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

by Saul Tanpepper

  From somewhere else in the building, somewhere down here in the basement, there’s a loud crash and the clatter of dozens of large objects hitting the floor. All at once, the moaning of the Undead amplifies. We all know what it means.

  “They’re in,” Kelly quietly says. He seems almost serene. He leans against the glass door, closes his eyes and counts silently. Or maybe he’s praying. His lips are moving and he’s praying. Not for the dead. This time it’s for us.

  When he’s finished, he yanks the door open and positions himself outside, waiting for the Undead to come. He holds onto the handle with one hand, as if he can keep them from coming in and getting us. The machete is in the other. His last stand. He’ll kill as many of them as he can, but we all know there are too many. Reggie’ll try, too. He’ll take his place, and when he falls, he’ll yank the wires from his Link, and he’ll die.

  I watch Kelly set his feet. I watch him square his shoulders as the moaning grows louder. They’re looking for us. They sense we’re here. They can smell us. I keep expecting him to run up the hallway toward them, eager to face them, but he holds his ground. He won’t leave us. This is where he’s chosen to fight. This is where he’ll die, not just once, but twice.

  Once bitten, twice dead.

  But I won’t let him. I have other plans.

  I just hope I can hold my arm steady. I pray I’ll have the strength to do what I have to do. I hope my aim is true and that the gun still works.

  “School starts on Monday,” Reggie says, his eyes glued to Kelly.

  “Oh?” I reply. “I lost count of the days.”

  “Yeah, so much for going back and bragging about it.” He sighs. “I knew this was a terrible idea. Right from the start I said that this was bad and that we shouldn’t have come here. Isn’t that what I said? I’m pretty sure that’s what I said.”

  I chuckle and it turns into a cough, and the cough sends a spasm of pain through me. I can feel fresh blood leaking through the bandage, leaking down my flank. Reggie sees me wince and he leans into my side, pressing into me, pushing all of his weight onto the bandage as if he’s afraid everything will come spilling out. But I have nothing left inside of me. I am finally hollow. I’ve been hollow for much too long.

  I don’t want to look into his eyes. I don’t want to see the madness in them. And I don’t want him to see the madness in mine. Could he read my thoughts? Does he know what I’m thinking?

  I glance down at the tablet. The Players have left the place where Ashley was. They’ve swept right past it and have turned. Now they’re coming back. Ashley is caught up in the middle of that horde. Here she comes. Is she an Infected Undead now?

  The other Players are swarming above us. I look up toward the ceiling, as if I could see them there, but there’s nothing but the ceiling tiles, yellowed with mildew and water-stained. And there’s that mute black eye staring down at us. It infuriates me. I wonder, is all of New Merica watching us? Are they cheering for us? Are they cheering for the Players?

  Is Ben?

  I’d give him the finger, but I won’t give him the pleasure.

  The main group is heading straight for us. They’re in the building now, coming down the stairs. They know exactly where we are. After the IUs come the CUs.

  I look up and Kelly’s eyes meet mine as he looks in. They’re empty, devoid of anything, light and knowledge and hope and caring. Devoid of life. He’s already died. This is just a formality. Now I see that he was right. He was right all along. We shouldn’t have come.

  Why didn’t he try harder to stop us?

  Or was he ready to die too?

  As I lie here dying, lost somewhere deep in the Wastes with the Undead closing in on us, wanting nothing more than to feed on the living, the truth hits home for the last time: what Kelly wanted or what I wanted never mattered. Arc Entertainment wanted us here. They planned it from the very beginning. They wanted us in The Game so we could try and break it for them. That’s why it was so easy for us to get in. The rest of it was the SSC. They’re the ones who kept us here.

  And why getting out has been such a killer.

  Does it make Arc any less evil?

  I glance again at the camera staring down at us. I imagine the swarm of red dots of the Players they’ve sent to us and I think:

  No. It doesn’t. Arc is just as culpable.

