“Back door’s wide open. No way in hell I was going inside.”
We check the next house over and find the doors closed, but unlocked. Inside, the air has a stale smell to it and feels tired and neglected. The cabinets in the kitchen stand open, ransacked.
“Looters?” I ask. “During the evacuation?”
Kelly shrugs, then shakes his head. “I don’t think so. Maybe the owners. Except they only took food, not valuables. Definitely not zoms. Not unless they’ve developed a taste for canned goods.” He lifts an old laptop computer from a desk in the kitchen nook and blows the dust off. But when he opens it up and presses the power button, nothing happens. He sets it down again.
“I heard there were people left, after the evacuation,” he says. “People who refused to leave or were ditched because they were too slow getting out. No shortage of food for stragglers here on the island.”
“Kelly.”
He looks over. “Sorry. Mind’s running a mile a minute. Whoever did this, they’re clearly long gone. Nobody’s been here in a while.”
I wipe a finger through the dust on the counter and nod. “Like anyone would choose to stay, especially after Arc started building the wall around Gameland.”
We head back outside where the others are waiting. I shake my head to let them know Stephen’s not here.
“What now?” Micah asks.
“Yeah, we’re wasting time,” Jake snaps. “We shouldn’t be looking for that asshole. We can’t trust anything he says.”
I glare at him in disbelief. He’s already moved on from Tanya. The girl’s still alive—though not for long—and he doesn’t even care what happens to her now. All he thinks about is himself.
I glance across the cul-de-sac to the house to the right of the path where we came out, then quickly step off the porch and hurry across to it. There’s a spot of blood on the sidewalk, then another, a trail leading around to the side door.
“Window’s broken,” Kelly says, stepping beside me. He nods at the small pane above the knob. There’s a large smear of blood on the grass beside us—fresh blood—and it’s been flattened down. Several more spots color the mat and the door. The blood on the knob is still tacky.
“Bring the others,” I tell him, before heading inside.
The entryway opens directly into a kitchen. The blood trail leads through the room and toward the back of the house. I pluck a long thin knife from the butcher block before following it, and there, in the living room, I find Stephen kneeling over Tanya’s limp form on the couch. He doesn’t look up when I walk in, but I can tell by the way his back straightens that he knows I’m there.
“I tried,” he finally says. “I tried, but I couldn’t save her.”
I don’t speak. Behind me, I hear the side door creak open and the sound of footsteps. I can feel the others gathering around me.
“This was my one chance to prove what I could do. It’s ruined…all gone.”
The man is a pathetic liar, I remind myself. Tanya’s gone, and his mourning for her is a desecration of her memory. I’ll mourn in my own way later. Right now, I have five others who need me to get them home, one of them in need of a cure.
I move around so I can see his face. “How do we turn off the failsafe, Stephen?”
He stares at Tanya, his eyes glassy. Finally he opens his mouth. He takes in a shuddering breath and says, “There’s only one way to access the programs, and that’s directly through the mainframe beneath the Jayne’s Hill radio transmission tower. Each program runs on an infinite loop and transmits wirelessly to the tower. It’s unbreakable.”
“How do we find it? How do we get to the mainframe?”
“I’ve never been there. I don’t know how big the place is. I just know you have to go down an elevator to get to it. Several stories, I think. As far as getting in, the place is surrounded by chain link and razor wire. The fence is electrified, running off solar panels.”
“What if we just cut the power to the transmission towers?”
“The lines are embedded in cement.”
“And if we shut down the mainframe?”
“Won’t work. The satellite servers, like the one you shutdown in LaGuardia, are designed to endlessly transmit last instructions. So, even if the program itself somehow ceases to run in the mainframe, or to be transmitted from there, the signal still gets sent out to your implants. Built-in redundancy.”
“Cut to the chase. How do we leave?”
He looks up at us, despair in his eyes. Beside him, Tanya’s chest rises and falls, shallowly and rapidly. “I told you: It’s unbreakable.”
