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

by Tanpepper, Saul

  “It’ll be over soon. Anyway, listen, when do you think you’re going to get here? Because I have some paperwork I—”

  “I don’t want you working, Ramon. Cassie needs your full attention when she’s there.”

  “I do give her my full attention.” He sounded hurt.

  “Really? You don’t just let her do her own thing?”

  He sighed. “Is that what she told you, that I ignore her? Because if she—”

  “She doesn’t have to tell me anything. I know you. You’ve been too wrapped up with work lately.”

  There was nothing but silence from the speaker for a long time. Outside, Cassie could hear the low rattle of the workmen’s tools and the muffled shouts of the man in charge, the one wearing the yellow hardhat and the fat goggles with the black lenses and the funny-looking gloves on his hands. He was the only one who ever spoke, and when he did, it was always in a shout.

  It was time to check on the dancing statue again. Cassie needed to know where it was.

  “Look,” her father said at last, “I know I haven’t handled the past couple of months as well as I could’ve, but you have to admit, neither have you.”

  “I lost a baby!”

  “We lost him, honey. No, that’s not right, either. He died and not because of anything we did or did not do.”

  “Babies don’t just die!”

  Another sigh. “Listen, it might be time we got some professional help because this doesn’t seem to be working. There’s a therapist—”

  “I’m dealing with it just fine!”

  Cassie cringed at the harshness in her mother’s voice, feeling it roil her insides even more than they already were. She thrust her feet against the back of the seat, as if to keep it away.

  Before Remy, her parents almost never argued. But after they came back from the hospital, it seemed like it was all they ever did. That’s why her mother had asked her father to leave. But even then, the fighting continued.

  “Stop pushing on the seat, Cassie!”

  Cassie sighed and twisted her head slowly around, searching for the scary dancing statue. If she found it, at least then she’d have something to direct her anger toward. The sunlight bounced off the window of the car behind, blinding her for a moment. She squinted against it and turned to the sidewalk.

  The dancing statue still wasn’t there where the raccoon pancake was. It wasn’t on the other side of the road, either.

  “I just need time,” she heard her mother say. “And space.”

  Where did it go? And why was it dancing?

  Quietly, she unlatched her seatbelt. Then, slowly, carefully, she swiveled onto her knees. She didn’t really want to see it, but not knowing where it had gone was making her stomach feel really, really bad.

  “I disagree. We need to work togeth—”

  “Time and space. That’s what I need, Ramon. That’s all I really ever needed.”

  “Honey, we—”

  “Look, I just called to let you know we were going to be late. And to ask you to pay attention to Cassie while she’s there. Not to fight. Just promise me no paperwork. Or phone calls. It’s the weekend, for Christ’s sake. Spend some time with your daughter for once.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  The call disconnected.

  Cassie shielded her eyes from the glare and squinted at the vehicles behind.

  The motor revved, and they moved forward a car-length. The tires crunched over something that sounded like bones, though it was probably only gravel. But at least the glare was finally out of her eyes, and she could see the woman behind them.

  The old lady smiled and waved at her. It was a shiny, brand new car, something you’d expect to see a much younger person in. A tiny dog sat on her lap, its hair just as white and curly as hers. It yapped mutely at Cassie through the windshield before turning its attention to the workers and barking at them. Cassie returned the wave, then quickly swung her eyes back to the empty sidewalk.

  There was the sandwich shop her father had taken her to the first time she’d come to visit him in his apartment. A couple offices in the corner. A print shop. She recognized it because of the giant American flag on the too-short pole on the roof. The parking lot was nearly empty— only a couple cars, probably because of the construction. A man stood outside the print shop and watched the workers. He took out a tissue and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He looked worried.

  “Cassie, why are you—? Get back in your seat, young lady!”

  “We’re not moving.”

  “Don’t argue with me. Just do it.”

  Cassie tried to see past the white-haired lady’s car, but a truck blocked her view.

