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

by Tanpepper, Saul

  “Doctor White leaned toward him, pleading with her eyes. “But I saved your brother. I treated him with Jessica’s blood, kept him alive. And now he can be cured. Now we know it works!” She pointed at the girl on the couch. “I infected myself, too. And look at me. I’m alive after a week.”

  “WHAT DID YOU DO?” Kelly screamed. Tears rolled down his cheeks. “Oh my God! Oh my God, you did— You infected Kyle!”

  He leapt at her and wrapped his hands around her throat. Reggie didn’t move. The doctor’s confession had shocked him to the core. He’d strongly suspected the woman was unbalanced, but he’d had no idea just how badly.

  “I’m going to fucking kill you!”

  Kelly had climbed on top of her and was pressing down, choking her. She had her hands on his, trying to pull them away. She kicked and thrashed beneath him, but he was beyond reason now, beyond any sort of sensibility. He wasn’t aware of what he was doing anymore, just reacting.

  Four years of pent up fury, of simmering anger tearing him up inside, confusing his feelings for the girl he loved yet at the same time hated for what her family had created, all came to the surface. He cried out in anguish for his brother, whom this madwoman had sentenced to death on some pretense of granting him a reprieve which she didn’t possess.

  Her face turned blue and her struggles weakened, yet Kelly’s hands squeezed even tighter. Tears fell from his eyes and splashed onto her face. Lips purple-gray, tongue protruding now, the woman was dying. Her eyes bulged while her brain tried to strip the last of the oxygen from her blood. There was not enough to save her.

  Movement on the couch caught Reggie’s eye. The girl had woken. She sat up and turned to look at them, and her own eyes were pearly white with cataracts. The deeper blackness in her own lips had faded to a dull gray. She opened her mouth. “Maaamaaa?”

  One of Doctor White’s hands slipped off Kelly’s and drifted to the floor.

  “Mama? I had . . . dream.”

  A shiver passed through Reggie. He stepped over to the couch. Doctor White’s struggles had ceased. Both arms now rested beside her, both limp. Reggie reached down and pried Kelly’s fingers away. “Let go, Kelly,” he said.

  He finally managed to get him off of her.

  A moment passed, and nobody moved. Then Doctor White sucked in a huge breath of air, the air shrieking as it whistled past her crushed vocal cords.

  “Noooo!” Kelly wailed, and twisted away from Reggie. But the larger boy refused to release him. He hugged his arms to his side and held him until he was sure the woman would live.

  “Listen to me, Kel,” he hissed in his ear. “Cassie’s awake! She’s awake.”

  “It’s not fair!”

  “No, it isn’t. But you can’t take her away now,” Reggie said. “She’s alive. And for better or worse, she needs to be a mother again.”

  Kelly sobbed openly. He leaned against Reg and the strength went completely out of his body. Together they collapsed to the floor while the blind girl on the couch watched and waited.

  * * *

  “What would you do to save the life of your only child?”

  Kelly didn’t respond. He’d retreated deep inside of himself.

  Doctor White took another sip of water and grimaced as she tried to swallow. Her voice was little more than a whisper, cracked and broken, without strength or inflection. Just like the woman it came out of.

  She’d confessed everything— how she’d been secretly conducting her research on Kyle until she’d figured out how to use the stem cells to counter the disease. How she’d finally, at long last, tested it upon herself, injecting herself with the same attenuated virus she’d injected into her husband years back. All to save the daughter she’d left here over a decade before.

  The admissions had been horrifying enough, but when she spoke about finding the Infected child in a house down the street and forcing it to bite Cassie to save her from dying of rabies, Reggie’s horror reached a new level he never thought possible. In all of his life, he had never met anyone so depraved. It stunned him into silence.

  But not into inaction.

  If it weren’t for the girl on the couch, he would have gladly finished what Kelly had started. He would have choked the life out of the woman, leaving her just shy of dead, and then thrown her out into the street to be taken by the Infected. There was no more fitting end for her than to spend eternity as one of them.

