S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus (147 page)

I quietly open his door and stick my head in. The tang of the poultice hits my nose. It's clear from the pile of bandages on the floor that somebody changed them in the middle of the night. Maybe a few times. I stand in the doorway, not quite sure what to do. In the wan light, he looks dead—or dying—and my heart races. But then I see him inhale and a sob of relief escapes my lips. He opens his eyes.

“
Hey.”

I wave and step in.

“
Once more,” he whispers. “Once more we have somehow managed to evade death.” He turns his head back to the ceiling and stares at it. He looks miserable.

“
How are you feeling?”

Are you kidding me? He's got to feel like hell.

“
I've been better,” he answers. He tries to give me a wan smile. “And worse.”

“
We got Eric.”

He nods. He hadn't been in any condition to talk last night, so I hadn't tried to bring him up to speed. “Sister Jane told me, said his chopper went down.” He shakes his head. “A chopper full of Omegas. And then you and Reggie went out into the forest after dark—”

“
It wasn't bad. Brother Walter made a distraction. We only had to deal with a couple.”

“
I'm glad to hear he's safe. Is anyone else awake?”

I shake my head. “Brother Walter is outside somewhere. The rest are asleep. Well, Micah's awake. He's tied up.”

“
You should sleep, too.”

“
I'm fine. I'll sleep when I'm dead.”

He frowns. I don't know if he remembers saying those same words to me just a few days ago, when we were still in LaGuardia. It seems like years ago now. “Don't even joke about that,” he says.

I go over and sit on the floor next to him and hold his hand, and neither of us speaks for a long time. He's covered with someone's jacket—Casey's, probably—and most of the wounds are on his arms, out of sight, so we can both pretend. At least the Undead spared his face.

After a little while, he closes his eyes. His breathing grows shallow and steady. When I'm sure he's asleep again, I let go of his hand and gently place it across his chest. He doesn't stir. I lean over and kiss him on the lips, then stand up and leave.

I stop only long enough to leave a note on a piece of scrap paper that I'll be back soon. I don't say where I'm going because I don't exactly know. I don't wake anyone. Eric would tell me it's too dangerous and that I'm too young. He'd fall right back into that older-brother-as-father role again. And Reggie would just stand in the doorway and tell me I'm being a fool and not let me go.

But they'd both be wrong.

I gather my bag with a couple packs of water, plus the tablet and the rifle and machete from the table by the door. At the last moment, I leave the tablet behind. I don't need it. It's useless to me.

Already it's warm outside.

It's always warm anymore. Except when it's hot.

I think about the ice on the lamps at the boardwalk above Niagara Falls and the bone-chilling cold the day we went there, and now I wish the world would freeze up like that again. Will I ever see snow like that again?

I push my way through the wet grass and I'm soaked through with dew and sweat by the time I get to the edge of the wood.

Everything is quiet again. The fire from the crashed helicopter is still smoldering. The tang of burnt fuel and plastic lingers in the heavy air. The forest is quiet.

I glance back at the buildings one last time. The place seems dead, inert. Maybe it's my imagination. Maybe it's knowing the network is down, that the mainframe is doing nothing but churning and burning useless code. It makes me think what the world would be like if Arc's systems were to go down everywhere like they have here. The idea sends shivers through me and I pray it doesn't happen. As much as I hate Arc, I'd hate it even more without them to control the Undead.

Not sure where to look first, or which way to go. I don't even know why I'm looking, other than out of some misplaced sense of good fortune borne out of Eric's rescue.

I dig into my pack and draw out Ashley's Link. Just holding it makes me feel better, as if I could connect with her through it.

I start by heading to the place where I last saw her L.I.N.C. signal on the tablet, right before the Players swarmed over her. The same Players that met us at the gate and which had brought back her Link. Ben's Players.

How did he manage it?

