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

by Saul Tanpepper

  Brains, brains, everywhere. On the walls and on the chair.

  Kids chanting in the school lunchroom, taunting me. Everyone knew the story, how Dad had been found with the top half of his skull peeled off and his brains scooped out. Eaten.

  Half-eaten.

  The zombie wouldn’t eat it all. The brain was rotten, much too small.

  If only I had known then that the brain-eating part was mostly urban myth. They’ll eat just about anything.

  How do you starve a zombie? Lock it in a room with Jessica Daniels.

  Yelling back at the teasers only made things worse.

  Your father’s so dumb, not even a zombie would eat his brains!

  “They found a puddle of urine just outside his office doors,” Eric continues. “Mine.”

  I remember seeing pictures of the old house. My father’s office, the French doors. There was a matching set that led outside, the ones they thought Halliwell had used to get in.

  “You couldn’t have seen anything from the hallway,” I counter. “They were covered from the inside with curtains.”

  “Thin fabric. If it was dark in the hallway, you could see some details, shadows mostly. Shapes.”

  I turn and stare at him.

  “I wasn’t supposed to spy on Dad. He was afraid I’d hear something I shouldn’t have and repeat it in school or something. But it never stopped me. I was curious.”

  “Is that why you’ve been going to the shrink since you got back from the Marines?”

  He hesitates before nodding. “Since high school, actually. I need to remember.”

  “But why? I mean, something like that, why relive it if you don’t have to?”

  He sighs. “Because I need to know. Whatever happened that night screwed me up inside something bad, Jess. Facing it is the only way I know how to try and fix it.”

  This worries me. “Is that the real reason you’re here, to face Halliwell? It’s not to fix me. It’s to fix you.”

  He turns his eyes to me and there’s something dark in them, something beyond reason. A flicker of hatred, of something desperately longed for. Of revenge. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t like it.

  “You can’t kill him, Eric.”

  “I don’t plan to, Jessie.”

  I don’t plan to, but…

  “He’s not a monster.”

  He thinks of himself as the monster.

  Brother Matthew’s words. But I don’t believe them. Not that kind of monster, anyway. A living human being wouldn’t eat anyone’s brains.

  The cup, his drink. Wormwood. Helps suppress the appetite.

  Appetite for what?

  “Why did Mom call Grandpa first before the police?” I ask.

  “So he could tidy up. Dad was the president’s chief scientific advisor and Grandpa was the commander in charge of the new Omegaman division of the Marines. These were early days in Reanimation and the government was trying hard to get the public’s support. If word got out that a zombie had killed one of the president’s inner circle, it would have been a scandal and almost certainly would have derailed the entire program.”

  “I wish it had.”

  “It came close. There was this senator, Larry Abrams. He was on some sort of technology committee or something, part of the high level talks in the White House that occurred after it was discovered that Halliwell had tried to find a cure. A few weeks after Dad was killed, Abrams leaked tapes which he claimed were voice transcripts of Halliwell’s experiment.”

  “Why?”

  “He thought the Omegaman project was a waste of money, that it was based on questionable science and was too risky, not to mention unethical. It probably would’ve ended the program if Abrams hadn’t been caught passing intelligence to China. It turns out he had fabricated the tapes.” Eric sighs, adds, “I still come across copies in the black streams.”

  I give him sharp look. The surprises just don’t stop coming. Even the police aren’t supposed to be watching the black streams.

  He nods. “Just type in a search for ‘Golgotha’ and ‘Halliwell.’ It’s not hard to find.”

  “Are you suggesting I do something illegal?”

  “No. Just saying they’re out there. Anything is, if you look hard enough for it. The truth. And lies.”

  “Why Golgotha?”

  “The place where Jesus Christ was crucified. Someone coined the phrase during the Senate hearings that occurred afterward, a journalist, I think. In any case, like Jesus, Halliwell felt persecuted by the government, betrayed by his closest ally.”

  “Dad.”

  Eric nods. “Halliwell believed the government was trying to assassinate scientists.”