  But the girl had spoken. She’d recognized her mother, after all these years and despite her blind eyes. It was beyond belief, and yet to see it himself was to accept that she really had been brought back from the dead. She was alive. The girl she had once been, was again.

  He couldn’t take her mother away from her, not now when she needed her the most.

  He couldn’t.

  But neither could he be a part of this anymore. He needed to go, to put distance between this and himself. He needed to not think about any of this, not the living dead girl or the mother who had made her that way. Not Kyle or the thousands of Infected here on the island. Not the Infected elsewhere.

  Not Ashley. Or Micah. Or Jake.

  Because to think about them would be to admit that they really weren’t. They were still there inside, just as Kelly had guessed. The little girl had proven it.

  God, how many of them had he killed, thinking they were gone? How many people had he watched slaughtered in The Game?

  The woman was still trying to explain herself, but Reggie had zoned her out. He stood up and went over to Kelly and pulled him out of the chair. He came easily, responding to Reggie’s touch almost as if he were a Player himself and Reggie his Operator.

  “We’re leaving, brah. Now.”

  He started to lead him toward the garage. Together, they walked to the door.

  Reggie could feel Doctor White’s eyes on them, on his back. If he turned from the doorway to the garage, he knew he would still be able to see her, and he almost did turn. But he didn’t want to look upon her face. He didn’t think he’d be able to control himself if he did.

  He reached for the knob and turned.

  “She’s pregnant.”

  Reggie hesitated. He had no idea what the woman was talking about, or who. Clearly she couldn’t mean Cassie.

  He gave Kelly a gentle push in the back to get him moving again down the steps into the unlit garage.

  “I was getting some anomalous results with her latest blood test, so I had it checked. Jessica’s almost two months pregnant.”

  Chapter 62

  “Turn around,” Eric said.

  “What? No!”

  They’d just passed the last of the Infected at the mouth of the alleyway. It had been slow going, as Gilfoy tried his best to avoid running any of them over. Eric wasn’t sure if it was out of respect for the victims, squeamishness, or if he worried that the car might get stuck or damaged.

  “Turn around. We can’t leave those people back there.”

  “And how are we going to save them?” the police officer asked. He swerved around a burning car, its doors flung wide as if they’d been blasted open by some intense pressure. “I can fit four more people in here, max. Maybe five. There are more than twenty people back there. Let me get you out of here first, then I’ll—”

  “Now,” Eric said. He wiped the sweat from his forehead on his sleeve. He could feel the adrenaline leaking away from him already, leaving him exhausted and trembling with weakness. “There’s not a single person back there who can deal with this situation properly. They will die, all of them. They need someone who—”

  “They’ll be safe, Daniels. They just need to get onto the roof.”

  “And then what? They know they’ve got no food, no water. They’re going to panic.” Eric reached for the door handle. “I’m not worried about what the Infected will do to them. I’m worried about what they might do to each other. Desperation and ignorance cause as many casualties in these sorts of crises than the Infected themselves.” He opened the door and stuck
a foot out.

  “Damn it, Daniels!” Gilfoy slowed down. “You’re in no shape to— All right! Stop! I’m turning around, but we need a plan. And really, you’re not going to last long with your arm like that.” He shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t know how anyone could do something like that.”

  “Desperation,” Eric replied. He looked out the window. “Like I said, it makes people do stupid things.”

  If he’d just waited another twenty minutes . . . . But how could he know anyone was coming for him? He’d had to do it to survive.

  “There,” Eric said, pointing at a delivery truck parked in front of a bakery. It took all his strength just to lift his arm. “We can fit everyone inside that. Pull over next to it, and keep an eye out for me for Infected. I’m going to jump it.”

  “With one hand? You can barely even sit up.”

  “You have a better plan?”

  Gilfoy pulled up next to the driver’s side door and got out, leaving his own door open and the patrol car’s engine running. When he folded the truck’s visor down, a key fell out, which he held up for Eric to see. “It’s a stick, so I’ll drive.”

