“Have a seat,” Ben tells them. The machete is out, and he’s slapping the side of his leg with the flat of the blade. “Both. Now.”
Brother Nicholas’ eyes skim over Ben’s outfit before coming to rest on the machete. He takes it all in in less than the space of a second before he nods solemnly and gestures for Ashley to sit in one of the middle seats. He takes her bundle of plants and drops them all onto a table before taking the chair in the front row.
Ben watches him carefully. There’s no look of look surprise on his face, no sense of not knowing who this person is supposed to be, even though Brother Nicholas clearly doesn’t belong with the rest of us. He’s so much older than the rest of us.
But of course Ben wouldn’t be surprised. That’s what he meant outside when he said the Coder has been keeping them updated. Micah has told them everything, at least until our arrival last night at Brookhaven, when the brothers took his Link away.
And suddenly another piece of the puzzle falls into place. Stephen wasn’t with Arc either, despite what he indicated and what Father Heall and the brothers thought.
This is bigger than Arc. That’s what Stephen had told us.
So who?
A war of many agents, my dear, Father Heall had said to me, late last night. A war of wrongs.
And I had answered: But not you. Because you’re on the side of right.
Each of us thinks we’re on the right side.
The sounds of other voices come to us, of several sets of boots clomping over the floor. Three people enter the room a moment later. The first is Casey. Color has now fully returned to his face. He appears fully recovered, healthy and strong. There’s a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead and it drips down his neck, but no more than the others. It’s warm and humid outside.
His infection is completely gone.
The other two people are dressed similarly in black.
I recognize the woman right away. It’s Miss Novak from the tram, the woman who’d managed to escape after we’d tied her up and left her in the baggage claim area of the terminal with her partner. Nurse Mabel had killed him, but she’d escaped and hidden out in the terminal for the next three days, probably keeping tabs on us while we healed and prepared to escape. Watching us while we tried to find a way to defeat the failsafe device.
Her eyes find Kelly as soon as she walks in, and a slight smile crosses her lips. “So good to see you again,” she tells him. “Glad to see you didn’t break your neck jumping off the tram.”
But Kelly ignores her. It’s Casey and the second man he’s giving his attention to.
The man walks right up to Kelly and, without warning, sucker punches him in the stomach. Kelly doubles over with a puff and I jump to my feet, but I’m stopped by the two rifles pointed at my face.
“That’s for being such a smart fuck,” the man growls. His second punch lands on Kelly’s cheek and snaps his head backward. But Kelly rolls with it. “And that’s for fucking me over.”
Chapter 16
“They’re the two guys who took me and Jake to LaGuardia,” Kelly says panting. He clutches his stomach and coughs. Spit dribbles from his lips.
Ben laughs. “Poor kids, Casey and Shane. Beaucorps tore them both new ones for lettin you escape. Didn’t he, boys?”
Casey’s face twitches, a flicker of that old self-doubt. The first crack, I think. But it quickly disappears, plastered over by that false sense of indestructibility. “Yeah, me and Shane both,” he says. He laughs, and I think I hear a slight quaver in it. “Won’t happen again.”
Shane points a finger at Casey’s face, as if to tell him none of it was his fault, but Ben steps in. “That’s in the past, boys.” He shoves Shane away.
Shane clearly doesn’t suffer from confidence issues. He glares at Casey, shrugs, then goes and stands by the door. He slings his rifle casually over his forearm and aims it in our general direction. He appears to be as young as Casey is, but his face has the lines of a hardened street thug and a thin scar runs across one dark eyebrow, bisecting it.
Miss Novak swiftly crosses the room and stands next to Ben. Something about the way the two stiffen up suggests they’re not just business associates but something a bit more. An invisible charge passes between them, an electrical tension. I can almost feel the air sparking.
And not in a good way.