Ashley makes a sound of disgust. “No program is unbreakable. I cracked The Game’s codex, I can crack this one.”
He turns his gaze to her. “The program is only one part of the failsafe.”
“We got that, asshole,” Jake says. He stares at Stephen’s face, careful not to look at Tanya.
Stephen sneers at him. “I should’ve killed you all when I had the chance.”
“Shoulda, woulda, coulda. You’ll be lucky if we don’t kill you for what you’ve done.”
“Don’t let him get to you, Jake,” Kelly mutters. “He’s just a tiny cog in a much bigger machine.”
“And you’re all just players in a game,” Stephen whispers.
Tanya’s body spasms and gush of dark blood erupts from her mouth and gurgles down her cheeks. Jake turns away. I almost feel like going over and forcing him to look, but a part of me doesn’t blame him for stabbing her, the way she was acting inside the wall…
Stephen brushes the hair from her face and whispers, “Shhh, there there. Shhh.”
My stomach clenches, wanting to be sick. I turn to Reggie. “See if you can find some wire cutters. Maybe downstairs or in the garage.”
Reggie glances at Jake, who nods. Then he turns and heads off through the house, leaving Jake behind. Micah disappears, too.
“Ashley, can I talk to you?” I say. “In private. Kelly, keep an eye on Stephen. You too, Jake.”
Jake tries to protest but Kelly quiets him. I pull Ash into a bedroom down the hall. It used to be a girl’s room, twelve or thirteen years old. The walls are lined with faded posters of once-famous music idols and little pink pigs. There’s an overabundance of the color, and the shelves are lined with hundreds of paperback and hardcover books. The board sags in the middle where a half dozen or so inordinately fat and colorful volumes sit.
I pull one out and glance half-blindly at the cover. It’s got a drawing of a boy with wild hair on it waving a magician’s wand. I put it back, resisting the urge to open it, to feel and smell the pages.
A faded picture on the bedside in one of those old Record-a-Note frames shows a brown-haired girl in a ponytail. I push the speaker button near the bottom and expect to hear childish titters of laughter and a happy message from a ghost of the past. Maybe a happy birthday squeal. Or, “I love you, Mommy and Daddy.”
But there’s nothing. It’s dead, too.
Ashley sits down on the bed and waits. A cloud of dust rises around her. I turn around and shut the door before facing her.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?”
She shakes her head. “What do you mean?”
“The three of you are acting all secretive. I want to know what’s going on between you two and Jake.”
She looks away for a moment, then turns back at me. Her mouth pinches. “It wasn’t my idea.”
“What idea?”
“Reggie agrees. And… Well, so do I.”
I wait, crossing my arms.
“Look, I’m sorry Jessie. It’s nothing personal, but…” She stops and looks down at her hands, scraping the dirt from her fingernails. “We don’t think you should be making the decisions anymore.”
Ice water flows over my head and freezes my body. I can’t move or speak.
She looks up, pleading. “We talked it over. Please don’t be mad. It’s just—”
“What, Ash? You think Jak
e will make a better leader than I will, make better decisions? You think I’d be mad about that? I’m not mad. You’re right. If we’d have listened to Jake, we wouldn’t be in this mess, would we?”
She nods, smiling uncertainly. “I’m glad you understand.”
I can feel the emotions roiling inside of me, wanting to burst through. I can feel my face wanting to twist into a mocking sneer and the anger wanting to form words and hurl them at her until she bleeds and her bones break. I hate that I feel this way.
I take in a shaky breath and say, “I just want you to remember something, Ashley. First, I’m the one who helped everyone escape from Arc at the airport. I’m the one who…who killed that nurse.”
“We know that, Jessie. We know and we’re grateful. You got us out of there. But any of us would’ve done the same thing.”
“I’m not finished! Yes, I made some bad decisions, but you all agreed with them.”
“Not always.”
“If you didn’t agree, then why didn’t you say so?”
