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

by Tanpepper, Saul

  “Oh, she thinks she’s funny bringing him in here. Ironic. Like I’d forgive that bitch. Well, screw her. She’ll be sorry she didn’t kill my Player when she had the chance. Pause. I said pause game, damn it!”

  Off went the goggles. “Mom! Where’s my—”

  Her eyes alit on the sweating can of Red Bull on the table. The stupid, sneaky cow hadn’t even bothered to clean up the broken glass at the base of the wall.

  “Fucking losers, the whole fucking lot of you! You hear me, you cow?”

  She plucked a couple of pills from the baggie and tossed them into her mouth, then washed them down with the drink, swishing the noxious mixture around a few times with a distasteful grimace. To her, the drink looked and tasted like piss. She grabbed several more pills and chewed them, relishing the way her vision tunneled and her muscles began to feel like high tension steel wires.

  After a few deep breaths, she pulled the goggles back over her head. The scene had shifted in just the few seconds she’d been away.

  Someone was speaking: “—not going anywhere, Micah.”

  Jessie’s reappearance took Siennah by surprise. She hadn’t expected the coward to return, but there she was, not five feet away, close enough that all Siennah had to do is reach up and wrap her hands around that puny neck of hers and squeeze like she’d done in the bathroom at school just a few days ago.

  The Player’s dead hands appeared before her eyes, their unfeeling fingers groping the air between them.

  Jessie didn’t even flinch. She had her head cocked slightly to one side, as if she were listening to something.

  “What the hell is she doing?”

  The Player wasn’t responding. Its arms extended as it tried again and again to grab Jessie and pull her closer. Hungry animal sounds came out of its throat. Siennah was fascinated by all this, but she wasn’t about to let the Player just kill and eat her, not just yet anyway. She had other things planned.

  “Resume play,” she muttered and flexed her fingers. The Player aped her movements.

  “Just now?” Jessie said, frowning at him. “Right now at this moment?”

  Micah made a hissing sound in response. Siennah almost chuckled. The bitch actually believed she was talking to her old friend. “He’s dead, you stupid bitch! Get over it!”

  Jessie leaned in.

  “Thatta girl,” Siennah murmured. “Come on, just a few more inches. I want that ten million dollars. A little closer . . . .”

  But Jessie was careful not to get too close.

  “Come on, bitch,” Siennah whispered. “Just . . . another . . .”

  Before Siennah knew what she was doing, Jessie had reached forward and begun to wrap the Player’s wrists with tape. Siennah tried to pull away, but it was too late.

  “Bitch! You fucking cunt whore!” She tried to break the tape, but it was too strong.

  Jessie’s face twisted. She got to her feet and started to walk away before spinning around again and pointing. “Why?” she screamed at the Player. “What did I ever do to you?”

  Siennah laughed nervously. The bitch really had lost her marbles.

  “I’m talking to you, Siennah Davenport!”

  Siennah’s knees weakened. “Y-you can hear me?” she stammered.

  “What did we ever do to you?” Jessie shouted. She leaned in again, swiping angry tears from her cheek. “Why Micah? Why couldn’t you just leave us alone?”

  “Me?” Siennah shouted back. “You were the one who was always—”

  “He loved me. And now look at him! You’re just using him to get back at me!”

  Jessie pushed Micah’s hands to one side and leaned in even closer. Siennah tried to grab her, but it was useless with the Player’s hands tied. “Listen to me, Siennah. I know you’re in there, and I know you can hear me. I wish I could hear you, but I can’t. I’m asking you not to do this.”

  The Player hissed. Siennah swung around again. She wanted to knock the bitch upside the head, but Jessie ducked easily out of the way. The Player fell.

  “Fucking clumsy shit!” Siennah cried. “Get the fuck up!”

  “Listen, Siennah, I need your help, your father’s help. This thing with Arc? It’s wrong! We have to stop them. If we don’t, then you know what’s going to happen? It’ll be bad. Bad for everyone, you and your family, my family. Everyone. They want to control our m—”

  The image and sound began to break up.

