S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus (152 page)

“
I'm saying you don't know what she's been through.”

“
And how would you know? How could you possibly know what she's been through?”

“
Because, Jessie, I was there!”

“
Oh, so just because you're old enough to know better, maybe remember what life was like before Dad died—I heard it wasn't that great, so I don't know how that could possibly be much of an argument—that you've got this unique insight into Mom's head? She's a drunken whore. She was a shitty mother. She was never there!”

“
Don't you ever say that, Jessie! You don't know.”

“
But you do.”

“
I do!”

“
Why?”

“
Because I was there! I saw it happen, Jessie.” He stops and his face goes slack while mine freezes. “The man we're going to find—the
thing
that calls himself Father Heall—I saw him kill Dad. So, yeah, I know what hell she's been going through because I have been going through it, too.”

 

“I was there,”
he repeats, mumbling this time. “I saw Dad die.”

“
How come you never told me this?” I cry. “I always thought you were asleep in bed when it happened. We were all in bed.”

“
That's just what Mom told the police when they arrived the next morning. They never believed the story. They couldn't understand how we weren't woken up by the gunshot.”

“
But you just said you were awake. Why didn't you go get Mom?”

“
I was in a state of shock, incoherent. Grandpa found me curled up in a ball in the back of a closet.”

“
Grandpa wasn't living with us then.”

“
After Mom found the mess in the morning, she called him in a panic. She couldn't find me and thought I'd been kidnapped or something. It didn't take long for Grandpa to realize what had really happened.” His voice cracks and he swallows a few times before going on. “It's not easy for me to talk about.”

He says he hates Dad, but does he really? He says he won't kill Halliwell, but will he?

I look over and wonder if maybe this wasn't such a good idea. He's obviously too emotionally involved. What will he do once we find him?

If we find him.

I never knew my father, had never felt all that close to him. In fact, I resented him, even hated him. For me, this trip is strictly a matter of survival, not just for me and Kelly, but also for humanity.

“
Grandpa found me in the back of the hallway closet,” Eric continues. “Mom wanted to take me to the hospital, but he was adamant about us staying out of the media circus that was bound to happen. He knew I'd seen something and was afraid of what I might say. I laid in bed for the next three days, totally unresponsive, catatonic.”

“
So, you know what happened? What aren't you telling me?”

He frowns. I can't tell if the question troubles him or if he's just trying to remember. Or maybe he's trying to untangle conflicting memories, both the real as well as what might have been planted. “That's the thing,” he says. “I don't know. All I can remember is the blood. Lots of it.”

Brains, brains, everywhere. On the walls and on the chair.

Kids chanting in the school lunchroom, taunting me. Everyone knew the story, how Dad had been found with the top half of his skull peeled off and his brains scooped out. Eaten.

Half-eaten.

The zombie wouldn't eat it all. The brain was rotten, much too small.

If only I had known then that the brain-eating part was mostly urban myth. They'll eat just about anything.

How do you starve a zombie? Lock it in a room with Jessica Daniels.

Yelling back at the teasers only made things worse.

Your father's so dumb, not even a zombie would eat his brains!

“
They found a puddle of urine just outside his office doors,” Eric continues. “Mine.”

I remember seeing pictures of the old house. My father's office, the French doors. There was a matching set that led outside, the ones they thought Halliwell had used to get in.

“
You couldn't have seen anything from the hallway,” I counter. “They were covered from the inside with curtains.”

“
Thin fabric. If it was dark in the hallway, you could see some details, shadows mostly. Shapes.”

I turn and stare at him.

“
I wasn't supposed to spy on Dad. He was afraid I'd hear something I shouldn't have and repeat it in school or something. But it never stopped me. I was curious.”

“
Is that why you've been going to the shrink since you got back from the Marines?”

He hesitates before nodding. “Since high school, actually. I need to remember.”

“
But why? I mean, something like that, why relive it if you don't have to?”

He sighs. “Because I need to know. Whatever happened that night screwed me up inside something bad, Jess. Facing it is the only way I know how to try and fix it.”

This worries me. “Is that the real reason you're here, to face Halliwell? It's not to fix me. It's to fix you.”

He turns his eyes to me and there's something dark in them, something beyond reason. A flicker of hatred, of something desperately longed for. Of revenge. I don't know what it is, but I don't like it.

“
You can't kill him, Eric.”

“
I don't plan to, Jessie.”

I don't plan to, but…

“
He's not a monster.”

He thinks of himself as the monster.

Brother Matthew's words. But I don't believe them. Not
that
kind of monster, anyway. A living human being wouldn't eat anyone's brains.

The cup, his drink.
Wormwood. Helps suppress the appetite.

Appetite for what?

“
Why did Mom call Grandpa first before the police?” I ask.

“
So he could tidy up. Dad was the president's chief scientific advisor and Grandpa was the commander in charge of the new Omegaman division of the Marines. These were early days in Reanimation and the government was trying hard to get the public's support. If word got out that a zombie had killed one of the president's inner circle, it would have been a scandal and almost certainly would have derailed the entire program.”

“
I wish it had.”

“
It came close. There was this senator, Larry Abrams. He was on some sort of technology committee or something, part of the high level talks in the White House that occurred after it was discovered that Halliwell had tried to find a cure. A few weeks after Dad was killed, Abrams leaked tapes which he claimed were voice transcripts of Halliwell's experiment.”

“
Why?”

