Don’t let go!
Leave it!
I need it to save Jake and Kelly.
Something slams into my face, snapping my head around. I feel the bag work free of the car and I kick myself through the opening. The current immediately catches me, swirling, and I’m tumbling through it with no sense of up or down or left or right. Only forward. I can’t hold my breath any longer. The air explodes from my mouth. Muck replaces it.
And still I kick and pull, not knowing where or how, not caring. I can’t give up! And suddenly there’s the sky! I spit out the mud and take in a mouthful of fresh air before the current pulls me under again.
I grab for anything that might save me. I swim with every ounce of energy I can muster. My legs feel like lead weights, threatening to drag me down. My head comes up again. The land flashes past. I’m only ten feet from the shore, but it’s moving too fast!
I manage to keep my head up this time, manage some semblance of swimming. The supports of a destroyed overpass slice through the water, rushing toward me. To the left, up near the bank, the current appears to slow, the surface there looking slightly calmer. I try and angle myself for the opening, but it’s too fast and I’m too weak and I have to pull away at the last possible moment to avoid slamming into the concrete. I pass to the wrong side and the rough surface of the barrier scrapes my knee. As I pass, the land above me gives way and slumps against the piling. The surge thrusts me further away from the bank. I’m too tired to swim now, too tired to even hold my head up.
I think about letting go of the satchel.
I think about letting go.
I think about how nice it would be to just sink away. Would I rise again? What if I were trapped underneath? How long before my body started to rot? How much longer before my mind finally stopped working?
This last thought shocks me to my senses. I don’t want to die. I want even less to come back. Even if it were to wander mindlessly through these wastes, I don’t want that. It would be just as horrible as being trapped forever in muck, ever yearning, ever hungry, never dying.
But I’m too exhausted to even lift my arms out of the water. I give a feeble kick, then another. The shore inches closer. Too slow. I’ll sink before I make it.
And then I see it up ahead, a chain link fence, collapsed now and sunken into the water. It vibrates from the rush of the torrent through it, like a sieve, jolting and threatening to yank its posts out of the ground above. It rushes closer and I’m almost on it before I realize I need to grab it. And then it’s there and rushing past and my chance is lost.
But I’m not moving. The water piles up against me. I’m caught, snared on the fence by my shirt! But the fence sinks, pulling me under, and the current tears at me, throttles me. The shirt won’t tear. It won’t untangle. I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
Oh, god, I can’t breathe!
Chapter 3
My first introduction to Kwanjangnim Rupert was when I was in second grade. Of course, he wasn’t a hapkido master instructor then, but a kasa, an assistant. He’d come to our elementary school with a few of his students to put on a show, hoping to recruit more to a studio he taught at in town, the First Hapkido Academy. The owner, Dojunim Chan, was a well-known character, an imposing figure of a man, though not because of his size—he stood barely five-foot-six—but because of his fierce scowl and the absolute power he exuded. He was well-known for his brutal lessons, and he never hesitated to unleash a string of Korean curses at any student who didn’t meet his high standards. Whenever any of us kids saw him in town, we’d try to avoid falling under his withering gaze.
The story Rupert told us about Chan was that he had survived the Long Island outbreak by battling the Undead with his bare hands, crashing through a wall of them sixty bodies thick and emerging without a scratch. It was, of course, totally unbelievable. And yet, as Rupert recounted that horrific tale, we were all entranced, completely convinced it had happened just as he said it had. There wasn’t a single one of us who didn’t imagine ourselves in his place.
After Rupert’s demonstration that day, we all wanted to learn hapkido, but when it came time to actually enroll in the classes, very few of us actually did. Dojunim Chan was just too scary. Not even the prospect of learning how to fight off a horde of Undead could convince us it was worth suffering under his tyrannical tutelage.
Shortly thereafter, we learned that he had reached his Life Service Commitment age. Rumor had it that he had gone to serve on the front lines in southern Oklahoma, defending against uprisings fomented by the Southern States Coalition.
