Deadman's Switch & Sunder the Hollow Ones

by Saul Tanpepper

  I hesitate a moment before forcing my hand down.

  “Aw, god,” Reggie says. The way he says it sends shivers up my spine. We all turn. He’s pointing to the ground.

  Tanya’s arm twitches and uncurls from beneath him. Then the other does the same, elbows out to the sides. She plants her palms on the ground and tries to rise.

  “Jessie, if you’re going to shoot her,” Reggie says, “I’d say right now is good time.”

  But still I don’t. I watch her back fill and empty and remind myself that zombies don’t breathe. Zombies don’t breathe. I hope they don’t breathe. I pray it’s not one more thing we were wrong about the Undead.

  The muscles in her arms tremble as she pushes herself off the ground. Her torso rises, head hanging down. I want so badly to be able to see her face. I want to check her eyes, to see if there’s anything in them, a spark, something other than that flat, black, dead darkness of hell. And yet I know that’s exactly what I’ll see, regardless of any rules about breathing. We already know what we know about the Undead is seriously incomplete.

  “Jessie?” Kelly says.

  “Tanya, look at me, damn it.” The gun in my hand is shaking like crazy. I’m not even sure I could pull the trigger if I needed to. “Tanya!”

  Her body shudders once and stops rising.

  “I think she heard you,” Reggie whispers.

  Ashley starts laughing hysterically. She raises both her hands to her mouth to stifle it.

  “Tanya, if you can hear me, you need to say something. Please. I don’t want to have to do this.”

  “Damn it, Jessie,” Kelly says. “I don’t like this, either! Do something.”

  “Shut up! Everyone just shut the fuck up!” I yell.

  “Shoot her!”

  Slowly, her head turns to toward us. It’s still mostly hidden in shadow, silhouetted against the gloom. Her eyes are too dark to see.

  I hear a gasp and turn toward it. It’s Stephen. He’s standing now, erect, very much alive and very much the picture of health. His eyes are aglow with excitement. “It worked!” he cries. He runs over to Tanya. “The alpha worked. It took a long time, but it worked.”

  “What are you talking about?” I snap. “She was bitten.”

  “No.” He smiles and finally I understand that everything he told us was a lie. Jake was right; I was wrong. And now we’re all dead because of me.

  “The green stuff you injected into me?” Kelly cries.

  “What?” I shout, blinking uncomprehendingly. “I thought—”

  “I couldn’t tell you, Jess. I wanted to, but—”

  “A week,” Stephen says. “That’s how long it took for her.” He laughs and I realize he’d given himself the vaccine. “The incubation period is a week. A living, breathing zombie in a week. Stronger, conscious.” He laughs maniacally and turns his eyes to Tanya. “What a glorious day!”

  Jake roars. He raises the knife again and slashes down.

  Everything goes silent—the wind, Stephen’s laughter, us. There’s only the thump of a body hitting the ground.

  Ashley throws her hands to her face, but she can’t stop staring. She makes a choking sound.

  Jake throws the bloody knife down. “I told you I wouldn’t hesitate,” he growls at us. He points straight at me and says, “You did. You broke your promise, and now we’re all dead.”

  Then he steps over Tanya’s lifeless body and walks away.

  ‡ ‡

  [END OF EPISODE THREE]

  GAMELAND

  Episode 4: Sunder the Hollow Ones

  PART ONE: Rend

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  PART TWO: Repair

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  PART THREE: Reunite

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  † † †

  PART ONE

  Rend

  Chapter 1

  “Nooo!” Stephen wails, collapsing onto the hard-packed dirt next to Tanya’s body. He looks up and stabs the air, pointing an accusing finger at Jake. “You did this! Now look at what you’ve done.” He buries his head in his hands and sobs. “All my work… You’ve ruined everything!”

