibrates the air.

  “I guess that means everything’s good,” Reggie says. “No red flashing lights or alarm bells. No sirens. No explosions.” He gives me little shrug and grins.

  The word ‘explosion’ sets me on edge again. “Let’s go then,” I say impatiently.

  I know it’s just nerves, but I can’t shake the feeling that something’s not right. It’s been troubling me ever since I broke out of my room. Maybe I’m just being extra paranoid, but ever since finding out that our ‘impromptu’ plan to break into LI was really part of a larger scheme involving Arc, I’ve been second guessing everything, every decision, every move.

  How did they know? Who could’ve told them? Jake?

  Grandpa?

  God, we thought we were being clever and secretive, a bunch of juveniles getting away with random crap that we really had no business messing around in. The only part of our excursion that was truly our own decision and not Arc’s was when we came back. And we screwed that up.

  Who can I trust? Who can’t I?

  It makes me suspect everything that happened, starting with Reggie’s suggestion to come here in the first place.

  Was our earlier attempt to hack The Game some kind of trigger that set our path?

  What about when we hacked the old government computers for the maps?

  And my faulty rebreather in the tunnel. Accidental or intentional?

  How about the sudden appearance of the zombies on LI?

  Was meeting Tanya on the bus part of the plan?

  Reggie curls his fingers over a control lever and slowly pulls it down. The external doors close. A bell chimes and a female voice announces that we’ll be moving soon. There’s a chuff of air as the brakes release. I brace myself, but we don’t move.

  “What’s going on? Why aren’t we going?”

  He shakes his head and studies the control panel. The he reaches over and pushes a red button with the palm of his hand. The train car lurches. We begin to move.

  “Seems our friend was holding out on us. It’s not just a lever. It’s a lever and a button.”

  I hope it’s the last surprise.

  “Let’s go home, Reg.”

  “I’m with you on that one, girl,” he replies. “And never come back, neither.”

  ‡ ‡

  [END OF EPISODE TWO]

  Episode 3

  Deadman’s Switch

  PART ONE

  Promises Made

  Chapter 1

  I wait for the tram to pick up speed, but it just clicks quietly along at a steady pace, no faster than a jog. At this rate, it’ll take us an hour to get to the mainland.

  “Must be low on power,” Reggie says.

  “See if you can figure it out.”

  The darkness of the tunnel envelops us and we’re left in the meager glow of the safety LCD lamps shining down on us from the ceiling of the car. They turn Reggie into a pale ghost.

  “Let me know if you see anything strange.” I point at the grainy black and white image showing the leading end of the tram and the tracks that lie ahead. He nods. “Give us a couple minutes warning before we get to the mainland side. I want to make sure we’re prepared for whatever might be waiting for us.”

  “What do you think is waiting for us?”

  “I don’t know, Reg.”

  I also have no idea how he’ll know when we’re getting close, but I trust he’ll figure it out.

  I open the compartment door and head back to the main car where the others are seated. Nobody talks or moves. The door slides shut behind me.

  I wish I could shake this feeling of unease, or at least understand what’s causing it, but the stress is making me even more lightheaded than I already am. I can feel it in the back of my head at the base of my skull, a dull pressure, radiating toward the front. It feels like a caffeine headache, the kind I get when I drink too much caffeine too fast.

  Kelly stands up and walks over. When I gesture for him to sit, he settles into the hard plastic seat next to me.

  “I’m sorry about back there,” he says. “I was just so crazy worried about you, and then, when I saw you, I just about lost it.”

  I sigh and try to rub the tension out of my neck. I don’t say anything. I can’t even think straight right now.

  “I want you to know why I did what I did, Jess.”

  “I think I already know,” I say. “It’s all right. Micah told me. He said it was for love and responsibility. He said you did it for Kyle.”

  “For you, Jessie. I did it for you. I wanted to protect you.”

  I’m tired of that old argument. It doesn’t hold water with me anymore. “You see,” I tell him, “that’s the part I don’t understand. Your brother Kyle? I get that. You needed money for his hospital bills, so he can get the treatment. What I don’t get is all the rest.”

  “You figured that out then, the part about the bills and needing money.” Kelly exhales heavily and looks away, pinching his nose. “Yes, the first time we went, that was more about Kyle. But it’s not what you think.”

  “What I think? What I think is that I can’t believe you kept it from me. You ask me to spend the rest of my life with you, and then you turn around and keep secrets from me. How am I supposed to trust you?”

  “It’s because I love you that I kept these things from you. I love you, Jessie.”

  “What did Arc want you to do in return? Be a Volunteer?”

  “What? No! I would never do that!”