I’m sure he would’ve made a fearsome zombie.
Despite Chan’s “retirement,” enrollment at the dojang didn’t pick up. Arc had just introduced its new VR platform and launched its first version of Zpocalypto. If we wanted to fight zombies, we could do it in our own homes.
“Safe, secure, and addictive. Entertainment without the stink.” That was Arc’s tagline.
Now we could battle virtual zombies in the hours between dinner and bedtime. No training required. And it was addictive. I, just like a hundred million other New Mericans, began to spend all my spare time playing the stupid game. It was a welcome respite from the reality of living with a drunkard for a mother, a teenaged brother who believed he was my parent, and an inscrutable grandfather who scared the shit out of me.
Then I learned how to hack.
Eric worried terribly about me. “You’re spending way too much time in the Stream,” he complained one night. He reached over and shut it off when I was right in the middle of a new high-scoring game. I’d just recoded it to make me faster. “And that’s too violent for you.”
I was livid—I remember that much, though very little of what actually happened next. The evidence is still there for all to see, which is why Eric won’t walk around anymore with his shirt off. Like he’s ashamed of the scars my eight-year-old fingernails left on his chest and side. I know I am, and I’m glad not to be reminded of it.
We don’t talk about that day. In fact, as far as I can remember, he only brought it up once after that.
“You want me to what?” I’d asked, incredulously.
“Take self-defense lessons. From the First Hapkido Academy.”
“Why? I know how to defend myself.”
“Scratching isn’t self-defense. And I think it would be good for you. It’s not healthy for a kid like to you—”
“You’re not my father! You don’t know what’s best for me. You can’t tell me what to do.”
“Jessie, listen, I—”
“No, why should I?”
“But didn’t you think it was cool when they came to your school?”
“So?”
“Don’t you want to learn how to do some of that?”
I’d laughed at him and pointed to the screen where I was whipping some serious zombie ass. “This is the closest I’ll ever get to meeting a real live zombie up close.”
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
“What? Has there been another outbreak?”
“No, but—”
“Then what’s the big deal?”
“You’re just a kid, Jess. You haven’t seen—”
“Oh, like you have? You’re barely out of high school and suddenly you think you know fucking everything?”
“You shouldn’t swear. It doesn’t sound nice coming out of your mouth.”
“Fuck, Eric. Fuck fuck fuck.”
I don’t know how long it went on like this, me being mouthy and Eric getting more and more frustrated with me. There were times afterward when I felt sorry for acting this way, but most of the time I didn’t. Eric and I had different ideas about the world. If we happened to live in the same house and had the same parents and suffered the same indignities in school, well, that was just a coincidence. We were two completely different people, and the Undead highlighted that difference: He could still remember a world devoid of them, whereas I couldn’t.
; In the end, it wasn’t my choice to make. I had to go. He’d already signed me up and bought my uniform. I probably would have fought harder, but Grandpa stepped in and promised to take me to the gun range to learn how to shoot. Between learning about Chan and Arc introducing Zpocalypto, hapkido had morphed from being totally cool into being a pansy sport, obsolete. But it was a good sacrifice, since it meant I could learn how to fire guns.
Sometimes I wonder if Grandpa, despite all his criticism of Eric and his pacifist ways, actually thought it might be a good idea that I learn a little hand-to-hand combat. In any case, I’m glad I did.
Now, as the water rushes past me and I weigh the choices of drowning, it’s Master Rupert’s teachings that come to me, the three basic principles of hapkido: hwa, won, and yu.
“Hwa teaches us how to remain relaxed,” he taught, “especially when you are facing an opponent determined to destroy you. By bending with the force of his attack, you neutralize his strength.”
I remember telling myself just a few days ago that I was done with relenting, with adapting and being flexible, but what has that done for me since then? Nothing. I’m still here, fighting for my life against an opponent so much more powerful than I could ever hope to be. Fighting has only brought me closer to death. I need to relax and use my enemy’s energy in my favor.
