S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus (21 page)

“
Hurry up, Jessie!” Kelly shrieks. I want to slap him. What does he think I'm doing?

I'd started pulling my arms into the suit even before I got there. They slip easily on.

Jake's yanking at the second leg, screaming in frustration. His suit doesn't want to go on. I realize it's because his suit is still wet but he's not. He hasn't even broken a sweat. “Get some water!” I scream at Reggie. “Wet down his skin.”

The closest zombies are about a hundred feet away now.

I zip my suit up, then shift the gun from my other hand. I aim at the closest zombie and squeeze the trigger. The gun clicks.

“
Shit! Where's my mask?” I toss the gun away, but keep the axe.

Kelly hands me my mask, along with his goggles. I push them away. “They're not going to fit me!”

Reggie scrambles back up from the water's edge. He hurries over to Jake with his hands cupped, but the water spills out before he gets him. The two of them start fighting over how to get the suit on Jake. Reggie just starts shoving parts of Jake's body into places inside the wetsuit where they don't belong. Jake's shaking with terror now, useless. Even from where I'm standing I can see that his suit is twisted. He'll never get it zipped up. Reggie tries anyway. He gives the zipper a massive tug and it rips.

“
Never mind,” I scream. “Get into the water!”

Kelly has taken my axe and run over to the first zombies. He takes two out and is working on a third. They seem to appear out of nowhere, swarming, their moans filling my ears.

“
Kelly!”

He throws the axe at another and sprints back, snatching our backpacks from the ground and hurling them out and over the water. “Let's go!” he yells, as they splash down.

Ashley and Micah are already climbing down the fence. Ash reaches the water first and plunges in, pushing her gear and flippers ahead of her. I snatch my flippers and head for Jake and Reggie, who are still stupidly struggling with the suit.

“
No time! Into the goddamn water!”

I grab two more pairs of flippers as Kelly gets their packs. Everything gets hurled over the railing. Reggie kicks at a zombie while pushing at Jake, who's practically sobbing by now and babbling. The zombie gets back up and comes at them again, but it has to push past several of its comrades.

Reggie swings the spare equipment bag at them, bowling them all down.

I grab Jake and yank him away just as another zombie reaches for him. Its blackened fingers close over empty space. Its momentum trips it, but it doesn't stop coming.

“
Wrong way!” Jake screams.

“
You're going over!”

I grunt and push him over the railing. He flips in mid-air, then splashes into the water.

A hand rakes my back. Instinctively, I step away, even as I reach back, grab, and pull. I use the attacker's own weight against itself. But I realize only too late what I've done as the zombie follows Jake over the railing. I try to pull it back, shouting, “Lookout!” But its arm rips from its socket with a dry popping sound.

There's a splash. Ashley screams. Or maybe it's Jake.

The next zombie lurches at me, but then Kelly launches himself at it and it flies off to one side.

“
Go!” he shouts.

“
Not without you!”

“
I'm coming.”

And we vault the railing.

The surface comes up fast. It's a roiling, chaotic mass of water and air as Jake kicks himself away from the zombie. Micah is slashing at it with his knife. Reggie is swimming over, but without flippers he's moving too slowly. Our gear bags slowly gather against the wall of the overpass, pushed there by the breeze and the waves that everyone's thrashing is making.

“
I'll help Jake,” Kelly yells. “Get your flippers.”

I swim over and find them. I've just managed to get the second one on when there's a splash right beside me. I look up and see a zombie tilting over the railing right over me.

“
Jessie!”

I kick away from the wall just as it falls, narrowly missing me. Then it seems to be raining zombies as more and more of them tumble over the railing in their attempt to reach us. Some sink immediately, while others bob near the surface. They thrash. Their moans turn to gurgles as their throats fill with water.

“
The gear!”

“
Forget the gear,” Reggie says. He's got his flippers on now and is swimming Jake's over to him. “We need to go! Now! Look!”

