S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11)
Page 56
“What’s going on?”
She stopped and sucked in a breath before answering. “I don’t know. Might be a fire somewhere. I can’t see anything from here.”
Ramon rose onto his elbows. “Must be a big one.” He paused and sniffed the air. “Not near, though. I can’t smell anything burning. Come back to bed.”
“I’m just going to check on Cassie.”
“I’ll do it.” He pulled the bed sheet off his legs and rose. “You rest.”
In the dim light, Lyssa could see the toll the past few years had taken on his body. She hadn’t noticed it the other day at the beach, but now his skin seemed sallow, the muscles on his arms and thighs losing their once-youthful definition.
Their skin looks creepy.
He scratched the stubble on his cheek with one hand as he searched the floor for his shirt, his other hand scratching his ass, tugging his loose underwear beneath his expanding belly.
“Go back to bed, Lyss,” he repeated. He pulled a tee shirt over his head and ran a hand through his hair. It flopped back.
“I want to check the other windows,” she told him, and she didn’t wait for him to finish dressing. She pulled her robe tighter about her shoulders and stepped out of the bedroom. Cassie’s room was the next door down on the other side of the hallway. Lyssa’s slippers made soft slapping sounds as she padded toward the half-closed door. It opened silently beneath her hand.
Shinji was a quiet, dark shape on the bed. He lifted his head at her and stared, his eyes glistening with moonlight from the window. The room had a stale smell to it that made Lyssa wrinkle her nose and pause, wondering if it was the dog, if he’d pooped again instead of asking to be let out. But when she heard Ramon come up behind her, she dismissed the thought. It wasn’t that kind of smell. This was something else, something more earthy.
She realized she was probably just remembering burying the rabbit earlier that evening. The smell was an echo of that terrible time, her mind trying to purge itself.
She went in and slipped over to the window.
The lights were dark in Mister Locke’s house, and she found herself silently cursing the man once more for what he had done that afternoon. She didn’t care how much he’d paid for the laying hens. She didn’t care that he was falling victim to the Stream. Nothing justified the brutality Cassie had been forced to witness when he’d beaten her rabbit to death.
From this side of the house, the sirens sounded even farther away, and there was no telltale glow in the distance to suggest a fire massive enough to require so many emergency vehicles. She turned and sidestepped past Ramon, who was in the middle of the room watching her.
“Nothing?” he whispered.
She shook her head. “I think it’s east of here.”
“Might be the highway.”
She paused to consider this. Route 495 was a quarter of a mile away to the south. But she shook her head. The sirens, though inconstant, didn’t sound like vehicles passing at a high rate of speed. “I just want to make sure it’s not close.”
“Mama?”
They both turned their heads toward the bed.
“It’s nothing, honey. Go back to sleep.”
“I wasn’t sleeping.”
“Go on,” Ramon whispered to Lyssa. “I’ll stay with her until she falls asleep again.”
Lyssa nodded and went and bent down over Cassie. For just a moment, the smell she’d noticed earlier filled her nose, making her gag. She staggered a moment against the mattress and caught herself by grabbing the headboard. But a moment later, the smell was gone again.
Just the change in my blood pressure, she realized. I should get that checked.
“Daddy’s going to stay here with you,” she said, and kissed her daughter’s forehead. After a moment’s hesitation, she pulled a blanket off of her and shooed the puppy away. “You’re too hot, honey. You’re sweating.”
“I feel sick.”
“That’s because you have all these blankets. You don’t need so many.”
“But I’m cold.”
“Because you’re sweaty and I just took the blanket off. Now, shh. Go back to sleep.”
She moved aside and Ramon went and sat on the edge of the bed and asked her if she’d like a story. Not the stupid rabbit one, Lyssa thought. Not after what happened today.
She went out into the hallway and checked out the back window, but she saw nothing to suggest a fire, just the usual faint rural glow of Syosset to the west and Woodbury to the east. The neighborhood where they lived straddled the line between the two towns. Where the twin auras converged, the night dipped down. Through it, to the north about three miles, was Oyster Bay.
She pulled the window open and leaned against the low sill, bending at the knees so that she could sit on the narrow ledge. She leaned her head against the screen and sucked in a breath of the warm night air. From here, the sirens were faintest. The trouble, whatever it might be, was clearly to the south.
The lonely warble of the sirens drifted in and out, fading and rising on the edge of her consciousness. She felt herself slip and nearly fell from her perch.
Standing and stretching herself awake, she proceeded to the opposite end of the hallway. Hoping to draw a cross breeze to banish the staleness in the house, she left the window open.
Passing Cassie’s door, she heard Ramon tell her, “That’s enough for tonight, honey.”
Cassie didn’t protest like she usually did. Instead, she asked, “Are there really such things as vampire rabbits, Daddy?”
That damn story!
“Only in books, honey,” Ramon replied.
“What about zombies?”
Lyssa’s heart leapt into her throat. She could feel a cry of despair and fright clawing its way to her lips. Had Cassie been listening to the radio, too?
