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

by Tanpepper, Saul

  The man raised an eyebrow, as if amused. “We know he received a package within the past couple of weeks. It contained a tube, and inside that tube was a substance. It is that substance about which we are particularly interested in obtaining information.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we think it’s a counteragent against the virus— my virus.”

  Lyssa shook her head. “I don’t know anything about any of that.”

  He pulled a sheet of paper from the file. “Are you denying this is your signature?”

  Lyssa recognized the requisition she’d signed for Drew a week and a half earlier. It was the copy she’d brought back from Brookhaven.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “Answer the question,” Brad snarled. He threw a quick glance at their boss and stepped back in chagrin.

  “I— Yes, that’s my signature. But I don’t know anything about those samples. I sign dozens of requisitions just like it every month.”

  “So, you’re saying you’re not aware of the nature of the samples he sent there?”

  Lyssa shrugged. “Isolated proteins. Purified viral nucleic acid. Why?”

  “Did they send you the results?”

  “There was a mix up at the analytical lab, a contamination I’d assumed. They were supposed to repeat the assay.”

  The man standing over Ramon exchanged glances with the other two, and something seemed to pass between them.

  “Are you engaged in animal research at Laroda?”

  “Yes. Everyone knows that.”

  “And what was the nature of your most recent experiments? What were the results? Noticed anything . . . unusual?”

  “That’s confidential information,” Ramon told them. He started to stand again and was pushed down. “Unless you—”

  “It’s for the Department of Agriculture,” Lyssa replied. “Figuring out how to get cows to make more milk.”

  Brad smirked and shook his head. He stepped forward. His smiled turned into a sneer of rage. “Stop bullshitting us, bitch! I’m sick of this shit!” He grabbed at Cassie’s arm and began to pull her away. Cassie turned and bared her teeth, snapping at his hand. He snatched it back, narrowly avoiding getting bitten.

  “Step away from her,” the old man calmly said. But this time Brad didn’t listen. He raised his hand to strike the girl.

  “Stop it!” Lyssa screamed.

  Once again, Ramon began to rise from his seat. There was a loud crack! and he crumpled unconscious to the floor.

  “I warned you,” the man with the gun said, sneering at Ramon’s slumped form.

  “Enough!”

  The old man stepped forward, moving unnaturally fast for a man his age. He grabbed Brad’s collar and pulled him back. “Mister Manning, I told you to step away from the girl.” He turned to the other man. “And you, Fred, get Doctor Stemple off the floor. Rouse him. He’s no good to us unconscious. And don’t do that again. We’re not here to hurt anyone.”

  “I told him he’d pay if—”

  “And I’m telling you you’ll pay if you don’t do as I ask. Both of you.”

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  He stepped over to Cassie and ordered her to get off the floor. “Go sit in the chair over there,” he told her, pointing at the corner.

  Cassie buried her face even deeper into Lyssa’s thigh.

  “Honey,” Lyssa said, whispering. “You need to listen to the man.”

  Cassie hesitated for a moment, but there was something so compelling in the man’s demeanor that it was almost impossible to disobey him. She scurried over to the chair and climbed into it.

  “I don’t tolerate having to repeat myself,” he said, turning back to Lyssa. “So I’m only going to ask my questions once. You will answer them honestly and fully. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Lyssa nodded jerkily, her eyes on the man struggling to lift Ramon back into his chair. Her husband’s head lolled to the side, dripping blood from where he’d been hit with the pistol. His eyes were open and blinking, though they were unfocused. He was conscious, but not aware.

  “Look at me.”

  Lyssa tore her eyes away and turned to face the old man. Her blood thumped in her head, pulsing behind her eyeballs. She felt dizzy.

  “As long as you answer honestly, I won’t hurt you or your daughter. How old is she? Six? Seven?”

  Another nod. “Sh-she’ll be seven in a couple weeks.”

