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

by Tanpepper, Saul

  Ramon was already up. She knew it even before she heard his voice downstairs and smelled the coffee brewing. She sensed the coldness of the empty bed beside her, felt how the mattress wasn’t compressed, and wondered at how quickly she’d gotten used to him being there again.

  Was he going to follow through with his promise to take them camping on the beach?

  She groaned again, this time aloud, and hoped not.

  Work was foremost on her mind, the mysterious test results and Drew’s exploiting her trust to have samples she didn’t know about analyzed. She wanted to reprise her attempts to get in touch with Drew. She checked the clock and saw that it was still too early to call. As anxious as she was to get some answers, she didn’t want to be rude, especially if the man was bedridden.

  She already felt guilty for the way she’d treated Ronnie last night when they got home.

  Ramon had commented that it might be a good idea if she stayed the night rather than risk driving back to Medford in the storm. “I don’t want to learn that she’s wrapped her car around some lamppost.”

  But in a sudden and inexplicable moment of spite, Lyssa had said no. “We need time to work on us,” she told him. She was almost positive she’d noticed a flash of anger pass across his face.

  You’re just transferring your own guilt onto him.

  Would she have been as adamant if it had been Ronnie’s male housemate instead that she was sending out into the storm?

  The three of them had eaten supper in a heavy silence. It was broken only by Rame’s lame attempt to engage Cassie in conversation. But their daughter seemed especially withdrawn, perhaps sensing the tension between her parents. So, little else was said after that. The wind howled through the eaves and the rain lashed against the windows, while inside forks tinked on plates and the three of them tried not to look each another in the eye.

  Afterward, while Cassie was in having her bath, Lyssa and Ramon had situated themselves in the living room, she on the couch and he on the chair. The television was on, the sound turned down. He was sifting through a stack of papers, and she tried a half dozen times to call Drew. But the phones had been full of static. Thunderclaps barreled across the sky and the lights would flicker, and each time Ramon would look up and shake his head. “They’re supposed to hook up the panels soon,” he told her.

  It turned into quite the storm, as they sometimes were. The sliding door rattled from the strongest gusts. And every time the flue inside the vent over the kitchen stove fluttered, Lyssa would glance over at him. He would give her a look that seemed to say, “Be patient. It’ll blow over. Trust me.”

  Now, as she lay in their bed, every trace of the storm gone, it galled her that he had been right.

  She lifted herself up onto an elbow and pushed the blankets off of her body. The air was warm already, and humid. Sweat clung to her skin, gluing her tee shirt to her back. Not even eight o’clock, she thought, checking her phone. And no call back from Drew. She wondered if he’d even gotten the first message in the car or if she’d simply been speaking into a dead line.

  She decided to risk his disfavor and dialed his home number. The same strange clicks and crackles she’d heard last night fouled the connection, but at least the static was gone.

  Drew answered on the fourth ring.

  “You sound like death warmed over,” Lyssa said, both relief and worry washing over her. “Did you get my message last night?”

  “Some of it. It was really garbled. Something about the animals?” He coughed lightly and tried to clear his throat. “What’s happening?”

  “I took some samples from the freezer to be analyzed yesterday. Hand carried them to Brookhaven. But . . . .” She exhaled noisily. “There was a problem with some other samples, ones you already sent.”

  “Oh,” he replied, sounding more surprised than curious.

  “They said they needed to repeat the assays, something about identifying a suspicious substance in one of the samples.”

  “What kind of substance?” He sounded like he didn’t want to know.

  “A virus.”

  For several seconds the silence was broken only by the rattle of his breaths. “All those years the boxes sat in your advisor’s freezer,” he said. “I wonder if some student passed through the lab and messed with them.”

  “It’s possible,” Lyssa conceded. She truly wanted to believe him. “I don’t know what we should do with the rabbits. If we injected the wrong thing into them—”

  “Let’s wait and see what the lab results say before making a decision to terminate the experiment.”

  Lyssa felt her chest relax. “That makes sense. I thought I was going to have to sacrifice the animals and clean their cages. I actually planned on doing it this morning, but I think Ramon has other plans for us for the weekend. He wants to go camping at the beach.”

  This time, the silence lasted so long that Lyssa thought she’d lost the connection. But then she heard a wheeze, which escalated into a coughing fit. She waited for Drew to recover.

  After apologizing, he told her not to worry. “I’ll take care of the animals this weekend. Feed and clean and collect samples. You enjoy the beach.”

  “I can’t let you—”

  “Really. I don’t mind. In fact, I insist.”

  She sighed in frustration. She knew he’d go in, just as he said he would, even if he was on his deathbed. “Okay, but just make sure to keep good notes,” she instructed. It was an unnecessary reminder and she thought she could feel his resentment coming through the line.

  “I always do, boss.”

  He started to cough again, and it was several minutes before either of them could speak. “Actually, Drew, I changed my mind. Just leave it all. I’ll deal with it.”

  There was no protest this time.

  “Drew?”

  She looked at the screen and saw that the timer had stopped.

  “Damn it.”

  She decided not to call him back.

  * * *

  She found Ramon and Cassie sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor eating pancakes.

