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

by Saul Tanpepper

  I want to shake my head. I want to deny any of this, all of this. I want to scream at my grandfather, demand that he undo this. Halliwell can’t be dead.

  I reach down and touch his face. He’s so cold, cold and stiff and hard. No give to his skin, nothing that even faintly resembles life anymore.

  “Look at me, both of you,” Grandpa commands, the old military general. He expects us to obey.

  I stand up and turn around. Grandpa’s standing there on the edge of the circle of light. For some reason my eyes zero in on a spot of blood on his neck, a knick from his razor. He holds a gun in his hand, pointed at us. At Eric. His face a mask, the same one I’ve known all my life. The lines in it are a lot deeper than they used to be, but even they seem as devoid of emotion and humanity as cracks in stone.

  Eric pulls me away, draws me behind him. “Just stay right there,” he warns.

  Grandpa takes a leisurely step forward, defying Eric, challenging him. “Whatever you think I’m doing here, son—whatever you think I’ve done—I’ve done it to protect you.”

  “I said, stay where you are!”

  He stops, sighs dramatically. “I didn’t expect you to come. Certainly not so quickly. If I had known…”

  “We had to hurry,” I say, my voice sounding far away. “There wasn’t time—”

  “Jessie,” Eric says, cutting me off. He never takes his eyes off Grandpa. “Why?” he asks. “Why did you do this?”

  “So you wouldn’t have to.”

  “Eric?” I croak. “You said you weren’t going to kill him.”

  “Don’t listen to him, Jess.”

  “She knows I’m right.”

  “No, you’re wrong. You have no idea how wrong you are, Ulysses.”

  “Educate me then, son. Tell me what you think I’ve done.” He takes another step closer.

  Eric raises the knife higher, holds it out. Like it’s any defense against a gun. “He had a treatment,” he says. “For the infection. And it works. I’ve seen it.”

  “Hell, I know it works. I’ve always known that.”

  “And you still killed him?” I ask, incredulous. “Why? After all we’ve been through, Grandpa. This would’ve made things right for us.”

  “Don’t be so naïve, young lady. The world doesn’t want what he had to offer.”

  He shakes his head, piercing me with those steely grey eyes. They feel as if they’re slicing straight into my soul, flaying me wide open and exposing me to him.

  “That thing at your feet was a monster, nothing more. It may have looked like a man—to some, I suppose—and it may have even acted like one, pretending to breathe and speak, drinking that damned herbal tea—but it was a monster.”

  “You’re saying they are monsters, then?” Eric asks. “Your own creations. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “That thing wasn’t created by me. It wasn’t alive or Undead. It was an abomination.”

  Aren’t they all? I’d asked Brother Matthew.

  No. Only the Deceivers, the CUs. Turned into abominations by the things inside their heads, by the people controlling them. Was Halliwell a Player?

  “No,” I whisper. “We’re all abominations.”

  Eric gestures at me. “Jessie was bitten. She’s infected. If you knew that—if you knew that only his blood will save her—you wouldn’t have done this. You’ve killed your own granddaughter.”

  The truth of this hits me hard. I blink, stunned, once again realizing my own mortality. Coming from my own brother’s mouth with such irrevocability, I begin to crumble.

  Something flickers across Grandpa’s face, but it’s gone so quickly that I can’t tell what it was, whether it was doubt or surprise or anguish. Then he snorts. “You were always so melodramatic as a child. She won’t die.”

  “I’m not lying!”

  “And neither am I. But truth and lies, Eric, can both be slippery things, like eels, glinting differently depending on how you shine the light on them.” He sticks a hand into a pocket. Both Eric and I tense up. But when he pulls it back out again, we immediately see that the small silver and white object he’s holding is harmless. He tosses it onto the table and it slides across and comes to a stop at our end. “Thought it might be time for a refill. Three times a day, Jessica,” he says. “Take your medicine like you’re supposed to and you’ll be fine.”

  I blink stupidly at the inhaler. It’s a new one, fully charged. Nobody moves.

  “Go on, take it.”

  I reach over with a shaky hand.