  Kelly sags away from me, holding his head in his hands. For a moment I think he’s crying, but then quickly dismiss the idea, so I’m surprised to see his face is wet when he looks up.

  “I was supposed to get Micah’s hack,” he admits. “I’ve been selling them to Arc.”

  “All of them? Even the light saber fix Micah wrote for his avatar in Zpocalypto?”

  He nods. “Yeah. I sold that one, too.”

  I stare at him for a moment, then a bubble of laughter rises up inside of me. I try to stifle it. He smiles at me, confusi
on on his face.

  “But, okay, then why go back for Jake? What does that have to do with Arc? Or Kyle?”

  “Nothing. That’s what I keep trying to tell you. That part was for you. And Jake too. A tiny, little bit for Jake. Mostly it was for you. And…okay, maybe a little bit for me. You really poured on the guilt back there. I mean, you were right: Jake didn’t deserve us turning our backs on him. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life not being able to look at myself in the mirror and hating myself because I’d left him behind.”

  “You should’ve let us help.”

  “I figured it would be a simple rescue. Get in quick, get out quick. The fewer people involved, the better. Christ, I was wrong. And then, when those two guys from Arc found us, I was, like, cool. But I knew something was wrong, almost from the start. Sure enough, they betrayed me. They betrayed all of us.”

  “Why? What could they want with a bunch of kids?”

  “We’re not just kids, Jess. We’re hackers and gamers. And we’re nobodies. Who’ll miss us?”

  “We’re not nobodies.”

  He leans into me. The fatigue suddenly etched so deeply in his face that I’m afraid it’ll never go away. I take his head in my hands and pull him close. He hesitates at first, his eyes studying mine, looking for something that I’m not sure he’ll ever find in them. Maybe if he looks hard enough and deep enough he will. Maybe. I hope he keeps trying.

  And then we kiss.

  Oh God, I want so badly for this to be a dream. A nightmare fading into a harmless dream. I want to wake up from my life and just be with Kelly.

  When he finally draws away again, his eyes are closed. “Marry me,” he whispers.

  “If we get out of this—”

  “If? Don’t you mean when?” He smiles thinly, but it still manages to light up his face.

  I smile back, even as a deep sense of foreboding falls over me. I’m not as certain as he is that we will succeed in getting out of this.

  He sags against his seat until his head rests against the wall. In less than a minute, he’s asleep, his body finally yielding to his exhaustion.

  I wish I could sleep too, but I can’t. The throbbing in my head is worse. My stomach roils unhappily. I stand up to stretch. With one last glance downward at Kelly, I step toward the back of the car.

  Stephen looks over at me. “This isn’t about Arc,” he quietly says. “It isn’t even about you. It’s much bigger than that.”

  Jake gives him a quick shake of the head, a warning look in his eyes, silently telling him to shut up. But there’s something else in Jake’s face, too. Pain, I think. He looks like he’s desperately trying not to cry out.

  I go and stand in front of Stephen, blocking him from Jake’s view. I don’t need anyone to freak out like he did back there in the terminal. For a moment there I was sure he was going to lose it and murder someone. I can’t let that happen. I may have blood on my hands, but the rest of them are innocent. I’ll do what I can to make sure it stays that way.

  The tram rocks slightly and my body responds sluggishly. My brain feels like it’s sloshing around inside of my skull. My head pounds from the combination of tension and Kelly’s kiss, from fatigue and hunger. I wait for the pressure and the nausea to pass, but they only intensify.

  “What do you mean bigger than Arc?” I mumble.

  Stephen’s face swims before me. He laughs again and his voice sounds low and warped in my ears.

  What the hell is wrong with me?

  Across the aisle, Jake suddenly bends over and pukes between his shoes. I turn, startled by the sound, but the scene sweeps past my view and keeps right on spinning; it doesn’t stop. I catch a glimpse of Ashley slumped awkwardly in her seat. Tanya cries out, grabbing her head. She tries to stand, but crumples to the floor, writhing and making choking sounds. The scene spins and spins: Kelly, Jake, Micah, Ash, Tanya.

  Kellyjakemicahashtanyakellyjake—

  Stephen laughs and laughs.

  And then, from some deep place inside of me, I suddenly know what’s been eating at me. It was what Miss Novak had said about us not being able to leave. And then, earlier, in my room during the fight with Nurse Mabel, the words that so enraged me that I’d had to—

  That I…

  I…

  You’ll never escape.

  I had to kill her.

  I had to.

  Now I finally understand exactly what they’d meant: There’s something about the new implants they put in us. They’ve done something to them so we can’t leave.