I slip through the wood, and the sunlight trickles through the canopy and morning dew drips onto my head. There's not a sound except for the birds and the buzz of mosquitoes. I don't see a single IU anywhere, though from the sheer numbers I'd seen last night, I know they must be all around, hiding beneath their logs and bushes, underneath piles of fallen branches. I know I'm walking among them, stepping past them, maybe even over them. And yet this doesn't frighten me, not in the way it might have a few days before. How many times have we passed among the Undead without knowing it since coming here?

Maybe it's fear they sense. Maybe that's what draws them out.

Still, I make my way as quietly as I can. I stay alert. No reason to tempt fate or test theories. This isn't an experiment, it's a search and—

recover

—
rescue mission.

I reach a small clearing where the grass has been trampled down. I have no way of knowing if this is the exact place where I last tracked Ashley's signal. It's in the general vicinity at least. At first glance there appear to be no traces that she and Ben were ever here, but then I find a spent shell casing, untarnished. It still smells of gunpowder. I search for more, but there's only the one.

Then the blood.

Off in one corner. The ground is soaked with it. I know immediately that this isn't the site of a zombie attack. It's too concentrated. Someone was shot here. Ashley was shot here, and she was either carried off or she went under her own power.

The blood trail leads away across the grass and into the woods at a point opposite from where I entered the clearing. It's not hard to follow, as it keeps to a beaten track. A few hundred feet away, it encounters a wooden walkway half-buried in bracken and fallen leaves, then stays on it. Five minutes later I emerge from the trees and step onto pavement. It's the parking lot. To my left is the bathroom where Micah and I escaped the Player. Where Shinji saved us.

The blood trail weaves across the lot, leading to the back door of the old car. There's a smear of blood on the door handle, more splattered underneath. I hurry over and wipe a bit of the grime off the window and peer inside. I can make out the figure of someone sitting on the other end of the seat, fiery red hair cascading over her face. Still as a statue.

“
Ash?”

Heart pounding. Please be alive.

I tap on the window. She doesn't move. I call again, louder, wary of the noise in the otherwise quiet morning. I try the door. The handle yields, but won't open. I cross to the other side, grab the handle, pull. There's a crunch of old rubber coming apart. Dirt and leaves caught inside drift to the ground. The door is sticky, resistant. I give it a firmer yank. There's a thump, then something pushes from the inside. The door swings open before I can stop it and a body tumbles to the pavement at my feet.

It's not Ashley.

It's some long-dead corpse, skin drawn tight against its face, a horrid grimace, paper-thin lips, leathery cheeks. Loose brown hair drifts to the ground, floating away across the parking lot on the breeze.

I don't know how long I stand there, trying to summon something from inside of me—pain or horror, sympathy, something—but nothing comes. Dead is dead. Whoever she was, at least she never came back.

I reach down, try to lift the skeleton, but it just crumbles through my fingers, so I leave her. At least now nature can reclaim her.

I circle the car again and now I see that the trail of blood leads in a different direction. It meanders across the parking lot. I lose it for a moment, find it again. Before I've taken five steps, I know where she's gone, and I look up and sure enough I see the smear of blood on the handle of the bathroom door. Without thinking, I'm sprinting, pushing it open, stepping inside.

“
Ashley!
”

There's a faint cough from somewhere in the shadows.

“
Ash? It's Jessie.”

“
If it ain't the jacker bitch,” comes the reply, and the blood in my veins freezes. “Come to join me?”

 

“Surprised?” Ben asks.
His voice floats out at me from near the back wall, but I can't see anything because my damn eyes won't adjust. The only windows in this part of the building are small, located near the ceiling in a wall facing west, where the sky is still dark, and they're matted over with the accumulated years of spider webs and dust.

“
Truth be told,” he goes on in barely a whisper, “you surprised the hell outta me just now, little lady, sneakin up on me like that.”

“
What did you do to her? Where's Ashley?”