  “Jessie, don’t,” Eric says. He sweeps it away, but I scramble after it. I don’t know why. Maybe because Grandpa believes it will save me. It has to save me. I pluck it up off the floor and cradle it like it’s the most delicate thing in the world.

  “Three times a day, young lady. Don’t forget. Don’t ever forget.”

  Eric is silent for a moment. I can sense his sudden doubt. “Is it a cure?”

  “No.”

  “What about Kelly?” I ask. “He was bitten, too.”

  Grandpa’s eyes flick from my face to Eric’s and back again. He blinks once, slowly. “I’m sorry, Jessica. I truly am. But you cannot—must not—tell anyone about any of this. Especially now. You must keep this all a secret.”

  “You can’t do that! You can’t stop me. I’ll give it to him if I want to!”

  “You’ll just be wasting it, Jessica. If he’s bitten, then he’ll soon die of the infection. There’s nothing you or I can do about that. I’m sorry.”

  Numbness slips through me like a drug. I feel like I’m going to faint, and when I speak, it’s like hearing my own voice coming out of someone else’s mouth. “Why?” I croak. “Why me? Why not him? Why can’t I save Kelly?”

  “I’ve told you before that you are special, Jessica. You, and you alone.”

  The inhaler slips from my fingers, clatters to the floor. The room swims.

  I feel myself stepping back. I feel my heels hit Halliwell’s body. I feel my legs giving beneath me. My back slams into the wall, bracing me up. I start to slide.

  Eric turns to grab me. I see Grandpa step forward. There’s a deep, hollow blackness in his eyes, and it’s like staring into the muzzle of a gun. His face is stolid, dead. Someone shouts for him to stop, but he doesn’t. Then there’s the deafening roar of a gunshot blast. Now he does stop, eyes sprung open, body arching and jaw dropping.

  Eric, still turning, dives to the side, pulling me down with him. My eyes are still on Grandpa. He reaches out for us. Now I see the pain on his face. Pain and surprise. His hand slaps the table with a dull thwack. The teacup topples over. Thin green liquid spills out. The air fills with that strange tincture of herbs and medicine. Cra-CRACK! go his knees on the floor. Crash! Shards of teacup, a worn silver spoon pinging off the cement. Once, spinning. Twice, falling.

  “Eric—?”

  Look of horror and surprise on his face, too. The knife is still in his hand and for a split second I see the drop of blood on it. But it’s just a trick of the lighting, the brown of the ceiling rafters reflecting off of the shiny metal. I know it’s a trick because when he drops it, I see a shadow emerge. I see the gun. I see the wisp of smoke rising from the barrel.

  Julia steps forward. Her small face is a pale full moon in the light. She takes another step.

  And collapses.

  Chapter 20

  “We don’t have enough time, Jessie,” Eric says, wheezing, as we reach the top of the stairs. He bends over in pain for a moment, then resumes carrying his end of the body into the hallway. “We’ll just leave Grandpa behind.”

  I glance sideways at Julia, but her face is rigid, hard to read. I don’t know if she’s in shock or not. I know I am. I can’t believe Halliwell is dead and that my grandfather killed him. Now he’s dead, too. I should be happy, angry. Instead, I feel…empty

  We struggle down the hallway and into the main room. Eric drops Halliwell’s feet—they thud onto the worn carpet—and he settles heavily onto the piano
bench. The rickety thing creaks beneath his weight. “Let me just…catch my breath,” he says. He wipes the sweat off his unshaven face with the back of his hand, wipes that on his shirt. His skin is the color of the walls, a drab white turned husky gray by age and neglect. It’s not just the lighting; he’s suffering badly. “Rest,” he tells us.

  I let Halliwell’s arm slip through my hands and I step over to sit on the end of the couch. My side aches, the dull, throbbing pain of dying embers.

  Julia gives us both a worried look, her beautiful brown eyes alternating between me and Eric. Then she follows suit.

  She hadn’t uttered a word when he told her we were going to take Halliwell’s body back with us. No protest, no surprise. Nothing when Eric said we’d leave Grandpa behind. “He’s dead. We’re out of time.” Not even when I told her Sister Dorothy is dead did she say anything.

