“Damn it!” I growl at her. “God damn it. Why couldn’t you have been dead already, like Shane? It would’ve been so much easier.”
She gurgles again. I don’t think it’s an answer, or even an attempt to answer. There’s not a single coherent thought behind it, none that I can detect. She’s way beyond that now. Unfortunately, it seems that death is beyond her ability to grasp as well. She’ll need my help reaching it.
“Why? Why did Ben do this to you?” Because it’s obvious by now he’s the one who’s responsible. I just can’t see Casey doing it. Ben must’ve recovered and taken Casey and—
I jerk my head up. “Ashley!” My voice is loud in the stillness of the building. But there’s no response, just that strange, regular, knocking sound.
“Gahhhh…,” Miss Novak answers, sighing. Bloody froth bubbles up from her lips and also, oddly enough, from the corner of one of her eyes.
“You’re not going to make this easy on me, are you?” I say as I reach down and take her head in my hands.
“Gahhhh…”
Of course not. It’s never easy. It’s never as easy as it should be, except when it is easy. Like with Nurse Mabel. Like with Shane.
Like it will be with Ben and whoever else is behind this. Padraig. Beaucorp. Whoever those men are. When I find them, I’m going to—
“Gahhhh…”
A trickle of blood and saliva leaks from her mouth and dribbles across her cheek. Her chest lifts and falls, the rate of her breathing growing quicker until it stops for a couple seconds. Then it resumes, slowly at first before quickening in pace. Twice, three times, the cycle repeats. It shows no sign of stopping. Novak won’t die. She’s clutching to life. Maybe she’s afraid of what might happen to her afterward.
Let her find out, my mind whispers.
I’m tempted.
I stand up, yet continue to stare down at her lying there all twisted and broken. For the amount of trauma done to her head, there’s surprisingly little blood. Most of the bleeding must be internal. Her dead eye stares at me, still frothing. A scrim of red spills over it. I turn away. I’ll finish her later. After she’s finished holding on and is ready to let go.
Maybe.
“Ashley?” I call again, cautiously this time. I don’t know if Ben’s still here or if he took off with Casey. He would’ve thought we were all dead by now. But my ears prick at every little sound, and I keep expecting them to jump out at me.
That weird mechanical knocking is still there, like someone rocking in a chair. I think about Ashley’s G-ma Junie. The old wicker rocker on the porch with the loose board: rick-click…rick-click…rick-click. It sounds a little like that.
“Ash?” Quietly, cautiously.
I step through the doorway and go into the main room. The sound is coming from my left, from the vicinity of the elevator. Two more steps and I see what’s making it: the doors closing and opening—or rather trying to close. They can’t. A bloody arm is preventing them from shutting all the way.
“Oh God, no!” I groan. “Ashley!”
Chapter 21
I wrench the elevator doors open and find Casey lying there, eyes closed, death mask quickly stealing the color from his skin. He’s been stabbed several times. Half the floor is covered with his blood. It’s all over the walls. He looks like he put up a fight.
I’m about to step over him to pull him out of the way so I can take the car down and get Kelly and Reg—Please, God, don’t let Reggie be dying, too!—when the hand moves. It grabs my ankle. Out of some deep-seated reflex, I kick viciously at him. He grunts from the impact and his lips move: “Help…me.”
“Casey?”
His mouth opens and closes, making sticky clicking noises. “Help me. Please…”
“Where’s Ashley?”
“Too…”
“Ben took her?”
“Yehhhh…”
I leave him to do a quick search of the rest of the building, then of the grounds. But the fence is turned off and the gate is wide open and there’s no sign of them, none except the trail of blood leading to the gate. The drizzle falling from the sky is slowly rinsing it away. Unbelievably, the sun is shining and there’s a rainbow. My hair is soaked by the time I get back inside, dripping in my eyes.
Novak’s almost dead. I take care of her before returning to Casey. No loose ends, I tell her, as I kill her twice with a single slice of the knife.
Casey’s still alive, still breathing. Still bleeding out. It seems inconceivable that he would survive the longest, but then again, maybe Heall’s serum does make one stronger.