  He helped Eric into the passenger seat, then climbed into the cab and started the truck up.

  “You really are not looking so hot,” Gilfoy said.

  Eric gave him a weak nod. “You keep saying that, but I’m fine.” In truth he felt like collapsing.

  The road ahead was nearly empty, a deep canyon between the cliff walls formed by the warehouses. Only a few stragglers remained wandering aimlessly about outside and—

  mooing

  —moaning. They apparently hadn’t gotten the memo that breakfast had been relocated indoors because of inclement weather.

  Eric rolled his head onto his shoulder and pressed it against the window and looked up. The sky was green. Not a turtle in sight.

  There were snakes, though. A lot of them, fat and slow, slithering across the sky. They were biting his hand again.

  Daniels

  “Hey, Daniels!”

  Gilfoy grabbed his shoulder and shook him. “You still with me?”

  Eric blinked a few times, then nodded. “Yeah, I’m good.”

  The cows and snakes were gone, and the sky was back to being the same slate gray it had been all morning. Tendrils of smoke billowed out from the roof. He thought it might rain.

  Gilfoy pulled around to the door, then backed in. He had a couple feet of clearance on either side. “You stay here,” he ordered, and climbed out through his open window onto the roof of the cab. “Hey! Anyone up there hear me?”

  The dead inside the warehouse began to attack the truck, slapping their hands against the sides. Only the tallest of them could reach the bottom of Eric’s window. He watched them warily, wondering if they might be able to climb onto the step beneath his door. From his time in the marines, he knew they couldn’t, not without someone live thinking for them, controlling their bodies. But these were freshly deceased, and he’d seen some of them do things that surprised him, even without cybernetic help.

  Gilfoy climbed back in. “They’re all up on the roof, apparently trying hard to burn themselves to the ground.” He gave Eric a slight nod, as if to say You were right. “We’ll back up against the ladder and they can climb down and get in through the windows. It’s the safest way, I think.”

  Eric grunted. He didn’t like the way the walls were pushing in at him. And they smelled. They smelled like cottage cheese.

  He didn’t like cottage cheese. It gave him gas something terrible, made his stomach hurt.

  The truck jolted backward. He wasn’t expecting it and nearly hit his head on the dash.

  “You might want to move into the back once I stop,” Gilfoy said. “And open your window so people can climb in. The quicker we can get everyone in, the quicker we’ll be able to leave.”

  Eric nodded, but he couldn’t find the switch on the armrest.

  “It’s got a hand crank, like the cars from the beginning of the century,” Gilfoy said. He was checking the mirrors on both sides.

  Eric frowned. The truck didn’t look that old.

  The bumper hit the ladder, and the metal squealed as it bent. Once more, Gilfoy climbed out, disappearing onto the roof. Eric could hear him up top. He opened his door to get out before remembering the Infected and slamming it shut again, catching his foot in the opening. Pain spread up his leg. He pulled it in and slammed the door shut.

  He was supposed to do something, he just couldn’t remember what it was. So he sat there and watched the people on the ground.

  Open your window.

  That’s it. Except he couldn’t find the switch.

  Crank. It has a crank.

  God, why was everything so damn hard all of a sudden? He felt hot, then cold. He was hungry, but also nauseous. And his damn arm hurt like a son of a bitch.

  Someone was knocking on the top of his head. He needed to answer the door. He turned to open it, but a foot appeared from the ceiling.

  That’s a foot. Someone’s in the ceiling.

  “Open the damn window!”

  The foot kicked at the glass.

  Gilfoy appeared in the windshield and slapped it, drawing his attention. Eric smiled at him. They were playing a joke on him.

  “Open your window!”

  He felt a presence next to him and looked over and there was someone sitting in the driver seat looking over. And more feet on that side. It was like they were falling out of the sky.

  “What’s wrong with you?” the man asked. “Open the damn window and get out of the way!”

  Everyone was talking all at once. He couldn’t hear them, couldn’t make sense of any of it.

