Micah frowns. “Is that necessary? I thought I’d check out the mainframe.”
“Naw, it’s cool, brah,” Reggie replies, maybe a bit too eagerly. “Besides, I need you to watch my back.” He gives Micah a smile that doesn’t fool anyone.
“Check on Shinji for me,” I tell Micah, and he nods. His face is back to being stoic again.
As I turn to make my way over to Jake, I hear Reggie ask what Shinji is.
“Not what, who,” Micah answers. “I’ll explain on the elevator ride up.”
Chapter 5
“I’m afraid your friend will turn soon if we can’t manage his fever.”
I turn to face the man who suddenly appears beside me. I hadn’t heard him approach, and it raises the hair on my neck.
“He’s in very serious condition.”
“Isn’t there somewhere we can take him? Something we can do?”
“Out in this heat?” He shakes his head. “Not recommended. He was lucky to be here when it happened. Outside, he’d definitely turn by sundown. Besides, you’ll want to keep him still. Movement only hastens the disease. Although, you know it’s just delaying the inevitable.”
I close my eyes for a moment as the truth of this finally comes clear: Jake won’t be going home with us. He’s got less than two days left to live before he dies and reanimates. Two days, before one of us will have to put him out of his misery. No, less than two days. This man is suggesting that we quiet him now.
“I’m sorry…” I’m barely able to keep my voice from breaking on the sob welling up inside of me. I swallow hard and steel my nerves, trying to recall the man’s name, but for the life of me I can’t remember it. “Who the hell exactly are you? And why are you even here? I didn’t think there were live people in Gameland.”
He doesn’t seem surprised by my hysteria or flinch at the withering glare I give him. “My name is Brother Nicholas,” he quietly answers. “You’ve met Brother Matthew.”
He pauses, perhaps waiting for me to give him my name. When I don’t, he gestures at a chair and tells me to sit. I do, suddenly grateful to take the weight of the world off my feet.
“My name’s Jessie,” I tell him. It’s an effort just to speak. I give him no last name. I won’t. So far, a first name is all he’s given me, and who’s to say it’s even his real name?
“You’re the leader of this group?” he asks.
“Hardly.”
“That young man you were just talking with indicated that you are.” He gestures at Kelly, who’s feet are disappearing through the ceiling of the elevator car. This little tidbit of information both surprises and bolsters me, despite recent setbacks. But then the thought crosses my mind that it also makes me responsible for our being here, not to mention everything we’ve done and everything that has happened to us. I’m not ready for that kind of pressure. Nor do I deserve it. I didn’t cause what happened to Jake. That one’s all on himself.
“Well, he might think I’m in charge, but he’s probably the only one who thinks so.” I point to Jake. “Until this happened, he was in supposed to be charge.”
“Be that as it may,” Brother Nicholas says, and I can tell he doesn’t believe a word I’ve just told him, “it seems you’re in charge now.” He waves Matthew over to join him.
Brother Matthew, I remind myself.
To my mind, the ‘Brother’ part just sounds stupid and pretentious, like a role they’re playing. But I tell myself that until we know a little more about these people and what they want, until we know for sure they’re not going hurt us, then we’d better just play along.
Brother Matthew comes over and stands on the opposite side of the table and waits. Ashley glances warily over at us but stays put by the elevator. The doors are shutting, which tells me that Kelly is now somewhere inside the elevator shaft. I hope and pray he’ll be able to get Ashley’s Link without hurting himself. I keep picturing all those cables and pulleys inside the shaft and all the tight little spaces and Kelly getting tangled up in them. So much could go wrong.
I push the images aside. I have to trust that he’ll be okay.
“Do you want to explain to us what you kids are doing here?” Brother Matthew finally asks.
“You first,” I answer. I’ve already decided I don’t like him as much as Brother Nicholas. Not that I like either of them all that much.
He gives me a hard look.