  The first sounds of the IUs’ naked feet on the linoleum now come to me. Kelly raises his arm and the machete rises up to meet them. Shadows stretch over him. His eyes grow wide and his face blanches. But he takes a half step forward and swings, and a body falls to one side of him. Then another. He’s a madman out there, killing himself again and again with each swing he takes, with each new zombie he kills. They keep coming and he keeps swinging and the bodies pile up and the gore coats his arms and his shirt and his neck and his face, and it seems that he might actually hold them off. He’s a madman, showing no fear now, no fatigue.

  But then he cries out. He shakes his arm, trying to dislodge the zombie that has sunken its teeth into his wrist and the momentary lapse in attention is all that is needed for the Undead to overwhelm him. Another falls, but it grabs his leg and pulls itself up, and he collapses beneath their weight. They pile on top of him. My vision blurs from my tears.

  But he stands again. He stands and climbs the mound of their bodies. He fights, falters, falls.

  I reach behind my back. It’s almost time. I feel the cold metal of the gun against my back. One bullet. Just one. This must be what I’d been saving it for. I must’ve known that very first day. Kelly must’ve known when he found it and brought it back to me. He saved me, all those years ago, and now it’s my turn to return the favor.

  My fingers wrap around the grip; they find the safety and flick it off. They touch the curve of the trigger and gingerly test its resistance. Reggie sees the wince on my face as I pull it free, but he thinks it’s just pain from the infection. He doesn’t yet see the gun. All he knows is that the disease is spreading inside of me. He knows the agony I’ll soon be going through. He knows the monster I’m about to become.

  I cough and my bandage bleeds. “Got any antivenin?” I joke. “I think this level of the game has kicked my ass.”

  He smiles a wistful smile, stands, readies himself for when they come in.

  Outside the glass door, Kelly somehow manages to stand again, to push them back. For the moment he leans against the glass, which is splattered with blood. The zombies have stopped their attack. They’ve fallen back. He looks over at us, confused, exhausted.

  I look down at the tablet. It’s the Players. They’re here. They’re down here. They’re drawing the IUs. They’re engaging them.

  Blood drips down Kelly’s arms, coats his shirt and pants.

  I draw the gun out and I hold it up.

  He and Reggie both see it at the same moment. It doesn’t register with them right away. They think I’m going to shoot the Players when they come. What a joke. One bullet might stop one, but there are dozens more out there. I lift it up, and then, all at once, they know—or they think they know—and they start yelling for me not to do it.

  But I don’t hear them. All I can hear, as I swing my arm, aim, and pull the trigger, is Kelly—my poor, dear, lost Kelly—whispering inside my head how much he loves me.

  I know, I whisper back. I’ve always known. I love you, too.

  He nods then. He was always a better player than I was. Better than I ever realized.

  The blast is the last thing I hear before the bullet exits the gun and jerks my body back with such force that the pain rips through me and takes away all sense.

  Darkness envelops me as glass shatters and showers to the floor.

  Chapter 20

  I never deserved anything good. I had bad blood flowing inside of me, blood of my father and the blood of his. Blood that brought a darkness to the world and tore humanity apart. Blood of my mother who had given up living long ago and was living, instead, a kind of waking death. I was
bad, and I never deserved anything good.

  When Kelly came, he filled a void in my life, made me complete. But I was a fool and never really realized it. Last year, we went through a rough period. We’d broken up. I tried dating other guys. More than I can remember. More than I care to remember, in fact. But I was never with any of them. Not like I was with Kelly.

  He told me I was becoming my mother.

  “You’ll drink yourself to death, Jess. I can’t stand to see you doing that to yourself.”

  I’ve tried to blank that time out of my mind. I hate what I did to myself then. What I did to him. He filled a void in my life, but what I didn’t realize was that I was filling one in his. When I left him, it was like tearing holes in both of us.

  What brings me back now is the smell of his hair and his skin, the sound of his voice, the feel of his arms around me. All of these things pull me from the edge of consciousness and back to myself.

  He was good, and I never deserved anything good, but he was what I needed. And he needed me.

  “Jessie,” he says. I can hear it in his voice: he’s dying.

  I look up at the shattered black globe, that all-seeing eye, and I say, “I didn’t want them watching us die. They don’t deserve it. They don’t deserve us.”

