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

by Saul Tanpepper

  The stray light from downstairs doesn’t reach the top of the flight, but there’s a window a few steps beyond the darkest section, where the stairs make a ninety degree turn. I hurry up to it, wading through the inky blackness, before thinking to wake my Link and use its wan glow to light my way.

  Micah said he’d double-checked these rooms. After the attack by Stephen, he’d gone through the entire house again and assured me that we were the only things in it. Except for Stephen’s body, of course. Even so, I’m wary. The image of that girl on the swing haunts me.

  But I make it to the bathroom and find it empty. The light blazes after I flip the switch. I make a quick inspection. I even check beneath the vanity.

  Out of habit, I push the flush handle down when I’m finished. But, of course, there’s no water. Instead, there’s a strange crinkling sound coming from inside the tank. I lift the cover and find it dry.

  Taped to the bottom of the lid is a plastic bag. I tear it away, holding my breath and hoping it’s what I want it to be.

  It’s not. Not even close.

  I still have the gun I found in Long Island City, but it’s only got one bullet left. What I find in the plastic bag is a wad of old American currency—useless now—plus some jewelry and a stack of photos. I toss the cash into the toilet. The jewelry I pocket.

  I’m about to toss the pictures as well, when something makes me stop. Instead, I turn and sit down on the rim of the tub and begin to thumb through them. They’re old and brittle, the old wallet-sized ones. I wonder why they were put there under the tank lid. Why wouldn’t the owners have taken them when they left?

  And why are you putting yourself through this torture?

  The picture on top is of a woman, young and pretty, straight brown hair, a slightly mousy face. The wife, I guess, based on the photos downstairs. The next photo is of the same woman standing alongside a man, their arms intertwined. Both are smiling. Everyone’s smiling. Everyone’s happy. It’s a snapshot in a park somewhere. Central Park, maybe. They look to be in their mid-twenties, a young couple, probably newly married.

  Back before the maximum Life Expectancy was mandated, people wed and had families later in life. Now, the average marrying age is nineteen. You’re a spinster if you’re unwed at twenty-two.

  The next series of pictures are all of the couple—at a party, on a boat, a professional sitting. The next is flipped over, as are the remaining. I turn them and gasp at the one on top. The little girl is so beautiful. Her golden hair shines like the sun, and her blues eyes are stunning. In one photo, she’s a tiny baby, a tuft of downy hair rising from the top of her head like delicate tendrils of smoke.

  The last is a photo of her on the swing in the backyard—new and shiny—her rabbit stuffy on the freshly mown lawn next to her. She’s laughing into the air as the swing carries her higher. I can almost hear it. I can imagine the crick of the swing on its chains and soft whisper of the breeze. Daddy’s barbecuing and the smell of hotdogs comes to me. I close my eyes. My mouth waters. Mom laughs too, as she tries to angle herself for the perfect shot.

  There’s a knock on the door and the vision breaks up and drifts away, leaving nothing but emptiness inside of me, the emptiness of a family torn apart by this evil created by my own father and misused by his.

  “It’s done,” Micah says, sticking his head in without waiting for me to answer. His eyes drift down to the photos in my hands. “Not sure I actually managed to do it, but at least I tried.”

  He stands there a couple more seconds while I stare at the photo. Finally he sighs and asks, “You want to tell me why I just turned their Links into failsafe transmitters?”

  I stand up and slip the photos into my back pocket. “So we can leave the island,” I answer. “All of us.”

  PART THREE

  Reunite

  Chapter 19

  Micah shakes his head and gives me this smile that tells me he thinks I’m right. “I can’t believe it was so simple,” he says.

  “You think it’ll work?”

  “Do I? It’s brilliant,” he says, pacing excitedly. “Using our Links as mini-transmitters. They communicate directly with our implants, and we carry them around with us everywhere we go. Why none of us thought of it before…” He rubs his face, and the lack of sleep suddenly settles back over him. “Sometimes the simplest answer is the hardest to find,” he finishes.

