S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11)

by Tanpepper, Saul

  The operating procedure also mandated the application of a facemask to prevent biting, as well as wrist and ankle restraints for immobilization. These had been applied by one of his deputies without difficulty.

  Eric glanced down and shook his head. It was actually a stroke of misfortune that the blow to the back of the head hadn’t been a few inches lower. A blow of that force in such a vulnerable location would almost certainly have severed the spinal cord. With its skull half crushed like it was, this new Conscriptee would probably end up pulling border patrol somewhere down south or, more likely, explosives detail at one of the shipyards.

  Eric had one hand on the EM pistol on his hip, not because he expected to need it, but because it helped relieve some of the discomfort from the broken rib he’d received a couple weeks before. As an extra safety precaution, he’d also chained the CU to the railing, although this wasn’t required by procedure. He’d had enough close encounters with Omegas during his time in the Marines to know it was better to err on the side of caution.

  With his other hand, he cupped his Link communication device up close to his mouth. His chin was pressed into the hollow of his opposite shoulder in an attempt to block as much of the stink from the sewage tanks from his mouth and nose as possible. Neither the stench of the place, nor the roar of the pumps, was bad enough to send him outside, but they did make communicating and breathing unpleasant.

  “The shift supe has confirmed that the controller stream is fully back on-line,” he relayed to his supervisor at the police station, “and all but two units have been recovered.” He tried not to shout; he was sure the captain could hear him perfectly fine, but the roar in his ears from the pumps and fans was loud enough that he could barely even hear himself.

  “Escaped?” Captain Lynn Harrick asked. Her look of worry turned to alarm.

  Eric shook his head. “Facility access logs are on a separate stream, one that was unaffected by the outage. They recorded only a single entry-exit event prior to our own arrival, and that was the dead man’s.”

  “Is it possible a CU got out when your vic entered?”

  “Negative. There are three auto-locking barriers here. The victim made it through all three in succession and was found here in the aeration chamber. If one of the missing units happened to have gotten as far as the gate, protocol dictates that the guard immediately alert someone of the breach.

  “But we know they’ve already broken protocol.”

  He sighed. “True.”

  The tension on Captain Harrick’s face deepened.

  Eric was well aware what was worrying her. Confirmation, or even a strong suspicion, that an uncontrolled Reanimate had been inadvertently released into the general population required them to activate the mandatory “shelter-in-place” warning system, and that could be a royal pain in the ass to clear. Lower Manhattan had called their own S.I.P. situation nearly a month ago, and it was only just now getting ready to clear it.

  Eric knew she was waiting for him to declare the situation fully contained. He wished he could oblige her, but he couldn’t. Not just yet.

  “Of the six units in the facility inventory, I’m still waiting on visual confirmation of two of them. We’ve traced signal from one implant, but not the other. The shift supe believes the implant device may have been destroyed.”

  “Why would he think that?”

  “He says there’s a blockage at one of the outflow valves, so it looks like the last unit fell into the pool and got sucked into a pipe. The tracked signal localizes to the same pipe, suggesting they’re both in there. Arc just sent authorization to send a third unit down into the pools to get a visual.”

  Captain Harrick’s face tightened. “Can’t they just drain the tanks? Wouldn’t that be quicker?”

  “Draining’s not the problem, it’s diverting the inflow material. The Second Street plant is down for repairs, so this site has taken up the slack. Apparently it could take up to eight hours to bring enough spare capacity online to reroute all the waste flow.”

  An edge left the captain’s eyes. Now she just looked tired. The recent spate of Undead-related issues that had cropped up in the past four weeks had taken their toll on her— on them all. “It’s been ten hours since they first went off-line,” she reminded him. “If we don’t clear this up soon . . . .”

  Eric shrugged. He knew she was looking for him to throw her a life preserver. Ten hours was an awful long time not to resolve a CU problem, but the lack of sightings of the fluorescent green jumpsuits used by the Omega civil servants worked to their favor. There were no reports of attacks, and, most telling, Arc’s implant network hadn’t picked up any new death clusters which couldn’t be explained by other causes. If an unlinked CU had gotten loose in a populated area, they’d almost certainly have heard something by now.

  “Let me know when you have confirmed visuals on both of the missing units,” the captain said.

  “We may never get a visual on at least one of them,” Eric warned.

  “Why not?”

  “I think one got pureed,” the supe chimed in nervously, leaning in toward Eric and speaking directly to the captain through his Link. Eric pushed him away.

  “What’s he blathering on about?” Captain Harrick asked, her frown deepening.

  “The missing signal,” Eric explained. “There’s a mechanical grinder underground for processing large chunks of solid material,” Eric explained. “It basically pulverizes everything. If a CU got into it, there’d be nothing left to ID. The system reported a small pressure spike at—” He checked his tablet. “At ten-oh-seven this morning. It’s consistent with the explosive capacity of an implant’s self-destruct mechanism. I sent Officer Vanne down with the other Operator to check for damage and to see if the outflow filters caught anything, scraps of uniform, implant pieces. He hasn’t reported back yet.”

  Harrick stared at the screen for a moment before shaking her head. “How long?”

