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

by Tanpepper, Saul

  “Hello? Anyone here? Anyone alive?”

  The infected watched him as he passed, gesturing with their clumsy hands and even taking a step or two in his direction before losing interest. He knew he was safe from them. They wanted uninfected flesh, healthy meat. Not his own diseased body. He was not a good host for the virus, and that made him invisible to their blood lust. His own sickness was his armor.

  As he made his way to the Emergency Room, he pondered his decision to send Ramon and Marion here, putting them at risk when he would have managed safely enough on his own. But he’d worried about Lyssa, worried about her mental state, and had been loath to leave her alone with the ill child. He’d watched her suffer such horrors in the past two months, had seen her fall apart. He worried what she might do — to herself, to the girl — and as long as there was a chance to save the little one, he hadn’t felt comfortable leaving Lyssa alone with her.

  But any chance at Cassie’s recovery had quickly faded away.

  He opened another door and looked inside, into the darkness. He could smell the infection and knew it had already gotten whatever hid in the gloom. There was a soft rustle of movement, a moan. A face rose from beyond the hospital bed and peered at him for several seconds, hissing, before bending back down. In a moment, it resumed its feeding.

  He realized he was looking for survivors, those trapped here by the dead, the ones not yet infected. It didn’t seem likely he’d find any.

  And what if you find someone infected but not yet dead?

  Yes, what then? There were needles and syringes here.

  The same old fear began to well up inside of him. Could he do it?

  Just get the stuff and go.

  He entered the Emergency Room waiting area. Mounted beneath the ceiling in the corner was a small television monitor. The screen was blank except for the usual oval iTech icon floating from edge to edge. By and large, the infected were ignoring it. But one, a teenage boy with fractured arm, a spear of bone protruding through the skin just north of his elbow, seemed entranced by the colorful bouncing shape.

  Drew went over and searched for the channel button, but was unable to find it.

  “Sorry, buddy. Looks like you’re out of luck.”

  The zombie curled his lips at him and stepped forward. Drew matched the movement, keeping at a constant distance and cringing despite his knowledge that he was safe. The boy’s dead gaze swept past his face and settled onto the aquarium along the far wall. He took another stumbling step, the broken, bloody arm brushing against Drew’s, causing an involuntary shiver to pass up his spine.

  Drew shook his head and turned back the way he had come. It was time to leave. The hospital was no longer a place of healing.

  He found a med cart and used the tire iron to pry it open, spilling plastic bottles out of the drawers. Checking the labels, he stuffed the ones he thought he might be able to use into a clean pillowcase. He finished with a few boxes of needles and syringes, and then he left.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY EIGHT

  Ramon became aware of the movement, of the sensation that he was being grabbed and pulled and lifted, before it came back to him where he was. He heard the grunts before he remembered about the infected. But by then it was too late. The pain was too enormous inside of him. His body was so full of agony that his mind simply shut down. He slipped back into the blissful place where pain could not reach him.

  * * *

  The sun was shining, and it was bright. Too bright. Even with his eyes closed Ramon still had to look away. Blood red through his eye lids, the heat pinching and burning his skin.

  He reached up to his neck and pulled the stiff constricting collar away, allowing a tiny draft of cooler air in to dry the sweat.

  He looked down upon the people seated before him, all glassy-eyed and smiling expectantly. He tried to smile back, but he was worried — couldn’t help but be worried — as he waited in the sunlight, standing and sweating and choking for air.

  The music started. Everyone sighed and turned as one. With each note of their wedding song, he worried, fretting that Lyssa would not come. With each strum of the guitar, his heart threatened to stop.

  But there she was, radiant in her dress, the bump of their child evident beneath it, the miracle of their love and devotion for each other, and he smiled. God, how he loved her. Had loved her since the day they first met. He wished he could see her face now, hidden beneath her veil. The torture of waiting was so delicious, so wonderful, that he thought he’d never stop smiling, not even if it broke his face into halves.

