A couple of their colleagues had laughed. Gilfoy hadn’t. Nor had Harrick.
“Arc’s no longer calling the shots,” she said. “Protecting Undead assets stopped being a top priority when they refused to take my pings. Now we focus on restoring public safety and security.”
“Yo, Hank. Stand back a sec.”
Castle wound up like a baseball player and slammed the towel rod into what remained of the corpse’s collapsed head. It disintegrated into a cloud of black powder and dark brown spray.
“What the hell!” Gilfoy exclaimed, wiping gore from his face.
“Just keep counting bodies. Let me worry about the evidence collecting.”
They went room-by-room, Gilfoy keeping track of the victims while Castle kept referring to some list on his Link. Each time, the overweight cop would appear to be looking for something. Then, apparently not finding it, would crush the victim’s skull in glee. “Just making sure it don’t come back,” he explained.
It seemed pretty damn obvious to Hank that they were beyond Reanimation.
They made their way from the medical units, which were gutted, to the wing housing the critical care wards. The damage here was less complete, though still fairly extensive. To Hank’s relief, they found fewer victims, which meant more of them had gotten out. Whether they’d escaped before or after dying wasn’t clear.
As they made their way through the Emergency Room to the main elevators, Hank remarked that the outbreak had started there. That was the official statement anyway, that Patient Zero had been a hospital employee.
Castle barely looked around as he swept through what had once been a waiting area, kicking aside the metal skeletons of toppled chairs and IV poles and gurneys. He didn’t even bother keeping up the pretense of identifying victims, of which there were several, or of worrying about their Reanimation potential.
Crossing the open lobby, a figure emerged from behind the largely intact reception desk. Castle didn’t see it. His eyes were on the stairs. He didn’t even know it was there until it moaned, and by then it was almost on him.
Hank shouted. The Undead thing, its clothes and hair charred and its skin covered in weeping blisters, spun around, which bought Castle another second or two. He whipped his service revolver from his holster, stepped forward and put a bullet into its skull. It stopped in its tracks, its mouth dangling open as if in surprise, then slowly tipped over onto its face.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about!” Al shouted. He spun around to face Hank. “See? We don’t need those fuckers in NCD. Bunch of pansy-assed, zombie-loving pussies!”
“I’m not comfortable with—”
“Oh geez, Gilfoy. Fucking lighten up already. You’re bringing me down.”
“All I’m saying is we should follow protocol.”
“Just come on. I ain’t got all day.”
Hank followed him to the stairwell, where Castle blew the head off another victim without breaking stride. He didn’t even confirm it was infected before doing so, just shot the woman point blank as she appeared from around a corner. The bullet took off the top right quarter of her face. The blood splatter on the wall behind her was bright red and unclotted.
“This is wrong, Castle,” Hank protested. “We shouldn’t be here doing this. What are we looking for anyway? Just tell me? It wouldn’t happen to be someone specific now, would it?” He’d lost all his patience for the charade.
Castle turned and glared at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do. What did Harrick say to you?”
They were standing at the doorway to the stairwell. A chorus of moans rose from the landing below, triggered by the sound of the officer’s voices. Hank went over and looked down into the darkness.
It was filled with at least a dozen or more of the Infected. He caught sight of a firefighter whose face appeared to have been chewed off, and his stomach clenched at the sight. Many of the walking corpses were burnt, but some had only a few shallow bites on them. They bumped mindlessly into each other, their arms and faces held up in ghoulish exaltation.
Without bothering to aim, Castle fired a couple rounds into the horde. “Tell you what, Hank,” he said. “Why don’t you stay here and put the rest of them down?”
“I’m not splitting up.”
“I’m your superior. Do what I tell you, okay?”
“Breaking protocol will only—”
“Again with the damn protocol?” Castle laughed. “There’s no protocol for any of this, Hank. Arc’s AWOL and NCD is obsolete. We’re on our own, which means we het to make the rules now!”
“But—”
“Fine. You want protocol? I’m your senior. Follow orders.”
He spun around and took the stairs by twos, leaving Hank to fume alone.
* * *
Albert Castle knew his partner didn’t like him. He knew that that dislike had grown since he put that asshole Daniels into the same cell with the two drug runners, but he’d only been following orders. Harrick had told him to get him out of the way.
He was miffed that Gilfoy had gone and spoiled his fun, though he didn’t let it bother him too much. He was about to stop the fight anyway. After all, he only meant to punish the Daniels kid, not kill him. No, what bugged him was that his younger partner was starting to question everything he did, like he thought he was so much smarter. Well, he wasn’t the one fucking the captain, was he?
The kid was getting a bit full of himself, that’s all. Getting to be too much like his copper father was, too old-school. He didn’t see that the rules were meant to be bent and broken. And even, in certain circumstances, bought and paid for.
Circumstances such as this.
He smiled as he broke through into the gloom of the second floor, his pistol out in front of him and his eyes searching for more survivors to put down.
Speaking of which, Gilfoy should be thanking him for letting him deal with the fuckers down in the stairwell. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, shooting them like they were fish in a barrel. Castle couldn’t think of too many things that were more fun than shooting things in a barrel.