  “Good morning?”

  Ramon looked up and smiled. “We made breakfast. It was Cassie’s idea to let you sleep in.”

  Lyssa frowned at them. “Why are you on the floor?”

  “She’s angry,” Cassie whispered to her father.

  “No. I’m not angry, honey. I’m just wondering why you’re sitting down there with the animals.”

  “Because they’re not allowed to sit up at the table.”

  Lyssa glanced at Ramon, who shrugged and dunked a forkful of pancake into his lake of syrup. “There are more keeping warm in the oven,” he told her. He patted the floor next to him, inviting her, but the puppy promptly stepped over his lap, sniffed the spot, and claimed it as his own. “Poor guy. He’s been begging.”

  “You’re not feeding him, are you?”

  “Daddy won’t let me,” Cassie said. “Says he’s already too fat.”

  Lyssa smiled and stepped over to the oven and opened it and pulled out the plate. She plucked a pancake off the top of the stack and dropped it at her feet. “Oops. Oh well.”

  “Mom!”

  Ramon laughed and shook his head. “Still got room for you here, hon.”

  “No thanks, I think I’d rather sit at the table like civilized folk since you’re going to make me sleep on the sand.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Ramon said, looking awkward. “About that.”

  Great, here it comes, Lyssa thought. “It’s all right. I’ve got work to do anyway.”

  “No. Daddy says we get to go to New York instead.”

  “You want to go into the city?”

  Ramon nodded. “We’ll get a nice hotel room for once, have dinner in a fancy restaurant and see a show.” He reached over and ruffled Cassie’s hair. “Something we can all see as a family.”

  “Feeling rich all of a sudden?”

  “Feeling like we haven’t done anything special as a fami
ly in a long time.”

  “And what about the animals?” She gestured at Shinji. “Who’s going to watch them?”

  Ramon shrugged. “They’ll be fine for twenty-four hours. Shinji can have the run of the back yard; he can’t get into much trouble back there. He’s got shade beneath the deck, and if we give him enough food and water, he’ll think he died and went to doggie heaven. Hell, drop another pancake on the floor and he’ll be in a coma till Tuesday. What do you say?”

  “Please, Mama!”

  Lyssa shook her head. “What do I say?” She picked up her plate. “I say you better make room for my big, fat butt down there. And give that poor starving dog another pancake! He’s practically skin and bones.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I’m telling you, people, the government — our government of the people and by the people — has been lying to us through its nasty, rotten, stinking teeth. They’ve been expecting us to just accept everything they tell us as the god’s honest truth! Well, wake the hell up! Fight back! I mean, how can they possibly justify another tax hike? And don’t tell me it’s to pay for better technology and infrastructure and all of that other bullsh — BEEP — because the numbers just don’t add up! Military spending is out of control, and we’re not even at war! Where’s the f — BEEP —ng money going?

  “We might want to listen to something else,” Ramon suggested. He glanced up at the rearview mirror to check on Cassie, then over at Lyssa.

  Lyssa hadn’t even been listening. She’d had it on the station from the last time she’d driven her car and had forgotten to switch it. She reached over and turned the dial to another station.

  “That’s better,” he said.

  It was that popular techno crap every other station seemed to be spewing these days. The music — if you could call it that — got under your skin and in your bones until it felt like bugs crawling around inside your head. How people could think with that mind-numbing noise was beyond her.

  Ramon didn’t seem to mind it, though, which actually worked in her favor now. It was better than trying to hold a conversation with him. Just the little bit of interaction that morning had completely drained her.

  They were heading west on the Long Island Expressway and had come upon another traffic jam. Just the typical Long Island weekend exodus, she figured. But then she saw the fluorescent coveralls ahead, and that brought back the memory of the man who had fallen from the crane the night before.

  Strange, how she’d completely forgotten about it.

  Blanked it out is more like it.

  And there had been nothing at all about it on the news. Not one single mention.

  As they carefully made their way past the site, she swiveled her head to watch the workers. She counted six green jumpsuits and one man wearing the typical control equipment. He was housed inside a shaded portable shack. To a man, the conscripted convicts were each wearing a set of the face-covering masks and the long black gloves, leaving only the smallest patch of skin beneath their chins exposed. It’s a wonder they don’t overheat in this humidity. Or maybe they had some sort of cooling mechanism built into the uniform. None of them seemed to be sweating at all.

  They think they’re swimming in a nice cool lagoon somewhere tropical.

  Three of the workers were just standing around, not moving, not talking to each other. Not interacting in the way normal people did. They just stared off in apparently random directions. Just mindless drones waiting to receive instructions on what to do next.

  The other three men were transferring objects — pieces of a new tower, she guessed — off of a trailer. Their movements, as usual, were slow and jerky.

  Mechanical.

  She wondered how it worked, the interface. Were they all controlled simultaneously by the one man, their Operator? How could he possibly do that?

  One of the crew members stumbled over a rock, collapsed to his knees, and did a face plant without even trying to stop himself. A moment later he was back on his feet. One of the inert workers suddenly came alive and went over and stiffly picked up the offending rock and carried it away.

  The entire incident gave Lyssa the creeps.