“I shouldn’t have left you,” I tell him. I don’t tell him it’s because he’s most likely to reanimate. He’s the one who was bitten.
I grab the back of his collar and pull him out of the elevator car, if only to make the door stop that awful ratcheting sound.
“Casey?” I shout. “Tell me what happened. Why did Ben do this to you?”
His eyes flutter open and he tries to shake his head. Air crackles out of his throat. The blood in the corner of his mouth is starting to dry. Water drips from my hair and onto his face. He doesn’t even flinch. “…haa…”
“Where’s Ashley? I need to find her. Where is she?”
“…staaaay…” He tries to wrap his fingers around my ankle again, but he’s too weak.
I’m restless. By now the gas downstairs should have dissipated. Hopefully Kelly is still conscious. Hopefully Reggie isn’t bleeding out. I need to get back down there. I need to get Kelly so we can go find Ash.
His fingers flutter on my leg.
“I’m not going anywhere, Casey,” I lie.
He coughs then, spraying the air with blood. A wet, bubbling sound comes from his chest and another dribble spills out. Air whistles from a hole in his side.
His eyelids flutter closed.
Should I wait? Should I finish him so I can…finish him?
“Hell,” he whispers. He swallows painfully, and his eyes roll back in his head. He’s dying, I think. Going fast. Unlike Novak over in the hallway.
“Yeah, that’s probably where you’ll go.”
“Well…” he whispers, as if asking me what’s taking me so long to do it.
I reach into my backpack and pull out a water packet. I rip it open and dribble some into his mouth. He swallows, then coughs.
“Was it Ben?” I ask stupidly. Of course it was Ben. Here I am asking about him when what I really want to know is what he did with Ashley.
“…dying?” he asks.
“Yeah. You need to tell me what happened.”
His eyes roll lazily between me and the ceiling, never really focusing on anything. He closes them and whispers something I can’t hear.
“What?”
“…here…” he breathes. “…took…”
“Ashley?” I ask. “Why did Ben take her?”
His body arches and his face turns blue. The veins stand out on his forehead as he strains to breathe. Then he coughs violently once more, twice, before he settles back down to the floor, his eyes closed. He takes in another rattling breath and lets it out. Then another.
Then I notice it, the temperature of his skin. The heat in his breath. The infection is growing inside of him. He’ll turn.
I roll him over and find several more stab wounds. There are multiple slashes on his back. For the first time, I notice the palms of his hands are shredded. Defensive wounds. It makes me even more angry, the viciousness of Ben’s attack. It makes me more determined to find him. And more worried about Ashley.
“Puh…puh…” he says, his mouth gulping air that won’t save him, his chest whistling at me.
I flip the knife in my hand around and push the handle into a wound on his side. He screams in pain, gurgling.
“I need to know!” I shout. “Does Ben know where Heall is?”
He blinks again and there’s a moment of awareness in them. “Yes…no…” he tells me.
“Sonofabitch!”
&n
bsp; Fresh blood gushes from his mouth and spurts from his neck.
“Are you really from the Southern States Coalition?” I ask. I don’t know what else to say or do. I’m asking questions I don’t really care about. I know I’m just delaying the inevitable.
He gives me a nod.
“Why do you want Heall? Have you come to kill him?”
His mouth opens: Well. Or maybe Hell.
“Okay. Listen— Hey, you listen to me! I can’t help you, Casey. There’s nothing I can do. You’re dying.”
“…closerrrr…”
Don’t do it, Jessie, my mind warns. Don’t get too close to him. He’ll bite you.
I lean forward.
“Look…linkahhh…”
“Link? You want your Link?”
I search his pockets, but all I find is the bullet Ben took from me. I slip it into my own pocket.
“Where is it? It’s not here.”
He closes his eyes and doesn’t answer.
“What was on your Link?”
“…cuh…cuh…der.”
“The Coder?”
He nods: Yes.
“Is that how they know where Heall is?”
Nothing.
“Casey!”