Brother Nicholas coughs into his hand, then quietly says, “We’re just trying to understand what’s going on here.”
“Not that it’s any of your business,” I snap.
He exhales through his teeth, whistling with frustration. “We know you’re from the real world. We know you don’t particularly want to be here.” He gestures at the table. “What we can’t tell is whether you came here of your own volition and, if so, why.”
I study the dirt in my fingernails for a moment. What are the answers to those questions? No matter how I answer, I’m being dishonest. “We’re not Volunteers, if that’s what you mean. Or these Deceiver things, as you call them.”
“Good. That’s a good start. Now, look, we’re not your enemy. In fact, if my guess is correct, we’re on the same side.”
“And what side would that be?”
He raises an eyebrow.
“Arc?” I ask.
“Are you saying you’re not with them? If so, then we can help each other out.”
“You want my trust? Maybe you should start by telling me a bit more about who you are and why I should believe you’re not part of Arc’s sick plans for us.”
Brother Matthew and Brother Nicholas glance at each other. Something passes between them. I see the latter give a slight nod. Brother Matthew takes in a deep breath and says, “My name was once Egan Wallach. Before the evacuation, I was a post-graduate fellow in neurochemistry at Brookhaven.”
“Left behind? Or did you stay willingly?”
“I was caught in the lab running an experiment, a rather…extensive and complicated one. I was dosing cells in dishes with—” He waves his hand distractedly. “The exact details don’t matter now. What matters is that I didn’t heed the evacuation orders until it was too late. I didn’t make it out in time.”
“And him?”
“Born Thomas Nguyen.” He offers his hand, but I don’t shake it. “Right. Anyway, I was a stock broker in Manhattan. My family and I were vacationing in Mashomack—in one of the stilt cabins at the very tip of Long Island. Fishing, you know? Anyway, when the evacuation was called, we packed up as quickly as we could and managed to get back in through the eastern wall and across the island. But there was a ten-mile traffic backup just getting to the bridges to Manhattan. Took us sixteen hours to go four miles. Everything was jammed up and the outbreak was spreading fast. We didn’t want to get caught in it, so we got out of the car and started walking.” His face blanches. “The Elders—sorry, the Undead—were everywhere. We ran, hard, and got to the bridges just as the military started bombing them.”
“Your family? Where are they now?”
“My wife and two sons were… They were bitten.” His face shows nothing, but I can hear it in his voice, the sorrow and bitterness. For some people, thirteen years might be enough to heal over the scars of watching your loved ones being turned into zombies. Apparently Brother Nicholas’ scars are still raw. “All but my youngest daughter. She was a year old during the evacuation. I was carrying her in my arms as we were running. Lissa—” His voice breaks, and now the past begins to show through on his face. “My wife tripped. Bennie and Kyle stopped to help her, my sons. At least I still have my daughter. She’s almost fourteen now.”
“I’m sorry about the rest of them,” I tell him.
He coughs and blinks away the wetness in his eyes. “I couldn’t save them. I…” He looks at Brother Matthew. “I did what needed to be done. They’re at rest now.”
He lays a hand on Jake, as if to send the message to me that it’s now my turn to do what’s right. But how c
an I? Killing Tanya was one thing, and I would’ve done it if needed. But this is somehow different. I don’t know why, but it just is.
“How many people were trapped on the island with you?” I ask.
Brother Nicholas sighs. “At first, thousands. Tens of thousands, maybe.”
I’d always been told it was just a few hundred. Even though there were rumors that it was much more, none of us ever truly believed them. “Where are they all now?”
“Most are gone. Turned. Laid to rest. There aren’t that many of us survivors left. A hundred maybe?”
Brother Matthew nods in agreement.
“Why do you even stay?”