  “—ienna—

  “—op them. Our impl—

  “—to help. Please. I can’t do this alone.”

  Siennah swung again, and this time she felt the Player’s fists connect, but she didn’t have the satisfaction of knowing what she’d hit.

  The image had gone blank. A split second later she lost all feedback.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  The sound of static filled her ears.

  Siennah stood there for several minutes and waited. She remembered the way Jessie had begged for her to stop, but it was a small consolation. She was too angry about losing the connection again.

  Now she had another bone to pick with Arc. How else had the zombitch known that she’d been the one to buy the Sandervol kid? It was supposed to be confidential. They must have told her.

  Not to mention their fucked up network keeps going out!

  The longer she sat the angrier she became.

  Finally, about an hour later, the connection came back. But this time it was obvious the Daniels girl had left and who knew when she was going to come back, although that seemed to be the plan. She had taped both of the Player’s wrists and ankles around the base of a church pew.

  “You don’t think I won’t just chew my way out?” Siennah screamed. Her head was throbbing like a son of a bitch. It felt funny, both too full and too empty at the same time.

  She tried to get the Player to open its mouth, but that stupid bitch had taped that shut, too.

  “Son of a bitch! You stupid fucking cunt!” Siennah raged. “Get back here! You can’t do this to me! Get the fuck back heeeere! I’m going to fucking destroy you!”

  * * *

  Deep in a dark closet in the back of the house, Missus Davenport cowered in abject terror. In her hands was a Felipe-Janssen fillet knife, one of the set her parents had bought in Grand Forks years back and which she kept hidden beneath the corner of her mattress. It was still as sharp as the day it was new.

  She wondered how long it would be before she’d have to use it.

  Chapter 15

  The feed for The Game kept going in and out, flashing between provocative images of Jessie — standing alone and bloody in the rain, her injured arm splinted against her side, close ups of her bruised face, the wildness in her eyes, her dragging Micah’s body up the stairs to some crumbling brick and white clapboard building — and periods of blank static filled only with Arc’s infuriatingly vague promise that the show would return at any moment. The effect was to keep Kelly and Jessie’s mother glued to the television set.

  “Why is my daughter on my TV?” she kept asking. “Why is she back in that place? How did she get there?”

  He didn’t answer at first, just shook his head and tried pinging his father, but the network glitch had affected the communication stream this time and he couldn’t get through.

  He wished he knew what the hell Jessie was doing. He couldn’t understand it. Why was she wasting her time with Micah? Why hadn’t she left him behind?

  Why hadn’t she just finished him off?

  He couldn’t sit still. He wanted to get up and pace. Or flee from that room. But Missus Daniels had a death grip on his hand and refused to let him go. Given all that she’d been through, he was surprised at her strength.

  “I need you to tell me everything you know, Kelly.”

  He began by telling her how Jessie thought Micah had faked his conscription and hacked their implants. “She went back to try and stop him.”

  “But it wasn’t him, was it?” She flicked her eyes toward the televisi
on screen. “That didn’t look fake at all.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  She studied Kelly’s face for a moment. “Was he innocent? Did he deserve to be executed?”

  He felt his face grow hot. He looked away, unable to meet the accusing look in her eyes. Not a day had passed since the trial that he hadn’t thought of Micah’s conscription, of his dying confession. How vindicated had he felt that Micah was gone and couldn’t steal Jessie away from him? He’d refused to acknowledge that he was being petty. Petty and self-righteous.

  But Micah hadn’t betrayed them; he hadn’t betrayed his friendships with any of them. If anything, by keeping his true feelings secret until the very end, he’d shown how loyal a friend he really was.

  “No, he didn’t deserve it.”

  “If not Micah, then who?” Missus Daniels asked.

  “Ashley.” He felt relieved that the conversation was shifting away from Micah. “She blamed Jessie for her grandmother’s conscription.”

