S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus (39 page)

Reggie comes out with Ash's arm draped across his shoulders. I notice he's abandoned the sling now, though he holds his hurt arm against his chest, favoring his shoulder.

Ashley's feet half drag, half walk along with Reggie, and her head rolls crazily against his chest, but at least she's trying to hold herself up a little. He sets her down on the floor and leans her against the wall. She opens her eyes and blinks a few times, mumbles something incomprehensible, then closes them again.

“
Let me try,” Reggie tells Jake. Jake gladly agrees. As Reggie whales on the door—his one-armed strikes so much more powerful than Jake's two-handed attempts—Jake carefully kneels down on the other side of Ash and watches me try and revive her.

“
Too bad we don't have smelling salts,” he says.

“
Idiot!” I cry, slapping my forehead. He watches me get up. “I should've thought about that.”

I run down the hall to Nurse Mabel's room and start opening the drawers. I finally find what I'm looking for about halfway down: a box of ammonia inhalants. I extract one and run back down the hall squeezing it between my fingers. I feel the glass ampoule inside shatter. A cool liquid soaks the cotton wrapper and the smell of ammonia reaches my nose, making me want to sneeze.

I shove it right up to Ashley's nose and wait. At first she does nothing, then her head snaps back. It lolls to one side. I push the ampoule back into her face.

“
Whuh?”

She lifts a hand and swipes weakly at her face.

“
You're going to burn her nose hairs off,” Jake says, misplaced concern on his face.

“
You're worried about nose hairs? She'll grow them back.” I practically shove the thing into her nostril on the next try.

“
No!” Ashley raises both hands now and pushes. She blinks, her eyes watering. “Whathafug?” she asks. “Jeh?” Her head turns and she sees Jake.

Reggie bends down. “Hey, babe, it's me.”

“
Reggggsh? Whazgoingon?”

He smiles and nods. “Good thinking, guys.” Then he gets back up and starts pounding on the door again, this time with both arms. Ashley winces from the noise. She looks drunk, but it's a definite improvement from where she was just a few minutes earlier.

Finally, there's a splintering sound. Reggie doesn't stop. He just keeps pounding. He winces every time the tank hits, but he's a total maniac now, almost impervious to pain. Every once in a while he glances over at us. At Ashley. My heart skips a beat seeing the worry on his face, and I can't help feeling a little jealous.

The hole in the door widens. Reggie reaches over and rips the wood with his bare hands. Jake gets up and helps.

“
I can see a bed,” Jake announces, peeking through the opening.

My heart skips, then sinks.
A
bed. Not two.

“
No, wait a sec. There's another.”

This time my heart takes flight.

I hurry over, but Reggie pushes us both out of the way to tear away at the door some more.

He hammers and pulls and kicks. Then a corner of the door bends in. He pulls it free with a loud ripping sound. The hole's still not large enough for either of them, but I can squeeze through. I do, forcing my way in despite their protests.

“
Careful,” Jake says. “You'll get splinters.”

Reggie snickers. At least they're back to their old selves.

I get back to my feet once I'm fully inside.

Just as with Jake's room, there's a privacy curtain pulled closed, partially obscuring my view of the two beds. I can see that they're both occupied. That's all I need to know.

I barely notice the stuff piled up on the floor around me, the packs and clothes. I barely notice the stacks of old computer servers softly humming away on the left, their lights blinking green. I barely notice how cool it is in here. But I do notice, and causes me to wonder what the hell all this equipment is for.

“
Are they there?” Reggie shouts through the opening. He yelps and says something about splinters.

“
I told you,” Jake says.

I pull the curtain open and find Micah lying in the first bed. He looks like hell. His eyes flutter open and he sees me and whispers my name.

“
Sa noise about?” he mumbles. “Thought we were being bomb again.”

“
Micah's here,” I shout excitedly. “He's…” I notice the bandages around his head and the burns on his arms. “He's okay.”

Then I turn to the other bed and see the face of the person lying in it, still as death.

And this time I can't stop my heart from breaking.

 

“Jessie?”
Reggie asks. “Is it…?”

“
I don't want to talk about it,” I say, as I sink to the floor between the beds.

I can hear them quietly murmuring to each other outside the room, trying to decide what to do. They finish clearing away the rest of the door and come in

“
I'm sorry, Jess,” Reggie tells me. He gives the figure in the other bed a baleful glance but doesn't say anything.

When I don't move, he joins Jake over by our packs and begins sorting our clothes.

“
What the hell happened to you guys?” Jake quietly asks. “How'd you end up here?”

“
I'd ask the same about you and Kelly.”

“
Long story.”

“
So's mine.”

“
I asked first.”

Reggie exhales with a sigh and looks over at me. Then at Micah, who appears to be sleeping again. He shakes his head and rubs his sore shoulder.

“
We came down because Micah said you were coming out through the tunnel. He got the hack to work and was tracking you as you moved northeast toward the Harlem tunnel. We were in a boat. The bomb hit about a hundred yards from us.”

