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

by Tanpepper, Saul

  Jo’s lip caught the corner of a Bible, pulling her damaged mouth into a sneer. She reared back, trying to dislodge Jessie’s hands, but her grip was like a vise now.

  Jessie pulled again, this time slamming Jo’s head into the solid oak frame with a resounding thunk!

  “Stop!” a voice commanded. “That’s enough!”

  She yanked Jo back again, but froze when she heard the click of the gun’s safety. She raised her eyes to where Rosie was standing at the other end of the row, the gun pointed at her head.

  “I said, that’s enough.”

  A smirk crossed Jo’s face. She reached up to wipe a line of bloody snot from her cheek. “ ‘Bou fuggin ime, Hay-gahg,” she slurred. “Fuggin cun.” She raised her fist and slammed it once more into Jessie’s face.

  * * *

  The darkness was so absolute that when Jessie woke, she wasn’t sure her eyes were even open. In fact, she couldn’t be sure she was awake. She’d been hearing voices for a while, flitting about her, wavering between being very close by and somewhere far away. But had she dreamt them? There seemed no clear distinction between herself, her mind, and everything else.

  Her face hurt, she knew that. Badly. But so did her brain. Just thinking took effort and energy she didn’t have.

  After a while, she tried to raise her hand to touch her cheeks, but she found she couldn’t. Her wrists were bound behind her, as were her ankles.

  The myriad voices eventually coalesced into two and then separated enough for her to recognize them: Jo and Rosie. They were arguing.

  “I’m not letting you steal this from me,” Rosie said. “I don’t trust you.”

  “Oh, why nah?” came Jo’s reply, her voice low and seductive, yet still missing the hard consonants. She sounded like she had a mouthful of cotton.

  Jessie snorted silently. She hoped she’d bitten off half her tongue.

  But her amusement was short-lived as the reality of her confinement came back to her. The only reason she was still alive was because Rosie didn’t trust Jo not to cut her out of her share of the winnings.

  She tugged at the bindings — plastic ties — but only managed to make herself bleed.

  Getting the hood off of her head was easier, but afforded little benefit in terms of sight. It was still dark. They were outside under the stars.

  A breeze caressed her cheek.

  The voices died down. Jessie could smell food, could hear the crackle of something cooking and the soft tink of metal on metal. A memory of Eric taking her camping flashed through her mind, of marshmallows cooked using green sticks cut fresh from the surrounding trees. The campfire. Tents. Sleeping bags.

  A tear rolled down her cheek. There were no trees here for cutting sticks. There were no marshmallows.

  We’re back at the wall. That’s why they feel safe.

  Except the wall wasn’t inside her head, which meant it wasn’t inside the Undead’s either.

  “Hungry?”

  Jo’s voice startled her out of her thoughts. The woman was little more than a vague shape in the darkness. Something bounced off Jessie’s chest, then rolled to the dirt beside her.

  “Have some beans. There may be one or two left in the can.” She laughed quietly. “Oh, I may have pissed in it. Beggars can’t be choosers.”

  The dirt crunched as she walked briskly away.

  Jessie’s stomach rumbled. She was hungry and thirsty. But even worse, she was starting to get a headache, and not one of her usual ones, either.

  This one was in the base of her neck.

  Chapter 58

  Reggie sat straight up in the chair, stunned by what he thought he’d heard. Could it be real? Had the girl actually spoken? Or was it just a moan?

  Kelly was also leaning forward and staring, the same look of disbelief on his face that Reggie knew was on his own.

  “Cassie?” her mother said, her voice hushed.

  But the girl had gone silent and still.

  “I guess she’s sleeping.” Doctor White lowered her head to the cushion and closed her eyes.

  Kelly stood up and gestured for Reggie to follow him into the kitchen. There was a new urgency in the way he carried himself. The lost and bewildered look was gone, leaving only a steely determination. “We’ll leave as soon as the streets clear.”

  “Oh, now you’re eager to leave. What changed?”

