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

by Tanpepper, Saul

  He found Missus Daniels slumped in the hallway and very nearly passed her before recognizing the clothes she wore. “I told you to wait upstairs,” he scolded her, throwing her arm around his shoulders and lifting her to her feet.

  “I thought I could walk.”

  Back down the hallway they went. She dragged her feet. Down two steps, three. He nearly stumbled. The second floor landing was six more steps down and she had no more strength. Her feet kept tangling, making it hard for him to assist her. He picked her up in his arms.

  “Where are we going?”

  “There’s a wheelchair in Doctor White’s room.”

  Doctor White had managed to get herself sitting up, but she still hadn’t put on her shoes. Kelly shouted at her to hurry. She waved him off. “Get her down to your car,” she said. “Close the door on your way out. I’ll be here.”

  There was no time to argue, so Kelly did as she said. He raced back down the hall with Missus Daniels in the wheelchair, threading his way between patients and staff to the utility elevator. The sounds of gunfire were now all around. Muffled bangs came from overhead and below. They reverberated through the hallway. He punched the button again, and cursed the lift’s slowness.

  The main elevator doors at the other end of the hallway dinged open, and he considered making a run for them. But he was surrounded and helpless to do anything but watch as the crowd surged ahead of him. A half second later, they started to push back, shouting with dismay. Even with the noise, Kelly could hear the moans.

  Behind him, the scratched green doors of the utility lift began to open. He braced himself, but no one came out at them. He had to jostle with a dozen others to get in, then squeezed into the space along the side wall that was still wet with fresh blood.

  After exiting on the ground floor, they careened past the unmanned security desk before detouring through the nearly empty Radiology Department. An officer rushed past him without looking. He screamed into his Link that they needed to “call in the Zombie Squad!”

  “Can’t spare anyone,” the Link squawked. “Head of NCD’s in lockup.”

  Missus Daniels’s head swiveled and she frowned at Kelly over her shoulder. All he could do was shrug. “At least we know where he is,” he said.

  “You need to get him out, Kelly.”

  “It’s probably the safest place he can be right now. Right now, it’s you and Doctor White I’m worried about.”

  The back parking lot was just as bad as the front. Traffic was snarled as drivers tried to escape the chaos. As far as he could see, the dead hadn’t yet made it to this side of the hospital, but the noise would draw them soon enough unless the police could stop them first. He had little confidence they would.

  After getting Missus Daniels into the back seat of his car, he spun around and headed back with the wheelchair, but then abandoned it at the elevator. It would be easier to just carry Doctor White out.

  He took the stairs three at a time, but when he arrived at her room, the door was open and the bed was empty.

  The adjoining bed was also empty, but her sheets were covered in blood.

  Chapter 16

  Tighter.

  “Yeah, I think I got this, Micah.”

  I’m just saying.

  “I know what I’m doing.”

  Okay, maybe you do, but I don’t. You realize that, right? You know I can’t control myself. You know how strong the dead can be. They’re not like they once were.

  “That’s something I never really understood,” Jessie said as she bit off another two-foot strip of tape from the roll she’d taken from Ashley’s pack. She wrapped it tightly around Micah’s wrists. “How can they be so strong? I mean, it’s all the same muscles you had when you were alive, right?”

  Micah didn’t answer.

  Jessie leaned back and covered her face. “God, I’m sorry. That was stupid of me.”

  It’s not your fault.

  “No?” she said, standing up. She hurled the tape into a corner of the room with a frustrated cry. “Then whose fault is it that you’re dead? If we’d never met, you’d still be alive!”

  That’s not true.

  “How can you say that? We dragged you off this island and took you straight to the police! We watched you die!” She was sobbing now. “I was so . . . . I was so god damn angry with you, you know that? I couldn’t understand how you, you of all people, could betray us.” She wiped a sleeve across her face.

  Why did you come back?

  She told him about Kelly and Reggie kidnapping her mother and starving her to death, until she realized that someone had hacked their implants.

  And you thought it was me? You came back to stop me?

  “It wasn’t you. I know that now. It was Ashley.”

  I would never betray you, Jess. You know that.

  “Then why the hell didn’t you try to defend yourself? You never even tried! You— you just let yourself be executed!”

  I had to do it. It was the only way to know for sure. Jessie, you know I—

  “No!” she shouted, spinning back toward him. “Please, Micah. Don’t say it. I can’t take anymore guilt.”

  He didn’t say anything for several seconds. Then: It wasn’t just me, you know. We all love you, Jessie, every single one of us.

  “Why?”

  Because — and even though I can only speak for myself in this regard, I’m pretty sure the others felt the same way — we love you because we all saw how badly the world misjudged you. We all felt like we needed to make up for what the rest of the world failed to see in you.

  Jessie went and stood over the tape roll. She wanted to stomp it flat against the church’s wooden floor. She was trembling now, both with anguish and guilt.

  “Ashley hated me,” she whimpered.

  Of all of us, she loved you the most. And that’s actually saying a lot. That girl was terribly unhappy inside. She couldn’t even love herself, but I know she loved you.

  “She hated me.”

  Hate is just another face of love. You can’t hate someone without loving them.