“What choice did we have?” Brother Nicholas says. “There’s the wall, of course. Many of us considered climbing over it or blasting through it. Some tried. I never heard from them again. Besides, then what? The waters surrounding the island are mined. We tried escaping by flying out. A group of people with me took a couple of small planes at Calverton Airfield. There were two pilots in our group; I was one. I was flying the second plane, my daughter sitting in back, when a missile came out of nowhere and blew the first one out of the sky. We barely made it back to the ground. After that, the military came in and—”
He fingers a long scar running the length of his arm, but what catches my attention is the strange mark on the back of his other hand. It looks a little like a fraternity brand: two perfectly shaped semi-circles, omegas, their horns not quite touching. The scar tissue has knitted thickly over them. There’s nothing like it on Brother Matthew’s hands, so if it is a fraternity mark, it’s not one they both belonged to.
“After a while, the thought of escape leaves you and survival becomes second nature. It’s a hard life, as you can imagine, but now I wouldn’t trade it, not for what’s on the outside.”
I frown at him. How could he possibly believe that? As bad as it is in New Merica, this is so much worse.
“Father Heall has been bringing the Children together,” he adds. As if it explains everything. “He has given us purpose.”
Children? I have to keep from rolling my eyes and crying out in disbelief. They’re all whack jobs, a cult of zombie lovers. Or haters—I’m still not exactly clear on that. New age whack jobs, as Kelly said.
I wave a dismissive hand at the small pile of leaves that Brother Matthew collected earlier. Some of the leaves have been made into a slurry in a plastic bowl. The rest have been bundled and tied with twine. One end is burnt, and the air smells of incense. “And that?” I ask.
“A slurry of willow leaves,” Brother Matthew says, holding up the bowl. “Willow contains an analgesic. The other is mugwort. When held against the skin and burned, some of the bad spirit is drawn out.”
Dear lord, really? Voodoo magic. Herbal medicine. What next?
Brother Matthew grows indignant at the look on my face. “There are rational, scientific, bases for why these work!” he says.
“Science has been outlawed,” I tell him. “I’m beginning to think so has rationality.”
“Outlawing the truth doesn’t make it go away.”
“Fine. Whatever. You still haven’t told me why you’re here.”
“We followed the Deceivers.”
“How did you get in?”
“The gate was open. The power was shut off.”
“What are you talking about? Nobody turned off the power!”
“Somebody accessed the panel by the gate.”
“Bullshit!”
Brother Matthew sighs. “There’s a switch inside a panel by the main gate. It controls both the lock and the voltage running through the fence and is accessed by a keypad. Someone here either knew the code or guessed correctly. They turned off the electricity, which incidentally also unlocks the gate. We followed the Elders and the Deceivers right in. Then we found your friends.”
I cringe. Nobody knew the code. It must’ve happened when Kelly overloaded the circuitry. The surge must’ve tripped the controls.
“We reset the switch, but this is what happens when you kids start messing with things you have no idea about,” Brother Matthew says.
“It was a power surge! It nearly electrocuted my boyfr— It nearly killed Kelly. Nobody intentionally turned it off!”
Brother Matthew frowns. “A power surge wouldn’t physically open the panel and key in the proper code to shut off the current.”
My eyes drop to Jake, but I immediately dismiss the idea. First of all, how would he know the code to the access panel?
Lucky guess?
Unlikely. Even a simple four-digit sequence would have ten thousand number combinations. Not impossible but highly improbable. Maybe one of us could do it by hacking in, but not him.
Pretty sure he’s got a few secrets he’s not telling us.
Is that what Kelly meant earlier? Did Jake do it? He certainly had opportunity.
I still don’t believe it. Why would anyone want to mess with something like that? Why would any of us want a bunch of Undead to gain access? I shake my head. “I don’t care what you think. Nobody here opened that gate.”
Both men purse their lips, but they don’t argue.
“And why were you following the Players in the first place?” I ask.
“It’s our job.”
“Your job? What, like, you get paid to babysit them or something?”
“Something like that.”
“So, you do work for Arc.”
“We don’t.”