  “Like who?”

  “This guy, Archdeacon, who had developed the virus backbone that was later used to create the Reanimation process. This German scientist who invented the first neural implant and shared the prize with Dad and Halliwell. Geena Bloch.”

  “Bloch?” I say with a start. “Did she have a son named Stephen?”

  Eric shakes his head. “I don’t know. Why?”

  “Father Heall—Halliwell—said he had a son by the name of Stephen. Except that wasn’t his real name. It was Enoch. Enoch Bloch.”

  “He and Bloch were friends,” Eric says. “Maybe he was a godfather or something.”

  “I didn’t get that impression.”

  Eric frowns. “Well, it wouldn’t surprise me. Halliwell had a reputation for being a womanizer.”

  I don’t know why it should, but this bothers me even more than the possibility he might be half-zombie.

  Chapter 18

  “Do you think he and Mom…?”

  “What? No! Come on, Jess. I know you don’t think she’s been a very good mother, but before Dad—”

  “What happened before Dad died doesn’t matter!” I snap. The car swerves and I jerk the wheel back to the right, overcorrecting. We fishtail a moment before settling back in the center of the lane. “She hasn’t been any kind of mother at all. To me. To either of us.”

  Neither of us speaks for a few minutes.

  We pass a sign for the Township of Medford. Below it, notification that County Road 16 is coming up. Our exit. We’re getting close.

  “What are you planning to do when we get there?” I ask. I still feel numb. I have to concentrate just to keep the car on the road. To push on the gas. To breathe.

  He doesn’t answer right away.

  Brains, brains, everywhere. On the walls and on the chair.

  The zombie wouldn’t eat it all. The brain was rotten, much too small.

  Brains, brains, everywhere. On the desk and in your hair.

  Bite me, bite me in the head. Now your daddy is Undead.

  “This isn’t about you or me, Jess. This is bigger even than Arc or the government. It’s about…”

  Retribution.

  “It’s about undoing a great wrong.”

  “He’ll die anyway, you know. Maybe not literally, but he might as well be dead. They won’t let him be free.”

  “He’s not free here. And he will be dead if he stays.”

  “You know what they’ll do, Eric. They’ll stick him in jail cell or a lab somewhere and they’ll draw his blood and turn it into medicine for the rich and privileged until they bleed him dry.”

  “They won’t do that, Jess. You and Kelly will get what you need.”

  “Oh, don’t be so naïve, Eric! Nobody will care about me or him. We’re nobodies!”

  He gives me a shocked look.

  Outside his window, the sign indicating our exit flashes by. I flip on the blinker without thinking about it and begin to slow. Force of habit. The movement catches Eric’s eye.

  I remember Micah doing the exact same thing in Lower Manhattan and being amused since there hadn’t been any other cars around. He was always so careful driving. One of his strange quirks. But now I know it was because he didn’t want to risk getting caught. He didn’t want to attract a cop’s attention.
/>   Like breaking into Long Island didn’t attract attention.

  I turn the signal off. Suddenly, the last thing I want to do is exit.

  The ramp draws near. I’m tempted to just hold the wheel and keep going straight, to pass right by it and drive until we reach the far wall at the eastern-most edge of the island. I want to slam our way through it. I want to drive right into the ocean.

  At the last second I turn the wheel and Eric yelps in surprise, bracing himself. But he relaxes as I slow the car down, and we fall back into a smoldering silence.

  I take a right onto Patchogue Road a mile and a half later. We pass beneath another highway, take a left onto North Dutton. Everything is startlingly familiar. In a way, it almost feels like coming home.

  As we pull up to the house, I look for the IUs I’d seen before, but I see none of them in the surrounding area. I guess they’ve all gone back to their dark places. Not even one. No sign that tells me everything is normal.

  Normal? Ha!

  “Watch out!”