So I relax. I feel the current tug me and strain the fabric of my shirt. But the fence won’t let me go. My shirt won’t tear.
Think! Use the energy already there.
But how?
The second principle, won, taught us how to incorporate an opponent’s own momentum to incapacitate him. The bigger the opponent, the more favorable to the student. But how can I use the energy and momentum of the water against the strength of the fence?
And then there is yu, the third principle. This is the one Rupert always focused on, the water principle. It teaches us how to deflect a blow by redirecting the energy of a strike back to the opponent.
And it’s only when I have these three pieces do I understand what I have to do. I’d been fighting against the current, fighting and losing. My own energy is sapped.
So now I finally let go. It’s the only thing I can think of to save myself.
† † †
I flow with the current and my shirt goes taut and tugs at my arms. Now I raise one and my body slips out. I switch the satchel to the other hand, now raise the other. I’m slipping out of the shirt, flowing with the current. Free.
Now I grab the fence and hold. My arms shake with the relentless weakness that infuses my body. But now it’s time to use the water’s energy. It swings me around, pivoting my body on my anchor hand, higher. I grab and release and swing closer to the surface. Grab, swing and grab again, and again, until my head breaches the surface and I can breathe.
I don’t know how long it takes me to climb out of that viscous river. I don’t know how many times I slip back on the slick metal of the fence and nearly fall back in. The awful climb to solid ground nearly kills me when another chunk of rock crashes down.
When I reach level ground, all I can do is lie with my face to the sky and the pouring rain rinsing the mud from me like holy water washing the thick blood from a serial killer’s hands. There’s too much to wash away. It’s underneath my skin.
Breathing finally becomes less painful and so I become aware again of the bite on my thigh, a hard, angry knot, thudding dully and hot. I’m afraid to look.
The satchel rests beside me. I’m afraid of looking there, too. It could be empty. I think the pistol might still be in it, but I have no idea about the syringes. If not, I suppose I could always put the pistol to use.
Eventually I gain enough strength to lift my head. I lean on my elbow and stare at the soggy bag for another minute or so, not wanting to open it, not wanting to be disappointed, daring those bastard syringes to not be there because—God help me if they aren’t—I don’t think I’d be able to bear anymore of this hell.
I remember seeing three strewn about on the ceiling of the car. I remember throwing one back in the bag, and I remember Brother Matthew grabbing the other two right before he was taken. I close my eyes for a moment to try and erase the images of the zombies swarming over him, but they’re right there, knocking on the front door to my memories. They won’t go away. Both Brother Malcolm and Brother Matthew.
I told him not to get out of the car.
I let out a deep breath; it comes out as a sob. It could’ve been me instead of him.
My throbbing leg reminds me that all is not so well.
I lift my shaking hand and pry the bag open. By rights there should still be at least one syringe inside, possibly two. Then again, they might have fallen out at any point after the car fell down the cliff and plunged me into the water. Two would be good, but, really, right now, all I’m asking for is one.
I find a thick layer of sludge inside and I realize something new: Even if the syringes are there, they might be ruined.
I reach in and carefully dig through the muck and almost immediately my fingers slip around a cylinder, but as soon as I try to lift it out I know it’s not a syringe. I pull the gun out and set it to one side. Mud clogs the barrel and bleeds from every crease and opening. The thing is probably useless now. I should’ve done a better job protecting it. All those times it got wet and wasn’t properly dried. It’ll be a miracle if it still works.
What good is a bullet if you don’t use it? Jake’s voice, echoing inside the empty terminal at LaGuardia. I see Stephen lying on the ground in front of those streaked gray windows overlooking the empty tarmac, his eyes glazed and his body lost in some sort of trance, and the EM wall in the distance. The wall that seems to so badly want to keep us here. Back then, all we’d wanted was to get out past it. Ironic: now I’m trying to get through yet another wall, to make my way deeper inside.