  I hear Stephen’s voice cutting through the fog of pain: “Our failsafe.” He sounds so far away now, like he’s been whisked away, flying over the hills and into the clouds. I can almost see and feel those same clouds between us as my knees give way. He comes and hovers over me, as if the floor has lost all its substance, smiling like a manic angel.

  “You didn’t think we’d just let you go, did you?” he asks. “That’s why we have contingencies such as these.”

  He goes over to the cart and pulls out a pair of scissors and manages to cut himself free of his bindings. I watch helplessly from the floor, my muscles quivering like jelly, not responding to my commands.

  Yet, somehow, with an effort that feels both torturous and not my own, I find myself incredibly lurching to my feet. I smack into a pole and grab it to keep from falling, but I slide down. I rise again, pushing, straining against the mighty grasp of gravity. I need to make it back to Reggie. I need to tell him to stop the tram. To turn it around. My mouth doesn’t work. My lips are cardboard.

  I bounce between the poles, off the seats. Two more steps and my brain registers that the engineer’s compartment is empty. Reggie’s not standing at the controls. His body lies limp on the floor of the compartment, half through the open doorway, rocking with the movement of the car.

  I slip to my knees. They won’t carry me any longer. Leaning back against the seat feels so good. I’m tempted to just lie down and sleep.

  Stephen watches me with amusement in his eyes. I couldn’t care less. I just want to sleep.

  “We should be just about under the wall by now. Just about to the EM barrier. It won’t hurt for much longer. I promise.”

  “Why?” I gasp.

  “We don’t want our experiments getting out and infecting the rest of New York, now do we? Not yet, anyway.”

  His laughter peals against my eardrums, pounds off the walls of my skull. He reaches into the medical bag and draws out a syringe filled with a shiny green substance.

  “What are you going to do with that?” I say, my words slurring. They’re barely coherent, even to my own ears.

  “Not everyone is who you think they are,” he says. “Not your friends. Not your family. Not even me.” He laughs and pushes me aside with his foot. He sneers like I’m nothing but dirty laundry. It doesn’t take him much effort to get past me.

  “Take me, for example,” his voice says.

  I watch his lips, fascinated by the way they don’t seem to sync with his words.

  “You undoubtedly thought I was some weak-kneed intern or something. I’m the prep nurse, not Miss Novak. I’m the one who developed the alpha protocol. And once I get you back, I’ll be giving the injections to all of you.”

  I slip to the floor once more and begin to melt into it. I just want so badly to sleep. I close my eyes, and darkness descends.

  Suddenly, there’s a snap inside my head and a white hot flash of pain. I scream in agony while Stephen laughs.

  Then it’s gone, blissfully gone. The pain flees from my head so completely that I’m left breathless. It leaves in its place an emptiness so immense that all I can do is plunge headlong into it.

  Chapter 2

  “Citizens are advised to remain indoors,” the recording blares from the government-required speaker on our wall. The same message for the past three hours, over and over again. “This is not a drill. Do not go outside. Do not answer your door unless you are instructed to do so by the m
ilitary.”

  Eric pulls me away from the window, snapping at me that I’m going to get us killed standing there like that.

  “I thought the outbreak was in Washington?” I say. “That’s hundreds of miles away.”

  “How do you know that? I didn’t see anything on Media.”

  There’s been nothing about the outbreak on the official Media Stream, no announcements, no coverage. But it’s not hard to find the black streams. That’s where the real information can be found, unadulterated by Government.

  “God,” I cry, rubbing my arm. “Why do you have to be so paranoid all the time?”

  “Jessie, be quiet!”

  “You be quiet, Mister Scaredy Cat-I’m-afraid-of-a-zombie-wombie.”

  He holds his head in his hands and rocks, moaning like one of them.

  “Is it because of Dad you’re such a freak?”

  “You shut up about Dad!” he screams, his face bright red.

  “Eric,” Mom says, “please. She’s only nine. She’s just a kid. She’s scared.”

  “I’m not scared, Mom.”

  “You should be,” Eric says. “Now get away from the window.”

  “How long do we have to stay inside?”

  “As long as the police say we have to, honey,” Mom says. She reaches for her glass. Condensation still drips down the outside, though the ice is long gone. She lifts it to her lips and grimaces. She doesn’t like the taste, and yet she still takes another drink. Sober for three months—the longest stretch yet. But rumors of a new outbreak have driven her back to the bottle.

  “When is Grandpa coming home?” I ask. “Won’t he be arrested for being outside?”

  “Grandpa is safe. Don’t worry. He’s helping the police. He knows what to do.”

  “Damn well better know,” Eric mutters. “This is all his fault.”