  “Do you hate me?”

  No, Jessie. Of course not.

  She returned to him and kneeled down. She tried not to see the shell before her, not as a monster, but as a broken machine he was trapped inside. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  She had securely taped his feet to the end of one pew. Now she grabbed his bound wrists and pulled them grimly toward the other end. She had to strain against the zombie’s struggles, but she finally managed to get him stretched out and secure. His body still writhed and sounds of hunger came from his throat.

  “That should hold you while I’m gone,” she told him. “What will you do? You’ll be so bored.”

  She thought she could feel him chuckle inside her head. No more bored than I have been.

  She smiled wistfully down at him. “You were always the smartest one of us, you know that? A genius trapped inside a body that couldn’t seem to be able to keep up with its own mind. Is that why you took drugs and drank? They helped slow your mind down.”

  I was still always the best gamer of you lot.

  “Because you cheated! You hacked your way through all the levels. I was the only one who ever made it through fair and square, on my own merits. I did it by following the rules of the game.”

  And that’s why you’ve got the best chance of any of us to survive this. You play the game you’re given, Jessie, not the one you wish you were in. You learn its limits and you adapt to them, rather than forcing the game to adapt to you.

  She sighed. “To be honest, I don’t know if I’ll survive this. I’m not even sure I want to anymore.”

  You will.

  She stood up again and made to leave.

  You should probably cover my mouth with tape, too. Otherwise, I’ll just chew through my arms to get free. You know Siennah won’t stop at anything to send me after you, not even if I were to chew through both arms and both legs.

  She lo
oked at him in shock for a moment before bursting out in laughter. “Do you remember that old movie Reggie’s dad played for us once, the one where the knight gets his arms and legs cut off, yet he keeps thinking he can attack?”

  ‘It’s just a scratch!’ Micah aped. Even in her mind she could hear him trying to say it with a British accent, which was hilarious since his southern accent kept creeping through.

  “ ‘A scratch? Your arm’s off!’ ”

  ‘No, it isn’t! I’ve ‘ad worse. Come on, you pansy!’

  “ ‘You, Sir Knight, are brave indeed, but the fight is mine!’ ” She pointed at him. “ ‘You’ve got no arms left!’ ”

  ‘Oh, I see! Running away, eh? Come back here and take what’s coming to you! I’ll bite your legs off!’

  Jessie’s laughter faded away even as Micah’s echoed inside her head. “I wish we’d never come here this summer.”

  I don’t think we had any choice, not about coming, or about what happened or what’s going to happen.

  “What do you mean?”

  There’s a war coming. I can feel it. The network is the battlefield— we are the battlefield. And the spoils.

  “What do you mean?”

  It’s always been about control.

  “I always thought it was about profit.”

  Is there a difference?

  Jessie was silent for a moment. She had never been a particularly philosophical person, so to be having such a conversation with someone she was still trying to wrap her mind around being both dead and alive was more than she could handle.

  You can end the war, Jess. The codex is the key. Without it—

  “No! I need to get my grandfather’s Link, Micah. That’s our best chance to take out Arc, with a cure. Without the Undead, the codex will be useless.”

  Will it?

  “Of course. What else could they use it for?”

  To control the living. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.

  “That’s against the law. There are measures to prevent—”

  The rules have changed, Jess. What makes you think they haven’t already begun trying?

  She was going to shake her head, but then realized the idea wasn’t that farfetched. “Maybe,” she said with a sigh, “but I’m still getting that Link. Think of all the people we can save with a cure. It’s not too late. Even for you.”

  It is, Jess.

  “No, it’s not! Don’t say that!”

  Jessie, no.

  “I’m serious! We can bring you back!”

  Jessie, stop. You can’t.

  She was crying openly now. “Doctors are doing amazing things with genes and cells these days, regenerative medicine, and—”

  No! I said no, Jess. Please. I don’t want to be brought back. I can’t imagine anyone of us would want to be brought back.

  “Don’t talk like that! You don’t know. You’re not dead!”

  Listen to me, don’t let this opportunity go to waste. Something’s happening in the Stream. Someone’s manipulating the codex. I can feel it fighting itself, and I fear something worse is about to happen. You need to stop it. Get my tablet from the mainframe and—

  “It’s gone, Micah! Someone took it.”

  But then she remembered the tablet she’d found inside Ben’s duffel. Ashley must have been the one to remove it. But now it was buried beneath the rubble of the orange building.

  “I know where it is, but I’m going to Brookhaven first, Micah. After that, I’ll come back for you and we can destroy the codex together.”

  Jessie, please.

  “No, you made your decision. I’m sorry, but I’ve made mine.” She stood up. “I have to do this.”

  She waited for him to try and talk her out of it. But as she strode across the dusty worn floor to the front door of the crumbling church, he kept his thoughts to himself. She could still feel him inside her head, a presence. She could feel him struggling, wanting her to turn around. But all he had to do it was words, and they had already failed him.

  She paused only a moment to glance back at him, then she stepped out into the unexpectedly bright light of the day. The storm clouds had finally broken apart, leaving the air humid. She shut the door and checked that it was latched.