They’re both getting more and more impatient with me, and this just makes me all the more impatient with them in return.
“Look, okay, thanks for helping my friends. But right now, as you can see, we’ve got some heavy shit to deal with. You say we can’t move Jake, fine. But we still need to get Ashley’s Link back, because without it, we can’t leave your little Garden of Eden. I’ve got three days to get my bo—to get Kelly back to Arc so he can be cured—”
Brother Matthew’s head pops up. “Arc has a cure?” He turns to Brother Nicholas, who shakes his head. “We would’ve heard if they’d developed one.”
“Excuse me,” I say, “but you’ve been here for thirteen years. There’s probably a lot you haven’t heard about.”
“We may be isolated, but it doesn’t mean we’re out of touch.”
Brother Nicholas clears his throat. Turning to me, he says, “The boy in the elevator, Kelly, he’s your boyfriend? He’s infected, too?”
I nod.
“When was he bitten?”
“It wasn’t a bite. He was injected.”
The men exchange another troubled glance. “Enoch?” Nicholas says, and Matthew nods. “Excuse us for a moment,” they say and then move off to talk in private.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I ask, but they ignore me.
Chapter 6
“How’s the recovery effort, Ash?”
I speak softly, more so that I can still hear the men talking—even if I can’t make out all the words—than for privacy. Something about the way they’re arguing gives me hope. For what exactly, I’m not sure, but their disagreement suggests to me that there may be something to hope for.
Ashley shrugs. She eyes the men and says, “Haven’t heard a peep from the boys in a while. I hope that’s a good thing.”
I nod and shrug. The elevator call button taunts me. I want so badly to push it, to bring them all back with Ashley’s Link, but I know if Kelly’s down below, the car could crush him.
“It’s just so hard to stand by and do nothing,” she says.
“I know.”
I feel restless and helpless, too, especially now that we’ve come up with a way to bypass the failsafe—Micah’s failsafe. It’s not ideal, nor is it a permanent fix, but at least it’ll get us off the island and out of direct harm’s way. Despite knowing that Kelly’s infection isn’t going to be fatal—not in the short run, anyhow—I’ve still got this feeling of urgency in me. I don’t know if it’s instinct or a sense of impending doom, but
something inside of me has been telling me to hurry.
But now, because of Jake’s poor judgment, leaving seems just that much further out of reach. If it weren’t for him, we’d have been back on the road already and heading out of here. We could’ve been outside of Gameland by noon and most of the way back to LaGuardia by nightfall. Manhattan by tomorrow night at the latest.
One simple selfish act and now nothing is so simple anymore.
Who will make sure he doesn’t come back?
It has to be me. I don’t want Kelly to do it. He’s always been a healer; he doesn’t need this on his conscience. And Micah’s out of the question. If he really is a traitor, then Jake deserves better. And forget Ashley. Never happen. Which leaves me and Reggie.
And I can’t see Reggie doing it, either.
Ash glances at the men, still deep in discussion. “What are they talking about?” she whispers. “Do you think they can help us?”
I glance over. Brother Nicholas is still nodding and Brother Matthew is still shaking his head. What the hell do they have to argue about for so long? The latter is rubbing his shoulder. The collar of his shirt pulls down and I see a scar there, almost white and standing in sharp contrast against his sun-browned skin. It’s a hard life, Brother Nicholas’ voice whispers at me. But the mark looks familiar.
Who the hell are they?
The bell for the elevator dings and the soft chug and whisper of the motor inside comes to us. I’m only remotely aware of it. Ashley grips my arm in anticipation. She thinks that we’ll be able to leave as soon as she gets her Link back. But first there’s one piece of business that needs to be finished: Jake.
…ding…
That nasty-looking scar on Matthew’s shoulder.
“Jessie?” I’m only dimly aware of Ashley squeezing my arm. I ignore it.
…ding…
“The boys are coming back.”
…ding…
“We’ll be able to go home.”
S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus Page 64
