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

by Tanpepper, Saul

  “I beg you,” he whispered, before straightening up and shouting at the line of cars behind them to resist.

  “Christ bullshit!” Ramon snapped.

  The man turned to Lyssa one last time. He reached in and grabbed her arm. “Christ won’t help you. Only the bird. Listen to the bird. The bird sings the truth.”

  “Wait—!”

  But he was already gone. Lyssa twisted around in her seat and saw him slamming his palms onto the hood of the car behind them. He was shouting again, “Go home! Resist the corporate vampires!”

  “A little birdie told me,” Ramon said in a mocking voice, as he pulled forward. “See? I told you he was cuckoo.”

  But she frowned and stared blankly at the paper in her hands. Listen to the bird, he’d said.

  “Fucking nutcase.”

  “Okay,” Lyssa said curtly. “I get it.” She wasn’t sure why the man had angered her husband so much. “He actually sounded halfway articulate to me.”

  “And halfway freakazoid.”

  “Maybe if we read—”

  Ramon snatched the paper away from her, wadded it up and threw it out the window. “I told you he’s out there every morning spewing his self-righteous, antigovernment, delusional crap. Reminds me of that asshat on the radio show you always listen to. It’s all the same garbage.”

  Lyssa sat stunned for a moment by the vitriol. “Asshat?” she sputtered.

  “That stupid Jail Bird.”

  “Jay, not Jail!”

  “I don’t care!”

  And then the man in the Liberty costume’s words echoed in her mind: The bird sings the truth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  They arrived in front of Drew’s house five minutes later. The street was visibly empty, completely devoid of people. Lyssa had this overwhelming feeling that the residents had left in a hurry, although there was nothing obvious to suggest this. No doors left wide open. No hastily packed and improperly latched suitcases spilling their guts out on the front lawns.

  Ramon parked at the curb and shut off the engine. Lyssa felt uneasy, exposed. Her eyes strayed to the opposite curb, as if expecting to see a dark sedan parked there. But Ramon’s Audi was the only car visible on the entire block.

  They got out and proceeded up the front walk and onto the porch. Ramon stood behind her, a frown of impatience deepening his brow. “Well, aren’t you going to knock?”

  The sound reached into the house and came back to them, dull and lifeless, the telltale knell of abandonment.

  “Try the doorbell.”

  “Just wait, Rame.”

  He sighed. “I don’t think he’s here.”

  Lyssa knocked harder, rattling the door in its frame. She shouted Drew’s name. This, too, seemed to hang in the lifeless air.

  “It must be some kind of military exercise.”

  She looked over at him, frowning.

  “You know. A drill of some sort. Or maybe a tsunami evacuation exercise.”

  “They still have those?”

  It’d been at least a dozen years since the last one she could remember. And that had occurred when she and her family were camping down on the shore. They’d been forced to leave the beach, but after checking in at the staging area, they’d been allowed to return.

  The drills were all about paperwork and response times and route planning, a way for the emergency services to coordinate logistics in the event of an actual emergency. They wanted to know which traffic corridors would be most impacted.

  Back in the days right after the ice shelf broke off and caused the floods — it was nearly twenty years ago — the drills had been regular occurrences. A major inconvenience for those who lived close to the coast or in flood plains, but like all things routine, people simply got used to them.

  Just like when they stopped occurring.

  Ramon shrugged. “That’s the only thing I can think of that makes sense. It couldn’t be anything too serious, otherwise they never would have let us in.

  Lyssa stepped to the edge of the porch. She glanced up and down the street. “There are no cars,” she grudgingly conceded. She was still upset over his outburst at the costumed protester. But when she moved to step down from the porch, he stopped her.

  “I’ll circle around the house and meet you back here,” he offered. “Why don’t you try calling him again on the phone? If he’s inside, you might be able to hear it ringing. That’ll tell you if he’s home.”

  He bounded down the steps and disappeared around the corner.

  Lyssa dialed Drew’s number, but when she stuck her ear against the door, she heard nothing coming from inside. And neither another loud knock nor even the doorbell elicited any kind of response. On a whim, she called his home number. In the distance, as if from very far away, she heard its harsh jangle. She disconnected when it failed to pick up or go to his answering machine after about the twentieth ring.

  The leaves in the trees fluttered in the dry breeze. The morning’s warmth foretold another unbearably hot day. Already, she could feel it pinching her cheeks and the corners of her eyes, scratching at the inside of her nose.

  Where the hell is he?

  And where, for that matter, was Ramon? He was overdue.

  Several houses away, a sprinkler popped on, ratcheting lazily. The water arced over the lawn, splashed onto the sidewalk. The sound was like the scritching of a thousand crickets in unison.

  She heard the deadbolt turning behind her.

  “Drew!” she exclaimed whirling around. But it was Ramon standing there instead.

  “Back door was open,” he explained.

  “You went inside his house?”

  “I mean it was wide open, Lyssa. What would you expect me to do? I was worried and checked around. But the house is empty. And his car’s not in the garage.” He shrugged and gave her a sympathetic look. “Nothing appears taken, so he’s still around. But he’s not inside.”

