I spin and kick out at Jake, directing my foot at his elbow. The pistol goes flying out of his hand.
“What the fu—”
Ashley screams.
I turn just in time to see her drop the machete—the blade stained almost black from Mabel’s clotted blood. She turns and starts to run as the zombie hisses at her.
“Ashley!”
Mabel spins and lunges at me, her teeth gnashing. I step back. She falls, gets back to her feet and takes a lurching step forward, reaching out with both arms. One of them ends in a grisly stump that leaks a vile, thick goop. The fingers of her other hand claw the air. She moans with hunger and desire. In an instant, the distance between us closes.
Jake and I stumble into each other as we try to get out of her way. I’m knocked off balance. My ankle twists on something and I go down. Jake spins and stumbles but plants a hand on the floor and manages to stay on his feet.
Mabel’s on me in an instant, the bones in her stump pressing down on my neck, tearing at my skin as she leans in to bite. She bares her bloodstained teeth at me, her tongue reaching out like the fetus of some kind of evil parasite emerging from the belly of its host. I reach up and grab a handful of her shirt, feeling it squish in my fingers. With a sickening, slurping sound, my hand sinks into the gaping gunshot hole in her chest. She pushes down on me, extending her neck, dripping blood and saliva onto my cheek. I try to push her away, but she arches her spine, and now I’m up to my elbow inside of her, pushing against the back of her ribcage and hoping my hand doesn’t slip through the exit wound.
Her mouth gapes wide, a black maw cavern of death. My mind goes blank with terror.
But then she shudders and jerks to the side. Out of the fog of my shock, my mind registers something slamming into her face. A thick, putrid fluid splatters over me. Mabel jerks and tumbles away. I manage to pull my arm free from her chest and scramble off in the opposite direction.
Reggie steps into view again, brandishing the stump of Mabel’s arm. He hits her with it again, square in the face, but it does little to stop her. It only draws her attention to him.
“Jessie! Get out of there,” Kelly shouts.
Mabel spins around, spraying blood and spittle in a wide arc.
“Over here!” Reggie shouts.
For a moment she can’t decide between them, but then she turns back to Reggie. He’s closer.
“That’s it, bitch! Come get your arm back.”
“Don’t piss her off, Reg,” Kelly warns.
It’s such a ridiculous comment that I bark out a crazy laugh. Mabel hears it and turns back to me.
“Use the machete, Jessie!”
I realize it’s in my hand. It must’ve been what I’d tripped over. I quickly get my feet beneath me and stand.
“I killed you once already, bitch. You should’ve stayed dead!”
“Hey!” Reggie shouts. Mabel spins toward him again, exposing the back of her head to me. “Over here!”
“Get that column between you and her,” I hiss. “To your left, Reg!”
His eyes flick in the wrong direction.
“Your other left!”
“That’s my right!”
He starts edging toward the column, but Mabel has turned back to me again.
“God damn it, bitch!” Reggie shouts. “Make up your mind!”
Mabel doesn’t listen. Her eyes lock on mine, those inkshot, blackened orbs that show me what hell must look like. There’s a hint of something in them, the ghost of a fire, a spark of life. But then it’s gone as she passes into the shadow of the column.
Reggie hits her one last time with her arm. It smacks against the side of her face with a sickening sound. Quick as a wink, she spins on him, grasping, reaching out with her hungry arms.
“Shit!” he yells, ducking just out of reach. He edges toward the column. “God damn thing was waiting for me to do that!”
I almost argue with him, but don’t. Moving quietly, keeping entirely in her blind spot, I move up close behind her. I grip the machete in both hands, testing its weight, noting the sliminess of her congealed blood on the handle. I shudder, knowing I’m also covered in the same stuff, but there’s little I can do about that now. If anything, the tackiness will help me keep my grip.
Reggie begins to circle around the column, making sure Mabel follows.
“You better do something quick, guys!”
I step up behind her and raise my arms. Mabel shuffles toward him, deceptively slowly, unbelievably fast.
He comes into view around the column.
“Reggie! Look out!”
Mabel spins toward Ashley’s voice just as I bring the machete down. But instead of slicing through her neck, the blade misses, leaving only a deep gouge on one side. A chunk of neck muscle sloughs off. Clumps of half-clotted blood gurgle forth. How can she still have so much blood inside of her? The blade pings off the column and snaps.
White hot flames shoot up my arms. My sprained wrist sings from a million pin pricks. I drop the broken machete and stumble away, holding my arms stiffly out in front of me, grunting in pain.
“Hey!” Reggie yells. He picks up the stump of her arm and heaves it at her. It bounces off her face and lands on the floor. The movement distracts her. I see Reggie bend down and grab the broken machete. When she turns back to him, he swings it up.
It seems to slice right through her neck, and yet she takes another step toward him. Reggie falls backward, tripping over the hand. Mabel steps again, and then collapses. Her head tilts away from her body as she falls. She hits the ground and rolls left. Her head rolls right.
Nobody says anything for a moment, then Kelly’s by my side, trying to pull me to my feet.
“Don’t touch me!” I scream. “I’m covered!”