She clenches her jaw, but doesn’t answer.
“Jake isn’t always right either, you know.”
“He’s smarter than you about some things, Jessie. He’s had survival training. He fixed your arm.”
“He knows basic first aid. He knows how to start a fire. He can tell what time it is by the position of the sun. Big fucking whoop, Ash. Did his training teach him how to kill a zombie? Because even back when we first swam here through the Midtown tunnel, when he and I were first attacked on Long Island City, all he ever did was run away from them.”
“And you keep running toward them.”
I stop, openmouthed. The accusation stings, not because it’s not true, but because, regardless of my intentions, it is.
“Not on purpose,” I manage to spit out.
“I know, but we need to follow someone who’s looking to avoid getting killed.”
“Are you saying I’m trying to get us killed?”
She opens her mouth and gawps for a moment before shaking her head. “No, but…”
“But what?”
There’s a knock at the door.
“Not now!”
But it opens and Reggie sticks his head in. “We need to leave soon if we’re going to make it before dark.”
“I haven’t had a chance to talk to Stephen.”
He blinks and doesn’t answer.
“Did you find wire cutters?”
“Even better: bolt cutters.”
I turn back to Ash and say, “Okay, Ash, if that’s how you guys feel, then…fine. Let Jake lead for a while. I’m tired of always having to make the tough decisions, anyway. I’m glad to let someone else step up and do it. But no one else has, other than Jake. And, honestly? I think he’s a train wreck waiting to happen. But if you want to follow him, then fine. We’ll do it his way for a little while, see how badly that turns out.”
Her eyes flick to Reg. “See, the thing is, Jessie,” she says. “It’s not just that. We don’t want you to come with us.”
“What? Why not?”
Reggie clears his throat. “You’re bad luck.”
Chapter 3
I blink stupidly for a moment.
“What did you say?”
“Look, it’s nothing personal, Jess. Jake thinks—”
“You know what? Screw Jake and the whore he rode in on!”
Reggie quickly slips into the room and sweeps the door shut behind him, gesturing for me to keep quiet. “Please, Jess, it’s—”
“No! Don’t you start this crap on me, too. You’re supposed to have my back. Instead, you…you go and pick sides with Mister Freaky Boy out there!”
“We’re not talking about picking sides for a game of Zpocalypto here, Jess. This is serious, real life-and-death shit. If we don’t figure this thing out that’s inside our heads, we’re dead. Do you understand? No. Worse than dead. We’re Undead.”
“I understand perfectly well, brah. It’s not a fucking game. Is that what you think I’ve been doing, treating this like a god damn game? You’re right. All this time I’ve been busy whupping zombie ass, it’s because I’m counting points and keeping track of who gets to go first and all that shit! What the hell are you guys thinking? I’m trying to get us back home!”
Ashley gets up off the bed. Her arms are crossed over her chest and she stares at the floor.
“Well?”
“We’ve already decided. You and Micah should stay behind.”
“Micah?” I say, choking. “That makes even less sense. He’s our best hacker—”
“He’s useless,” Ashley says, and she quickly blushes. “He can’t remember, I mean.”
“This is bullshit! He’ll remember. You think you three can handle crossing Gameland all by yourself?”
“Four.”
“What?”
“Four. Kelly’s coming with us.”
My head shoots up at Reggie. “Oh no. You can’t expect me to stay behind when he goes with you. Didn’t you hear a word I said outside? No fucking way.”
The door opens up behind Reggie and he moves aside so Kelly can come in. Was he waiting just outside all this time? Was he listening?
“I just spoke with Micah,” he says. “It’s all set. You two will stay here and figure out a way to get through the wall.”
“What? No fu— Wait a minute. Do you think I’m bad luck, too?”
“No, of course not, Jessie.”
“Well, I’m not leaving you. And I’m not letting you leave me.”
He leans in and grabs my arms hard. There’s a ferocity in his eyes that immediately quiets me. He gestures to the others and they quickly file out of the room.