  Was surrendering control of all your actions and thoughts fair punishment for what they’d done? What if the government decided that maybe less serious criminals could be conscripted? How far would they go?

  She hoped she’d never find out.

  Cassie was sitting quietly in her seat, her eyes glued to some object Lyssa couldn’t see in the rear foot well. Her face looked pale and drawn. The darkness around her eyes seemed deeper than it should be. She was clutching her abdomen.

  “You okay back there, honey?”

  Cassie nodded but didn’t look up.

  “Stomachache?”

  She shrugged.

  “She’s fine,” Ramon said. “She just ate too many pancakes and doesn’t want to admit it.”

  With a sigh, Lyssa turned back around to the front. Outside the car, the remaining two workers seemed to have woken from their trance. They moved as a unit toward some unknown destination and disappeared from view around a concrete barrier.

  The cars ahead were gradually accelerating, widening the gap between themselves and the next. Lyssa craned her neck as she watched the work crew.

  “Would you just relax?” Ramon told her. He reached over and took her hand. She nodded numbly and turned back to the window.

  The ground was soft. It broke his fall.

  That had to be the explanation. Sodden with rain and rotting leaves. It would’ve been like falling onto a mattress.

  She sighed and closed her eyes.

  On the radio, the reporter was talking about a woman who’d gone on a killing spree down near Mastic.

  Maybe it was a good thing they were heading into the City instead. Mastic Beach was where they usually went camping.

  * * *

  They reached the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel just shy of ten-thirty and descended down into the passage. The weak lights gave the walls a dingy yellow look. Although considerably cooler than outside, the air in the tunnel was much more humid. A heavy mixture of seawater stink and diesel fuel and motor oil washed through the car, bathing their faces. But nobody bothered to close the vents or turn off the air.

  For the first time in a while, Cassie lifted her head and turned to look out at the stark, stained walls flashing past. A wavering line of dark brown ran along each wall, looking like a bathtub ring. In fact, that’s essentially what it was, a ring marking the level of the flood which followed a massive ice shelf break sixteen years before. There were old stains discoloring the cracks in the walls from the black mold which had grown there until the state reconditioned the tunnels a few years back.

  The echoes of the engines and horns were loud about them, but not so much that they completely drowned out the grind of the sump pumps. Behind the scenes, massive amounts of water were being flushed back into the East River.

  The radio abruptly lost signal. Lyssa reached over and turned it off, glancing obliquely at Ramon. But he didn’t seem to notice. He was concentrating on the narrow, crowded lanes, alternating between the brakes and the gas to maintain a constant distance between himself and the car ahead. Every so often there would be a screech of tires, the sound distant and hollow and impossible to localize.

  A few minutes later, the quality of light changed, and they began to head up and out. They emerged from beneath the river at the foot of Manhattan’s manmade mountains.

  “Hotel’s a few blocks ahead,” Ramon told them. He exhaled a long, deep breath. “I’m hoping they’ll let us check in early. Then maybe we’ll head on over to the zoo. Or Central Park. Whatever you guys want to do.”

  Lyssa checked the time on her phone. It was still too early for lunch. She nodded and typed in a message for Drew.

  << CALL ME AFTER YOU GO IN. >>

  She half expected him to reply immediately, to tell her that she just needed to enjoy her days off, but he never did.

>   CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It was the next morning, Sunday, and Lyssa was furious with Ramon. She knew she should really be mad at the money people on the new project, the ones who had called while she was in the shower and demanded to meet with Ramon right away. But she found it easier to be angry with him than at some faceless, nameless people. Besides, she doubted Ramon had even asked if it could wait till Monday.

  He and Cassie had still been asleep when she rose, but when she came out a half hour later draped in one of the plush cotton hotel robes, her hair dripping and her skin still tingling from the heat of the water (not to mention memories of last night’s sex), she found him on the phone and Cassie planted in front of the television.

  She had fantasized in the shower about slipping out of her robe and climbing naked into bed with him, making love to him in the way that they used to before Cassie was born, slow and tentative, fingers and tongues exploring every inch of each other’s bodies until they became one big, noisy tangle of skin and hair and ecstatic moans. Not like the urgent, mute way they had done it last night, more aware of Cassie asleep in the adjoining bed, than of each other. Not that last night was bad, far from it. It just wasn’t like it had once been.

  That was what she was thinking when she stepped out. But seeing him on the phone and Cassie glassy-eyed completely erased any good feelings.

  “Who’s that?” she asked after a few seconds of listening to the faint gibberish coming through his phone. She rubbed the thick hotel towel over her hair as she tried not to show her irritation.

  He raised a hand at her, his attention clearly focused on the call. “Uh huh. Sure. When? Yeah, I can be there.”

  Lyssa rolled her eyes and went back into the bathroom.

  “I know how it looks,” he told her after he’d hung up. But she doubted that.

  The Ames investors had supposedly called to ensure that everything was in place for the next day’s start. But then he’d let slip that he was spending the day in Manhattan, and when he told them where, they remarked that the hotel was less than two blocks away from the high rise which held their offices. They wanted him to come up and meet some more of the high up muckity mucks.