  None of them do. Not Ben, not any of them.

  He gently pries the gun from my fingers and sets it aside.

  Reggie stands over by the door, holding it closed, straining to look outside. “They’re fighting,” he says. “The Players and the IUs, they’re fighting each other.”

  The sounds of the battle out in the hallway and farther out in the main room grow loud to our ears. Soon the Players will finish with their mindless opponents, and then they’ll come for us.

  “You know what needs to be done, Reg,” I say.

  He looks over. I take Kelly’s machete and shove it away from me. It slides across the floor and comes to rest at his feet.

  “Kelly first, then me,” I tell him. I won’t let Kelly watch me die. Reggie doesn’t argue. He knows this is my last gift to Kelly. “Then…your Link.”

  He shakes his head. “No, I can’t.”

  “You can. You have to.”

  His eyes search and locate the gun. His mouth becomes a thin white line. He thinks I’ve wasted the last bullet, but I haven’t. I’ve saved us, saved our dignity. I won’t be fodder for the Media Stream. I won’t be just some ratings gimmick for Survivalist. Let us die in peace. Let us die and not come back.

  I turn to Kelly. “Does it hurt?”

  He shakes his head. “Not yet.” He’s still high on adrenaline, but I know the pain will come. Soon. First the pain from his wounds, then the pain of the infection.

  The sounds of the fight are eerily quiet, just the sounds of moaning and of bodies falling. The Undead, whether controlled or otherwise, have no need for shouting in the heat of battle. They don’t cry out in pain or anguish over those who fall before them. For them, this is nothing more than some primal directive, like code executing some natural process. The game being played out. The sounds of metal on flesh and bone. The sounds of tendons separating and limbs and heads falling. These are all a part of it.

  Reggie looks back out and he shakes his head. “I can’t see anything. It looks like the Players are falling back.” I can hear the excitement in his voice. I can sense the hope. He thinks there’s a chance he can get out of this alive. I wish he was right. But the battle out there will ebb and flow with its own inexplicable and unpredictable rhythm. Yet, like the tide, it will eventually wash back in again. Right now the Operators are too focused on the IUs, but they’re mere obstacles for the real prize. We are the real prize, the end-game, the final level. When the Infected Undead are all killed, then the Players will come for us.

  “Reggie,” Kelly says. I can hear the first hint of pain now in his voice.

  “No, wait…”

  “Reggie, listen,” he says, “they’re going to come back.”

  But Reggie doesn’t answer. He leans against the door and looks out, his hand suspended, as if warding us off. But I don’t have the energy to even stand, and Kelly is beginning to shake. I can see the shock beginning to slip over him. I can see the life beginning to leave his eyes.

  “You h-have—have t-t-to,” Kelly says. “Quick, before they come b-back.”

  The fighting sounds have become more sporadic, and I wonder if maybe I’m beginning to fade away, too. They seem so far away.

  “They’re leaving! The Players are leaving.”

  I blink open my eyes.

  Reggie rushes over and bends down. “Can you walk, Jessie?”

  I laugh-cough and shake my head. Kelly lets out a deep breath. He doesn’t even respond. He leans back against the wall next to me and already I can feel the heat coming off of him. Isn’t it strange, I think, that I can feel his fever, but not mine?

  “No,” Reggie says. He looks at Kelly’s wounds and repeats himself again and again: “No, no. No. I won’t let you. I won’t!”

  “You have to,” I whisper. “Ashley’s dead,” I tell him, though I don’t say that she’s reanimated. “Jake is gone. Now Kelly and I are gone, too. If you can get out, then go, but first you have to finish us. I reach over and it feels like my hand weighs a million pounds. I reach over and grasp his wrist with the machete in it and pull it up and it’s like lifting the weight of the world. “Kelly first.”

  “No,” he moans. “I can’t.”

  “You’re saving us,” I tell him. “You’re saving us. You’re letting us go into that long sleep. I’m so tired. I just want to sleep.”