  On her arm, her father.

  Strange. Hadn’t he died the year before?

  Ramon shook his head. Of course not. How could he be here, at their wedding, if he’d died?

  And there was Lyssa’s mother, seated among the guests, not a sign of the terrible automobile accident on her face.

  The closed casket funeral— he must have dreamed it. The coroner’s . . . .

  The two generations passed beneath the archway and came into full view of the seated attendees, and there was something wrong with his father-in-law’s face, something horribly, terribly wrong. It was melting away, the flesh slipping off, leaving nothing but mottled bone, riddled with twisted tracks, like the crooked furrows termites chew through wood. Lyssa turned toward him and leaned over and kissed his rotting cheek through the veil. And when she turned back, Ramon saw the smudge of rotting flesh and gore which had adhered to it near her mouth.

  No, he thought, his stomach twisting. No, this isn’t right!

  The congregation watched, their necks swiveling as the procession passed. And their own skin rotted away, and their hair fell to the ground in clumps. The lipless mouths grinned and their teeth clacked, and their shredded hands clapped, flinging bits of skin and muscle at each other, such was their enthusiasm on this day of joy.

  And then Lyssa was with him, her hand on his elbow, and they were facing the priest.

  Ramon shook his head and tried to speak, but nothing came out. Nothing but a low moan of air.

  “Do you, Lyssa Anne White,” the priest asked, “take Ramon Michael Stemple to be your husband? To have and to hold, through sickness and in health, not even in death will you part?”

  No! Oh god, no. Not this way. No, please.

  The priest smiled. Or seemed to smile. It was impossible to tell without skin. He waited for Lyssa to answer.

  Yesssssssss . . . she hissed. Oh, yessssss.

  “Then by the power vested in me by the State of New York—”

  He watched as Lyssa reached up, mesmerized by his fear and longing. She began to raise her veil, and what it revealed exhilarated him. He felt his soul begin to swell. But then he began to fall. Hurry! he pleaded. Hurry!

  “Doooo yoooou?” she asked him.

  He opened his mouth and said—

  * * *

  Marion stumbled and fell to his knees, rudely dropping Ramon to the grass on the front lawn. He couldn’t go on. He’d used every ounce of energy he had fighting off the infected back there at the accident site, then carrying Ramon the quarter mile here. One lung most likely collapsed. More than a pint of blood drained from him. He tried, but he had no more to give.

  He collapsed to the ground, an arrow of pain piercing his side, and felt his consciousness slipping away.

  Yes, he thought, welcoming it.

  No! Still not safe!

  He rose onto an elbow and rolled closer to Ramon and gave him a weak nudge. Ramon groaned. Another nudge, then a pinch of the skin on his neck. It was feeble but enough to rouse him. Ramon opened his eyes but didn’t move. He stared up at the sky. A single tear rolled down his cheek.

  “You have to get inside,” Marion whispered. “Hurry.”

  “Yes,” Ramon whispered. He took in a deep breath and said, “I do.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY NINE

  The boy had wanted to watch, but even in her grief-stricken fog, Lyssa knew how wrong it would be to let him. This was worse than pornographi
c. What she was about to do wasn’t meant for anyone to see. No one could possibly understand how private and personal this was.

  “Stay in the kitchen,” she instructed. “Watch for the others. Don’t come out until I say you can.”

  Then she picked the still-writhing Cassie up off the floor and carried her out into the back yard where Lucy already waited, tethered to the tree.

  She set her daughter down on the grass and loosened the bindings around her legs. Cassie seemed to understand what was about to happen. She immediately calmed. But Lyssa left the tape on her mouth. She didn’t want to hear her little girl cry out when it happened.