  Maybe it went back inside. It’s too hot to be dancing on the sidewalk.

  She wondered why there would be a little Statue of Liberty here, as if the real, giant one had shrunk while walking across the water on its way to Long Island. Why was it dancing like that, gesturing to the people walking past? It wasn’t even close to being Halloween. And why was it so scary-looking?

  Anyway, it was gone now.

  Behind her, she heard her mother open her window, heard the rattle of the machines outside and the engines and voices grow louder. She felt the sweep of hot air on the back of her neck and her bare legs, felt the brush of its thick, dry fingers on her hair. With a sigh, she turned back around and reached for her seatbelt.

  The light coming into the car had dimmed. Cassie glanced up at her window, thinking a cloud had passed across the sun. But when she saw what it was, this time she couldn’t hold back the gasp.

  The terrifying dancing statue bent down over her window and grinned, its mouth just inches away from her face. But then it stepped to the side, and it reached in toward her mother.

  Cassie’s throat tightened, turning the cry into a choked scream.

  “Afternoon, ma’am,” the scary statue said. Cassie thought his skin was sloughing away from his bones, but then she saw that it was just his makeup peeling from the heat of the day. He tiredly removed a single sheet of paper from the stack he was holding in his elbow and extended it into the car. “We’re protesting the new tax proposals. If you could read this—”

  An impatient voice yelled at them from the work site and gestured for them to go. The white-haired old lady behind them honked, a sound more cheerful than urgent.

  “Thanks,” her mother mumbled. “I’ll read it later. I have to go.” She took the paper and placed it on the seat next to her, rolled the window back up, and threaded the car through the narrow gap between the traffic cones.

  As they passed, the statue man’s bloodshot eyes met Cassie’s one last time. He didn’t wave or smile at her. He just nodded once, almost knowingly, and resumed his dancing.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Ramon’s looking for you, boss,” Laroda’s senior Staff Scientist, Andrew Royce, said from the hallway.

  Lyssa clenched her jaw, but didn’t look up from the scene of the death and destruction splayed out before her eyes. Tens of millions dead, scarcely a survivor among them. “What? He can’t be bothered to stick his head in the lab once in a while?” she growled. “He knows I’m in here. Just because he spends all day in his office doesn’t mean—”

  “He, um, wants to powwow on the cattle project.”

  Lyssa pulled away from the microscope, not liking the sound of that. “Sorry, Drew. I know it’s not your fault. I shouldn’t snap at you.”

  The broad-shouldered older man stepped through the door into the clean room and shrugged. “I know. No biggie.” He gestured at the glass slide Lyssa was extracting from the microscope’s stage and asked, “Any luck?”

  She shook her head. “The virus is still bricking up the cells. They’re breaking open less than twenty-four hours post-infection. Everything’s dead.”

  “Could be they’re making too much protein. We could try dialing back production.”

  Lyssa chuffed. “And spend another six weeks screening new viruses?” She slipped the glas
s slide into the overflowing biohazard waste container at her feet, then gave it a shake to settle the contents. But several slides tumbled out and shattered on the floor.

  “I’ll ask Sudha to replace the container,” Drew offered.

  “Tell her to be careful and make sure it gets properly sealed and incinerated. Last thing we need is another incident like the one they had across the hall last month. Those Ames people are reckless, throwing their hazardous waste into the regular trash. After all the worker accidents they’ve had to report — not to mention the ones they haven’t — it’s a wonder Occupational Safety hasn’t shut us down already.”

  “Probably got some big shot official from there on their payroll,” Drew joked.

  Lyssa washed her hands in the small sink in the anteroom, then dried them in the automatic dryer. When the blower shut off, she said, “Every time the inspectors come out here, Ramon and I are the ones who get fined.” She unbuttoned her lab coat and hung it on the hook by the door. “Sometimes I wonder if it was a mistake buying this place. It was definitely a mistake renting those people lab space.”