“You’re hurting me, Kel.”
“I…” he stammers, his eyes flicking between mine. He doesn’t loosen his grip. “I need you to stay behind. I need you to do this for me, Jess.”
I frown. “What’s going on? What aren’t you telling me?”
“It’s killing me, Jessie,” he whispers in my ear. “But I can’t say anything right now. Just know that I love you. That’s all you need to know.”
Then he leans in to kiss me. I’m too shocked to respond or resist. At the last possible moment, he tilts his head up and the kiss lands on my forehead, dry and cold. And the look he gives me tells me one more thing: He doesn’t expect to ever see me again.
He’s out the door before I can move. By the time I can, Reggie’s standing at the door, blocking it.
“Get the hell out of my way!” I shout at him, trying to push past him. “I hate you! I hate you all!”
He gently pushes me back into the room with one hand, waggling a finger at me. He opens his mouth to speak but doesn’t say anything. After a moment, he closes the door behind him.
“No!” I slam my fist against the door. “You bastards!” I grab the knob and rip it open and race out into the hallway. Micah catches my arm before I can get out there.
“You need to calm down, Jessie.”
“Oh, so you’re all against me now?”
“No.”
“I won’t stay here. I am not going home without you guys!” I try to push him aside too, but he holds a finger up to his lips and gives me a quick warning shake of the head. I can hear the others talking in the other room, discussing their plans. I hear Jake mention that they’re taking Micah’s tablet with the map on it.
“What—?”
“Shh! Just listen, Jess,” he whispers. “Kelly didn’t explain everything to me, but I got the sense he thinks you’re in some kind of danger.”
“From Jake?”
“I don’t know. I tried to talk him out of us splitting up, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He was very insistent. He doesn’t want you going to Jayne’s Hill.”
“Why not?”
“Again, I don’t know. But something tells me he knows what he’s talking about.”
I run my hands restlessly through my hair and pace from one side of the hallway to the other. Step,
turn, step, turn.
Focus. Breathe. Step. Breathe.
“He can’t stop me,” I decide. “None of them can. What are they going to do? Have me arrested? Detained? ‘Yes, Officer, my girlfriend is following me through zombie-infested lands because she’s worried about me and I’d really like it if you took her into custody.’ Is that what he’ll do?”
Micah shakes his head and cracks a smile. “Yes, this I remember, the old Jessie, not the running scared one we’ve been seeing lately.”
“Running scared?” I sputter. “Who the hell have you been watching?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know, but not this. This is the real you. Finally. Brassy, cocky, indignant. Not the you everyone else wants you to be.”
This startles me. It’s been a struggle for me lately, trying to do the right thing. Trying to do what other people have told me I should do. Ignoring the tiny voice inside of me.
“You’re thinking of Ashley,” I grumble. “She’s the one with the ‘tude.”
“No, underneath her hard exterior it’s all soft marshmallow. You know that. I know that. Most importantly, Reggie knows that. Why do you think he’s so protective of her? You, on the other hand, you wear your marshmallow part on the outside. It buffers the toughness inside.”
“Yeah, my bad-luck heart of stone. I know.”
“No, not stone. But you are pretty damn tough inside. Maybe…maybe a little too tough sometimes.”
I frown at him, but I feel my anger leaking away. “Well, maybe by splitting up, we can accomplish more,” I say. “You and I can work on getting through the wall.”
“That’s my girl. We’ll get out of this, but not if we’re constantly fighting each other.”
I stare at him for a moment, wondering if his amnesia has done something to him, changed him.
“What?” he asks, giving me a bemused look.
“I think I like this new Micah,” I mumble. “The old one never got this serious about anything. Thoughtful, yes, but not serious.”
“I’ve always been this serious, Jess. I just happen to be sober.” He laughs. “But if you tell anyone this is the real me, I’ll have to kill you.”
S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus Page 49