He chuckles, and it sounds evil and insane and suddenly I don't care if I can't see. I don't want to know why he's sitting in here in the dark. I don't want to know why it smells of rancid blood. I don't want to think about him going crazy, the disease taking over his mind while his body grows more and more powerful. I don't want to think about the possibilities.

“
Please,” I beg.

“
If you must know, you just missed her,” he says, and then he coughs again, laughing. This time I hear the sickness in his voice seeping through. “By a few hours, actually. Is it morning already? Time is meaningless, you know, when all the world is dead.”

I don't speak.

“
Bet you could find her, though. If you looked hard enough.”

“
Shut up!”

“
Won't recognize her, though. She's not the same.”

“
Shut the fuck up!”

“
I think you already knew, little lady. You just didn't want to think about it.”

My throat closes up. I can't speak. How could he possibly know what I'm thinking? I swallow and it hurts. I close my eyes and count. It helps relax me a little, helps me regain some control. “I don't give a shit what you think,” I whisper. “Tell me where she is. What did you do to her?”

“
Do to her?” he asks, incredulous. “
SHE SHOT ME!
That fucking bitch shot me!”

I step back, startled, and hit the doorframe.

“
Used my own god damn gun on me.”

“
Too bad it wasn't fatal.”

“
I showed her, though.” He chuckles. “Got even.”

I can finally see him. I still don't want to, but I need to. He's sitting next to a sink near the back wall, propped up against the side of a stall. Where is she? What's left of her? The smell of death and decay wafts out at me, of excrement and vomit and poisoned blood and urine. I can smell the rot and the heat of his infection.

“
You're dying,” I say.

“
Of course I'm dying, you stupid bitch! I just told you she shot me.”

“
Ashley?” Denial, disbelief.

“
She… she says she'll come for you next.”

“
I told you I was going to kill you.”

He sucks in a breath, smacks his lips. He raises his hands to his face and holds them there. I can't tell what he's doing. “Stupid bitch,” he mutters.

Smacking sounds.

He's chewing. He's eating something.

I squeeze my eyes closed and try not to think about it.

“
Stupid bitch shot me,” he mutters, “left me to die. I showed her. Yes I did.”

There's a metallic click. Without thinking, I duck back out through the door. The wall where my head was a moment before disintegrates into a puff of powder. Shards of concrete pelt my neck. The sound of the gunshot rolls across the parking lot and fills the world. Birds flutter away, frightened by the noise.

Only a matter of time before the first IUs show up, Jessie. You need to finish this now.

“
You'll get us both killed,” I say through the door, not daring to stick my head inside again.

His voice wafts out through the window: “I'm already dead. Don't worry, you can come in now. I won't shoot. She only left me one bullet.” He chuckles humorlessly to himself. “Guess I wasted it. Stupid bitch.”

There's a clatter and something scrapes across the bathroom floor and hits the wall next to the entrance. Cautiously, I crack the door open and peek inside. I see the stock of his rifle.

I hesitate. Is this a trick? Does he have another gun? A knife? Has he gotten up and sneaked over to attack me?

I reach in with my own rifle, poking the end in and dragging his out. Grab the stock. The thing's sticky with fresh blood.

Ashley's blood. His blood. I can't tell. Wipe it on my pants.

“
Told you,” he says. His voice sounds empty and weak. “Wasted.”

“
Where did she shoot you?”

Silence for a few seconds. Then, “Had to put a tourniquet on. Fucking leg's useless now. Cain't walk on it. Cain't run. I'm dyin, just not fast enough.”

“
You deserve worse.”

He grunts and says something too low for me to hear.

“
Let me have her.”

“
Ain't gone tell you again,” he says. “She ain't here. Left me the gun and a single bullet. Told me to use it wisely. Thought I was…sittin here…waitin. Musta fell asleep in the night. She came. Woke me up and it weren't her no more. Then you came.” He laughs drily. “My salvation. Ain't that ironical? Since you were the one told me about the blood, that it ain't no cure. It was the infection in it, weren't it?”