He stopped and frowned at the silence. That boy better start wasting some bullets, he thought. Finally, a shot rang out. Then another. “Thatta boy. But not too fast. Take your time. Relish it.”
He kicked through the still smoldering door of Doctor White’s office and looked around. The walls and carpet were scorched, yet, incredibly the curtain over the window was still intact, as was the desk.
He stepped further inside and made his way around the furniture. He fully expected to see the charred body of the woman he’d choked to death just days before lying in exactly the same position he’d left her.
This was what the whole charade of “looking for evidence” had been for. Harrick wanted to be sure she was as dead as he told her she was, but she wanted to make sure no one traced the woman’s death back to her.
“You checked her pulse, right?” she’d asked him, after the outbreak had happened. “You made sure she was dead, right? No? Jesus Christ! Then how the hell can you be sure she’s dead?”
“Hey, I ain’t no doctor!”
“Not a doctor?” She proceeded to rip him a new one. “You can take a pulse, can’t you? Or are you too stupid to do even that?”
“Hey, I’m positive the bitch stopped breathing.”
Then, as if that weren’t bad enough, when he told her about the telephone call and the message on the machine, she asked if he thought to bring it with him.
“No.”
She’d stared him down with such ferocity that he actually felt his testicles crawl up inside his body. “Well, go back and get it.”
As much as he enjoyed screwing the woman, as much as he enjoyed the things she could make his testicles do in the privacy of the motel room they regularly used, this was one of those decidedly unpleasant sensations, and one he didn’t care to experience again anytime soon.
He circled the doctor’
s desk and stared at the objects scattered about the floor. There was no body. And no phone.
“Fuck,” he whispered. “Shit fuck!”
“What’s up?” Gilfoy asked from the doorway.
Castle almost screamed. Gilfoy actually did, when the pistol in his partner’s hand fired, lodging a bullet in the doorframe by his knee.
“Jesus!” Castle yelled. “God fucking damn it, Hank! Don’t sneak up on me like that!”
“Sorry, I—”
“Did you finish off those dead fuckers like I told you to?”
“I was going—”
He shoved Gilfoy aside and headed back to the stairwell. When he got to the first floor landing, he leaned over the railing and emptied his revolver into the remaining Undead. Click click click, went his revolver when it was empty. Click, click, click, click. Most of them were still standing.
He was tempted to go down there and finish them off with his bare hands. Meanwhile, that asshole partner of his just stood there like an idiot watching him.
“Let’s go,” Al finally said. He was out of breath, and his chest hurt. But a heart attack was the least of his worries at the moment. He had a feeling his testicles were going to be experiencing some new sensations shortly. And they weren’t going to be very pleasant ones, either.
Chapter 29
Jessie woke with the hot sun full on her face, her right foot completely stuck, and a cold, dead hand fondling her left breast.
She could imagine worse situations to be in. At least the zombie wasn’t having her for breakfast. Which isn’t to say that it wasn’t trying, either.
She exhaled as silently as she could and tried to think about how she was going to get out of this new predicament, which felt like déjà vu all over again. Hadn’t she just escaped a collapsing building not two nights before? Couldn’t the world come up with some new and creative way to crush her? She felt like she was back in Zpocalypto playing the same level over and over again.
The roof collapse had trapped her in a space between shelving units, and it was through a tiny opening between them that the zombie was trying to reach her. She’d managed to clear herself a little wiggle room, but no matter what she did, her foot simply refused to pull free.
She gave it another experimental tug. Nope, still stuck. Not that she could go anywhere anyway with that thing sitting on top of her copping a feel.
She wondered how long it would stay there before it got bored and wandered off.
If it’s anything like Reggie, probably never.
The thought almost made her laugh out loud. But then she sobered up remembering that there was a real person inside of it, someone aware of what it was doing and yet unable to stop itself. Her face flushed with embarrassment at the thought.
A half hour passed and the sun slid from one side of the gap to the other. She drifted in and out, cursing her growling stomach.
She snapped wide awake when she heard the voices. They were most definitely not inside her head.
“Don’t tell me I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about!”
It was the Live Players. Somehow, they’d found her, and they sounded angry.
“You’re the one who can’t read a fucking road map. I knew teaming up with you like this was a bad idea.”
That’s Penny, Jessie thought. Penny Smith.
“Fuck you.”
And that was Jo. How the hell did they find her so quickly?
“God, don’t you women ever shut up? Yakkity yakkity, like a bunch of hens. Are you actually trying to get us killed?”
“Fuck you, Emerson,” both women said at the same time, their voices fading as they passed the shop.
The zombie above her moaned and shifted its weight as its attention was drawn away to the new source of flesh. It withdrew its hand, finally giving Jessie’s breast a much deserved break from its molestation.
“Hold up, guys,” Penny’s voice said, getting louder again. “We passed it. The signal’s coming from that store back there.”
“In there?” asked a third female voice. “The place is a fucking mess.”
That’s Rosie. So, she is with them after all.
“Careful,” Emerson warned. “There’s another one of them dead bastards.”
“So blast it already.”