“Honey,” Ramon began.
“Are there zombie rabbits, Daddy?”
“Why would you ask something like that?”
“Are there?”
“Zombies? No, honey. Of course not.”
Lyssa began to move away from the door. But then she stopped when he spoke one last time:
“Not rabbits, only people.”
It was clear that he had intended for Lyssa to hear him. He knew she’d been standing out in the hallway listening. His last words hadn’t been for Cassie’s benefit, but for hers.
And in that moment, she hated him for his spitefulness.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
The room was painfully bright and the sirens were gone the next time she opened her eyes. One moment she was asleep — dreaming, most likely, though she had no memory of a dream — the next her eyes were open and she was staring at the ceiling of her bedroom, aware of a cobweb wafting above her, one end stuck to the wall, the other invisibly attached to the ceiling. She watched it float for a few seconds on invisible air currents. Nothing else moved but her eyes.
No sirens. No smell of smoke.
She blinked and directed her eyes to the side, still not moving her head. She knew she was alone in the bed. Slowly, she slid her hand across to Ramon’s side, holding her breath as if a part of her doubted that assessment and expected to find resistance. But there was none. He’d risen.
No smell of coffee.
No gurgle of water through the pipes as he showered.
Nothing.
How could it be so quiet?
Last night came back to her in a rush— her disgust with Ramon, her refusal to come back to bed, his shrug of indifference as he left her sitting beneath the front window staring out into the darkness. The creak of the mattress. Then, a few minutes later, his snore.
She had fallen asleep on the floor and woken some time later, shivering as the fog poured in off the street and into the house, swaddling her and lending an eerie dreamlike feel to her waking. The mist wasn’t cold, but it was heavily laden, and the wetness felt chill on her skin.
The sirens had still been going, like the wails of dying creatures.
But it was only the sun beginning to rise.
She’d stood then, stiffly working the aches from her joints and the gooseflesh from her skin, and slid the window noisily shut. Whatever the reason had been for the sirens, it clearly didn’t affect them. So she went to bed, not caring about how much noise she was making when she slipped beneath the covers. She was still very angry with Ramon. The sight of his bare skin and his metered breaths only infuriated her all the more.
It took her a long time to go back to sleep, even longer for her fingers to loosen from the fists she had made.
Even now, the muscles in her hands were still sore.
The curtains of the bedroom window fluttered. Somewhere, someone had mown their lawn already, getting it done before the day’s unremitting heat made such work impossible. She’d slept through the noise. She could smell it in the air, the fresh organic aroma of the grass and the burning stink of gasoline.
The clock beside her told her it was after nine o’clock. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept so late. And yet she still felt exhausted.
Minutes passed. The sunlight on the wall shifted enough for her to notice the difference.
Finally, she sat up and dropped her feet to the floor. Her slippers weren’t where she expected them to be. Neither was her robe. Frowning with irritation, she stepped out into the hallway. But they weren’t beneath either of the windows.
Ramon, she thought. He must’ve picked them up this morning.
She rechecked the bedroom, but by then the urgency in her bladder was too great to continue her search.
As she relieved herself, she stared at her reflection in the mirror on the back of the door, cringing at the lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. How was it possible that one day you woke up and suddenly realized years had slipped away? She leaned forward, drawing her hair behind her ear and saw how many strands had turned gray. She turned her head away so she wouldn’t have to see.
She’d asked Ramon to remove the mirror several times, and an equal number of times he’d promised to do it. The previous owners had mounted it there, but Lyssa had always hated it. It was bad enough to see how much she’d aged, but to do it while seated on the toilet was downright masochistic. It was why she preferred to use the downstairs bathroom.
She stood, turning away from the offensive image, and flushed. She’d procrastinated long enough. It was time to face the day.
What did it hold for her? She could only guess.
Still no sound from downstairs, but from the hallway window she could see Cassie in the back yard sitting on her swing— not actually swinging, but just sitting, an arm draped around the chain and her cheek resting against it.
Lyssa’s eyes drifted right, over to the garden, to the spot where she’d buried the rabbit. The mound was almost indistinguishable from the surrounding dirt. Beside it, partially hidden behind a clump of lavender was a patch of white. It was her robe. And there were her slippers.
How the hell did they get out there?
She heard Ramon shouting now, the sound coming from the direction of Cassie’s room. There was a certain quality to it which told her he wasn’t inside the house.
She went and stood beside the window frame and peered down. Ramon was out there, dressed for work. He and Mister Locke were arguing. Sam raised his bandaged hand for Ramon to see. “Your daughter bit me yesterday!”
“You killed her rabbit!”
Cassie’s attack had happened so suddenly that Lyssa hadn’t been able to stop her. Luckily, the bite had been shallow, barely breaking the skin. It was then that Sam had threatened to call the police. Lyssa hadn’t waited to see if he would actually follow through. She’d dragged Cassie inside.
And sedated her.
