S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus (156 page)

I bring the rifle up and slam it into his head. His body jerks, falls. I scramble to my feet and run over to Julia. But she's already gone. Her eyes are starting to glaze over. Blood leaks from her nose and mouth, bubbles from her torn throat with every agonized breath she takes.

Rustling, behind me. Don't look. Jake on his feet. The others coming: thirty feet, twenty-five. They're screaming, waving their arms. A growl, almost in my ear.

I drop, roll, twist. But he's not there.

Spin around, search. He's gone

“
Shoot him!” Reggie screams, pointing.

I look. Jake's loping off toward the buildings.

Not typical. Not typical for a zombie not typical no not typical come back—

Reggie slides to the ground next to me. He reaches out for Julia, but she's clearly on her last breaths. There's nothing any of us can do. I push him away.

Eric hobbles up next to us a moment later. He tries to take the gun, tries to lift it, but it slips from his grip. He tries again, wincing, seats it in the hollow of his shoulder, sights, squeezes. The rifle leaps as it fires and it goes flying out of his hands. It hits the soft dirt muzzle down, plants itself. Eric drops to a knee, clutching his side.

Jake disappears around a corner.

“
That fucker,” Reggie sobs. “That stupid fucker. Look what he did.”

But I can't look at her, and not because I know it's my fault she's dead. I can't look at her because I it's not her face I see. It's Jake's. I see him looking back at me, his dark blue eyes now black, now pleading with me to stop him, to kill him. To please make it stop.

And I know I'm not imagining it. He's Undead and he knows it.

† † †

Chaos reigns for the next several minutes. Eric tries to hold Reggie back, to keep him from going after Jake. Kelly's there too, pushing against Reggie's chest, trying to talk him down. They're both weak, and Reggie's strong. He should be able to sweep them away like gnats, but he doesn't.

I pluck the rifle from the dirt. Four rounds left. I carry it over to Julia. It feels so damn heavy. Behind me, the boys are still arguing. I angle the gun at Julia's head and pull the trigger and the world suddenly goes quiet.

I don't know how long I stand there. Eventually the moaning of the Undead drifts back into my consciousness. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Reggie push the others away. He steps over to me and for a moment I think he's going to hold me. Instead he screams, “You should've shot him! Why didn't you shoot him?” Then he stomps away.

Eric takes my arm and leads me back to where we'd been sitting. He doesn't say anything, but I can sense him wondering the same thing: Why didn't I shoot him? How could I have missed him twice from such close range?

“
What time is it?” I ask, numbly.

He looks at his Link. “Four thirty…five.”

I think it's then that we realize leaving isn't going to be as easy as we thought. Hopeful anticipation turns to despair. Not even the shock of what just happened can mask it.

I leave Julia. She's dead now, nothing but dead meat rotting into the dirt, dirt to dirt, dust to dust and we all fall down. I go and I sit back down with Kelly near Halliwell's body, opposite Reggie. He holds his head in his hands and refuses to look at me. Eric comes over but doesn't sit. I'm dimly aware of him standing there, keeping watch. Waiting for Jake to return. I don't care anymore. Let him come. Let him come and feed on us all.

But he doesn't. Of course he doesn't. We just sit and wait for a rescue that never comes.

Four forty comes and goes. Then it's ten till five and still no chopper. Eric tries to ping someone, anyone, but there's no one on the Stream. I can see it in his eyes, the self-doubt, the wondering if maybe our chance to get the island died when his chopper went down last night. But I think it was when Grandpa died. It was him, after all, who'd arranged to get Eric here in the first place, arranged for Air Defense to postpone their bombing run.

“
They're going to come soon.”

I think it's Kelly who says this. I'm not sure.

Nobody answers. Nobody asks if he means the rescue or the bombs.

At five o'clock, the fence stops working. Almost intuitively, we know it's for good this time. Reggie stands up and brushes himself off and says, “Give me the gun.”

 

I don't move.
I'd been thinking what a coincidence it is that there are three more bullets left. Three bullets, four of us.

“
Give it to me,” Reggie asks again, extending his hand toward me. He stares off in the distance, the muscles in his jaw rippling.

“
Why?”

“
I'm going to hunt that son of a fucker down.”

“
Why?” I ask again. Kelly's got his head in my lap now, his eyes closed, the heat of his fever rolling off of him. I stroke his hair with my fingers. I think he's asleep. He looks too peaceful to wake.

Reggie reaches down and snatches the rifle from the ground with a grunt. I don't stop him. If this is how he wants to spend the last minutes of his life, who am I to judge?

Eric struggles to his feet, holding his side, and follows after. I don't stop him either.

I watch them go, Reggie sawing at the tall grass with the rifle, his shoulders set like a bulldog's, Eric snapping at his heels. The image brings up even more regrets. I think about Shinji and suddenly the tears come, not in great heaving waves, but a quiet rush that won't be stanched. They fall in a cascade over Kelly's face and hair, and I wipe them away and think, how stupid is that? I don't cry for myself or for my boyfriend. Instead I cry for a stupid dog out there somewhere. I hope that he's running and playing in these last few minutes of his life. I hope he's happy.

Time slips away—seconds or minutes or hours, I don't know—and the sun dips ever lower. The tears stop. I'm just too tired and too dehydrated to cry anymore. Or maybe I'm just finished crying. I never used to be like this, not until we came to this forsaken hell-hole. But now I'm finished. I'm done.

Check my Link and see that only nine minutes have passed. Nine. How can that be? How can I feel all cried out in so short a time?

Five ten…eleven. Seventy-nine minutes before the bombs.

Seventy-eight.

Why are we just sitting here? What are we waiting for?