  Cassie grunted once through her nose, then closed her eyes. Lyssa brushed her fingers over her cheeks, pulling away the loose hairs, wiping away the tears. She tried to hum something, but her throat was too dry, too swollen with her grief, and she couldn’t think of anything anyway. Her head was filled too full of the tuneless echoes of happier times— of first words and joyful laughter. She heard the sound of the waves on the south shore and the crackle of all the campfires they had ever enjoyed together. But most of all, she heard Cassie’s gentle, caring voice: Mama, I can’t wait to bring my little brother home.

  The tears flowed heavily now, down Lyssa’s cheeks, etching through the dirt of her recent ordeals, washing it away and exposing the pink, raw skin underneath. The tears dripped to the grass below and soaked into the dirt. “Oh, my beautiful girl,” she whispered. “My beautiful, sweet daughter. I’m so sorry about what happened. I wish I’d known.”

  She didn’t want to say goodbye. She couldn’t say it. She wouldn’t.

  Cassie was burning up now, her skin almost too hot to touch, dry and papery, rough like leather. A vein had popped in one of her eyes, flooding red into the white, a bright red canal overflowing its banks. The inner membrane of her eyelids was swollen and protruded from the strain of her disease.

  “I should’ve known,” Lyssa said, apologizing again. “I should’ve seen the signs.” They had been there all along, staring her in the face, the cycles of coherence and silence, the growing dislike for water. And light. The rise in aggression. “I could’ve stopped it.”

  She could’ve blamed Ramon. But, really, there was only one person to blame, and that was herself. She was the mother, and she had fucked up by not being attentive enough.

  But now she would fix it.

  “It’s time, honey.”

  Cassie arched her back, raising her body off the ground. Her cheeks puffed out, but the tape prevented the explosive exhale, leaving the air to whistle out through her nose. Neck muscles strained, tendons rose. A blush rose on her skin, coloring it from gray to deep crimson, then fading as she relaxed again with a sigh.

  Lyssa waited, and when Cassie had calmed down, she bent over and kissed her cheek for the last time.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY

  He heard the sounds on the front porch, the clumsy, shuffling footsteps and the creaking of someone or something leaning heavily on the railing. He should check. But the boy couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from the scene playing out in the back yard. The door rattled and the knob jiggled.

  He raised an arm to wipe away the fog his quick, shallow breaths left on the glass of the sliding door, but it faded in the warm air before he could. And now there was scratching, the sound of someone trying to get in.

  Little pig, little pig, his mind plucked from some long lost fairy tale memory. Let me come in.

  Except he’d always cheered for the wolf. He’d always hated the pigs and their smug, know-it-all superior attitudes. Just because he was a kid didn’t mean he wasn’t smart.

  He knew he was supposed to be watching for the men to come back. He was supposed to make sure none of the infected came. But hadn’t she brought one of them here herself?

  The excited thrum of his heart in his chest was too insistent to ignore. He felt that teasing, empty, thrilling tickle he always got inside his belly when he watched another animal die.

  Or person.

  The little brown girl with her big brown eyes had been easy. Too easy. So terribly unsatisfying. The older boy, though, the twin . . . .

  Well, it would’ve been better if all three had been there and the mother could watch, but he’d waited long enough. The impulse had come and he hadn’t been able to resist it.

  He wished he could’ve seen their faces when they found the bodies.

  Damn it. Hurry up!

  The woman was taking her damn time, and for a while he feared she might not do it. But then she looked up into the sky and the weak light spilling out from the upstairs window showed the glistening of her tears on her cheeks, the anguish in her eyes. And by the way her shoulders slumped, he knew as sure as he knew his own name that she was going to do it.

  So he waited.

  His heart began to race faster. The excitement in his belly bloomed into something bigger than him.

  The mother pushed herself unsteadily to her feet, wobbling as if drunk. She made her way over to the dead girl and untied her from the tree.

  She was being careless. The tiny thing — even smaller than he was — immediately lunged and almost broke free from her tether. But her shirt caught on a branch and spun her sideways. Her feet slipped out from beneath her. The branch splintered and dropped her to the ground. The girl’s snapping teeth missed their mark and instead found only empty air and dirt.