  We’re back in the laundry room, sitting with our backs against the old machines. The bottom corner of the washer is rusted away, the thin metal flaking and crumbling. I stare at the screen of my Link at the empty doorway to the stairwell. All is quiet there. Outside the house, the Infecteds have calmed down again.

  “If it works—”

  “It will!” he exclaims.

  “If it works, then Ashley needs to get her link back.” I gesture at the image on my screen. It’s still connected. It still shows the empty stairwell.

  Micah nods grimly and stares at my screen, as if willing the guys to come back.

  A shadow tilts against the far wall. I shush him, not sure if it’s one of our friends or an IU. The shadow moves, wavering from left to right, but whoever—or whatever—is casting it doesn’t move into the screen.

  “Think it’s one of them?” I whisper.

  Micah doesn’t answer. We watch a few more minutes until it moves away again.

  I let out a whoosh of air. “So, what if we make noise? It’s not like they can do anything to us, right? And if it’s the guys, then we’ll know they’re okay.”

  Micah considers this for a moment, then nods. “Just not too loud.”

  I cup my hands around my mouth and lower my face until it’s right next to my Link and call out.

  Nothing.

  I repeat it, once, twice…

  Then there’s a sound.

  “Was that a word? Did someone speak?”

  I shake my head. “Don’t know.”

  “Try again.”

  “Kelly? Reg? Jake?”

  The rasping noise gets louder and the screen fills with a pair of old faded jeans, too close and too blurry to tell who they belong to.

  “Jake?”

  The jeans-wearer bumps the table. Ashley’s Link jitters and the scene shifts.

  “I don’t think it’s one of ours.”

  I feel so helpless. We’re sitting here waiting for them, watching the IUs from the safety of our Link screens. I hate not knowing what’s happening.

  “Can IUs walk down steps?” I ask.

  “They can fall down stairs. IUs can’t walk up steps, not like implanted Infecteds,” Micah answers. He asks how I think they got into the compound.

  “Not by climbing a tree,” I reply. What I don’t say is that maybe it was Kelly’s fault. Maybe by messing with the power, he accidentally let them in.

  The jeans reappear, and this time it’s clear they belong to an IU.

  “What’s it doing?”

  Micah doesn’t answer. We both just watch as it shuffles around.

  “It’s like it’s looking for something.”

  Something to eat.

  “I can’t stand just sitting here.” I get up for the tenth time, then sit back down again.

  He checks his Link. “It’s just after two. We can’t do anything for a couple more hours, I guess.”

  “We should get some sleep.”

  “How can I?”

  “You’ve already done more than any of the rest of us, Jess. You’ve probably just saved their lives and—”

  “You don’t know that,” I snap. I can feel my self-control slipping away, leaving in its wake that hot, greasy, burning feeling of helplessness. If I could figure out a way to run from it, I would.

  “It’ll work.”

  I turn to him, squeezing my fists until my fingernails make painful half-moons in my palms.

  “It’ll work, Jessie,” he repeats. “I’m as sure of it as I was sure Ashley’s fix wouldn’t work. Even if I don’t understand why.”

 
; I gesture at my Link in his hand. “What’s it doing now? Is it still there?”

  He nods.

  I reach over and take it from him and yell into it loud enough so that it’ll hear. “Hey, asshole!”

  “Trying to piss it off? Tell it to get a life.”

  “Very funny. You’re a total crack—”

  The unmistakable sound of the elevator dinging cuts me off. At the exact same moment, Micah’s Link pings. He nearly drops it out of surprise.

  “It’s Kelly! Kel, where are you? Are you okay? What’s going on?”

  “Give him a chance to speak, will you?” I say.

  Kelly’s out of breath when he answers. He looks excited. “We’re in the elevator, heading back up. Nearly there. Just got a sub-stream.” There’s another ding. “Hey, whatever you guys did to the failsafe, it worked. Mostly. Everyone’s fine, except Ash. She’s still out.”