  Nobody sympathizes with him. In fact, I feel nothing but disgust. What Stephen did to us is wrong. What he did to Tanya is beyond forgiveness. All Jake did was…

  What he did was keep his promise to kill any of us that showed the first signs of the infection. And Tanya had. She didn’t deserve what happened. She didn’t ask for it. Jake didn’t either. It was Stephen and Arc. They’d done it. All Jake did was…

  What he did was murder her.

  Not murdered, I remind myself. Quieted.

  I turn my shocked gaze to Stephen. If anyone deserves to die, it’s him. “Not Jake,” I whisper. “You did this.”

  He ignores my words and my gaze. He ignores us all.

  I get up from the dirt where I’ve fallen and stumble over to him and—

  And I stop at the sight of the blood. I can’t go any further.

  Oh, god, it everywhere! So much!

  “This was not to supposed to happen!” Stephen shrieks, jumping madly to his feet.

  His words carry away into Gameland. I grab him by the collar before he can get away. I’m fully prepared to hurl him back to the ground. I really want to kick his ass for what he’s done to us. For what he’s done to Tanya. And my Kelly.

  He raises his hands to defend himself, but there’s a flicker of movement below us and we both see it. Suddenly everything changes.

  Tanya’s foot twitches a second time. She’s not dead. Not yet. Jake thinks he’s killed her. He thinks he’s quieted her. A single thrust of Reggie’s knife into her neck. One and done. That’s what he thought it would take.

  But now Jake knows what I already knew: killing isn’t so easy.

  Unless you don’t mean it. Then it’s easy.

  Her body spasms and a moan escapes her lips, followed by a bloody froth. She’s still breathing—I can see and hear her doing it and—

  And the Undead aren’t supposed to breathe.

  They don’t breathe.

  “Ah! She’s okay!” Stephen exclaims. “I can save her. I have to—”

  I yank him away from her. “It’s too late,” I growl. “Are you blind? She’s lost too much blood already.”

  “No,” he says, pleading. “She’s special.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, shaking him. “Special how?”

  Kelly speaks up then, demanding answers, too. “What did you mean when you said you created a living, breathing zombie? What the hell does that mean?”

  Stephen gapes at our faces. “It— I, uh—”

  “Answer us!”

  “S-same as the dead ones,” he stammers, struggling against me. “Same as the Undead. Except alive. The Controlled Living.” He glances down at Tanya, then back at me, desperation in his eyes.

  No, it’s not desperation. It’s lunacy. He’s crazy. I let him go and he drops to his knees.

  “She can’t die,” he mutters, and he pushes desperately against her neck. But her blood—her infected blood—seeps through his fingers, pulsing through them like it’s alive and trying to escape the ruined ship of her body. Like fleas from a dead rat. Fleeing like the living from an undead land.

  Her blood seeps into the ground but it doesn’t spread. It soak
s right in the very instant it makes contact. I half-expect something to sprout from the dirt, fed by her life-giving blood, but then I realize that this whole place has been completely corrupted by its proximity with the wall. As far as I can see in either direction, nothing grows within twenty feet of it. No grass or shrubs. No weeds. The wall is poisonous and the dirt is dry and sterile and when Tanya’s blood touches it, it too turns to dust, a black, lifeless mud. Nothing will ever grow here again.

  A sound escapes Stephen’s mouth, drawing my gaze back. His breath hisses between his teeth. “What do I do? I’m not— I can’t—”

  Nobody offers to help him. He lowers his hands again and shifts his weight over Tanya. He knows if he doesn’t push hard enough, the bleeding won’t stop. But if he presses too hard, she’ll suffocate.

  And still nobody moves. We know this: either way, she’s already dead. There is no compromise. It’s either finish the job or let her reanimate. And we can’t let that happen. She’ll be faster and stronger, much more dangerous. More destructive.

  I reach down to pull Stephen away again. “I have to finish what Jake started.”

  “No! This’ll work,” he pants. “I know it will. She’s tough. Please, God, help me stop her bleeding.”