  “Once they drop the search and recovery unit into the tanks, they estimate two hours to run a complete system sweep. My hope is we’ll get confirmation much sooner than that. Like you, I’m eager to close the book on this one.”

  “And the vic?”

  “I’ll take him over to Post-Mortem for cleaning and processing on my way back into town. They’ll swab the bite for DNA and make a positive ID of the biter. Arc can have him after that.”

  “I’ll send over a bus.”

  “No need. He’s contained. We got this.”

  The small man standing at Eric’s elbow shifted uncomfortably. He’d been up since nine o’clock the previous evening and had been running on adrenaline all day. But now the excitement was giving way to fatigue and worry.

  “I was hoping I could go home,” he began. “My wife—”

  But Eric cut him off. He wasn’t interested in hearing the man’s excuses, and the fact that he actually thought he’d be going home after what had happened here only irritated him all the more. He and the other guy, the one checking the filters with Vanne, were both going to spend at least one night in a jail cell while the investigation continued. And depending on what the interviews yielded, maybe quite a few more nights. They should’ve reported the system glitch immediately.

  Eric rubbed a hand on his cheek. He was also tired and eager to get home. He needed to check on Jessie, make sure she was doing all right. It was killing him to watch her drift away the way she was, from her friends. From Kelly. She was in so much pain, and it was clearly eating her up inside.

  He realized Harrick was speaking:

  “— an isolated glitch. We’ve finally received official confirmation of system failures in at least two other cities over the past twenty-four hours.”

  “Public works?” Eric asked, the uneasy feeling in his stomach quickly expanding like a bad gas bubble. “Or military?”

  “So far it’s just civilian facilities. Mostly isolated to remote sites with older stream hardware. Arc is activating more units to get everyth
ing updated within the next two weeks.”

  “That makes a ton of sense,” Eric said, frowning. “Like throwing gasoline on a fire to douse it.”

  Captain Harrick winced. Eric knew that she would’ve put him on notice in the past for speaking out against Arc, but the rules seemed to have changed in the past few weeks. No longer did Arc exert the same power over the citizenry anymore. Or the government. In a surprising turn of events two weeks before, a senator from Idaho called for a congressional investigation into mismanagement and abuses of privilege by high-ranking executives in the company. He accused Arc of diverting profits meant for upgrading their systems so they could pay outrageous salaries and bonuses. The allegations themselves weren’t terribly surprising, just the audacity of the senator in making them so publicly.

  In an apparent retaliatory move by Arc, the senator was accused of accepting payoffs from foreign companies and spying for the Southern States Coalition. This was typical tit-for-tat, except this time Arc’s claims seemed to have little bite.

  Eric had learned that police forces in other cities had stopped interfering with open protests against Arc and their stream technologies. People were boycotting the new federal inoculation initiative, which mandated total implant compliance by month’s end.

  “No military issues have been reported to the civilian agencies,” the captain emphasized.

  “Arc would probably try and suppress knowledge of it if there were,” Eric pressed, which elicited another tired frown from Captain Harrick.

  The shift foreman tried to force his way in front of Eric again, but Eric grabbed the handrail to block him. There was a twitch of movement at his feet, and he knew the vic was starting to revive. He took the Link off speaker and pressed it against his ear. “About that other thing,” he said.

  “The trace?” the captain asked. “I’m afraid my hands are tied. You know I can’t legally track a Link without evidence of a crime. And as far as I know, an identifier code matching your mother hasn’t come up on any of the Lifeguard lists Arc sends us.”

  Assuming those lists are accurate, Eric thought.

  “At least you know she’s alive. Maybe she’s just taking a break after what happened. I mean, look at the Evanses.”

  Eric sighed and nodded. Ashley’s parents had left town in a hurry once they found out their daughter had died on the island.

  He was about to thank the captain for trying, even though he was disappointed by the news, when the shift supervisor tugged on his sleeve and gestured toward the far wall.

  “Um, Cap, looks like they’re here with the S-and-R unit,” Eric said. “I have to go.”

  “See me when you get back.”

  Lurching toward Eric was a zombie in a full bodysuit and helmet. Eric raised a questioning eyebrow at the shift supervisor, who explained, “The suit is for our convenience. It makes cleanup easier.”

  Eric pulled his Link away from his ear and checked the screen, but the captain had already disconnected.

  “And the helmet?” he asked, slipping the device back into his pocket.

  “So they don’t swallow any sewage.”

  “What difference does it make if they do?”

  “The stuff leaks out for weeks afterward. Makes a huge mess.”

  ‡ ‡ ‡

  Chapter 6

  “Reg? It’s Jessie. You in there?”

  Most of the value held by the old arcade games Mister Casey had collected in their garage over the years was sentimental. Still, he insisted that the building be locked at all times unless someone was inside. Jessie knocked and the door swung slightly open. She peered into the darkness through the crack.

  “Reg? Kel?” The key beneath the loose shingle by the door was gone, so it had to be one of them. “Hello?”

  She pushed the door open a little more and stuck her head in, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the gloom.