  I look back in time to see the object in the middle of the drive, but not in time to avoid hitting it. The left front tires thump and I hear the sickening crunch of bones being snapped beneath me. I feel the car rise up, then drop, as the body collapses beneath us. Another thump and we’re past it. I slam on the brakes. The engine backfires and stalls.

  Eric’s out of the car before I have a chance to react. He moves quickly in spite of being in obvious pain, and he’s kneeling over the body.

  Please, I beg. Please do not be Father Heall.

  Eric stands up quickly and tries to block me. “She’s dead,” he says.

  “Sh-she?”

  I push him aside. He can’t stop me. He can barely stand.

  The world collapses into a finite point in that moment. All of my being is concentrated on the familiar face. I bend down and, with a shaky hand, brush the hair from her face, still unmarred, showing only the strain of living in a forsaken land. A choked sob escapes from my throat.

  “Did you know her? Jessie, who is it?”

  “Sister Dorothy,” I manage to say. I realize I don’t know her real name. “I killed her.”

  Eric shushes me. I fight him, but he hisses at me to stop. The look on his face startles me. “You didn’t do this,” he whispers, and he bends down and flips her over. There’s a small pool of blood beneath her, soaking into the ground. The back of her neck is stained, the blood already clotted. “Somebody quieted her, Jessie.” He rolls her back. Then, gently, pries at the collar of her shirt with a finger, exposing the top of one of her breasts.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I cry, slapping his hand away.

  He points at the scars on her chest. “She was one of the bitten, wasn’t she? One of the Living Infected?”

  Does he realize what he just said? He’s classified a new species of humans.

  Is that what I am? One of the Living Infected? An LI?

  LI, for Long Island. For Living Infected.

  “They all were,” I say, haltingly. “All except—”

  I stand up and look around. Nothing to see. Nothing to hear but the soft breeze and the distant twittering of sparrows in the trees. “Julia!”

  “Damn it, Jessie! Stop it!” He grabs me with one hand, the other clutching his side, and shushes me again. “Whoever did this might still be around,” he whispers. “I don’t like that they just left her here like this.”

  “Who? Micah?”

  He shakes his head, shrugs. “Unless he found a working car and figured out the wall thing too, I don’t know. It’s possible. He did have an hour or two lead on us.”

  I pull away from him and run for the front porch. When I get to the steps, I see that the door is standing open. Now I begin to notice other things out of place, things that whisper at me that something is terribly wrong. Of the three bikes we’d brought here and dumped by the side of the porch, one is now missing. There’s a car sitting in the side yard that I don’t remember seeing before, its driver-side door open. The whispers turn into silent screams: Blood on the steps, two drops, one of them smeared.

  I scan the yard. Out by the woodpile, a lump, blue and brown, sun-bleached clothes. It’s the IU Father Heall had patted on the shoulder yesterday morning. I can tell from here that it’s been quieted.

  “Jessie, don’t go in there!”

  But I do. I step inside and wait for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. I hear Eric taking the steps behind me by twos. I run down the hall and past the doors and hanging picture frames. I slide into the kitchen. Dirty dishes in the sink. Pail of water on the floor in front of it. Smell of eggs and coffee. I spin and race through the opposite door just as Eric appears in the doorway behind me.

  “Jessie!”

  “Julia!” I call. “Julia, where are you?”

  But except for the pounding of our shoes on the bare floors and the pounding of my heart in my ears, the house is utterly silent. I find another bedroom—a woman’s room—the bed freshly made, but no sign of the girl.

  “Jessie?” Eric says, puffing. “Jessie, you need to stop. This is danger—”

  “I need to find Julia.” I sweep past him and he tries to grab me, but I slip away from him.

  “Jessie, stop! You don’t know what—”

  “JULIA?”

  “What are you doing? Who’s Julia?”

  I stop and blink at him, my thoughts too scrambled to form words. Step back into the hallway. Try the basement door. It’s locked. “Julia?” Bang my fists on it. The sound echoes dully into the cellar below. “Julia? Are you down there? Father Heall?”