  “Stop right there, young lady,” a voice boomed from somewhere across the road.

  Jessie spun around in time to see a figure disappear behind a car across the street.

  “Don’t you dare move a muscle. That is, unless you want me to put a bullet in your brain.”

  Chapter 17

  Kelly ran into his first Infected in the hallway as he exited Doctor White’s room, a gargantuan woman whose hospital gown didn’t cover nearly as much real estate as it should have. A large chunk of her neck was gone, almost certainly down the gullet of her killer. The wound was fresh, minutes old at best, and still pumping out pints of bright red blood from the mangled jugular in a steady beat, not by the action of her inert heart but by the bellows-like compression-expansion of her body as she listed from one side of the hallway to the other.

  He traced the blood trail back to its origin, to a room at the other end of the hallway, and shut the door.

  He could’ve just turned around and headed in the other direction and the thing probably wouldn’t even have noticed him. But something instinctive kicked in inside of him and he stepped over to the shambling corpse and grabbed a handful of her hair. With a grunt of effort, he slammed her head into the wall beneath the doorplate.

  MAISIE, the label indicated. MAISIE FONTAINE. AGE 23.

  She extracted herself from the collapsed drywall, surprising Kelly. Given the damage to her skull, he’d expected her to crumple to the floor, but instead he seemed only to have startled her awake.

  She turned around and hissed at him. The skin of her face was as chalky white as the plaster dust covering it. A puffy hand shot out and grabbed a handful of his cheek. He felt her nails digging in as she squeezed, felt the white hot pain of his flesh being stretched. She pulled him to her and opened her mouth and let out a moan that would have sapped the strength from most men.

  As it would have his, if it had happened a month before.

  Kelly slapped at the arm with his left hand while reaching up with his right, and grimly thrust his fingers into the thick flesh below the chin.

  Her jaw opened and snapped shut, then opened again. He could feel her throat working, pistoning beneath his palm as she chewed off a piece of her own cheek and swallowed it. She moaned again and her mouth gaped so wide that he thought he heard the joint dislocate. Then she vomited.

  The hot, chunky mess coated his arm and dripped off his elbow. It smelled like rancid orange juice and maple syrup.

  This time he directed her head at the metal part of the door frame. This time her skull collapsed when it made contact. This time poor dead Maisie fell in a heap to the ground.

  She’d checked out against doctor’s orders.

  He quickly searched each of the other rooms, calling Doctor White’s name over and over again. He encountered several more Infected, but didn’t bother with them. He’d already wasted too much time.

  Many of the living he saw were bloody but not yet dead. They lay in pools of their own coagulating blood and vomit, moaning in pain as if practicing for the inescapable moment their bodies would enter the hell of oblivion. Their killers, it seemed to Kelly, had been more interested in sampling than in gorging themselves, as if this were some kind of macabre buffet.

  He shut their doors, as well. They would die sooner or later, and when they came back he didn’t need their numbers adding to the ones already on the loose.

  “Doctor White?” he shouted. “It’s Kelly!”

  He was surprised to see some patients lying untouched in their beds. Some were awake and aware, but most were too sick. These doors he also closed.

  He was nearly down to the second floor when he smelled the smoke. It filled the stairwell quickly, burning his eyes and lungs. The fire alarm starte
d ringing, and the overhead sprinklers burst open, spraying bucketsful of water on his head and shoulders.

  He slammed through the landing door and ran through the crowded hallways, sliding through the pooling water and knocking into people as he went. He didn’t care if they were alive or dead. They grabbed at him, whether for help or hunger, but he pushed them all away. He didn’t heed their cries.

  The door to Doctor White’s office was locked tight, already repaired since yesterday. Knocking yielded no response.

  “It’s an outbreak!” someone screamed as they ran past. “ Get your ass out of here!” The words were barely audible over the alarm.

  The hallway was clearing. In the haze, Kelly could see a lone figure lying in a heap against the far wall, their body jerking as they coughed. He stepped closer and saw that it wasn’t Doctor White. It was a man, and he had a security patch on the sleeve of his shirt. A gash on his forehead might have been a bite. Kelly couldn’t be sure.

  “You okay over there?” Kelly shouted, but the alarm was too loud. Even so, the man looked up. He reached out before collapsing.

  Smoke rolled along the ceiling like an inverted river. It smothered the fluorescent lights, casting a gray pall through the hallway. Gagging, Kelly dropped to his hands and knees and turned back to the door. If White had returned here after getting herself dressed, she might be unconscious inside.

  You shouldn’t have left her alone!

  “Too late for second-guessing,” he muttered. He crooked his arm around his mouth and took a deep breath, then stood up and kicked at the door. But all he managed to do was knock himself into the middle of the hallway on his ass. He scrambled back to his feet with a quick glance back at the injured man, then returned to the door.

  The first explosion was barely large enough to shake the floor and register in his mind.

  The second was much more powerful. It took out the power, plunging him into near total darkness. The alarms went silent, though the ringing in his ears remained. To the left, he could barely make out the faint red glow of the exit sign over the stairwell. Another red light to the right hovered over the portable fire extinguisher.