As gently as I can, I work my way out from under Kelly's head and rest it on the grass. He doesn't wake, and for that I'm grateful. Let him sleep a little more before we go.

I turn and run after the others. I can't give up like this. I won't. Not while we still have a ghost of a chance. Not until the planes are over us.

“
Eric!” I yell as I get to the buildings. “Reggie!”

As if summoned, they emerge through the door of Building Two, Eric leading the way. He's clutching his side and breathing hard, the EM pistol in his hand and the rifle slung over his shoulder. Reggie is behind him, carrying something large. There's no mistaking what it is. It's a body.

Not Jake's, but Micah's.

† † †

I tell them my idea. They don't argue, which surprises me. They'd already given up hope and don't care where they die or how. They do as I tell them without argument, drawing the IUs away from the gate long enough to get everyone into the car, including Halliwell's body. Reggie throws him into the front passenger seat and then gets into the driver's seat himself. The back is crowded. Micah sits slumped over behind Halliwell, still unconscious, Eric on the left. I'm in the middle with Kelly on my lap.

“
You sure about this?”

“
Just start the car, Reg.”

He does and it sputters to life. Immediately the gas gauge shows empty and dings its warning at us, but the engine doesn't cut out on us.

“
We'll be lucky to get out of the parking lot,” he mutters, but he puts it into gear and we edge our way through the IUs crowding around the sides of the car, knocking them aside, rolling over them. We don't even flinch anymore. They're just objects, like mailboxes.

He takes us through the woods, back the way we came, then noses us out of the parking lot. We all hold our breath and wait for the inevitable final stall. It doesn't come. Up the road we go, up the exit ramp to the Northern State Parkway. Reggie slowly accelerates, thirty, thirty-five, forty. He holds it steady at forty-five. We head toward the setting sun. It's almost five thirty and we've got an hour left to live.

“
He was messing with the computer,” Eric says to me. “Micah was.”

Reggie lifts his eyes at me in the rearview mirror. I can see the betrayal in his eyes still, the belief that I would rather sacrifice Julia than shoot Jake. I can't say that he's wrong. I don't know if he's right.

“
Why the computer?”

“
He said he was trying to fix it, get the network back online.”

“
That's bullshit and everyone here knows it,” Reggie snaps. “He was controlling Jake down there. Had to be. You saw how he was acting. That was totally unnatural.”

Unnatural, I think. The Undead are the very definition of unnatural.

“
He wasn't controlling Jake. You need a controller to do that.”

“
When we found him—before Eric zapped him—first thing out of his mouth was whether we saw Jake. Micah was tracking him!”

I mull this over for a few minutes. “Assuming he really was fixing the network, why?”

“
To get out.”

“
What else did he say?”

“
Nothing,” Eric says. “Reggie was going to shoot him right there on the spot. I stepped in to stop him and Micah tried to run. Reggie decked him.”

“
Twice in two days,” I muse.

“
Didn't knock him out like you did. Only made him madder. That's why I shot him with the EM.”

“
You got his tablet?”

“
It's on the floor up here,” Reggie says.

“
Evidence,” Eric adds.

Evidence? We may not even get out of this alive and he's worried about evidence.

Micah begins to stir just as the wall heaves into view. I want to know more about what happened, but Reggie turns hostile again. “Shoot the fucker again,” he tells Eric.

But Eric shakes his head. “Can't do it in here. The car will stall, not to mention knock us all out.”

“
You should have let me shoot him with the rifle back there.”

“
We take him back alive,” Eric says.

“
We may not even make it out alive.”

“
If we don't, you can be the first to shoot him,” Eric says grimly.

“
Don't talk like that,” I say. “Let's stay positive.” But right then the car coughs and stalls. We're still over a tenth of a mile from the wall. It's too far to walk.

“
Time to give this asshole his trial. Asshole, do you have anything to say in your defense?”

Micah mumbles something and tries to raise his head.

“
Never mind that, Reggie. Just start the damn car.”

He tries, but it won't start.

“
Well, nice plan, Jessie. Out of gas. Just another fuck up in a long line of fuck ups.”

I ignore him and instead push Eric to get out. “Pop the trunk. We need a gas can.”

“
Really? That's your brilliant backup plan? Why didn't you think of getting gas before?”

“
I can't think of everything!”

“
No, you just—”

“
Regggge
,” Kelly says, slurring his words. His skin is burning up. “Please. Cut…slack.”

“
Come with me,” I tell him. “The rest of you, stay here and keep quiet. Tie Micah up if you have to, but
don't
shock him again. Something tells me we may need him.”

“
For what?”

“
I don't know. Bait, maybe.”

“
I could go for that,” Reggie says. At least it gets him moving.

There's nothing in the trunk of the car but a spare and a tire iron and something that looks like a petrified cookie. Seeing it makes me realize how hungry I should be.

“
Come on, we need to hurry.”

“
No shit, Sherlock.”

“
Stop being such a hardass and help, okay?” I click the trunk closed as quietly as I can and scan the sides of the road for houses. Luckily we've stalled out near a residential area. “We need to find a gas can and some tubing.”

“
So we get some more gas. Then what? Drive this piece of shit another couple hundred yards?” He points at the wall running across the highway. “We could walk there faster.”

“
I don't know, Reggie! Okay? I'm making this up as we go along. It's more than anyone else is doing.”

“
That's because there's nothing else we can do, Jessie! It's hopeless.” But he jogs to catch up with me.

“
It's not. Now be quiet!”

After we drop down on the other side of the fence, we sprint to the nearest house. We get lucky and find a gas can and an old garden hose right away. The hose is stiff and brittle. Reggie breaks off several lengths and tucks them into his fist. Unfortunately, there's no car.

“
Plenty out on the street,” he says.