  She speaks her first words now: “I want to go with you.”

  Eric looks up at her, arching an eyebrow up at her.

  “What do you know about Halliwell?”

  “Who?”

  “Father Heall,” I say.

  “What do you know about the treatment, his blood?”

  “Nothing.”

  He lowers his head, shaking it.

  “She could live with us,” I say. “She has no family.”

  This brings a frown to his face. “We can’t just suddenly appear with a girl, especially one where there’s absolutely no record of her. People will ask questions.”

  “So, what do we do? We can’t leave her here.”

  “I don’t know,” he says, leaning into his side.

  “What about the others?” I ask her. “Brother Matthew said there were a couple dozen other brothers and sisters.”

  She shakes her head. “I only ever met a few. Sister Dorothy rarely let me go outside. My father was very protective. They all were.”

  “We’ll find them.”

  “We don’t have time, Jessie,” Eric says.

  “We just can’t leave them.”

  “Jessie, listen to me. It’s already noon.”

  “That’s because it took too long getting Halliwell out of the basement!”

  “We need him, Jess. He’s dead, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still learn from him.”

  “We’ve got four and a half hours, Eric! That’s more than enough time to do a quick search.”

  “And where would we put them? There’s four of us already. We can’t fit more than one or two more in the car.”

  “I don’t know! Maybe there’s another car. Look, it only took us two hours to get here—”

  “And what if we break down? What if we have to find another car? What if the network goes down again, Jessie? Huh? How do we get through the wall then?” He points outside. “Like it or not, those planes are coming at six thirty. And they will level this place whether we’re here or gone.”

  “Planes?” Julia asks.

  “They’re bombing the whole island,” I say. “They’re going to burn it all to the ground, sterilize it.”

  She looks from me to Eric and back again. I can see she doesn’t understand.

  Eric checks his Link again, if only to avoid looking at us.

  “We should at least try to find them.”

  “I’m not going to talk about it, Jessie. We don’t have time. Right now we focus on getting Halliwell’s body out to the car and locating his notes, if there are any. Think about Kelly. This body and those records are his best hope for a cure. Or at least a treatment. Those first, then, if we have time, we can try and find some of the others. Though I don’t know where we’d put them…”

  I stare at him for a moment before I cave. I know he’s right. It’s not just about saving Kelly or a few other people. This is our last chance to save us all.

  “Julia,” Eric says, “did Halli— Did Father Heall ever keep any notebooks?”

  “I never saw any. If he did, I don’t know where they might be.”

  “Does he have a room?”

  “Upstairs. But he seldom used it. I rarely ever had to make up his bed.”

  Eric clenches his jaw and tries to think. He checks his Link again. “Okay. Let’s take twenty minutes to do a quick search through the house. Bring anything that looks like it might be research, books, journals, recordings. Anything. Bring it here. Then we go.”

  We separate. Julia takes the ground floor while Eric heads back down to the cellar. I head upstairs to search, starting with Brother Walter’s room. I grab his keys and a few small trinkets to bring back to him. I don’t know why. I guess I’d want something if I was going to be taken from my home too, taken against my will.

  But despite thoroughly ransacking the sparsely furnished rooms, I find nothing resembling notes.

  Julia takes a bit longer, but in the end, she doesn’t find anything, either.

  Eric shakes his head. “Nothing downstairs.” He’s in obvious distress, even from just from climbing back up the stairs. I tell him I’ll rewrap him and he lifts his arms as high as he can, wincing.

  His side is swollen and deeply discolored, the scrape from the tree branch looking ugly and infected. Standing this close to him, I can hear how hard it is for him to breathe. “You better get this x-rayed when we get back.”

  It’s such a strange to hear myself say. X-rays. Smacking of routine and normalcy and conveniences lacking in this place. My fingers shake. I drop the bandage.

  Julia finishes the job. When she’s done, Eric sighs a little. “Feels better. Thank you.”

  “Why don’t you get the car,” I tell him. “Julia and I can manage getting Halliwell out there.”