  The man next to him tried to pull him out of the seat. Eric resisted, slapping at him. Pain rocketed up his arm. Oh, God, he thought. I’m having a heart attack.

  He felt his seatbelt release, felt hands on his shirt, pulling, grabbing.

  “Let go of me!” he yelled, except his words sounded like the wind.

  Something slammed into the hood. He looked over and was surprised to see a woman there, the pregnant one. She had slipped and fallen onto her back. She tried to get to her feet. Eric cheered her on, but the people below were pulling on her.

  Tug of war! Tug of war!

  She was laughing. Hysterically.

  No, screaming. She was screaming.

  “I think she’s having her baby,” he told the man next to him.

  “Get out of the way!” the man screamed back.

  “Are you a doctor?”

  The woman disappeared beneath the forest of arms for a moment, then reappeared as someone pulled her back onto the hood. Eric saw the truck’s hood ornament rake across her distended belly. He cringed. It looked painful. It must’ve been really painful, given how much she was screaming.

  “Get her back. Get her back!” someone shouted.

  The team on top was winning. He wanted to urge them on. It was fun. But the team on the ground just gave up. They let go at once and the woman and the pullers fell back against the windshield.

  “Yay!” Eric cheered, but vomit spewed from his mouth and splashed against the windshield and he couldn’t see them anymore.

  Hands beside him grabbed and shook him, pulled him away from his seat HIS SEAT NOT ANYONE ELSE’S!

  The woman had stopped screaming. He could see her again, a vague shape through the scrim of puke on the windshield. It looked like she’d cut her leg. Blood was running down it. Everyone had let go of her. The game was over.

  We’ll get you a bandage, Eric thought. It’s just a small cut. No worries.

  “Oh god,” he heard her say. “Oh god, I’ve been bitten! I’ve been bitten!”

  Bitten? By the snake?

  And then it all came back to him. He pushed the hands away from his arms and leaned forward and swiped at the windshield. The woman locked eyes with him for just a moment, just a heartbeat, before she turned away again. She stood up and turned toward the
mass of arms waving at her, beckoning. Nobody touched her. Nobody tried to stop her as she stepped out and plunged into their midst.

  “Noooo!” Eric yelled.

  But the Infected, their arms waving like snapping turtles, had already swallowed her up.

  Chapter 63

  Jessie avoided the Infected wherever she found them. By this point she felt as though she understood them, understood what drove them and the way they behaved. It was so different than in a game.

  In Zpocalypto, the zombies all acted the same way: they were one dimensional, without . . . life, without individuality. They all ran with the same lurching gait— well, not really running as much as walking fast, the same pace everywhere, every single one.

  In the game, it was better to run as fast as you could to get away, because once they were out of sight, they were pretty much out of the game.

  But in real life, it was totally different. Here, the Infected all acted differently. Some were faster. Some were harder to kill. Some seemed smarter than they had any right to be.

  Here, they were like people. Because they were people. Real people.

  That was the biggest reason she avoided them now. She knew that within each one of them was a person who was probably terrified as hell, lonely as hell, angry as hell over what had happened to them. She knew that they all probably hated themselves for what they’d become, for seeing themselves doing what zombies do, and for not being able to stop. They were unwilling murderers who couldn’t keep from murdering again.

  But she could stop. She didn’t want to be a killer, not of them, these people. They’d done nothing wrong.

  Unlike the living, both hiding behind their iVZ gaming gear. The people wearing the Arc jumpsuits. The people who knew what they were doing, who were consciously making decisions and acting on them.

  What did it say about her that she found it easier to kill the living?

  As she walked down the middle of the road, her eyes constantly scanning the shadows for the Infected, her ears pricked to every sound, she realized that there was a certain peacefulness to this place, a tranquility. She could see why Father Heale — her father — would choose to stay here after the outbreak. Aside from the arcade, the island was the only place away from the insanity of the living. Unlike the constantly monitored and guided and constrained world in which she had grown up, this place had been allowed to return to its native state.