  Kelly’s eyes flicked in the direction of the living room. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. In the end, he just shrugged and said, “Jessie needs us.”

  “What the hell did we just witness in there, Kel?” Reggie asked.

  “The girl spoke. It gives me hope. Against all odds, Doctor White made it happen. I— I guess I didn’t really believe it was possible. Any of this. Maybe even Jessie.”

  Reggie still had his doubts — not of Jessie, but of the cure — but he decided to keep them to himself. It didn’t matter what he believed, as long as it got Kelly moving again.

  “We’ll head straight for Jayne’s Hill,” Kelly told him. “We’ll take the main roads, leave signs along the way, just in case we cross paths.”

  Doctor White stepped into the kitchen. To Reggie, it seemed that she had also changed. She looked older now, as if she’d been held in suspended animation and all the missing years were just now catching up with her. And yet, at the same time, the woman appeared more vibrant, more alive than she had during the previous couple of days since he’d first met her. The circles under her eyes were less severe, which was surprising given how little they’d all slept.

  “There’s a car in the garage,” she told them. “I’ve plugged in the battery for you. You can take it.”

  “You’re okay with us leaving you?”

  “I’m not going anywhere, not until Cassie’s recovered enough.”

  Reggie realized that that wasn’t what Kelly had meant. Despite this new evidence that the cure was working, he too still feared what the little girl might do. They just didn’t know.

  They repacked their bags, divvying up the cans that Kelly scavenged from the mostly empty shelves in the pantry. Most of it was dog food, but it would do in a pinch. And there was no dog around to eat it.

  Kelly scrounged what he thought was useful from the house and added it to the back seat and trunk of the car. The Audi’s engine chugged to life after a great deal of coaxing. Black smoke belched from the exhaust for several minutes before clearing. The engine creaked and rattled.

  “Tank’s half full,” he reported. It was almost four-thirty and they were just waiting for the sun to come up. They peeked out the front door at the Undead standing out in the moonlight. “Always gives me the creeps seeing them out there like that.”

  Reggie went back and stood in the doorway to the living room and watched Doctor White and Cassie. He was anxious to go, to get away from this house and the strange woman and her Undead daughter who seemed to be miraculously clawing her way back to life.

  Doctor White had been crouched on the floor by the girl’s head, lovingly stroking her hair. Every once in a while he thought he saw the girl’s chest rise and fall the tiniest bit, but it may have been his imagination. Since that one utterance, the little thing hadn’t moved or made another sound.

  “Any change?” Kelly whispered.

  Reggie shook his head.

  “She’s still asleep.” Doctor White slowly turned her head to face them. “Sleep is healing.” Her voice quavered. She raised her hand to touch the girl’s face, but it didn’t quite make it all the way there.

  “She feels warmer. That’s something.”

  Reggie bit his tongue and kept his thoughts to himself.

  “You’ve got enough food and water here to last a few days,” Kelly said. “Maybe as long as a week, depending on . . . .” His voice trailed off.

  Doctor White shrugged. “She won’t be ready to eat regular food for a while.”

  Or she might just wake up starving, Reggie thought.

  She touched a fingertip
to Cassie’s neck and remained still for several seconds before rising and coming over to them. “Be careful out there.”

  Kelly glanced over at Reggie, who said, “Nah, we’re good. We’ve done this before.”

  Doctor White nodded, then turned and returned to Cassie’s side. Reggie watched as she bent down over her and delivered a kiss to the girl’s decaying flesh. He could help but shudder in revulsion.

  Chapter 59

  Daniels? Eric Daniels?

  He was walking through the—

  valley of the shadow of death

  —desert, and it was hot. Like, midday hot. And he was sweating something terrible. His clothes stuck to his skin, itching him, making it hard to move.

  One foot in front of the other. Quickly. That’s how we travel.

  It was so hard to move.

  The sand was soft, and his feet were sinking in to mid-calf. The dune he was climbing began to collapse. He slid back down. There was no shade from the fierce sun.