  There was a flash in his mother-in-law’s eyes, a rippling of the muscles in her cheeks which indicated anger. She’d never spoken negatively about Ashley, but Kelly had always sensed her dislike for the girl. His own parents felt much the same way, though they had always been more vocal about her to him: “She’s trouble, son. You make sure she doesn’t get her claws into you like she has that poor Reginald boy. He’s such a sweet kid. He doesn’t know any better.”

  “Did Jessie find her?” Missus Daniels asked.

  He nodded.

  “And?”

  “Ashley’s . . . dead.”

  He didn’t have to explain how it happened, not that he had the details himself. It was enough to know that there had been a fatal confrontation and that Jessie had managed to come out of it alive.

  Missus Daniels’s head sank back into the pillow. She closed her eyes.

  “There’s more,” Kelly continued. “There’s another reason Jessie had to go back.”

  He told her about the file that Eugene Halliwell — Father Heale — had assembled and uploaded into Arc’s mainframe, a file which ended up on Jessie’s Link after he, Kelly, had unwittingly triggered its transfer there on the day the six of them broke onto Long Island.

  Six weeks, was that all it had been? It felt like ages.

  He told her how the file required a pair of software keys, one to access it, the other to decrypt it, and how it was believed to contain all of Halliwell’s research notes.

  “We were used to smuggle it out without Arc’s knowledge, but they must have found out about it.”

  “That explains the bounty. It explains why they want her dead, but not why she went back.”

  “One of the keys is on Ulysses’s Link. She went back to find his body and retrieve it.”

  Footsteps pounded the hallway outside of the room, drawing their attention for a moment. Kelly stood up expecting the police to rush in and take him away. But it was just hospital staff in scrubs. They ran past the room without even looking in. He breathed a sigh of relief.

  “And the other key?” she asked.

  “Doctor White has it in her possession.” He pulled his hand from hers and she let him go. “I should go check on her. She was admitted to the hospital last night after—” He hesitated. “After she passed out in her office.”

  “I know. I overheard the nurses talking about her during shift change. They say she has some kind of blood infection.”

  Another person ran past the door.

  “What’s going on out there?”

  Kelly stepped over and looked out into the hallway. A crowd had gathered at the nurse’s station. Several people were on their Links, all talking at once. Snippets of conversation drifted down the hallway, random words, though nothing that explained why they were acting this way. He thought he heard someone say the police were on their way.

  “What is it?” Missus Daniels called from the bed.

  He shook his head, but kept a wary eye on the people. “I don’t know. But I think I should probably leave.”

  Overhead, the intercom crackled to life: Code Gray in the Emergency Room! All code teams and security staff report to the ER immediately! Code Gray in the ER! The crowd detached itself from the counter and headed en masse to the elevators.

  He turned back to tell her that it was okay, but she wasn’t looking at him anymore. Her eyes were on the television. He hurried back over and checked the screen. It was just the same useless message about technical difficulties.

  “What is it?” he asked her.

  The noise level in the hallway spiked as a new announcement came over the intercom: All regular staff report to your stations immediately! Initiate emergency lockdown procedure!

  “Kelly!” She tried to grab his arm and missed. “Close the door!”

  But he shook his head. If it was an outbreak, then they needed to get out, not lock themselves in. Staying here would only delay the inevitable.

  He checked in the closet and located the bag of clothes she’d been found in and cursed himself and Eric for not remembering to pack her some fresh ones. “I think you better get dressed.”

  “I can’t even stand.”

  He spun around, his eyes flashing. “Try, Missus D! I’ll be right back.”

  “Where are you going?” she cried. But he was already gone.

  He tore down the hall and slammed through the stairwell door. It banged against the wall before shutting hard behind him. A man ran past him going down, a Link pressed tight against his cheek. “I don’t know!” he screamed. “But I’m getting the hell out of here!” He paid Kelly no heed.