  It angers me that he would dare to ask God to help him. It saddens me to think there might be a god who would allow such a thing to come to pass in the first place.

  “She’s dead,” I hiss at the back of his head. “You just don’t know it yet.”

  I push my way from him then, shoving Micah and Kelly aside as I walk off. They’re both dazed-looking. Micah reels and falls to the dirt, holding his head in his hands. He shakes it, as if trying to get rid of the buzzing in his ears.

  I need to think about what to do next. Sweat drips down my forehead and stings my eyes. The wall is blocking the late afternoon sun, but there’s no respite from the heat and humidity. My whole body aches from fatigue and hunger and the trauma from the past week. It aches from being so close to this toxic wall. My skin itches. My skull feels like it’s half a size too small for my brain.

  Jake is standing right up against the wall, leaning his head on it and crying. His fingers run over the seam where we came through, as if hoping to find a latch that will open the door for him. His tears paint pink rivulets down his dust-streaked, sunburned face.

  “I had to do it,” he sobs. “You made me do it!”

  Is he accusing you or Stephen?

  It doesn’t matter; we’re both guilty of something. We’re all guilty.

  “She didn’t deserve this,” he blabbers. “I liked her, too. She was a nice girl and I had to do it even though I didn’t want to. I had to—” He gags and tries again: ‘I had to—”

  “She’s not dead,” I whisper to myself. Then, louder: “She’s not dead, Jake. You only injured her. Badly. Bad enough that she won’t make it. You have to finish it.”

  He stops and looks up and tries to focus his eyes on me through his tears. “What? No. I can’t do it!”

  “Shut up!” Micah says, slurring his words. “Everyone just shut up or we’re all dead.”

  Reggie blinks at us, not comprehending, a mask of terror on his face. Fear and indecision roots him to the ground. The horror of everything he’s just witnessed overwhelms him. It’s one thing to watch someone kill an Undead, quite another to watch someone murder another living human being. Even if she was infected.

  Kelly’s infected, too.

  I look over at him. He stands there stock still, just staring, stunned like the rest of us. He has reason to be even more shocked, now that he’s learned of his own fate. He’s witnessing it happening right in front of him. In a few days, he’ll end up just like Tanya. The virus will take control of his body and Arc will take control of his mind. He’ll be Undead.

  Unless someone—

  Panic flutters up inside of me. Panic and hatred and something so enormous that I can’t fathom how it can be inside of me. I want to let it out, but it won’t come.

  At least now I understand why Kelly never told me about what Stephen had done to him on the tram. He was afraid. He feared that what just happened to Tanya would happen to him. That someone would…

  That Jake would quiet him.

  Ashley sits crumpled over by the wall, shivering, weeping into her hands. Her Link lies in the dust next to her. Was she taking pictures? Is that why it’s out? Who the hell is she going to ping in here? I’m tempted to yell at her to knock off the crybaby crap and be the tough girl she always pretended to be. I need that toughness now. I need someone to help me be tough so we can all get through this together. So we can go home.

  “Get me out of this place!” Jake cries. He slaps the wall, but the sound is weak. There’s something about the material that absorbs sound and light and heat. It’s completely inert. The slap sounds far away.

  He reels away from the wall and stumbles drunkenly over to Ash and tries to pull her to her feet. “We need to get out of here.”

  She cringes from his touch, but her eyes fall away. She turns and retrieves her Link from the dirt.

  Seeing Jake grab her seems to snap Reggie out of his own trance. He starts to nod. “Yes…leave. We need to get out of here.”

  “If you people don’t shut up,” Micah hisses, “you’re going to bring every god damn IU and Player in Gameland here!” He pulls at his hair, gawping like a fish.

  “You shut up!” Jake snaps.

  Micah steps back, blinking stupidly. His mouth opens, but he doesn’t say anything.

  What is wrong with everyone? I want to shout. Then I remember: the wall. It’s affecting me less than everyone else because my implant isn’t working. I can still feel the effects, just not as strongly.