  He hadn’t previously considered the bonus of two deaths for the price of one. He weighed how much greater the pleasure would be seeing them both suffer and die. But in the next moment he discounted it. If the mother died, there would be no one’s pain for him to relish.

  The mother was forcing the little dead girl closer now, over to the twisting shape of the daughter on the grass. He thought about the worms he liked to burn with his magnifying glass, and the grubs he dug up in his mother’s rooftop tomato garden. He liked the way they smelled when they crackled. It reminded him of the burnt way his father smelled.

  Part of the sheet had pulled away, exposing the back of the daughter’s left thigh. The skin was pale there and smooth. He longed to touch it, to touch her skin, her hair. He felt himself stiffen at the thought, and another spark of excitement rose and filled his body. The fog ghost reappeared for a moment on the glass.

  The zombie didn’t seem very interested in the little girl. She only wanted to bite the mother. She kept twisting around and opening her mouth, her neck straining and her jaw so wide that the boy thought the skin of her cheeks might have to tear to accommodate it. The mother forced her to turn around, guiding her ever closer to the girl on the grass, to that small, silky, bare spot of skin.

  Eight feet away now, then six. Four. The dead girl still had not noticed the offering. The mother, he saw, was sobbing openly now, nearly overcome with her grief, and he couldn’t help but smile. He reached up with his hand to feel his own face, as if unsure he really was grinning. But what he found there seemed like a foreign landscape. He couldn’t tell what it was doing. So he leaned away from the glass until he could see his reflection.

  The movement must’ve caught the mother’s attention, because she stopped and began to turn toward the house.

  He slipped back against the curtains, careful not to move them, hoping she hadn’t seen him.

  Just do it, he silently urged. Do it!

  The woman turned her attention back to the dead girl in her grip. She thrust her forward once again. Toward her own dying daughter. Hoping to stave off the certainty of one death with the uncertainty of another.

  Three feet.

  Two.

  Forcing her to bend over until the dead girl’s eyes could see nothing but the tender, young flesh. The girl moaned and pawed at the air, but still she resisted. She still wanted to bite the woman.

  The mother kicked at the backs of the dead girl’s knees, forcing her to kneel. Pushing her down so that the living skin was only a few inches away from the other girl’s rotting teeth.

  The zombie
girl snapped her jaw. He could hear it through the glass, the sharp clack. Ready to bite, wanting to tear into human flesh. Just not the flesh of the prostrate child on the ground.

  What the hell is wrong with that fucking zombie?

  And then: Do it! DO IT!

  He almost clapped in glee when the mother echoed his own thoughts, shouting the words. He felt the anguish in her voice and he let it wash over him like warm milk.

  The front door rattled again, and this time he heard new voices, more moaning. He wanted badly to stay right there and watch some more — he was beyond fascination now, almost euphoric — but the thing at the front door was getting quite insistent. It was starting to worry him that they might get in and interrupt what was happening.

  “Hurry!” he whispered, almost shouting. “Bite her!”

  But he saw the mother hesitate. He saw her pull the zombie girl away and lower her own head down. He saw the jaw of the daughter moving, trying to speak, pleading one last time before Death silenced her.

  With her free hand, the mother pulled the tape away.

  He leaned and silently placed his ear to the door, and he heard the girl say: “I want to be real, Mama.” And the mother replied: “You are.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTY ONE

  Drew spun through the radio stations until he found his old friend and colleague, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Jeremy was back at his usual antics, cloaking his message within exaggeration so that the casual listener would not notice the threads of truth embroidered within its fabric.

  Told you it would happen, people, his voice belted out through the car’s speakers. The government has finally fallen! Oh, it’s the same old bought-and-paid-for politicians we foolishly elected into office, but now we know who’s really pulling the strings. Pirates! Excuse me. I meant to say special interests. Corporations, businesses, whatever. Terrorists. They’re all the same, folks— profiteers!