  Other shouts of panic reverberated through the stairwell.

  Kelly exited at the next landing and headed for the Medical Ward. The reception station there was empty. Links rung unanswered. Some of the ambulatory patients were standing at their doorways, the openings of their hospital gowns gathered behind them in their hands, looks of confusion and wonder on their faces. He ignored their inquiries as he checked the names on each door until he found the one he was looking for.

  “Doctor White!”

  The sight of the woman occupying the bed horrified him. She seemed to have aged twenty years overnight. Her skin had turned a sickly, pasty white. He called her name again, then stepped over and shook her until she opened her eyes. They were the eyes of a woman on the fringe of death.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but all that came out was a dry puff of air which smelled faintly of burning plastic.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, handing her a plastic cup with water and helping her drink.

  “Kelly?” she whispered. “What’s happening?”

  A rattling cough came from the other bed, but he couldn’t see the patient behind the curtain.

  “I don’t know,” Kelly lied. “Something down in the ER. Maybe someone with a gun. They’ve called for security.”

  He could hear sirens now outside the building. He thought about going to the window, but for some reason he didn’t want to see what was in the other bed.

  “NCD?” White asked.

  He shook his head. “What’s a Code Gray?”

  Her already pale face lost its remaining color. “Outbreak,” she said, and started pushing herself up.

  There was a muffled bang from outside the room, then a double pop pop.

  “Gunfire,” Doctor White said. She didn’t sound surprised or alarmed.

  Kelly thought it might be coming from outside the building, but he couldn’t be sure.

  The patient in the other bed coughed again, and the rattling noise followed for a moment before it stopped. There was more gunfire, this time clearly coming from outside, probably visible from the window. More sirens rose in the distance as additional emergency vehicles arrived.

  He reached the window in six strides and pushed it open. The noise level trebled. Below him was a scene out of the disaster films Reggie’s dad liked to watch.

  “What do you see?” Doctor White asked. Her voice was still a
whisper, though it seemed to be growing stronger.

  He scanned the crowds, trying to make out what the people down there were doing. Men and women were running everywhere, screaming, some in hospital gowns, some in scrubs, some in street clothes. Uniformed police were trying to control them, but they weren’t having any success.

  Another gunshot drew his eyes to a bunch of people near the edge of the parking lot.

  The gun fired again and thick blood spouted from a woman’s head as she fell. Kelly felt his body go cold. He recognized the ungainly walk of the Undead in the crowd.

  A man running past tripped over the curb. He was quickly overtaken by two of the monsters that broke away from the huddle of people.

  More of the dead stepped away, including one Kelly recognized. It was the attendant he’d spoken with at the elevator earlier in the morning. He wore a beard of crimson and his blue hospital scrubs were splattered as if he’d spilled grape juice on them.

  The patient in the other bed took another noisy breath. He looked over at her and gasped.

  She was ancient — was, in fact, the oldest person Kelly could remember ever seeing in real life — and he realized that she was one of the few who’d been granted a waiver from conscription. Her toothless mouth hung open and her cheeks sunk like inverted sails into the gaps. She had come here to die, but her death was from the rarest of all diseases: old age.

  “Why aren’t you getting dressed?” he cried, when he saw Doctor White just sitting there. “We have to leave!” He ripped open the plastic bag holding her clothes and began to pull them out.

  “Why haven’t they sounded the emergency sirens?”

  “I don’t know,” Kelly panted. “The network’s down. Maybe there’s a power outage, too. Damn it! Where’s your shoes?”

  She reached for the shirt and began to pull it over her head, over the hospital gown.

  “Can you finish on your own? I have to get Missus Daniels.”

  “Go,” Doctor White told him. “Just put the bed rail down for me. I can manage.”

  “Sit tight and I’ll come back for you. My car’s just outside.”

  He didn’t wait for her to respond. He bolted through the door and made his way to the main stairs. He didn’t worry about the police anymore. They had their hands full and weren’t going to be looking for him.