  Micah tilts his head and gives me that I told you so look. I wave him off.

  “Had a scary moment there, though,” Kelly continues. “She was convulsing, gagging when we got her all the way downstairs.”

  “What happened? Where’d the IUs come from? Where’d they go? And there’s a—”

  “That idiot Jake is what happened. He dragged a whole bunch of IUs in here.”

  “Hey! I didn’t mean to!”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Reggie says, somewhere off screen. “You don’t get to speak anymore!”

  Well, at least Reggie sounds fully recovered.

  Micah nudges me, pointing at my screen. I look down, remembering the IU that’s waiting for them upstairs. But the view of the stairwell is completely gone now. Everything’s blurry except for a fuzzy bright area in the corner of the screen. “I think it picked Ashley’s Link up.”

  “Kelly?” I say, hurriedly. “There’s more up top.”

  “We figured. We’re all ready for them. Everyone except Ash. Poor girl. Look, you need to do for her what you did for us.”

  “Already done,” Micah says. “You just need to get her Link back.”

  “We sent the failsafe programs to everyone’s Links,” I explain. “And Micah activated them. The Links are transmitting the signal. Ash’s is too, but—”

  “But we left it topside,” Kelly finishes.

  “That’s not all.”

  “What?”

  “An IU just picked it up.”

  Kelly’s shoulders sag. “It’s never just easy, is it?”

  There’s another ding and he looks up. “We’re almost there. I’ll ping you back in a few minutes.”

  “Wait—”

  But the connection is broken. I check the image on my screen. From somewhere far away, I hear the elevator ding one last time. There’s a pause, then the familiar shush of the doors opening.

  We wait. Soon, the tell-tale sounds of fighting come to us, the thuds of bodies falling and the heartrending moan of the Undead.

  “God, how many are there?” Micah asks.

  I don’t answer. I stare at my screen, hoping to catch a glimpse of something, anything. It suddenly flashes white. There’s a loud clatter, telling me the IU dropped it. The screen blurs for a moment as the tiny cam tries to refocus. Then the ceiling tiles come into view.

  “Kelly!” I yell. “It’s on the floor.”

  “See it!” I hear him say, his voice sounding far away. “Just need to…”

  There’s a wet smack, followed by another thud.

  “Kelly!”

  “I got it,” Jake answers this time.

  “Zombies first, Jake!” Reggie yells. “Keep them away from Ash!”

  Jake’s face appears, red and sweaty, blurry. He reaches down for the Link just as I hear Kelly shout out for him to look out. A shadow fills the screen behind him and the Link refocuses on the grotesque face of an IU above Jake’s shoulder. Its leathery and withered flesh has shrunken up tight against the bones of its skull. The eyes are gunmetal gray, blind, yet seeing. Its mouth opens, exposing a gap-toothed maw filled with a swollen, blackened tongue.

  “Jake! Behind you!” I yell.

  He turns just as the monster’s teeth close over his shoulder. He shrieks and falls. The view on the screen blurs.

  Jake screams again.

  The image wavers. There’s a clatter, then the screen turns black and everything goes silent.

  After a moment, a message appears on my Link:

  <>

  Chapter 20

  “What just happened?” Micah asks.

  I’m too shocked to speak. I’ve just watched Jake get bitten.

  “He’ll be fine, Jess. I don’t think it actually broke skin. That zom was missing most of its teeth.”

  I trip over my backpack, then numbly pick it up and head for the end of the hall. This time Micah doesn’t try to stop me. He figures I won’t leave, but I’m this close to actually doing it. I don’t give a rat’s ass if there are zombies waiting just outside.

  But when I get to the end of the hallway I turn around and pace back.

  “It bit him. I saw. I saw blood right before…before…”

  “We got disconnected.”

  “We didn’t get disconnected,” I snap. “It fell into the elevator shaft, between the floor and the car.”

  His face pinches. He knows I’m right. And he knows what it means. Ashley’s screwed.