She turns and casually passes her gaze over us, her eyes resting briefly on Reggie, taking in his broad shoulders and the muscles on his neck and arms. I can’t tell if she’s trying to make him uncomfortable with her stare or if she’s just remembering that he was the one who’d grabbed her first back there at the airport, the one who’d wrenched her arm behind her back. I remember how I’d initially thought that she was just some business woman and not used to such rough handling, and then only recognizing—almost too late—that her compliance wasn’t from fear but discipline.
She shows the same composure now.
Her gaze drifts to the side and arrives at Kelly. He meets it with his own stony stare, even though he still slouches and pants from Shane’s punches. Finally she looks at me. The smile on her face spreads like a coffee stain through fine linen. “You really should’ve shot me when you had the chance back there, Miss Daniels,” she says.
I clench my fists and my heart drums a loud beat in my ears. I can’t help it. I can’t control my emotions like Kelly can. “I won’t make that mistake again,” I tell her, and her smile widens even more. I’ve given her exactly what she’d hoped. I let her push my buttons.
She shakes her head. “No, I suppose you won’t, which is why you won’t get another chance. Although, since we’re on the subject of mistakes, it sure looks like you’ve made quite a mess of things yourself, haven’t you? Just one stupid mistake right after the oth—”
“We’re not the only ones who’ve made mistakes, are we?” I tell her, struggling to keep my voice level. “Letting Kelly escape—”
“Jessie!” Kelly says, his eyes flashing. But I won’t be stopped.
“And what about blasting a hole through the Gameland wall? Bet that’ll come back to bite you in the ass.”
She turns to Ben. “What’s she talking about?”
“Nothing,” he says, shrugging. “She’s blabberin.”
“I’m not blabbering. But I bet the biggest mistake was Stephen, wasn’t he? He wasn’t supposed to become our prisoner. He wasn’t supposed to be involved at all, was he?”
Every word I speak chips away at that contemptible smile on her face until it finally falls completely away. Ben steps in front of her, laughing. “Leave her be for now, Lena. You can have her later.”
“Stephen was unstable,” Novak tells me, spitting the words and punctuating them with her finger in my face. She elbows Ben aside. “He had no clue what he was messing with.”
“That’s puttin it lightly,” Ben says, rolling his eyes. Casey chuckles.
Her eyes almost spark when she turns to Casey. Do it! I scream to myself. Shatter that fragile new self confidence. But she turns to Ben instead. “He was your idea. I never wanted him on the team. You and Padraig.”
“Hey, Paddy’s idea, not mine,” Ben answers, defensively. “And for the record, Beaucorps signed off on him, not me.”
“I knew he was trouble, Ben. What did you expect? His father is half mad, his brain rotted away by that…that…” She waves her hands around, as if trying to conjure the right word. I think about the wormwood tea he drank, the way it turned the air bitter. Helps suppress the appetite. But whatever word Novak is trying to find doesn’t come.
“What’s the saying?” Ben says, humoring her. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree? I agree with you, Lena, but the son is not the father. It would be dangerous for either of us to underestimate him.”
“Really?” Novak replies. “You sound like you almost respect him.”
“I do.”
“Then you’re a fool.”
“A fool, maybe, but remember: I didn’t need help fi
nding him. What does that make you?”
The smile leaks back into Novak’s face, twisting the corners of her mouth into a nasty sneer. “You haven’t found him. You may think you have, but where is he? Why isn’t he here?”
“I know exactly where he is.”
“How?”
Ben smiles. “The Coder—”
“Who happened to be my idea, by the way.”
“What do you want with Father Heall?” I cry.
Novak turns to me, then back to Ben, her eyebrows raised. “Heall?”
Ben shrugs and dismisses me with a wave of the hand.
“Answer me!”
But they both ignore me. Novak pulls him aside and asks, “Does she know?”
Ben stops her with a laugh. He reaches into his pocket and withdraws the syringe. Miss Novak’s eyes go wide.
“Told you I had a surprise. And there’s more where this came from. According to her, lots more.”
Novak’s face softens and she actually smiles. “May I?”
He lets her look at it, but he doesn’t let her take it from him. Finally, she sighs, almost contentedly. “Remember, the Coder was my idea.”