  A snake had bitten his hand and now it felt really bad. The fangs had gone in right there in the webbing between his thumb and forefinger, swelling up. Now he had blood poisoning. Damn rattler. He tried to make a fist, but it was useless. He couldn’t use it at all.

  Why am I running?

  “Daniels?”

  He opened his eyes, and the glare of the desert sun winked out. The heat and pain remained, however. And he was still sweating profusely.

  “Thirsty,” he said. His voice came out little more than a whisper.

  “You have a fever,” Gilfoy said. He handed him a bottle and some pills. “Swallow these.”

  “How long have I been sleeping?”

  “All night. It was pretty quiet, except that we lost two more. And I think we might have a new problem.”

  Even as he said this, Eric heard the shouting. Someone was angry. Others were trying to calm the shouter down, but it didn’t seem to be working.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Eric sat up. He was hungry. His stomach felt painfully empty, hurting more than the fever and the ache in his wrist. “Weak. Are they still out there?”

  He knew it was a stupid question. If the Undead had gone away, Gilfoy would have said so.

  “God damn it! Let me go!” the angry man shouted, drawing closer to them in the warehouse. “I need to get home to my family! They don’t know where I am!”

  “Who is it this time?” Eric asked.

  “Same guy, the mechanic.” He chuckled dryly. “Sicilians.”

  “You’re Italian.”

  Gilfoy shrugged. “Florentine. Believe me, I’d love nothing more than to scream and shout about this, but it won’t help. It’ll only make things worse than they already are.” He handed Eric the bottle. “We’re running out. No food already. And when there’s no water left, there’s going to be a riot. How long do you think we’ll need to hide out in here?”

  Eric shrugged. “They could be out there for weeks. Longer, even.”

  “Then we need to make a run for it. You up for another adventure?”

  “I can be. What’s your plan?”

  “A few of the others got access to the roof overnight. They’re reconning the area to see which roads are blocked.”

  “Anyone try signaling for help?”

  “They started a fire, burned some pallets up there, but there’s plumes of smoke rising from all over town, with a major blaze somewhere to the southeast. The air was pretty thick with it last night, masked the stars. And you could see the glow in all directions. As for emergency services, I haven’t heard a single siren since yesterday morning. No Stream still, either. I don’t think it’s going to come on anymore. We’re on our own.”

  Eric rose, grabbing the jacket he’d pulled from the body of one of the casualties who’d reanimated after taking shelter inside the warehouse with them. They’d started off with a group of about forty, but within hours five of them had died from bites and had to be dealt with before they turned. Gilfoy and another man, a grocer at a local supermarket, had done the deeds. Among the victims had been a young boy of about ten who’d been separated from his parents somehow. Gilfoy had cried for an hour afterward.

  “The question is how we’re going to move thirty people through the Infected.”

  Eric shook his head. “That’s the wrong strategy.” He clenched his teeth against the shivers wracking his body. After a moment, they subsided. “We need to move them first, not us. They’ll stay where they are and keep trying to get in until we provide them with a reason to move elsewhere.”

  “Draw them away? How?”

  Eric nodded. “Help me up.”

  “Sit tight for now. We’re not going anywhere just yet.”

  “That rope there, can you make me a sling?” He pointed to the coil on the floor. “I know how they think, if you can call it that. They’ll eventually forget what they were doing, but memory, or whatever it is that they use in lieu of it, is more durable the more recently they died. They could be out there for weeks, maybe even months. It all depends.”

  Gilfoy looped the rope over Eric’s shoulder and beneath his arm before tying it off. “Well, we haven’t got weeks. We don’t even have days. At best, we might last till nightfall.”

  Eric pointed his elbow toward the argument at the other end of the warehouse. “I doubt we’ve even got that long.”

  * * *

  In the end, it was decided that four of the men would attempt to break through the line where the Undead horde was thinnest. Eric had argued for trying to break through at the building’s front entrance on the side opposite the alley. “There’s more room there to maneuver,” he noted.