  But that’s not the bigger problem right now. Jake is. I know what I saw. I know he was bitten. I watched that IU’s teeth sink into the muscle between his neck and shoulder. I saw the blood on his shirt when he yanked away. I saw the tooth still embedded in his skin.

  Right before everything went black.

  Before we lost the stream.

  Right after everything seemed to finally be coming together.

  “Just sit down, Jessie.”

  “Don’t tell me to sit down, Micah! I can’t. I want to leave. I can’t. I want to go home. I can’t do that either. I mean, I can.” I wave my hands hysterically around my head and keep pacing. Micah moves out of the way. He doesn’t want to get hit. “I want us to all go home and just when it seems like we finally can… It’s all fucked.”

  I sputter, kicking at nothing. I almost punch the wall before stopping myself. My shoulder sends me a painful reminder that it was recently dislocated. I’m almost too far gone to heed it.

  “That stupid son of a bitch had to try and be the hero!”

  Micah doesn’t say anything. He’s staring at the opposite wall with the same look on his face as when he had his breakdown in LaGuardia. I step over to him and grab his shoulder and shake him. “Don’t you dare wig out on me!”

  He snaps out of it, then launches himself off the floor. Without saying a word, he whirls around and heads for the front of the house.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Knives. There must be some in the kitchen.” He stops and turns. “Gather whatever we can find to defend ourselves. We’re leaving.”

  “It’s still dark.”

  “I don’t give a crap.”

  “Whoa. What just happened? Just a minute ago, you were—”

  “I just realized you’re right, Jessie. You’ve been right all along. You were right about the failsafe. You were right that we shouldn’t have split up. We need to go to Jayne’s Hill.”

  I shake my head. Now he’s the one thinking irrationally and I’m the one trying to keep him from committing suicide by going out there. But then my own need to be with Kelly overrides everything. “I’ll search upstairs,” I say.

  He turns and disappears into the kitchen. I stare at the empty hallway for another moment or two, listening to him opening and closing drawers. At least he’s got the presence of mind to keep the noise down and to use his Link for light. I turn and make my way up the stairs again.

  The first room I stop in is the parents’. I’m not looking forward to seeing the little girl’s bedroom.

  I don’t need a psychiatrist to tell me I’ve become obsessed with h
er. Or to tell me why. I know why. It’s because I feel connected to her. We share something: we’ve both been abandoned by our parents.

  My father was killed when I was two, murdered by the monster that Professor Halliwell turned into after his attempt to create a cure for Reanimation went wrong. He, along with that fellow Nobel Laureate from Germany named Geena Bloch, and my father, had all been friends. Eric told stories about us having barbecues with the Halliwells. Of the families camping together. Apparently my mother and Mrs. Halliwell were pretty tight, too. I wonder whatever became of her.

  But then Bloch disappeared under suspicious circumstances and Dad went to work for the president. He and Halliwell became terrible enemies. Halliwell accused my father of scientific abuse. “He was a nutcase,” Grandpa always said, whenever Halliwell’s name was mentioned. “A crazy, arrogant, old man who betrayed your father. He betrayed us all.”

  Grandpa was the general in charge of the Omegaman Project at the time, the group that created the first Undead Marine forces using Bloch’s neural implant device that Arc eventually adapted. The predecessor of our own L.I.N.C. devices.

  “How did he betray me?” I’d asked. The look Grandpa had given me had been withering and, for a moment, I thought I might be in serious trouble. Grandpa is one of those rare people who can give you a heart attack just by looking at you. He rarely shows emotion on his face, even if you know he’s just waiting to explode inside.

  “By taking away your father, Jessica. He tried pulling some crazy, half-baked stunt, and all he got for it was ironic justice: he died and reanimated. But then the bastard—”

  “Ulysses!” my mother exclaimed.

  “He came and murdered your father.”

  Nobody could ever explain how the monster had managed to escape his lab and make his way from the university to our house in Virginia from so far away.

  Zombies don’t commit premeditated murder.