  “But they do pay their rent on time,” Drew reminded her. Then, upon seeing the dark look Lyssa gave him, he held up his hands in a defensive gesture. “Hey, not making excuses, just repeating what the boss always says.”

  The look turned even more sour. “Well, don’t.”

  She shut the door to the lab behind them and headed down the hall toward her office with Andrew trailing behind. A middle-aged man, he was still fairly attractive for his age, tall and broad-shouldered with a deep voice. He was also a study in contrasts: rugged in appearance, though pale of skin; muscular, yet not an exerciser. Intense-looking while completely understated. She couldn’t recall a single time he’d been riled up.

  She had assumed during his interview nearly two years ago that he spent a lot of time outdoors, perhaps slathered in sun block, since he was so pale. He had denied it. “Yeah, I’m not really into all that nature type stuff. I prefer spending time at the bench rather than the beach.”

  She’d secretly not believed him back then, even had reason to wonder about his motives for employment. A seasoned scientist with excellent credentials, his interest in taking the research position seemed suspect, especially considering the low pay being offered and the lab’s remote location.

  The government had been the original owners of the Laroda Island research facility, intentionally situating it on the tiny northeasternmost spit of land on Long Island, far from prying eyes. The nature of their work had never been fully disclosed to the public, but following a series of scandals in the early twenties, they’d eventually shuttered its doors and moved on. Ownership of the buildings had transferred for a time to the Carcher group, and the facility had remained vacant for another five years before Ramon and Lyssa bought it lock, stock, and barrel for what seemed like a steal.

  From the start, they knew it would be a challenge finding qualified talent. The roads to Laroda were questionable, sometimes blocked by fallen tree branches, other times partially washed out. And then there was the allure of better pay and opportunities at the more centrally located Brookhaven Research Institute. But after sending out advertisements for weeks and receiving only two applicants, Lyssa and Ramon finally realized it was going to be a lot harder than they’d thought.

  Her first and only other interview had been with a greasy-haired, pimply-faced kid who looked barely old enough to have graduated high school, much less have a doctorate in molecular genetics. The kid had leered at her throughout the entire session in a way that left her feeling terribly uncomfortable. “We’ll be in contact,” she told him, heaving a sigh of relief when the front door swung shut as he left. She made Ramon call him with the news he hadn’t made the cut.

  Drew, on the other hand, she hired on the spot, despite any misgivings she might have about his true intentions.

  For weeks, she fretted he’d leave them. He was certainly qualified enough to find work at Brookhaven. And the research she was doing — improving beef and dairy production in cows using perinatal genetic engineering — wasn’t the sexy kind of stuff she knew their peers were all doing elsewhere. But he never expressed a single word of regret or acted like he was thinking about going elsewhere. Eventually, Lyssa grew so used to having him around in the lab, bouncing ideas and banter off of each other, that now she couldn’t imagine him not being there.

  There were days when she’d see him at his desk at the end of the day, his face illuminated by the blue glow of his computer screen, and she’d tell him to go home. She knew he wasn’t averse to sleeping on the floor in his office — one couldn’t miss the rolled up sleeping bag shoved into the kneehole of his desk — yet at the same time she also knew he didn’t have family to go home to, no wife or children. None that he’d ever spoken of, anyway. She knew he lived alone in a small apartment not five miles from the main Brookhaven facility, somewhere close to where Ramon had moved into.

  The early days at Laroda had been tight, but the lab was finally beginning to make a profit, partially because of the exorbitant rent Ramon charged the Ames Research Consortium — a rather misleading name given that the group was small, disorganized, and poorly managed — as well as the grant the Dairy Farmer’s Association had given them. Drew’s take-home pay was several steps below what comparable Brookhaven scientists received, and yet Lyssa still had to practically force him to take his yearly raises.

  Lyssa swept into her office and stopped short. “Damn, forgot my notebook in the lab.”

  “I’ll get it and meet you in the conference room.”