I lean over and open my mouth and puke up the half-digested remains of the Insta-Meals. It comes out blood red.
Ashley screams. Kelly jumps back, his eyes refilling with horror.
“Maraschino cherries,” I manage to gasp, smelling the sickly sweet aroma. “I knew it was a bad idea to eat those things. And don’t you dare call me Pukegirl.”
† † †
Sometime later, after I’ve gotten over the shock of the attack and the bloodbath, I stagger to my feet and over to the security door. Kelly’s and Reggie’s eyes rise and track me, but no one else looks. They’re still in shock.
“Don’t open it,” Kelly whispers. But I slip the cardkey from my pocket and slide into the reader. The light turns green. I already know what I’m going to see. I’d caught a glimpse of it when Mabel came barreling out.
“Not yet,” Reggie whispers. “I…can’t. Not yet.”
I can see his throat working. He closes his eyes and leans against the wall. The muscles in his face ripple as he tries to control his emotions.
“We need to know,” I say.
“We’ve got Stephen.”
“That’s if we can find him,” I remind them. “He took off when things started getting bad. Remember?”
“I told you guys,” Jake whines. “I told you he’d take off.”
“Not now,” Reggie says, his voice low and full of warning.
“No! You guys never listen to me. I said we should’ve done something with him before. Now, who knows where he is and who he’s going to bring back.”
“Who is he going to bring back, Jake? You didn’t see what’s inside that hallway. I did. There’s no one to bring back.”
“Um, guys,” Ashley says. She points across the empty ticketing lobby. “I don’t think we need to worry about Stephen. He’s standing right over there.”
We look out across the terminal and see a figure silhouetted against the tinted glass. It’s him, Stephen. As we watch, he raises his hands to his head, shudders, then staggers backward, and falls quivering to the floor.
Chapter 9
“I say we shoot him,” Jake says.
“You don’t get to speak,” Reggie tells him. “Especially about shooting.
”
Jake narrows his eyes at Reggie, but he backs down.
I ignore them both and instead kneel down right in front of Stephen, who’s now sitting up again and staring out the window. There’s a dazed look in his eyes.
“He’s screwing with us, making us think he’s psycho.”
“He is psycho, Jake.”
“Why the hell would he do that?” I ask, suddenly furious. “Why not just run when he had the chance? He could be long gone by now.”
“Where’s he going to run to? There’s nowhere to go out there. You said it yourself, Jessie.”
“The tunnel,” Kelly offers. “There’s nothing keeping him from walking through it.”
“There’s nothing keeping you from walking through it, either,” Jake snaps. “Or Jessie.”
“I can think of four reasons,” I tell him. “No, five.”
Jake stubbornly refuses to budge. “He’s messing with our minds, getting under our skin. Just shoot him.”
“He might be getting under your skin,” Reggie snaps, “but you’re getting under mine.”
I shake my head at them both to get them to stop, but they’re too amped up to see how their arguing isn’t helping
“Put him out of our misery.”
“Damn it, Jake!” Reggie shouts. “Would you quit with the shooting already?”
“What the hell’s your problem?”
“You want to know what my problem is? Jessie told you back there not to shoot. Not only did you not listen, you nearly took my freaking head off!”
“I had that IU dead to rights! One more shot and—”
“One more shot and we’d be completely out of bullets, Jake,” I whisper. “Now that’s enough. Both of you shut the hell up.”
Everyone stops for a moment. I can’t tell if they’re impressed that I had the presence of mind back there to have counted the shots or if they’re afraid of me, of what I might become because of the infected blood all over me. It must be the first, because they start right back up again.
“What the hell good is a bullet if you don’t use it?”
“What the hell good is a bullet if it doesn’t hit the target?” Reggie replies. “Or worse, it hits one of us?”
“All right. Calm down, both of you,” Kelly quietly says. “And, Jake, give me back that pistol before you hurt somebody.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Where the hell is it?”
“How should I know? Jessie knocked it out of my hand.”
The blood is drying on my skin, making it feel tight. My overalls are soaked with it. I want to scrub it all away with scalding hot water and bleach—not that I’ll find either of those here in this wretched place.
I follow Stephen’s gaze out through the dark tinted glass. The window is filthy, clouded with a dozen years of soot and dust and acid rain and who knows what else. The early afternoon sunlight is behind us, so the window’s now cast in shade, making the room even darker than it was this morning. Outside, nothing moves.
“What is he looking at?”
“I don’t see anything,” Reggie says.
I snap my fingers in front of Stephen’s face. He blinks but doesn’t respond.
“It’s like he’s waiting for something. Like maybe a whole bunch of zombies.”
Reggie snorts. “Yeah, Jake. Whose skin is he getting under now?”
“Shut up.”
“Jake,” I say. “Go find that pistol and bring it back.”
He’s more than happy to. He must think I’m actually going to use it to shoot Stephen. After he leaves, I lean over again and say in a loud voice, “Stephen, can you hear me?” The words echo in the terminal.
“Don’t get so damn close to him, Jess. Please.”
“Stephen! Answer me!”
His head slowly rises toward me. His eyes don’t move, just his head. His skin is dry, despite the warmth and humidity inside the terminal. His mouth hangs open and his breaths seem much too shallow.