  “Good. That’s a nice age. My granddaughter is slightly younger.” He smiled and pulled the last chair between them and sat down. Placing a beefy hand on the girl’s shoulder, he kept his dark eyes on Lyssa the whole time. The shadow of a smile on his lips sent a shiver down her spine. It was cold and calculating. “It’s very important that I find this man. The information he has is vitally important to the success of my work.”

  “Why?”

  He ignored her. “Do you know where he is?”

  Lyssa shook her head. “N-no. I assumed he was dead.”

  “When was the last time you spoke with him?”

  She thought about the texts she’d received on Ramon’s phone earlier that day. She’d thought they were from Drew, but now she realized they were probably from this man. “I I think it was about two weeks ago. No, a week.”

  He didn’t speak for several moments, just studied her face. Somewhere in the distance, a siren began to wail. Finally, the man turned to Brad and nodded. Brad stepped forward, reaching for Cassie.

  “No!” Lyssa cried and tried to grab her away.

  “I said I wouldn’t hurt her as long as you told the truth.

  “That is the truth!”

  “Is it? You haven’t had any contact with him since?”

  “Someone called me several days ago. I don’t know who it was. They just said to leave the island.”

  The corner of the man’s mouth twitched. “Leave the island?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ha! I knew it!” Brad said. “That asshole’s still alive!”

  The old man continued to hold Lyssa’s gaze. He didn’t respond to the outburst. It was as if he hadn’t even heard it. Somewhere outside, a siren was growing louder. “That’s all he said?”

  “Yes.”

  Something flickered in the man’s eyes. Lyssa couldn’t even be sure she’d seen it. It was there and gone in an instant. “I’m telling the truth,” she said, pleading. “It was an unknown number. I couldn’t call him back. Please, you have to believe me.”

  “He didn’t ask for any test results?”

  “No, I—”

  She stopped, remembering the papers in her car.

  “You what?”

  Across the table, Ramon groaned and slumped forward, then pushed himself up again. He raised his hands to his head and cradled it. The man standing over him grabbed his shirt collar and straightened him up. “Quiet, you!”

  “Don’t hurt him!” Lyssa begged.

  A car roared past the house, warbling its alarm. A mandatory evacuation has been called for Long Island! Please leave your homes immediately! A mandatory evacuation is now in effect for all residents and visitors of Long Island!

  “You do know something about those results, don’t you?”

  Lyssa swallowed.

  “Doctor Stemple,” the Colonel interrupted, “you don’t know how vital that information is, and I don’t have the time to explain it to you. If you want to live, I need those results.”

  “I— They’re in the trunk of my car.”

  He nodded at Fred. “Take her keys and check.” Then he turned back to Lyssa. “I’m particularly interested in a chemical known as ‘deprolidone.’ Have you ever heard of that?”

  She shook her head. “There was a notation in Drew’s notebook, a code, but nothing with a specific chemical name.”

  The Colonel glanced at Brad, who shook his head and said, “I didn’t find any notebooks. But that one might know.” He pointed at Ramon.

  Ramon shook his head, wincing i
n pain. “I don’t know anything about the notebook,” he said, and coughed. “I didn’t take it.”

  Fred stepped back inside. He had the sheaf of papers in his hand. He stepped over to the Colonel and murmured, “I got the results, but we need to go. The cops are here. They’re going door-to-door.”

  The Colonel didn’t seem all that concerned. He pulled the papers to his face and glanced at them. After scanning a few lines, he nodded and stood.

  “We got what we came for.”

  Lyssa stood up. “What is it? What’s in those results?”

  “Nothing to concern yourselves with.”

  “Sir,” Brad asked. “What about Royce?”

  “He’s in hiding. We won’t find him unless he wants to be found.”

  “And them?” Brad pointed at the Stemples.

  “They don’t know anything. Our friend was just using them for his little experiments.”

  He gathered his folder from the table and stepped over to the door. Before leaving, he turned one last time and added, “I recommend you take a boat, a private one. Not a ferry.”

  CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN

  Police cars were everywhere. Soldiers were everywhere. But they stood aside and watched as people made their way onto the highway.

  The westbound ramp was backed up, and all of the lanes heading that way were at a standstill.

  Lyssa glanced over at Ramon as they spiraled onto the eastbound ramp. She wanted to ask where they were going. She almost sensed he was running on autopilot and was going to take them to the lab.

  He guided the car into the slow lane, slotting it between a pair of army trucks, the spinning bubble lights over their cabs flashing orange inside the car.

  The canvas flap was closed, hiding whatever was in the back from view. Lyssa wished she could see inside. She wanted desperately to know what was in there. But the truck, as well as the one behind them, exited at the 110 interchange and headed south.

  “We should never have come back,” she said, staring out her window. “We should’ve just stayed in Manhattan when we were there. Or just kept going further west.”

  Ramon turned to her, frowning. “What are you talking about?”

  She glanced into the back seat at Cassie, but the girl had her head bowed at Shinji sitting quietly on her lap.

  “The new towers—”

  “Oh, Christ. Really, Lyssa? Fine, here you go. Listen to your heart’s content.” He reached over and angrily flicked on the radio and spun the dial until he found him.

  —get out if you can, people! Me, I’m choosing to stay. Someone has to tell the truth! But this may be your last chance to—

  Uttering a sound of disgust, he twisted the dial again. “On second thought, no.”

  “You’re in denial, Ramon.”

  “No, you are. After what just happened at home, how can you possibly still believe it’s radio waves? It’s a virus, honey. You heard that man. There’s nothing wrong with the Stream.”

  She stared at him. “How can you not see it, Rame? Sam had one of those new phones when—”

  “Sam was like that before the towers went up! He didn’t build his cellar butchery in a week!” He reached over to tune the radio to another station. “It’s a virus, end of discussion.”

  —first reported last week and initially thought to be an accidental release of a bioengineered neurotropic virus was the result of cross-agency miscommunication. The confusion has caused unnecessary panic and anger among Long Islanders.

  Claims that a contract research lab on Laroda Island weaponized the virus now appear to be incorrect. Copies of documents obtained by several media outlets through the Wikileaks website instead appear to implicate the military itself. The Pentagon has staunchly denied these claims and is dismissing the documents as fakes. Health officials with the CDC are now claiming that the disease is a previously unidentified but naturally-occurring strain of the Rhabdoviridae family.

  “See?” Ramon said. “I told you. It’s rabies.”

  Lyssa was silent. She couldn’t reason with Ramon anymore. This wasn’t rabies. This was a cover up. Those men who’d attacked them in their home were all part of it. They’d called the one man Colonel, so he had to be in the military. He worked for the government, the same government which Jay Bird claimed was now complicit.

  Additionally, they are saying that the disease is not as widespread as previously reported. In fact, no case of actual human transmission has been confirmed. Assuming this is true, then it is unclear why a mandatory evacuation was called.

  As residents attempt to comply with the order, traffic on the Long Island Expressway has become completely jammed up from Flushing to all points west. Several jurisdictions are reporting instances of looting and violence, and hospitals are turning away patients after a run on the rabies vaccine depleted supplies.

  Lyssa frowned when Ramon signaled to exit at Town Line Road. “Where are we going?” she asked. “We have to turn around.”

  “North,” Ramon replied. “We’ll take a ferry out of Port Jefferson.”

  “That man said not to take the ferry.”

  “He also broke into our home, attacked us, took confidential records, and terrorized Cassie.”

  As a precautionary measure, free disease screenings are being provided at all egress points. For the public’s safety, individuals showing symptoms of infection will be quarantined for seventy-two hours.

  * * *

  The exit was blocked by a Suffolk County sheriff’s vehicle, its lights flashing and siren wailing angrily at them. They could see the deputy inside, his microphone covering his mouth: “This road is for emergency vehicles only. Please proceed to the Nicholl’s Road exit.”