“There’s enough credit to go around,” Ben answers.
Novak’s eyes linger on his face a moment longer. I sense a cautious optimism there before she turns back to us. To me. “It’s really too bad about Stephen,” she says. She doesn’t even try to mask the contempt in her voice. She stares straight at me, as if there’s no one else in the room. As if her words are meant for me alone. “Not sorry that he’s dead, of course. He was a waste of time. But too bad that he couldn’t give us what we wanted.”
Ben snorts and rolls his eyes. “He knew how to make this stuff. He just wasn’t going to give it to us. That’s clear now. He was never going to give it to us. But now we’ve got it.”
She turns back to Ben. “We should get it back to the lab for analysis. We need to see how it works.”
But Ben shakes his head. “I already know it works.”
Novak’s eyes narrow. “How?”
He waves Casey over. “Show Miss Novak here the proof.”
Casey extends his arm, showing off his bite. It should be swollen and raging with infection by now, but it’s not.
“Ben almost three hours now,” Ben says. “Way I figure, he should be a quiverin puddle of flesh by now, a ragin volcano seeping virus from every orifice. He certainly wouldn’t be standin upright but on the floor sweatin out.”
And he’s right. Just two hours after Jake was bitten, he was deathly ill, shivering terribly and in a great deal of pain. And that was downstairs where it’s cooler. It would’ve been worse if he been up here in the heat like Casey has been. Instead, Casey’s skin has a healthy pallor to it. His bite has already started to scab over and it looks no worse than a scratch that had been properly washed and treated. Not like a fatal bite from an Undead.
“How was he bitten?” Novak asks.
“On purpose,” I answer. I point at Ben. “He made a zombie attack him.”
She turns to me, fear in her eyes. Fear and anger and disbelief. Then she whirls back around to Ben. “You made an Infected Undead bite Casey?”
“Hey, it worked, didn’t it? We couldn’t really test it on the girl, could we?”
Novak sputters for a moment. Then she turns back to me. “What’s in this? What did they tell you about this? What’s the formula?”
I clench my teeth down tight and refuse to answer, as if she could actually make the words come out of me if my mouth were to open. I guess I’m more afraid my own mouth might betray me than confident in my ability to keep quiet.
“Tell me!” she screams.
She walks over and Kelly moves to stop her but Shane sticks the muzzle of his rifle into his neck and tells him to sit down.
“Tell me what he told you about this medicine.”
“Bite me.”
Her face glows bright red. “You had better tell me right now. How did he make this? What kind of equipment does he have?”
“Calm down, Lena,” Ben says. “He’s at Brookhaven. I know that much. That means he’s got all the equipment he needs in the world.”
“Did you watch him make this?” Novak asks me.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “I watched. I watched him piss it into a cup. That’s how he made it!”
“You little bi—”
“She ain’t goin to talk,” Ben interjects. He puts a hand on her arm and draws her back. Apparently he thinks he’s the only one who gets to hit me. “We don’t need her anymore.”
“You won’t find him,” Brother Nicholas quietly says. He stands up. “Father Heall will have moved on by now. He—”
“Sit down or I will shoot you, old man.”
I frown at my lap. What Brother Nicholas says about Heall may have been true in the past. But hadn’t I overheard Heall say last night that he was tired of moving? Didn’t he say he was going to stay where he was this time? What a time to be making that decision.
“He doesn’t stay in one place for very long,” Nicholas continues. “Even I don’t know where he is all the time.”
“I said, sit the hell down.”
“Look,” Nicholas says, holding up his hands, “that treatment you’ve got there is unstable. It’s rapidly degrading. If you don’t give it to the boy soon, it won’t be any good and he will die. And once he dies…”
“Didn’t I tell you to sit down?”
“It won’t be any good.”
“I’m through with you,” Ben says, flicking his wrist dismissively in Brother Nicholas’ direction. “Casey, shoot him if he says another word.”
“I’m begging you—”
“Shoot him!”