  When he’s gone, Julia asks if he was bitten. “It doesn’t look like a bite.”

  I shake my head. “He fell into a tree. It’s a long story.”

  We drag Halliwell’s body to the door and out onto the porch. I hear Eric trying to start the car, but the engine refuses to catch.

  “He doesn’t look so good.”

  I don’t answer. Now I’m worried that we may have waited too long. It’s nearly a quarter to one and we have less than four hours to catch our flight out of this place. If we miss it…

  The engine sputters, coughs, sends out a loud report as it backfires.

  “Is there another car?” I ask.

  Julia shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

  I finally realize how sheltered a life she had here. Living outside the wall will be a huge shock for her.

  Eric tries again. Finally the car starts. He revs the engine for a minute before putting it into gear and driving it over. We pull Halliwell down the stairs, his worn leather boots thumping on each step.

  “We may not have enough gas to get back,” Eric informs us.

  Of course not, I think. That would be too easy. This time I don’t push the subject of looking for others, and neither Julia nor Eric brings it up. Time is now pressing heavily upon us, and panic begins to stir inside of me.

  As we head down Patchogue, Julia looks out the window. The sound of the motor has begun to draw new IUs out of the shadows. Her eyes are wide, though not with fear.

  I actually think she might be excited.

  Chapter 21

  We don’t reach Jayne’s Hill until almost three thirty.

  Just as Eric had foreseen, the car gave us problems, stalling several times and once leaving us stranded for nearly an hour while Eric tried everything he could do to get it running again. By the time he did, the road was filling up with the Undead, with many more coming. Julia’s excitement had turned to horror as she watched me fight them off with my machete, then finally switching to the rifle and mowing them down as a last desperate effort. Driving away, Eric gasping in pain and Julia crying in the backseat, I realized how numb I’d become to all this killing. The Undead were so thick around the car that my only concern was that we’d get a flat tire running over them.

  The wall was no problem at all. The way Julia held her head and squirmed, I could tell it affec
ted her, even without an implant. She didn’t ask any questions, and neither Eric nor I offered any explanations about it. I think we were afraid of speaking, as if talking about it would curse us, cause us to be trapped inside the wall or the car to break down for good.

  By the time we reached the parking lot at the bottom of the hill, our fear had nearly all disappeared, but we were in danger of running out of gas. The gauge had been edging rapidly toward empty. Just minutes before, the engine check alert had finally chimed that it was time to refill the tank.

  “How are you doing back there?” I ask, edging through the parking lot and avoiding looking at the door to the public restroom. I check the mirror, adjusting it so I can see Eric’s face. He’s spent the last twenty minutes with his eyes closed and his head tilted back.

  “Fine,” he croaks.

  I flick my eyes over to Halliwell. I keep expecting him to suddenly wake. But he’s dead for good. Grandpa knew what he was doing when he killed him. He won’t be reanimating.

  “There’s a road there,” Eric says, pointing to the far end of the lot. “Looks like it might’ve been a service road for the complex.”

  “There’s a chain hanging across it.”

  “Push through it,” he says impatiently. “No, don’t ram it! Just nudge up to one of the posts and push on it.”

  “Fine!” I snap back, though I’m not so sure it’s going to work. The post is metal. But it bends easily beneath the front of the car, probably weakened by rust.

  I wend my way up the road, trying to avoid the larger branches, skidding on thick piles of wet leaves. Julia sits silently next to me, watching out her window. Every so often she catches a glimpse of another zombie, and she shrinks back in her seat. When we left Brookhaven, she hadn’t been afraid of them. Now she is. Just a few hours away from her home and already we’ve changed her, made her suspicious, frightened. It makes me feel like we’ve stolen something from her, something worse than taking away her father.

  “Reggie?” I hear Eric say. I look up and see him on his Link. “Yeah, we’re close. Get the others, the Brother What’s-his-name and Sister…right.” Our eyes meet in the mirror. “How’s Kelly? Awake? Uh huh. Good, Jessie will be glad to hear that. Yeah…we got him. Just meet us at the gate. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”