“…save…”
The last bit of life gurgles out of him.
I wait for several seconds, but he doesn’t inhale. It’s only when I thrust the knife handle into his side that he responds. A shudder passes through him and his eyes fly open. He lets out a gurgling scream—more a drowning moan than a scream, actually. His mouth gapes open and pain flickers across his face.
“Micah was tracking us the whole time, wasn’t he?” I say, shaking him. His head flops loosely on his shoulders. “He’s the one who told Ben where to go, isn’t he? Isn’t he?”
Casey’s chin lifts and his lips draw apart. His tongue rises to the roof of his mouth. “Shhh…” he whispers, his mouth forming one more syllable: “slee…”
I stare at him for a few more seconds, but that’s all I get out of him. Even when I grind the knife into his side, he doesn’t respond.
He’s dead.
“Fine,” I tell him, turning him onto his stomach. “You get your wish. Sleep.”
Chapter 22
With the knife in my hand, still slick with blood and already tacky, I rest the tip against the soft spot at the base of his skull. A tear slips down my cheek and onto my fist. It slips into the folds of my skin, wetting the caked blood there. But I don’t cry for him. I cry for the lies he and all the others told to us. I cry for Ashley. I cry for Reggie and Jake.
The ball of my other hand drops from above my head, and I feel the shudder of the blade as it enters him. I feel the shock pass all the way up my arms and into my shoulders. A sound escapes my lips, a cry of despair and pain. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m sorry sorry ah god I’m so sorry for everything.
And the knife goes deep deep deep.
I have nothing left in my stomach after this morning, and yet, somehow, my body insists on trying to empty it anyway. A stream of greenish bile rushes out of my throat and splatters across the floor. One sudden little rush and then nothing more. But I can’t make the retching stop. My stomach clenches and I choke and cough and cry out from the pain. Another trickle comes, burning my throat, sticking to my chin, dribbling down my arm. I swipe angrily at it, but my anger doesn’t make the pain go away.
When I’m done, I leave Casey where he lies and I stand up. I wipe my lips and chin with my shoulder, and spit onto the floor. The vomiting doesn’t make me feel any better. I just feel emptier, more hollowed out.
What a god damn mess we’ve all made of everything.
And now I’m leaning into the wall, the button for the elevator door beneath my thumb, and the doors swishing open and inviting me in. And so I go in and try to remain standing but my legs refuse to hold me so I slip down the wall and collapse onto the floor.
What am I going to tell Kelly about Ashley?
How am I going to tell him she’s gone? How can I explain that it’s looking pretty bad for her?
I almost hope Reggie’s too far gone to know. I couldn’t bear telling him.
† † †
To my surprise, they’re both standing by the elevator doors when they open. Kelly has the back of a chair in his hands, ready to swing it at me. Reggie’s just standing there, still weaving slightly. He looks like a breeze will knock him over.
“How badly are you hurt?” I ask him. I scan up and down his body for telltale signs of blood that will tell me where the bullet went in.
“Hit my Link,” he says, showing me. There’s a dent in the back.
“Lucky it still works,” I tell him.
“Things are bulletproof. Who knew?” Then he staggers over to me and grabs my arms. “Did you find Ashley?” His words come out all mixed up.
“Casey, Novak, and Shane are dead.”
“Dead?” Reggie draws back. I can see the confusion in his eyes. “Did you—”
“Ben,” I tell them. “I had to finish them. Had to make sure they wouldn’t come back.”
“And…Ashley?” Kelly quietly asks.
I take in a breath and slowly let it out before answering. “She’s gone.”
Reggie lets out a wail.
“Stop, Reggie! I—I looked for her, but I couldn’t find her. Ben took her, I think. I went outside but…” I don’t mention the trail of blood. “It’s raining outside. And you know what? The sun’s out. It’s raining and the sun’s out and there was a fucking rainbow.” And now I’m crying, babbling.
They give me a queer look. Kelly comes over and holds me, but I push him away, swallowing my tears.
“I think B-ben t-t-took her with him,” I say. My hands are shaking.