“What?”
“God damn it! I said shoot the bastard! Do it, now!” And before I can protest—before any of us can move or stop him—Ben snatches the rifle from Casey’s hands. He spins it around and fires a single shot. A red flower blooms from the back of Brother Nicholas’ head and quickly drifts away. His mouth pops open. He looks for a split second like he wants to say something in his defense—last words or something. A closing argument. But nothing comes out, just a wet-sounding gurgle. He tilts backward and falls to the floor, tumbling over Ashley, who immediately starts shrieking.
“Jesus Christ!” Reggie shouts. He starts to stand up, but Kelly pulls him down.
“Shut up!” Ben roars, turning the rifle toward us and waving it wildly around. “Or you’re next! Everyone just shut the fuck up, right now! My patience is at its limit.”
Except for the ringing in our ears and Ashley’s muffled sobs, silence fills the room.
“We could’ve used him,” Novak quietly tells Ben. She looks very unhappy.
“Nobody is going to tell me what I should or can’t do with this!” He holds the syringe up and I can see his hand shaking just the tiniest bit. “God damn it, I said, everyone shut up!”
Ashley tries to be quieter, but it only makes her hiccup.
I watch Ben as he paces. We all watch him, running his fingers through his hair. Once more I vow not to leave the island until he’s dead. Brother Nicholas was a good man, a father, and now his daughter is an orphan because of this asshole.
“Was he telling the truth?” Ben says, whirling around all of a sudden. He points to Brother Nicholas, but he looks at me.
“I’m sorry,” I stammer. It’s so hard to think, especially with that rifle pointed at my face. “What? I don’t know what you—”
“Is this unstable? Will it break down like he said?”
I nod, hesitantly. “It’ll only work for a couple more hours. That’s what they told me. If we don’t, then it won’t be any good at all.”
Ben straightens up after a moment. “Okay, listen up,” he says. “This is how it’s goin to play out. I ain’t gonna waste this on some little prick of a kid. He’s probably too far gone anyway.”
“But—” I start to protest.
“I think maybe we
should give it to the kid, Ben,” Casey says, stepping forward. “If he was bitten—” But Ben pushes him back with the barrel of the gun.
“Don’t think. That’s your problem, Casey. You spend too much time thinkin. Maybe if you were actually smart it’d be worth the effort, but you’re a fuckin imbecile and nothing you come up with is ever very useful.”
Now the cracks appear.
“But—” Casey starts.
“Just take this,” Ben snaps, handing him the rifle, “and make sure those kids don’t move. Make sure no one moves.”
Casey snaps his mouth closed. He looks angry and hurt, but he obeys. He grabs the rifle and raises it to his shoulder and points it in our general direction. I wonder how much more it would take before he swings it over a few inches and pulls the trigger on Ben.
Ben slips the syringe into his pocket. He’s breathing heavily now, his face red. He rolls up his left sleeve, baring a muscular arm with protruding veins.
Novak frowns. “What are you doing, Ben? Ben, think about this. We should take it back to the lab. Get it analyzed.”
“You heard them,” Ben grunts. “It’s unstable. We know it works because it worked for Casey. It kept him from getting sick. If I give it to the sick boy, he’ll—what?—get better? Is that what you want? Then what? You know they’re expendable. That’d be a waste. I’m takin this.”
“Ben, no.”
He spins on her. “Oh, I see. You want it for yourself. I can see it in your eyes!” He laughs when she doesn’t deny it. “I thought so.”
“We’ll get some more, Ben.”
“I am not wastin this. Now, I’m ordering you. Give it to me.”
“You’re ordering me?”
“Casey, shoot her if she doesn’t—”
“Okay, okay, Ben… ” Novak sighs and shakes her head, but she extends her hand. Ben gives her the syringe. She pulls off the cap. “Where?”
He laughs madly and his eyes sparkle, insane delight dancing in them. “You never did know how to use power, Lena. That’s why I will always win and you will always lose.”
S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus Page 83