“
He thought the Omegaman project was a waste of money, that it was based on questionable science and was too risky, not to mention unethical. It probably would've ended the program if Abrams hadn't been caught passing intelligence to China. It turns out he had fabricated the tapes.” Eric sighs, adds, “I still come across copies in the black streams.”

I give him sharp look. The surprises just don't stop coming. Even the police aren't supposed to be watching the black streams.

He nods. “Just type in a search for ‘Golgotha' and ‘Halliwell.' It's not hard to find.”

“
Are you suggesting I do something illegal?”

“
No. Just saying they're out there. Anything is, if you look hard enough for it. The truth. And lies.”

“
Why Golgotha?”

“
The place where Jesus Christ was crucified. Someone coined the phrase during the Senate hearings that occurred afterward, a journalist, I think. In any case, like Jesus, Halliwell felt persecuted by the government, betrayed by his closest ally.”

“
Dad.”

Eric nods. “Halliwell believed the government was trying to assassinate scientists.”

“
Like who?”

“
This guy, Archdeacon, who had developed the virus backbone that was later used to create the Reanimation process. This German scientist who invented the first neural implant and shared the prize with Dad and Halliwell. Geena Bloch.”

“
Bloch?” I say with a start. “Did she have a son named Stephen?”

Eric shakes his head. “I don't know. Why?”

“
Father Heall—Halliwell—said he had a son by the name of Stephen. Except that wasn't his real name. It was Enoch. Enoch Bloch.”

“
He and Bloch were friends,” Eric says. “Maybe he was a godfather or something.”

“
I didn't get that impression.”

Eric frowns. “Well, it wouldn't surprise me. Halliwell had a reputation for being a womanizer.”

I don't know why it should, but this bothers me even more than the possibility he might be half-zombie.

 

“
What? No! Come on, Jess. I know you don't think she's been a very good mother, but before Dad—”

“
What happened before Dad died doesn't matter!” I snap. The car swerves and I jerk the wheel back to the right, overcorrecting. We fishtail a moment before settling back in the center of the lane. “She hasn't been any kind of mother at all. To me. To
either
of us.”

Neither of us speaks for a few minutes.

We pass a sign for the Township of Medford. Below it, notification that County Road 16 is coming up. Our exit. We're getting close.

“
What are you planning to do when we get there?” I ask. I still feel numb. I have to concentrate just to keep the car on the road. To push on the gas. To breathe.

He doesn't answer right away.

Brains, brains, everywhere. On the walls and on the chair.

The zombie wouldn't eat it all. The brain was rotten, much too small.

Brains, brains, everywhere. On the desk and in your hair.

Bite me, bite me in the head. Now your daddy is Undead.

“
This isn't about you or me, Jess. This is bigger even than Arc or the government. It's about…”

Retribution.

“
It's about undoing a great wrong.”

“
He'll die anyway, you know. Maybe not literally, but he might as well be dead. They won't let him be free.”

“
He's not free here. And he will be dead if he stays.”

“
You know what they'll do, Eric. They'll stick him in jail cell or a lab somewhere and they'll draw his blood and turn it into medicine for the rich and privileged until they bleed him dry.”

“
They won't do that, Jess. You and Kelly will get what you need.”

“
Oh, don't be so naïve, Eric! Nobody will care about me or him. We're nobodies!”

He gives me a shocked look.

Outside his window, the sign indicating our exit flashes by. I flip on the blinker without thinking about it and begin to slow. Force of habit. The movement catches Eric's eye.

I remember Micah doing the exact same thing in Lower Manhattan and being amused since there hadn't been any other cars around. He was always so careful driving. One of his strange quirks. But now I know it was because he didn't want to risk getting caught. He didn't want to attract a cop's attention.

Like breaking into Long Island didn't attract attention.

I turn the signal off. Suddenly, the last thing I want to do is exit.

The ramp draws near. I'm tempted to just hold the wheel and keep going straight, to pass right by it and drive until we reach the far wall at the eastern-most edge of the island. I want to slam our way through it. I want to drive right into the ocean.

At the last second I turn the wheel and Eric yelps in surprise, bracing himself. But he relaxes as I slow the car down, and we fall back into a smoldering silence.

I take a right onto Patchogue Road a mile and a half later. We pass beneath another highway, take a left onto North Dutton. Everything is startlingly familiar. In a way, it almost feels like coming home.

As we pull up to the house, I look for the IUs I'd seen before, but I see none of them in the surrounding area. I guess they've all gone back to their dark places. Not even one. No sign that tells me everything is normal.

Normal? Ha!

“
Watch out!”

I look back in time to see the object in the middle of the drive, but not in time to avoid hitting it. The left front tires thump and I hear the sickening crunch of bones being snapped beneath me. I feel the car rise up, then drop, as the body collapses beneath us. Another thump and we're past it. I slam on the brakes. The engine backfires and stalls.

Eric's out of the car before I have a chance to react. He moves quickly in spite of being in obvious pain, and he's kneeling over the body.

Please, I beg. Please do not be Father Heall.

Eric stands up quickly and tries to block me. “She's dead,” he says.

“
Sh-she?”

I push him aside. He can't stop me. He can barely stand.

The world collapses into a finite point in that moment. All of my being is concentrated on the familiar face. I bend down and, with a shaky hand, brush the hair from her face, still unmarred, showing only the strain of living in a forsaken land. A choked sob escapes from my throat.