“Why?”
“I d-d-don’t—”
“Jesus,” Kelly says, reaching for me again. “You’re shivering.”
This time, when he wraps his arms around me, I let him. He holds me tight. It doesn’t help. The tremors wrack my body until I can’t stand.
“Shock,” he says. The warmth of his body feels foreign to me. My body rejects it.
“It’s this damn air conditioning,” Reggie says. He spins around too fast and nearly falls over his own feet. “Where’s my backpack?”
“Where are you going?” Kelly asks. “You can’t leave!”
“I need to get Ash,” he growls. “Have to get her back.”
“Wait a sec, Reg. Let’s think about this fir—”
“Can’t think, brah. Just gotta do.” He bends over to grab his pack and nearly falls over. “Need to find her.”
“Not in your condition.”
“Gotta do it,” he repeats.
“Tell him, Jessie. Tell him to stop.”
But my teeth are chattering and my mind is threatening to shut down. “Duh-duh-duh…” I manage to get out before giving up.
“Reggie, don’t. Listen, we’ve got a few minutes. We know where they’re going. Jessie knows.”
“They’ve got a head start on us, man.” He moves slowly, deliberately, his head still in a fog. He picks up a can of tuna and stares at it for a long moment, as if entranced. “If we leave now we’ve got a chance to catch them.”
“I don’t think that’s wise, Reg.”
He spins around, his arms swinging like thick ropes. The rage in his eyes tells me there’s no reasoning with him. “Don’t fugging tell me not to fugging go after her!” he screams. He lifts a chair and hurls it across the room, howling in anger as he falls over.
Kelly pulls me away, protecting me. But he needn’t worry. Even in his rage, Reggie directs his fury away from us, toward the wall. He kicks at a stack of old manuals and they go fluttering away. Tears roll down his cheeks. “Don’t tell me I can’t get her back.”
Still shivering, I push myself away, forcing Kelly’s arms away from me.
“Jess.”
“L-let me g-go.”
“You can’t. Reggie’s not goi
ng to listen to you right now.”
“Reggie,” I say to him, halving the distance between us in three steps.
“Jessie, be careful.”
Reggie swipes at the table with his backpack, sweeping the bowl of leaves off. It smashes against the far wall and clatters away, splattering brownish-green muck over everything.
“Listen to me, Reg! We’ll go get her back, but first we have to take care of Jake. Jake needs us right now! We’ll go afterward, okay?”
This gets Reggie to stop. He turns around, his eyes flicking from me to Jake. “Ah, God. Ah God, I forgot about him.” And he slumps to the ground. “I’m so sorry. I’m— I can’t. Oh, God, Jake.” He buries his head in his arms and sobs. “I can’t do it.”
“You don’t have to, Reg.”
“If he so much as lays a finger on her—”
“Ashley will be fine,” Kelly tries to tell him, but Reggie waves him off.
“I’ll kill him.”
Get in line, I think.
“We’ll get Ashley back, but first we need to take care of Jake. We can’t just… We can’t just leave him.”
“I know. I know.”
Kelly steps to my side. “He was still breathing a few minutes ago. I checked right before the elevator starting coming down. I didn’t know if the knockout gas had any effect on him.”
“Why don’t you gather up our stuff?” I suggest to Reg. “You, too, Kel. Get ready to go.”
But Kelly follows me to the table. He lays a hand on Jake’s forehead before snatching it away. “Feels like he on fire.”
I touch him, too. Then check my fingertips, almost expecting blisters to pop up on my skin. “I can’t tell if he’s breathing.”
Kelly feels for a pulse. After a minute or so he nods. I can almost see the disappointment in his eyes. It’d be easier if he was already dead. None of us wants him to die, but it would’ve been easier if he were.
“Give me the knife,” Kelly whispers. “I’ll do it.”
My hand shakes as I reach for it in my belt loop. I can’t take my eyes off Jake lying there. I can’t stop staring at the way the skin on his face has drawn tight and sunken away, molding to the shape of his skull.
S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus Page 86