Dozens of the Infected Undead now line the overpass. The line presses forward. A dozen bodies fall and another line takes its place.

“
Shit!” Ash screams. “Oh, my fucking god where are they all coming from!”

Jake has finally managed to get the rest of his gear on and has gathered with the others about thirty feet from the overpass. I'm still off to one side, separated from them by twenty or so feet of water and several floating zombies leering at us.

“
We need those spare canisters,” Reggie roars, holding up his mask, but he doesn't move to get them. Nobody does. To do so would be suicide, since our bags are floating against the overpass. There's no way any of us can reach them. “These still have the used ones!”

“
You didn't switch out the canisters?” Jake screams. “What the hell were you doing?”

“
Never mind that,” Kelly says. “Which bag are they in?”

“
We can't!” Micah shouts. He turns to Jake. “You said these last about three hours, right? Well it took us half that to get here. I hope for our sake you're right.”

He then shouts over at me to stay put. “We'll meet underwater.” Then he instructs Kelly to swim over to me. A minute later, Kelly surfaces a few feet to my right. He grabs my hand.

Micah checks his Link one last time and curses. “Where'd the time go?”

“
I don't care,” Ashley says. “I'm going now!”

We all nod in agreement. It's now or never.

“
But this time,” Kelly shouts, “we all stay together.”

‡

We meet underwater
and join hands. The scene around us is surreal: A panoramic movie of zombies drifting down into the darkness below. They lurch and twist at us, looking like dying earthworms dropped into a child's bucket. They remind me of autumn, of rotting leaves sinking into a lake.

Then I remember the old video stream Reggie found one day while searching through some archived footage from the first part of the century: people falling from a burning building, plummeting to the ground, dropping, dropping, until the whole building collapses into a ball of dust that reaches to the clouds and turns the sun red.

“
Is this real?” I'd asked, horrified at the images. “This can't be real.”

Ashley asked her G-ma Junie about it and G-ma Junie told her to hush and never bring it up again. “Destroy the video. It's illegal to speak of things that happened before.”

We slip between the falling bodies. It's easy to evade them. They can't swim. They only drift down, and then they slip along the bottom as the current catches them.

I remember the one that attacked me on our way in. It had acted differently. It seemed like it knew how to swim. But maybe that's just how I'm remembering it.

Is it still alive? Is it lying on the bottom of the tunnel somewhere, unable to move because of its severed spine? How long could it stay there like that? Forever? Would the fish eat it?

The pile of zombies directly beneath the overpass is so large that they continue to rain down. The seething mass writhes and splashes, bodies disengaging themselves as the zombies struggle against one other. We don't stick around to watch. We swim quickly past them and they ogle back at us, looking almost resentful, their mouths gaping and their tongues lolling out. Their eyes black with death, full of longing and hunger.

Earthworms
, I tell myself.
That's all they are.

Except earthworms don't want to eat you. At least not while you're still alive.

The current gently pushes us forward. Already it's very weak, suggesting it'll turn soon. We'll end up fighting it again the closer we get to Manhattan.

We enter the same tunnel we came through earlier. Between the six of us, only two flashlights remain. Reggie holds one as he leads the group into the darkness. The rest of us form a chain, each holding the hand of the person in front: Reggie, Ashley, me, Kelly, Jake, and finally Micah in back. He holds the other flashlight. We push ourselves to the limit, kicking hard with our flippers to get away from that terrifying place.

I'm thirsty and tired, faint from hunger. My feet hurt and my knees burn from all the running we've done. My arms ache from swinging the axe. I can't see very much, and what I can see is blurry.

But I don't want to see. I keep my eyes closed and concentrate on kicking and for once I'm glad that Reggie is the one leading us out. He's always been the physically strongest among us.

We arrive near the place where the zombie attacked me. I only know this by instinct. Or maybe I imagine Kelly's grip tightening on my hand. I keep my eyes closed. It makes the time pass quicker. Soon. Soon we'll be home. I never want to come back.