  The going was slow, as the road was packed with cars.

  A mile shy of Port Jefferson, traffic came to a standstill. It was past one o’clock in the morning by then. Cassie was asleep in the back seat, murmuring to herself in some troubled dream.

  They were stuck on a one-lane bridge spanning a dark rift in the terrain. The line of cars stretched ahead of them as far as the curve of the road allowed them to see. Behind them was a tractor trailer, its headlights flooding the inside of the car. They sat without moving for a good half hour.

  Ramon yawned, and suddenly Lyssa felt as if she hadn’t slept in weeks. She was so tired, bone tired, and all she wanted to do was rest her eyes.

  “I think we better just pull over the next chance we get,” he said. “Try and get some rest. It’s not like we’re going anywhere for a while.” He sighed. “God, what a clusterfuck.

  She rolled her eyes. The man she’d married had turned into a regular potty mouth.

  A moment later the rumble of the semi truck’s engine cut off and the lights went out.

  Ramon followed suit, and the night swooped in, engulfing them in silence and darkness so thick Lyssa felt as if she might choke on it.

  Ramon checked his phone, exhaled in frustration. Lyssa studied him for a moment, wondering what he was thinking. She was tempted to turn on the radio, to see if the Jay Bird might be out there telling them the truth about what was happening. But what good would it do to antagonize Ramon now? They were stuck here at least until morning.

  Ramon’s head tipped forward, then jerked upward. He blinked numbly for a moment, then looked over at her.

  “I guess here’s as good a place as any to get some rest.”

  He pushed his seat back as far as it would go and closed his eyes.

  The last thing Lyssa did before exhaustion overtook her was to check that the doors were locked.

  CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

  Lyssa woke to complete silence. Dawn had broken, though the sun hadn’t yet climbed over the tops of the trees around them. The condensation on the insides of the windows and the fallen leaves plastered to the outside filtered the light even more.

  She raised her seat back and wiped away the mist on her window. Shinji immediately began to whine from the back seat, as if he’d been waiting for someone
to stir. Lyssa opened her door and in an instant he was scrambling to get over the center console to it.

  “Shh,” she whispered. As silently as she could, she reached behind her and lifted the puppy over and placed him on her lap. “Jesus, you’re getting too big and too heavy.” And he was standing right on her bladder.

  It was a short walk forward to reach the end of the bridge. She glanced into the other cars as she passed, trying not to be obvious. In three of the four, people were still sleeping. The fourth car was empty, the driver’s side door hanging open. Farther up the road, she could hear engines running and the sounds of tires moving over gravel. Traffic was beginning to move.

  She started to jog, urging Shinji to keep up with her.

  She took a narrow path through the bramble, soaking her pants as she went on the dew-laden brush. Shinji dutifully followed. Within feet of leaving the road, she could see none of the cars, and the sound of their engines became little more than a distant hum. The high-pitched whine of mosquitoes was louder.

  “Stay where I can see you,” she told the dog, as she glanced about them. Convinced that they were alone, she unbuckled her pants to relieve herself.

  The ground beneath her was soft with composting debris, the air redolent with organic decay. She knew the creek was somewhere to her right, down a steepening incline, though she couldn’t hear it. She let her head drop against the tree she was leaning on and shut her eyes and took in a deep breath. There was no hint of smoke, no diesel fumes. Just rotting leaves and wet earth and—

  Something rustled to her right. She pushed herself to her feet, yanking her pants up. Her back raked against the rough bark of the tree. Her underwear bunched into a roll against her upper thighs. Twisting her head around the trunk, she squinted into the shaded wood in the direction of the sound.

  Nothing.

  She didn’t even dare to breathe. Even the crackle of her neck as she looked for Shinji was loud in her ears.

  Of course, she thought. Damn dog’s run off.

  She took a moment to fix her underwear, then stepped away from the tree.

  “Shinji,” she called in a loud whisper.