  Sixteen hours ago, the winds of her fury had blown her here, to Reggie instead of her own husband. Subconsciously, she had known that Reggie would somehow understand the difficulty she was having adjusting to life after Gameland, after the death of their friends. Kelly always tried too hard to fix things, and she didn’t need that right now. She just needed someone to share her pain.

  Now, after another tormented night of sleep, feeling embarrassed and guilty for the way she had behaved in front of Reggie, she was forced to return for a much more mundane reason: to retrieve the backpack she’d forgotten so she could head off to school for yet another day of hell.

  She quickly looked around outside. The Caseys were already off to work, and the line of sight to the street was empty of witnesses. Once inside the garage, she gently pushed the door partially shut behind her, allowing only a sliver of light to enter.

  The building was two-cars wide. Over the years Reggie’s dad had added to it, doubling the length and erecting a new wall to separate the back half from the front. The old part was stuffed with old cardboard boxes, the trappings of years of accumulated possessions: broken bicycles, garbage cans, garden and power tools that no longer served any function. The game room with all the antique machines was in the newer, air conditioned section.

  Jessie walked over to the ArcTech console. Reggie had set the controller up on a dusty side table. The smoked blown-glass lamp that had occupied the spot for as long as she’d known him was gone. The thing had been the very definition of ugly, with its garland of black metal chains and its yellowed lampshade, but for some strange reason Ashley had developed an attachment to it and Reggie refused to throw it away.

  The game gear was turned on. She could see the ghost image of the Player standing motionless in the projected hologram. She recognized Reggie’s Link in the controller base, the dent on one side where it had stopped a bullet. The Game’s status light blinked green, indicating that Reggie was connected, but play was paused.

  So where is he, taking a potty break?

  Finding the gaming gear yesterday had been a complete surprise. Though Jessie immediately intuited what Reggie was using it for, she couldn’t help but redirect the anger already seething inside of her toward it. Why hadn’t he told her?

  To protect you.

  Eventually, her curiosity took over and she found herself geared up and connected. The experience left her sick to her stomach, and yet, for some reason, she couldn’t leave.

  It didn’t take long before another Player found her. And it didn’t take long for her to feel good about killing it.

  Last night, as she lay awake in her bed, she had promised herself never again. Going back had been way too easy. It had drawn out the worst part of her, and that frightened her. But what terrified her most was that, for the first time since coming home, she had felt alive.

  Not alive. That isn’t living.

  Maybe Eric was right and she should see a shrink.

  She glanced over at the Player standing motionless in the center of the hologram, waiting for its next command. She hadn’t bothered to look at it at all yesterday.

  What’s the harm in looking?

  The zombie’s chin was raised toward the sky. Jessie could barely make out the clouds through the haze of static cast by the old projector. If the bulb died soon, she wouldn’t be surprised. The thing was clearly long out of warranty.

  Standing there, not two feet away from the apparition that represented all she loathed about the world her family had created, she found she could feel nothing but pity for the thing. What had he looked like before he’d been conscripted? Had he been admired? Had he been a father? A brother? A husband? Or was he one of those prisoners, the first Omegas?

  Could somebody still be wondering about him the same way she wondered about Ashley and Jake? Or Ashley’s grandmother, G-ma Junie?

  Probably not. This zombie was very old. Maybe someone had once wondered where he was, but they’d almost certainly have stopped years ago.

  The plastinated skin was stretched tight over the bones of its skull, pulled taut like the membrane of a drum. I
ts eyes bulged from their sockets. A thin strip of rubbery flesh dangled from one cheek, a recent wound, from the looks of it, as it was still weeping a brownish-yellow discharge along the edges. Through the hole in its cheek, she saw the stained and pitted pebbles that were its remaining teeth. The blackened shadow of its tongue inched forward, probed the opening before disappearing back into the darkness again.

  Jessie shivered and looked quickly away.

  “Reggie?” she called, feeling suddenly anxious.

  Her backpack was on the edge of the couch, its contents spilling out.

  “You in here, Reg? Time for school.”

  Silence.

  She found a crate in a corner of the floor and pulled it over and stood on it. She leaned in closer to the flickering, transparent image. Through the glow, she could see the faint shapes of the video arcade games glittering in the faint light.

  A murkiness filled the Player’s dark eyes. This was the characteristic stare which always drove her thoughts to the blown-out windows of the abandoned East Harlem tenements they’d drifted past in their rented rowboat, just before the bombers sent them to New York Medical.

  On a whim, she waved a hand in front of the Player’s face and, when it flinched, she let out a startled yelp. But it was just a coincidence. The zombie couldn’t see her, of course. It couldn’t possibly sense her because it wasn’t here with her. It wasn’t here, and she wasn’t there with it.

  She let out a nervous chuckle.

  Miles separated them. Miles and walls and an EM barrier. The mined Long Island Sound. Only a stream of electrons connected them, fed through Arc’s relay towers on the secure game streams. Nothing but digital information processed by the projector and packaged into a virtual image. Electrons and photons, streams of code.

  Where the hell is that boy?

  She stepped off the crate and circled the hologram. She didn’t understand the technology of how the image was created. The software had to be incredibly sophisticated, since not all of it could be live feed. There simply couldn’t be that many cameras on the island to capture this level of detail.