  The shouting man, whose name was Peter Fortini and whose face was a lot redder than its normal olive-tone, convinced the rest of the group using nothing but sheer volume and a palette of colorful terms that the alleyway would be better. “I say we get the cop car,” he said, beckoning for Officer Gilfoy’s keys. “And then we do what you two should’ve done last night, which is plow them all down, mash them into the pavement like so much road kill.”

  “The living as well?” Gilfoy snapped back. “Are you saying, I should’ve run you down, too?”

  But Fortini wasn’t listening. “I mean, what good are bulletproof windshields if you’re not going to use them?”

  “They’re not bulletproof.

  “Maybe not, but they’re at least zombie-proof.”

  Neither Gilfoy nor Eric bothered to argue with the man. He was clearly not interested in hearing differing opinions, and the promise of action had finally shut him up. He just didn’t seem to understand that it was drawing more Undead to the building and getting them worked up.

  Eric stood back as the four men — Fortini, Gilfoy, and brothers Alex and Andrew Mayville — assembled near the rolling door they’d gained access through yesterday and waited for their cue. They held whatever makeshift weapons they could find or improvise, mostly an assortment of metal rods and large screwdrivers.

  A second group of people had gone up onto the roof and were making their way to the ends of the alley. They planned to throw whatever they could find onto the road below so the noise would draw the Undead away.

  Without Peter yelling anymore, the zombies finally stopped trying to force their way through the corrugated metal. They could be heard moaning outside, and every once in a while one of them would bang against the door, but the relative quiet helped to calm the frayed nerves of the survivors inside.

  From the distance outside, they heard a few faints shouts. Then the muffled sounds of large items crashing to the road. Peter reached for the door handle, but Eric held him back. “Give them a couple minutes to start moving away,” he whispered.

  “We don’t have minutes!”

  “Quiet!” Hank said, glaring at him.

  “Or what? You’ll shoot me?”

  One of the Mayville brothers shushed him.

  Peter waited less than a minute before he abruptly yanked the door open. It
flew up with such force that the handle slipped from his grip and came to a stop with a heavy thud over their heads.

  The loading apron was clear, as they’d expected, but the Undead hadn’t gone very far. Alerted by the loud rattle, they began to return.

  “Close the fucking door!” someone in the back shouted. Another screamed.

  Gilfoy shoved Peter in the back, who stumbled out into the sunlight. He followed swinging a heavy wrench at the head of the first zombie he met. Blood exploded into the air, spraying in a wide arc. The thing fell. Peter turned around and ran back inside, a look of utter terror on his face. The screwdriver fell forgotten from his hand.

  The Undead began to follow him in.

  “Get out there, you son of a bitch!” Eric said, grabbing his arm as he passed. But the man was senseless by then. “Damn it! Get back here!”

  He plucked the screwdriver from the ground and waded into the fray. The world spun for a moment, and he nearly tripped. But his head quickly cleared.

  The Mayville brothers were in the thick of it, swinging their weapons. The air about them was red, and bodies began to pile up.

  Eric’s first kill was very nearly his last. The screwdriver became wedged in the eye socket of an elderly female Infected wearing a tight fitting jogging suit with a leopard pattern and a necklace of obscenely large pearls. Half of her left arm and neck were missing, gnawed away as if the zombie that had gotten to her had had a very small mouth. The front of her jogging suit sported a bib of crimson. The backside was covered in shit.

  She leaned into the screwdriver, listing like a barge about to sink stern over bow. Her bones creaked and the bun in her hair unfurled, cascading over her face and covering Eric’s arm in a way that made him recoil at the touch. He tried to hold her up, but her weight shifted and forced his wrist to twist at an awkward angle. He let out a cry, slipped around behind her, adjusted his grip and yanked up as hard as he could, dislocating her neck.

  With a wet squelch the screwdriver finally came free. She crashed to the ground, her shoulder bearing the brunt of the impact, shattering the bone. A piece of her collarbone punctured through the skin of her neck, ejecting a plug of chin fat and a spout of blood that arced over Eric’s head.