I concentrate on my breathing—in and out and in again—timing my kicks to keep the rhythm going. The beat becomes a part of me, a part of my own living rhythm, until I no longer have to think about it.

Images gradually creep back into my mind, so slowly and stealthily that I don't realize it at first. The zombies in the store, the way their heads exploded like sacks of flour, like they were so old that they'd completely dried up inside. How could they still be…alive?

The ones that attacked us after we'd returned to where our gear was hadn't been like that. The faster ones. One of the zombies Kelly had beheaded had made a wet squelching sound when it fell. A thick, deep red fluid had oozed from its neck. It was a fresh zombie.

I shudder.

Reggie stops a couple times, both times asking us via Link if we're all okay. Kelly notices that I don't have mine and gives me a curious look. I shrug and hold out my empty hands. He types something into his screen, then shows it to me:

<>

I nod. He shakes his head. I'll need to figure out how to explain it to the Department of Citizen Registration when we get back. The questionnaire for a lost Link is over a thousand questions long.

The second time Reggie stops, I notice the drag on us. The current has stopped pushing at us. And while it isn't yet pulling us back yet, the lack of assistance combined with our fatigue is slowing our progress. We've depleted our energy reserves.

I'm especially beginning to feel it, since I didn't eat earlier. My legs cramp. There's a stitch in my side. Any adrenaline I'd been running on has long since evaporated away.

Micah gives Reggie an impatient look and gestures at him to keep going. We quickly reform our chain and carry on. We don't know how much longer our cartridges will last. Once more, I close my eyes and let the others guide me.

The minutes pass. Then I feel Ash and Kelly release my hands. I open my eyes, thinking we've reached the end. But everything's still dark, except for the two beams of light, spreading out.

I push myself toward the source of the closest one. Jake's face emerges from the gloom. I grab his hand and hold on. He stops and looks at me, confused, tension filling his face.

He holds up his Link and types:

<>

He reads my frown immediately, since I have no goggles to distort my eyes. Gripping my hand once more, he points downward with the light. Below us is the faint outline of the rear of the old bus we'd passed on our way in.

I look up again. The debris dam looms over us, tall and massive. It stretches all the way to the ceiling and spans the tunnel from one side to the other. A large tree trunk pokes through it, its stunted roots looking like a gorgon's head, a nest of unidentifiable flotsam trapped within its tentacles.

Jake swings the light over to the side. I'm barely able to make out Kelly and Reggie. They're at the opening we used earlier, but now it's blocked. I can see them trying to move something. Ash and Micah hover nearby with the other flashlight. Reggie must have given Jake his light to locate another opening.

I urge his hand to point the beam over the surface of the logjam once more, looking for another way through. Below us, a stream of mud eddies out of a narrow gap beneath the bus. In just the few seconds we hover there, the cloud spreads up to meet us.

A new alarm rises up inside of me: the current has shifted.

Jake realizes this too. He yanks the light away and swings it back up at Reggie and Kelly. They've got a corner of what looks like a box spring mattress and are pulling at it, trying to pry it loose. Jake makes an urgent noise with his throat, but we're too far away for them to hear it. I begin to kick my way up toward them.

I reach Ash just as I start hearing a soft plinking noise below us. I look down and see Jake urgently banging the handle of his knife on the flashlight, trying to alert the others. Ashley hears it and turns, inadvertently shifting the light in Micah's hands away from Kelly and Reg.

Just then there's a low grinding noise, massive and ominous. I feel it in my bones, and I sense, rather than see or hear, the pile beginning to shift, the low grinding of several tons of material moving against itself, pushed forward by the strengthening current, unrelieved now that its only opening has been obstructed.

Jake makes that urgent sound in his throat again, but Kel and Reg don't hear. He swims past us and stabs them with his light. They keep working on pulling the mattress free.