Now the same argument was unfolding before her eyes. Lyssa could imagine it escalating, becoming physical. Both men appeared to be on the verge of losing it.
She almost hoped it would get violent. She wished Ramon would do to Sam what Sam had done to Ben Nicholas.
These thoughts caused her to recoil from the window. How could she think such things? What the hell was happening to her?
And then she saw it, the tip of the gray tower peeking over her neighbor’s roofline, not fifty yards away. She didn’t even realize they’d put it up.
She could almost see the Stream spewing out its poison, the air shimmering. She could feel it on her skin. And the itch of it inside her head.
Below her, the shouting grew louder and angrier.
Lyssa knew she should intervene. Instead, she went and took a shower.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
“What have you done?” Ramon demanded, startling her with his sudden appearance in the entryway to the kitchen.
Lyssa stared at him for a moment. She was unable to grasp why he wasn’t injured. He bore no visible bruises, no cuts. His shirt and hair were unrumpled. She blinked away the water dripping from her hair.
“Did you hear me?”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”
“There are police checks everywhere and army tanks at all the major interchanges.”
“What?”
“Sam told me. He said it’s practically impossible to get anywhere. I have to get to the lab. You need to stay home.”
“I thought you two were fighting.”
He stopped pacing and glared at her. “This is bigger than some stupid pet rabbit!” he screamed. He leaned over the table. “You knew about it. All this time. That’s why you kept listening to that guy on the radio, to see how much he knew. You caused this.”
Lyssa shook her head again. She was losing patience now. “Ramon, honestly. I have no idea what you’re talking about!” She glanced toward the radio. Ramon stepped to the side, blocking her, as if he expected her to switch it on.
He slammed his palm on the table, making her jump. “Or is that fucker in on it, too, that jail bird guy?”
Lyssa gasped.
He yanked the chair next to her from beneath the table and sat down in it, grabbing her arm. “Please tell me you didn’t intend to start an epidemic.”
She tried to pull away. “What epidemic?”
“It’s everywhere now, all over the news. They’re saying it started in our laboratory, some experiment we were doing. The police say they have evidence from Brookhaven that we’re working on illegal viruses. Honey—” He shook her arm. “What experiments were you and Drew doing? What did you inject into those rabbits?”
Her mind froze. The mysterious samples, the codes Drew had written into his notebook. The results that needed to be confirmed. She hadn’t heard from the lab and thought the matter closed. But now . . . .
The truth hit her hard. Drew had been conducting secret experiments.
No! He couldn’t. He wouldn’t!
Her hands were shaking so badly that some of her coffee sloshed over the side of her cup. The liquid scalded her fingers, but she barely felt it. She shook her head and said, “They’re wrong.”
“They have evidence!”
She pushed him away and stood up, jerking her arm away from him. But his grip was too strong. “Let me go!” she shouted.
“No!”
She raised her free hand, ready to strike him. But the look of utter terror on his face stopped her. She’d never seen him so frightened before in her entire life.
He opened his mouth, but nothing came out save a strangled cry. He let go of her then and buried his face in his hands. “I don’t know who you are anymore.”
She stared at him a moment longer before turning and switching on the radio.
—saying the disease is highly contagious. All residents of Long Island are being told to remain indoors and at home. If you believe you have been infected, isolate
yourself from everyone else. If you believe someone you know has been infected, call authorities. Do not attempt to go to the hospital. Stay inside your house. Call authorities. Help will come to you. And stay away from all animals! All animals must be considered as potential carriers of this deadly disease.
“Where’s Cassie?” she asked.
“In her room,” Ramon moaned. “She’s in her room.”
Officials from the Centers of Disease Control are flying in. They plan to meet with experts at Brookhaven Laboratories where scientists are carefully analyzing samples delivered to their contract laboratory last week. Several buildings in the complex have already been closed off, and more than a dozen staff members quarantined. Although no official statement regarding the disease or its potential source has yet been released, evidence is accumulating supporting the claim that the virus was intentionally created, possibly at the Laroda Animal Research Facility. As to any motivation for creating the virus, whether it was for personal gain or for use as a bioweapon, we can only speculate.
Lyssa turned to Ramon. “We didn’t—”
The controversial animal research facility located at Laroda Island is a privately-owned laboratory service founded and run by the husband and wife team of scientists Ramon and Lyssa Stemple.
“Oh god,” Lyssa groaned.
The district attorney is at this moment filing papers to open an inquest into illegal research conducted at the site, including the use of high-risk methods and viruses banned by the government. When asked when the Stemples might be arrested, local and federal police agencies indicated that they would wait until they have built a strong enough case against the couple, including the collection of proof of their involvement. “This is a multi-agency operation” announced the Suffolk County Sheriff. “We know where the Stemples live and we know they can’t leave the island.”
As of this time, this reporter’s attempts to contact the Stemples at their Woodbury home have been unsuccessful. They are refusing to answer their phones and their door.
“No, this isn’t right!” Lyssa said. “We haven’t done anything illegal.”