  I reach over and pull Kelly to me. I lay his head in my lap, and he comes willingly. I can feel his breath on my skin, feverishly hot. I can feel his life leaking away like the heat rolling off a sidewalk when the sun goes down.

  “Please, Reggie.”

  And I run my fingers through his hair one last time. Kelly sighs and closes his eyes.

  “No,” Reggie says. He’s crying now. The big brute is crying. “I love you guys,” he says. “I can’t.”

  But he lifts his hand and stares at it like he can’t stop himself, like his body already knows what his mind refuses to accept. He watches in horror as the blood and gore-streaked blade rises, as his own hand betrays his will by lifting it.

  I part the curls on Kelly’s neck, his beautiful neck.

  “We love you, too,” I whisper.

  There’s movement in the hallway, shuffling footsteps approaching. They’re coming back. The Players are coming.

  The knife hovers, unmoving. The struggle inside of Reggie is as fierce as the one waged outside that door. A shadow fills the glass now, but we don’t look to see what’s coming for us. It’s now or never.

  Hurry, I scream inside my head. Hurry. And I close my eyes and say goodbye.

  The air makes a whooshing sound as the door begins to open. I feel it on my tear-streaked face.

  “Now, Reggie,” I murmur. “Do it!”

  But he lets out a yelp of surprise. I feel his body jerk. And I open my eyes just in time to the knife skimming away across the floor. It disappears beneath the stacks of computers. Then as the Player sweeps down and pulls him away, I think, It’s too late.

  We waited too long.

  I wonder: Do zombies dream?

  Chapter 21

  “What the hell are you doing?” a familiar voice shouts. There’s a blur of movement. Reggie tumbles onto his back and lies there staring up, too stunned to move or speak.

  “Micah?” I gasp.

  Kelly struggles to roll himself off my lap, to lift his head to see, but he’s too weak. He collapses with a moan and the sound of it makes me shiver, so full of pain and death, harkening of the darkness that lies beyond.

  “Go,” Micah commands. “Get out of the way.”

  “Let us finish, Micah. Please. Kelly’s dying. We’re both dying.”

  But Micah steps over Reggie’s legs and pushes Kelly back down. “Not if I have anyt
hing to say about it.”

  “It’s too late for us.”

  “Hold still!” he tells Kelly. “You need to hold still. Okay, never mind. He’s passed out.” And then he shouts over his shoulder: “In here! I found them. They’re in with the computers!”

  “Who are you talking to?” I ask.

  He ignores me. “I can’t leave you guys alone for a minute without you getting all fucked up. Why the hell are you even still here? You should’ve been gone by now. Where’s Brother Matthew? And Brother Nicholas?”

  Reggie lurches to his feet. “Forget about them, Micah. Why are you here?”

  Micah ignores him and instead starts to pull at the bottom edge of Kelly’s shirt, lifting it up, exposing his torso. He swears under his breath at the collection of wounds. “He’s lucky. Most of these are pretty shallow,” he says.

  “Lucky,” Reggie screams. “He’s bitten! He’s infected. He’s dying. Now get the fuck away from him!” And he reaches down to yank Micah off, but Micah casually swipes the hand away.

  “For once just sit down and shut up, Reggie. I’m saving your asses, so just give me some room.” He turns and yells over his shoulder: “Hey! Anyone out there?”

  Footsteps pound the hallway outside and a moment later the door slams open again and a woman sweeps in. Her eyes quickly sweep over the scene and come to rest on Reggie. She tells him to calm down. “And stay out of the way so we can help.”

  At this, Reggie’s face flushes. He doesn’t like being scolded by Micah, but when it’s even worse when those same words come from some strange woman he’s never met.

  She turns to Micah and hisses, “I told you we needed to stick together. That was what you agreed to. And here you are yelling with those things out there.”

  “Sister Jane?” I say.

  She spins around and tuts when she sees me. “Are you all right? You look all right.”

  “She’s not all right.”

  Sister Jane turns and waves Reggie back.

  “But…h-how?” I ask. My eyes bounce between her and Micah as I try to adjust to the sudden change in our fortunes. A moment ago we were dying, ready to do what needed to be done. And now…