  Lyssa’s mind whirled. “Let’s take a drive over to the hospital.”

  Ramon held up his phone. “Already thought of that. They have no record of him checking in.”

  Lyssa scowled. “If he’s sick, then he would be there or at home. Why isn’t he here?”

  “Because, Lyssa, he’s not sick.” He gave her a disgruntled look. “He’s off working for someone else.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  Lyssa hurried through her morning routine in a sour mood. All of the rabbits were still alive and, in contrast to yesterday, now seemed to be doing quite well. Even the treatment animals had recovered most of their energy and appetite. They hopped over to the front of the cage as she approached and gazed at her with stoic interest, their only expression concentrated in the endless wiggling of their pink noses.

  “Amazing what difference a little food can make,” she told them.

  She didn’t collect samples. She wasn’t ready just yet. They grew bored when she didn’t open their cages and returned to the darker recesses toward the back.

  She was doubly irritated when it became clear that Sudha was still absent, especially since, like Drew, she had also not called in to say she would be out. She’d now missed almost a full week of work.

  Like rats leaving a sinking ship, she thought fatalistically. Well, was it really all that surprising? It was clear by now that the two were close. If Drew had left—

  No, not if. He had, and the truth of that fact needed to be faced. He’d left, so it stood to reason that Sudha would have followed him.

  “So much for not having an office romance policy,” she muttered under her breath.

  “Who? Us?”

  Lyssa jumped and spun around. Ramon was standing in the doorway.

  “Should I be worried?”

  “How long have you been standing there?”

  He shrugged. “Just got off the phone with the Ames people. They’re having trouble leaving Manhattan. They’ve been stuck at the tunnel for hours, so it looks like we caught a bit of a break.”

  “St
uck?” Lyssa frowned. “Why?”

  “Apparently, they’re restricting traffic through the tunnels.”

  “Why would they do that? Is it the drill?”

  “Actually, they’re now saying it’s some sort of animal outbreak. They just started transmitting on the emergency channels.”

  “What kind of outbreak? What disease? And why restrict travel onto the island?”

  “They’re not saying much yet.”

  He pulled his phone out of his pocket and tapped the screen a couple times before a tinny pre-recorded message started coming out of it:

  —wish to inform you that the Suffolk County Vector Control District is preparing an island-wide alert at this moment. They are warning all residents to stay away from any strange animals and to monitor for unusual behavior in both domestic and wild animals, both mammals and birds. Do not approach any animal which you do not recognize or know for certain to be disease-free. Officials at the State Health Department have yet to release any details regarding the size of the outbreak, but we do know that it has been identified in several indigenous species along the Eastern Long Island corridor south of Highway 495. The infection appears to be spreading westward and northward from there.

  “I need to call home,” Lyssa said.

  “Already did. I called Ronnie’s cell and asked her to keep an eye on Cassie. And the animals.”

  “Since when do you have her cell phone number?”

  He sighed and stepped into the office. “Lyssa, what’s going on? Because when I spoke with her, she sounded terrorized. Did you—”

  “Terrorized? I may have been curt with her last night when I got home, but that’s all. It’s not my fault! I was worried about Cassie.”

  He held up his hands. “Sorry, poor choice of words. But she did sound scared. You might want to take a moment and call her, set her mind at ease.”

  “I thought you didn’t want her around.”

  “I never said that. I said I thought it was unnecessary to pay for someone while Cassie’s in school. Anyway,” he said, changing the subject, “I just wanted to let you know that we won’t be starting on the new project today.”

  Lyssa tried not to look too gratified at the postponement, though it was the only bright spot in her otherwise wretched day. She toyed with the idea of running some additional analyses on the rabbit samples, but her heart just wasn’t into work. And if there was anything she’d learned over the years, it was to not start anything new when she was feeling like this. She’d inevitably screw something up.

  She finished up her record-keeping and disinfected her hands, then trudged to her office. With the afternoon open, she could finally take a few minutes to review the results from the samples she’d taken to Brookhaven the week before. But when she got to her desk she realized they were probably what was printed and left in the trunk of her car. And her car was at home.

  She dialed the lab to ask them to send over another set.

  And while you’re at it, find out what ever happened with the other results.

  No one answered.

  As soon as the handset was back in its cradle, it began to ring. Lyssa lifted it back to her ear. “Hello?”

  She hoped it was Drew.

  “Lyssa? It’s Heather Hicks.”

  “Ah, I’ve been trying to get a hold of you. Thanks again for asking Jim to send the tubes,” Lyssa said. “Boxes and boxes of them.” She chuckled. “Thanks to your notes, we got most of them sorted out. But we may have accidentally injected something we weren’t expecting. I don’t know how much you can help, as it’s possible it was created by a student after you left the lab.”

  There was a moment of silence, and Lyssa sensed that Heather wasn’t returning her call from the other day.

  “What is it, Heather?”

  “He’s dead,” she said. “Jim’s dead. I just got word this morning that his lab exploded two nights ago.”

  “Oh my god,” Lyssa gasped. “That’s horrible. What happened?”

  “They’re still trying to piece it together. It was an accident. Someone left a gas burner on or something. I don’t know.”