“Are you sure he gave you whatever was in that syringe?” Kelly asks. “Maybe he gave it to himself.”
I was just beginning to wonder that myself. I raise my hand to my neck, as if that’s going to tell me anything. I haven’t shown any symptoms of having been injected with anything. And now he’s acting totally out of it.
“What are you talking about?” Reggie asks.
“Later, Reg,” I say. “Why would he inject himself?” I ask Kelly.
He shrugs. “Might not have been intentional. Maybe it was. The guy’s a psychopath. Who knows what drives them to do what they do. I mean, why would that nurse infect herself so she’d reanimate? That’s just…”
“Fucked,” Reggie says.
I reach out. The boys shift uneasily, alarm on their faces. But Stephen doesn’t move when I touch his forehead. “He’s burning up. Whatever happened back there on the tram—whether he got the injection or not—there’s clearly something wrong with him now.”
He’s infected and his body is struggling to stave it off.
Now a similar struggle wages inside of me, threatening to consume me. Except this infection is in my soul. The germ that’s trying to take over isn’t engineered from bits and pieces of genes and viruses. Not directly, anyway. It’s built from guilt and paranoia.
Why should I fear what Stephen might’ve done to himself?
Because you’re afraid of what Arc was trying to do with us.
“Have you decided?” Jake asks, returning. “Or are we going to keep standing around here for another half hour chatting while he screws with us?”
Kelly snatches the pistol from his hand. “Nobody’s that good of an actor. Stephen might be infected.”
We quickly tell them about the struggle on the tram and the syringe with the
(green)
white liquid inside.
“We thought he’d injected me, but I’m not sick.”
“So, we definitely should shoot him.”
“I am not going to shoot this man! Not until we know for sure he’s going to reanimate.”
“Jess.” Kelly reaches out, but he stops himself. It’s like he’s seeing me now for the first time, seeing the blood on me. Back there, when we were both sure I’d been injected, we hadn’t known what was inside that syringe. It might’ve been a virus; it might’ve been something else. Now…
Now, based on the limited knowledge we have of disease transmission, how could I not be not infected? Reggie might be too. But it’s clear to me that Kelly doesn’t want to touch me now.
“Maybe Jake’s right,” he says, barely managing to keep his voice under control. But his face flickers with emotion—fear and anger and hatred—and his fists clench and release with helplessness.
“First of all, we don’t know for anything for sure. Anything. Second, Stephen does. We kill him now, we lose our last chance to find out how to get out of here.”
“Jess, you need to think ab—”
“Those other two Arc people? I’m pretty sure they’re dead,” I say, standing back up. “Did you see the blood behind that security door? I did. There was a hell of a lot of it. Stephen’s the only one left who can tell us anything about these implants and how the failsafe mechanism inside us works.”
“He’s dangerous, Jess,” Kelly says. “If not biologically, then psychologically. He’s putting us at even greater risk than we’re already in.”
“We’ll tie him up.”
Jake throws his hands in the air.
“If he so much as blinks like a zombie,” I tell them, “I promise, I’ll be first one to put a bullet in his head!”
“Really?” Jake asks, challenging me. “Just like that? No hesitation? What if it was one of us?”
“What the hell are you talking about? It’s not one of us!”
“It might be, if he’s infected. He could bite one of us. And then where would we be?” He turns to Kelly. “What about you? What if it was Jessie?”
Kelly looks at me and in this moment I
hate Jake more than I have ever hated anyone else.
“I’d do what I needed to do,” Kelly whispers.
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t hesitate, either,” Jake says. “Not even for a second.” He stalks away. “I’m going downstairs to watch.”
“Hey,” I shout at his back. “I made a promise to bring everyone home. You can count on that!”
“When the time comes, Jessie. I’ll hold you to it.”
“Christ,” Reggie breathes, when Jake’s finally gone. He gives Kelly a weird look. “You’d really shoot us? Damn, brah, that’s seriously messed up.”
PART TWO
Everything Can Change in an Instant
Chapter 10
After tying Stephen up, Kelly, Reg and I head across the terminal and back to the security door. We each give Mabel’s body a long, hard stare as we pass it, but it’s pretty clear she’s really dead this time. She won’t be reanimating. Finally, we work up the courage to open the door.
We fully expect to find two bodies inside, a man’s and a woman’s, the two Arc employees we fought down in the baggage claim area when we made our escape early this morning. Or at least most of their bodies.
It’s possible that they could’ve survived, but from the carnage I’d glimpsed earlier, I doubt it. I can’t imagine anything could have survived such brutality. But we need to know: Did either of them escape? Are they infected? Have they reanimated?
“Ready?” Kelly whispers.
I swallow what feels like a boulder stuck in my throat, then insert the cardkey. The light blinks green. Kelly wraps his fingers around the handle.
“No!” Reggie says, placing his palm on the door and pushing against the door. “Wait. Maybe we should, you know, bang on it first. In case there’s another one of them wandering around inside. That’ll get them riled up if they’re in there.”
“Why the hell would we want them riled up for?”
“I’m just saying, then we’ll know for sure.”
S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus Page 35