  I watch as Stephen slips his arms underneath Tanya’s limp form and staggers to his feet. For a moment he looks like he’s going to collapse under her weight. The lack of food and sleep and his own injuries from the road are clear in the strain on his face.

  Blood throbs out of the gash in Tanya’s neck and runs down the back of his arm. It begins dripping off his elbow as he starts to walk away, leaving a blackened trail behind him.

  “Hey,” Jake yells, “where are you taking her? Bring her back. You need to come back here!”

  Stephen turns. “Please,” he says. “Help me. There’s a house right over there, across the road. I can fix her. I know I can.”

  It’s empty, of course. They’re all empty. No one has lived here for almost thirteen years, no one but the Undead. Long Island belongs to them now. Not us.

  “She’s too far gone,” I say. “You’re just prolonging the inevitable, putting us all at risk. It’ll only make things worse once she dies. You need to—”

  “The virus protects the brain against anoxia,” he tells us. “She could lose almost half her blood and still function.”

  “Well, she’s not functioning!”

  “Wait!” Jake says, pulling me away. “You think you can save her? Can you cure her? You said there was a vaccine. You gave it to yourself. Do you still have some left?”

  Stephen stares at Jake but doesn’t answer. Slowly, he turns away and heads for the road once again.

  Jake takes a tentative step forward to follow him. “You said there was a vaccine, right?”

  “A vaccine isn’t a cure, Jake,” I tell him. “It’s too late for that.”

  Jake looks stupidly at me. He blinks and something comes over him then. He turns away.

  “You can’t leave, Stephen,” I say. “Stop! You’re not going anywhere.”

  He falters at the sound of my voice, but only for a second before continuing on.

  Kelly touches my elbow tentatively and flinches when I turn to him. I realize the gun is back in my hand. I don’t remember taking it out. I don’t remember aiming it. I let it slip from my fingers. I hear it hit the dirt at my feet.

  “It’s too late for her, Jess,” he says. “You need to think about getting everyone home now.” And when he says that,
I know what he’s really telling me. He said everyone, not us. He thinks it’s too late for him to go home. Because he’s infected. Like Tanya.

  But it’s not too late. It can’t be.

  “Kelly’s right,” Reggie says. “We need to stick to the original plan.”

  “The original plan?” I sputter. It seems like the most insane thing I’ve ever heard. “Remind me again, Reg, which part of the original plan had Kelly getting infected?” I wave my hands desperately around me. “Which part had Tanya turning into an IU? This is all fucked. I can’t— I can’t think about this!”

  And then I spin on Reggie, shoving him. He falls to the dirt, not expecting my attack, and he lands on his ass, a look of surprise on his face.

  “This was your god damn idea, Reggie! We were supposed to just come here and take a few pictures, grab a few souvenirs. That’s what you said. It was all for laughs. None of this was supposed to happen. No one was supposed to die. You promised!”

  His eyes flick over to Stephen’s receding figure. Then back at me. “It wasn’t my idea.”

  “Shut the fuck up!”

  Kelly reaches a hand out to touch me and I hit it away. There’s pain in his eyes. He thinks it’s because I don’t want him to touch me. He doesn’t know that it’s because I need him to touch me. I want so desperately to connect. But I can’t. I just can’t do it right now.

  “Listen to me,” he says. “You can still leave here, you and Micah. There’s time. Go. Get the hell off the island. Go home. I don’t know how—I don’t even know how you’ll get through this wall again—but you have to. I’ll take the others to Jayne’s Hill, or…as far as I can, anyway, before… We’ll hack the mainframe and get rid of the failsafe.”

  “I’m not leaving you, Kel.”

  “I don’t want you here,” he tells me evenly, his face stony, emotionless. The light in his eyes has dimmed, replaced by the darkness of my pain.

  Somewhere, far away, a dog barks. Nobody looks up. Everyone’s eyes are on me and Kelly.