  “Oh, his poor wife. Was anyone else hurt?”

  But Heather didn’t answer. “Lyssa,” she asked instead, her voice hushed, “have you been getting any strange phone calls lately?”

  Leave. Leave the island while you can.

  “L-like what?”

  “Threats. People saying they’re watching you?”

  “We’re an animal research facility,” Lyssa replied. “We get threats like that on occasion. We forward them to the police to investigate. But we’ve never had a problem with anyone actually following through. Laroda is pretty isolated. Why? Have you been threatened?”

  “My lab doesn’t do animal studies,” she answered, exhaling deeply. “Maybe I’m just being paranoid.”

  “No, you should always take threats seriously. Forward it to the police. Or, at the very least, campus security.”

  “You’re right, Lyssa. It’s probably just some crackpot. If you . . . ,” Heather began, then seemed to reconsider. “I have to go now. We’ll talk soon.”

  But they never did.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  The moment Ronnie saw the dead bat she knew she should’ve just quietly put it into the trash without making a fuss. But she was angry and she wanted to teach Cassie a lesson about listening to her and following directions. She never expected the stupid girl to go and try to pick the damn thing up off the lawn. And she especially didn’t damn well expect the little fucking flying rat to actually still be alive.

  “Has anyone been bitten by it?” the clerk at the veterinarian’s office asked her.

  Ronnie’s eyes flicked to the side, though she couldn’t actually see Cassie through the hospital’s front window from where she was standing.

  Too many damn pets. No wonder she wasn’t afraid of it.

  “No,” Ronnie lied. “It was already half dead when I found it. Could you just test it, please?”

  “Do you have insurance?”

  “Animal insurance?” Ronnie winced. “No. How much is the test?”

  “We can do a quick in-house check. Takes a few hours, but it’s not the most accurate. It’s a hundred and twenty-five dollars. A conclusive assay runs four hundred and sixty and takes a few days, since the animal has to be sent upstate to a lab in Albany for necropsy. If someone were bitten, then it’d be free.”

  Ronnie groaned. Six hundred dollars was more than what the Stemples paid her in a week. “Do you take credit?”

  The clerk nodded and picked up the baggie holding the crushed bat. After it had bitten Cassie, Ronnie had panicked and stomped the thing to death. “You should’ve put it on ice.”

  “I I’m sorry,” Ronnie said, flustered. “I didn’t know.”

  “Phone number?”

  “Oh, I still haven’t memorized it. I got one of the new ones.” She pulled her iLINK out of her pocket and retrieved the identifier code.

  It’s a phone number, stupid. Why didn’t they just call it that instead of overcomplicating things?

  The sales rep who had signed her up kept insisting on calling it an identifier code.

  She showed it to the clerk, who copied it down on the lab order form.

  After running her credit card for the test fee, then checking that the required financial responsibility forms were properly completed, she repeated her question whether the bat had bitten anyone. “Or even just scratched. Rabies can be fatal if not treated soon enough.”

  Save the four hundred bucks and say it bit you.

  “No.”

  If it turned out to be positive, then she was sure the Stemples would pay for everything. Of course, she’d be out of a job for letting Cassie get bitten. On the other hand, if it was negative, then nobody would be the wiser.

  “And I’m sorry about the mess,” she said. “I saw it moving and I guess I just freaked out.”

  “Well, you did the right thing brin
ging it in. We’ve been getting reports of an uptick in rabies lately. And we just got a warning from the State Health Department about a new animal outbreak on the island, though they don’t know what it is yet.”

  Oh, that’s just fucking great.

  She gave the clerk a weak smile and walked stiffly out of the office.

  Cassie was especially quiet in the car on the ride back to the house, and for this Ronnie was grateful. It had been over an hour since the incident in the backyard, and yet her heart was still racing and her hands still shaking, so that when Ramon called her out of the blue to tell her about the animal warning himself, she’d nearly had a heart attack.

  “They told me a day or two for the results. Your parents could probably run the test in their own lab and know within the hour.” For free, even.

  “No! Please!” Cassie wailed. “Don’t tell them.”

  Ronnie guessed that Cassie had her own reasons for wanting to keep what had happened a secret, too. It was a small comfort, but it brought a tiny sense of vindication.

  “You should be worrying more about the shots,” she said. “More than what your parents might do to you for disobeying me. Big shots with big needles.”

  She kept on like this, scaring the girl until Cassie gave her a solemn promise not to tell.

  “Yeah, well, maybe I’ll tell them anyway.”

  The look of horror on Cassie’s face was like a stab to Ronnie’s heart. How could she betray the child like this? How could she be so selfish?

  She hoped and prayed the test results were negative.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  Lyssa was deeply shaken by the news of Jim Pearce’s passing. The manner in which he had died shocked her, but the circumstances were not out of the realm of the accidental. Benchtop burners got left on all the time. If unlit, the gas would quickly accumulate within the enclosed space. And a typical laboratory was equipped with all sorts of electronics, any of which could spark and trigger an explosion. Equipment could also malfunction on its own, short out and overheat. All it would take was the presence of some flammables and an ignition source.