  “You chickenshit,” she teased. He was leaving her to face Ramon alone.

  Drew laughed and waved good-naturedly as he turned.

  Lyssa watched him head back down the hall. There’s a man perfectly comfortable in his skin, she thought to herself.

  She plucked her cell phone from the desk and quickly checked to see if Cassie or the nanny had called. They hadn’t. They never did. But while the absence of any news always left her feeling uneasy, each time it happened, she felt the urge to call them lessen just a little bit.

  She’d struggled to concentrate after returning from her leave. When not obsessing over Remy’s death, she was distracted by thoughts of Cassie getting injured, or sick, or lost. That day she’d hit the possum had been a turning point of sorts, shocking her into realizing that she needed to move on or else be forever drowning in self remorse over what had happened.

  Forcing herself to leave her phone in her office while she was in the lab so she could get some work done was one small step. It hadn’t been easy at first, but now she was glad she did it. She was finally able to focus on her work again.

  Coffee mug and phone in hand, she made her way to the conference room where she found Ramon. With the exception of Drew, the rest of their small cadre of employees was already present. The low murmur of chatter stopped as she walked in.

  “Drew’s on his way,” she explained nervously.

  She sat down in one of the empty chairs with an explosive sigh, then took a sip of the cold coffee and grimaced. Her husband, the lab’s operations director, paced at the front of the room. Lyssa watched him warily, trying to gauge his mood, but he was always so hard to read. She couldn’t tell if he’d just gotten good news, bad, or no news at all.

  A moment later, Drew hurried in and sat across the table. He slid the notebook across with a wink.

  “Good, we’re all here,” Ramon said. He sat down. “I do have one administrative item to go over before we get to the real reason for this meeting.” He looked up and around at the faces surrounding the table. “I just got a letter from the Health Department reminding us about the rabies boosters. My records show a couple of you are past due. Travis, Sudha . . . . It’s important we all remain up-to-date on those. Since we work with both rats and cattle, we need to be sure we’re all properly inoculated against potential diseases.”

  Drew nodded and volunteered to make sur
e everyone was caught up by the end of the following week.

  “Why so long?”

  “Our serum is expired. It’ll take a week to get a new batch from the state.”

  “Good. Onto the other thing then.” He passed his fingers through his hair and took in a deep breath. “I had a conference call this morning with Ames, their director of scientific projects.”

  Several eyebrows raised around the table. “Ted Gundy?” asked Amanda Hawke, a research associate and one of their more chatty employees. Gundy was the leader of the group occupying the space across the hall.

  Ramon shook his head. “Their parent group, some investment trust in Manhattan.”

  “Investment trust?” Amanda asked, looking impressed. “Well, that explains how they can afford—”

  She snapped her mouth shut, her face turning red at the mistake.

  But Ramon didn’t seem to notice. He’d dug into his pocket and extracted his phone and was scrolling through it. “Not Ted, but some guy named . . . Padraig Harrison. VP of Research and Development and such-and-such.” He flicked a hand, as if to imply the exact name and title weren’t important. “Anyway—”

  “What do they want?” Lyssa asked. “Are they pulling out?” She felt herself beginning to panic. Without that rent money, how were they going to pay their bills? How were they going to pay salaries? She glanced around the room and imagined having to tell people they were being let go. She didn’t think she’d be able to do it. She’d give up her own salary first.

  “No, actually, they want to do more with us. Lots more. They have a new project and they want to collaborate.”

  A loud cough interrupted the discussion. Sudha stood up, her face red and her fist pressed into her mouth. She hurried for the door, stifling the urge to cough some more until she’d exited. They could hear her for several seconds, a wet, purulent sound that made many in the room cringe. “She hasn’t been feeling well,” Drew explained.

  “Collaborate?” Lyssa asked, turning back to Drew. “Here? Are you sure that’s wise? The Ames people already here are reckless, irresponsible—”