I reach into the satchel again and dig around, and in the corner I find them, both of them. I gently scoop away the mud and pull them out. They appear intact. Mud has gotten underneath the needle caps, contaminating them, but a bacterial infection is the least of Jake’s problems right now. We can get antibiotics afterwards.
After he’s better.
After I take him back to Father Heall.
I get shakily to my feet and look for a puddle of clear water to wash everything out in. When I’m done, I peel off my pants and check my leg. The first thing I notice is the absence of blood. The second thing is the huge white welt. I check it as carefully as I can, rinsing it and inspecting, carefully pulling the edges apart. But the skin isn’t broken. Either the IU that bit me was toothless or it couldn’t get through these jeans. I’ve just dodged another bullet.
After that, I pull the Link out of my pocket to check the time. I’m surprised to find that it’s still only a few minutes after eight o’clock. It feels like a week has passed since we left Brookhaven this morning.
My thumbs feel like jelly as I key in a message to Kelly and Reg:
<< GOT IT. ON WAY. SIT TYT >>
As an afterthought, I send another message to Ashley, a longer one telling her about Father Heall and the treatment and asking her to hold off on telling the others that I’ve left Micah behind. She’ll understand and not ask questions, not like Kelly and Reggie will, and I just don’t need that distraction right now. I don’t mention the accident to any of them. I know she might not get the message, not unless the others have gotten her Link out from underneath the elevator, but it still makes me feel a little lighter, sharing some of the burden like this.
Now I just need to figure out how to get back inside Gameland.
Chapter 4
My Link pings a few minutes later.
“Kel? I wasn’t expecting—”
“What the hell happened to you?” He squints into his screen, looking worried. “You look like somebody dragged you through the mud.”
Dragged and nearly drowned, I want to say.
I look down, careful not to tilt my Link. I don’t want
him to see me like this. Of course he’s seen me without my shirt on, but I just don’t need the hassle of having to answer all the questions.
“Long story,” I tell him.
“Where’s Micah?” he asks, suspiciously. “Why isn’t he with you?”
Either Ashley got the message and told him, despite my asking her not to. Either that or he saw the message.
I exhale, frowning and shaking my head. “I left him behind. Okay? I’ll explain after I get back.”
Kelly raises an eyebrow. He opens his mouth to say something, but I cut him off. “Where are you? How come you’re on the Stream? Why aren’t you down with Jake?”
“I’m topside with Brother Nicholas. We’re getting some more of that plant. Ash and Reg are keeping an eye on Jake. Well, I guess it’s just Reg right now. I just saw Ash walk past a few minutes ago. We have to get her out of here. She’s going stir crazy.”
“How is Jake?”
“Delirious. It was a shitty night. He was screaming like hell. I thought he was going to bring every IU within a five mile radius. Kidding, of course. No way you could hear him up here. That’s why Ash and Reg came upstairs, to try and catch some shuteye.”
“Shuteye,” I mumble, thinking otherwise, thinking that they maybe they just wanted to take advantage of a little privacy. Ridiculous! It makes me realize how much I miss Kelly, how much I miss having him hold me. How much I miss the feel of his body against mine.
Then again, what do I have to complain about? At least I had a nice hot meal and a soft bed to lie in, even if it was only for a few hours. And I shared it with a dog instead of him.
“Did you sleep?” he asks.
“Couple hours. How about you? Did you eat something?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m hanging in there. When do you think you’re going to get back?”
I look up and around. I have no idea where I am or which way to go. Then, in the distance, I see a squat gray line hovering over the horizon like the surface of a puddle of oil. The Gameland wall. It can’t be more than a half mile away, which means I can’t be more than six or seven miles from Jayne’s Hill. I just need to find a way in. If what Brother Matthew said is true, that shouldn’t be too hard. It’s crossing the river to get to the wall that might be a bit tricky.
S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus Page 76