“You blast it! I’m not wasting ammo on some random—”
A shot rang out, and the zombie slammed back onto the debris pile. Jessie almost cried out as her trapped ankle got pinched. Thankfully, the pressure immediately subsided when the twice-dead corpse rolled off.
“If she’s underneath all that crap, then she’s already dead.”
“Does that mean we don’t get our money?”
“Quit your whining, Penny. Of course we do. Split four ways, just like we agreed.”
“You mean five,” Henry Jayco corrected. “There’s Rosie too, now.”
“It was you I forgot.”
“Screw you.”
“Found her Link,” Rosie announced triumphantly, not eight feet away.
Jessie’s heart nearly stopped beating.
She felt the pile shift again as someone started to climb on top. Once more, pain knifed through her ankle, and she had to bite her tongue to stifle the cry. A figure passed over her, blotting out the sun for a moment. It circled around, then returned. Rosie looked straight down the hole at her.
“See anything?” Emerson asked.
“Naw.” She shook her head and stepped away, kicking a board across the opening. “Bitch must’ve known we’d follow her out of the arcade. Bet she left the Link here to trick us.”
“Yeah, and probably booby-trapped the roof to collapse on us,” Jayco added.
“Fucking A,” Emerson agreed. “That bitch is starting to piss me off.”
“How’d she know we were tracking her?” asked Penny.
“She isn’t stupid,” Rosie replied. “If she’s smart enough to hack the network, she’s smart enough to know Arc’ll be tracking her Link.”
“Or Grant told her.”
“Don’t be stupid, Henry. Grant didn’t know. You think Arc would tell him anything after that stunt he pulled back there at the shuttle? Did you forget that he let that bitch in here?”
“No. And don’t call me stupid. I’m not stupid.”
“I’m not stupid,” Jo aped. “Christ, what a pussy.”
“Hey! I’m not the one who let her get away back there at the wall! I was all for shooting her, but you wanted to get all fancy for the cameras.”
“Bonus points.”
“Screw that,” Henry whined. “I just want my money.”
“Keep it up, pussy, and I’ll do to you what I did to Grant.
“He didn’t deserve that.”
“Are you complaining? ‘Cause you can give me the extra half mil that’s your share for taking him out, you know.”
“Jesus, people,” Emerson said. “Can we stop snapping at each other for one minute and find her?”
“Yeah,” Penny said. “As soon as we collect that bounty, I’m ditching all y’all shitheads and finishing The Game on my own.”
“What? Because two million smackaroos ain’t enough for you?”
“Pocket change compared to what I could be making after two weeks killing Players.”
“You’d have to kill a hundred just to—”
“Yeah, no prob. I could do that in my sleep.”
“Nothing counts if the network’s down. Makes me want to burn that bitch even more for fucking everything up.”
“Shut up, everyone,” Emerson said. “Rosie’s right. We’re wasting time here. That girl’s probably halfway to Brookhaven by now.”
“What’s your hurry, boys? I say we pull that heap apart and check to make sure.”
“No hurry. It’s just that this place gives me the creeps,” Emerson replied. “I feel like I’m being watched.”
“Man, talk about pussies,” Jo joked. “You didn’t complain about all the cameras inside Gameland.”
<
br /> “That’s different. I don’t like this place. Nobody’s watching us here.”
“Well, you go ahead, Jo,” Rosie said. “Waste of time pulling that heap apart, if you ask me. As for me, I ain’t breaking my back. I’m going to Brookhaven to wait for her there.”
“You damn well better be right she’ll be there.”
“Believe me, she’ll show up.”
Their voices started fading away.
“So remind me again why we didn’t just head there in the first place?”
“Because, you dipstick. Arc told us to take Grant out first.”
Jessie slowly let out her breath. She knew she’d caught a lucky break. Rosie had seen her, hadn’t she? But now she wondered if maybe she hadn’t. The bottom of the hole, two or three feet down, would’ve been dark. And Jessie’s face was probably black with mud and filth.
Or maybe Rosie had seen her and was planning on circling back after ditching everyone so she could keep the bounty all to herself.
Either way, Jessie knew she needed to get out, and soon. She didn’t want to be stuck if and when Rosie returned.
Besides, if the network failed again, they wouldn’t have to kill her, because she’d already be dead. Without her Link device, the failsafe program in her head would activate her implant.
She pushed on the pile again, hoping to get it to shift. Something slipped off and banged when it hit the ground.
“Hey guys!” a voice shouted nearby. It sounded like Henry. “Stop, guys! Wait!”
She could hear his feet pounding as he ran after them.
“Damn it, guys!” he shouted. “Didn’t you notice I was gone? I was taking a freaking piss!”
They laughed until Jessie couldn’t hear them anymore.
* * *
By twisting, she managed to gain a little leverage and was finally able to pull her foot out of her shoe. Slowly, she widened the hole above her by pushing aside the boards and shelves. It was exhausting work, but she eventually managed to worm her way out.
More than once she feared the noise would attract other Undead to her location. At one point, her muscles cramped and dizziness overwhelmed her. When she finally emerged forty minutes later, she was shaking so badly that she had to sit down with her head between her legs until the world stopped spinning.
S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) Page 94