  “What about upstairs? Could they be—”

  But I push him aside and try the next door, the storage pantry where Brother Walter fetched the testing kit the day Micah and I arrived. It’s locked too, just like it was last time, but I don’t bother with a key. I ram it with my shoulder. The door pops open, easier than I thought it would. I stumble into the room. Feel around for the light switch. Flip it on. The bulb buzzes awake, dim and yellow. The solar panels on the roof are old, weak, the light dull. What I’m looking for is on a hook on the wall. Key ring. Dozens of keys. Grab it. Head across the hall.

  “What the hell?” Eric says, as I brush past him. His eyes are wide, scanning the shelves. I stop, turn, see what it is he sees: shelves occupied by plastic bottles of various shapes and sizes, most of them white with red labels. He reaches over and pulls one down.

  “Polyethylene glycol,” he reads. “Molecular weight forty thousand.” Two others: “Sodium azide. Clelland’s Reagent. These aren’t cooking ingredients. These are chemicals.” Then his eyes settle on the boxes on the back shelf. He sees the label that reads INFECTION.

  “Testing kits,” I answer impatiently. I have no interest right now in chemicals or kits. I need to find Julia.

  And Halliwell.

  My hands shake as I fumble through the key ring. I find the right one on the fourth attempt. It slips into place. I turn the knob. The door slips open an inch on its own, loose on its hinges, as if recently oiled. I give it a nudge and the opening widens eight more inches.

  The basement is silent and dark.

  A hand drops onto mine, startling me. “What’s down there?” Eric whispers.

  The crazy part of me wants to say it’s a tomb.

  Quiet as a tomb.

  “Wine cellar.”

  He raises an eyebrow questioningly.

  “It’s where I met Father—where I met Halliwell.”

  “The door was locked. You think he’s down there?”

  “I don’t know,” I reply. “Maybe.”

  “And who’s this Julia?”

  “A girl.”

  “Jessie, we can’t keep—”

  “She’s only fourteen, Eric. Never infected. She was just a baby when she and her father were trapped here after the evacuation. Her father’s dead.”

  “I’m sure that’s sad, Jessie, but—”

  “Because of me. Her father died becau
se of me, Eric.”

  He bites his lip.

  “I need to find them.”

  I try to push past him, but he blocks me.

  “Slowly,” he says. “This rushing everywhere is only going to get you killed.” He presses a finger to his lips and eases the door the rest of the way open. A knife from the kitchen appears in his other hand. “I’m right behind you.”

  We descend slowly into that dank basement, leaving the dim light from upstairs behind. We descend past the point where the shadows lose their clarity and become part of the twilight. We step from that twilight into darkness. When we reach the bottom step, we turn, one hand on the wall, the other on each other’s arm.

  Out of the darkness comes a new light, the brilliant stabbing, yellow light of a single bulb nestled in a distant corner of the basement, light scattered by rows upon rows of empty wine racks. We thread our way into that maze and finally emerge in the room where I sat two days before. The bare bulb dangles from the ceiling, the metal coil inside it looking like an electric worm. It shines onto the table and the two empty chairs. It shines on a teacup and saucer.

  “He’s not here,” I say, a mixture of relief and apprehension washing over me.

  But Eric squeezes past me and steps to the back of the room. “Jessie?”

  Then I see the body on the floor beneath the table.

  “It’s him.”

  Eric reaches over and places a couple fingers on his neck and feels. An eternity later, he looks up at me.

  “He’s dead.”

  Chapter 19

  “It had to be done.”

  I recognize the voice immediately, but I don’t turn. If I turn and see him, it’ll make this all real and Halliwell will truly be dead, and I can’t have that.

  “I couldn’t let him live. You understand that, don’t you? He killed your father, after all.” The words freeze my soul. “He killed my son.”

  Eric slowly rises. He pulls himself up with a hand on the back of the empty chair and his other gripping the knife. His knuckles are white and the look on his face is one of utter hatred, void of the physical pain that he must be feeling. “You don’t know what you’ve done, Ulysses,” he says in a low voice.