He holds up a shirt—Micah's, I think. I can't quite remember what Micah was wearing. My mind's a blank. The fabric's all stiff from dried mud and blood. It's torn—even burnt in places.

“
Damn blast knocked us all into the water. I saw Micah get thrown. I was sure he was a goner.”

I squeeze my eyes closed as the full memory finally comes back to me, the final pieces my mind has been holding back. And as soon as the picture's complete, I wish I could erase it all over again: the bomb hitting the water, the water bulging upward, shattering into a billion pieces, the boat lifting, the five of us flying through the air.

The sickening thud as Micah's body hit the sign we were tied up to.

The color of the water.

So much blood.

“
God, we were so stupid!” Reggie cries. “Right from the god damn beginning.”

“
Bomb?” Jake asks.

“
The planes were dropping them. We didn't know they were targeting the tunnels, collapsing them. First the Brooklyn Battery. We heard the explosions but didn't know what they were at the time. Then the Midtown. Those we saw, but even then it was too far away to know. We didn't even guess what the hell was happening until it was too late. Then those god damn planes were right over us, dropping the bombs.”

He pauses and turns his head and gives Jake a strange look. “What I can't figure is how the hell you survived? You were supposed to be inside the tunnel. How'd you get out?”

Jake frowns. “We weren't in any tunnel. We planned to go through the Battery further south, but… Why would you think we were in the Harlem tunnel?”

Reggie looks over at me. I don't move. I'm still trying to understand how it could be Kelly we've lost.

“
It's like I said. We were tracking you. Well, Micah was, on his Link. He and Ash cracked the codex. Your signal was moving north before it disappeared. He said it was because you were inside the Harlem tunnel by then, underneath the EM barrier. The signal was blocked.”

Jake shakes his head. “The Harlem wouldn't have been my next choice. After the Midtown tunnel collapsed and separated us, I came back. I just holed up for the night. I mean, I barely even managed to get out of the water—those zombies were everywhere. But then I found this drainage pipe and went through it. I came out in this access shaft and climbed up, but the opening was covered by a metal plate. I thought I was trapped. I finally managed to get it off and climb out before the zoms heard me.”

“
How did Kelly find you?”

“
I didn't sleep a wink all night worrying about where those things might be and if they were going to find me. When the sun came up, I was shocked to find the place deserted again. It was like they'd never been there, except for the few bodies still lying around, the ones we'd managed to kill.”

We?
I think. He'd been too panicked to even get his wetsuit on right. He didn't kill any.

“
Gone?” Reggie asks. “Where'd they go?”

“
Back into hiding, I guess.”

I remember how I thought the zombies had been hiding, how ridiculous that seemed. It doesn't seem so ridiculous now.

“
I don't know what freaks me out more,” Jake says, “knowing they can show up so quickly, or not knowing where they've disappeared to. The island's got to be crawling with the Undead, but we just can't find them.”

“
Zombies don't hide,” Reggie insists. He holds up Micah's old tablet computer and inspects it for damage before shoving it into the backpack. He comes over to me and asks, “What do you want to do with Micah? I don't think we should move him.”

I lean my head against the wall and stare straight ahead of me.

“
Jessie? Come on.”

I blink. I hear Kelly telling me,
I need you, Jessie.

“
Jessie?”

“
Go away.”

“
We need you.”

“
No, Reg, you don't. Leave me alone.”

“
You're wrong. We do need you. We all do.”

You're our rock.

Kelly was my rock, and now he's gone.

“
Please, Jess. There's not much time.”

I push him away. He clenches his jaw and makes to say something. I shake my head. I turn to Jake. I'm ready.

“
I need to know what happened to Kelly.”

 

“
I was going back to where we'd stashed the bags the day before,” he says. “I needed to get some fresh cartridges. I was going to try the other bore of the Midtown tunnel. I was out in the open when I saw something moving by the car where we'd stashed everything. Scared the crap out of me, at least until I realized it was Kelly. I don't know how long he'd been there, but he'd already gathered up some of the equipment. He told me there was no way we were going back through the Midtown tunnel. It was too active with IUs. Both sides.”

“
When exactly did you guys decide to try the Harlem tunnel?”

“
Like I said, that wasn't the plan. We were heading south toward the Battery when those two guys found us.”

“
What two guys?” Reggie asks. “Zombies?”

“
No. Warm bloods.”

I give him a strange look, and he shrugs. “Better than calling them ‘The Living.' Anyway, they claimed to be Arc employees. Said they were surveying the island. They had all this survival gear with them, EM guns, shotguns, machetes, body armor.”

“
Civilians don't get issued EM guns,” I say.

Jake shrugs. “Kelly thought that was strange, too, but what could we say? These guys promised to get us off the island. I didn't like the idea of going further inland, but Kelly said we'd be better off just going along with it. When we asked why we were going by foot, they said they didn't use cars or motorbikes. They said the first teams did, the ones that didn't come back. Apparently the zombies have become supersensitive to sounds.”

“
They weren't surprised to see you here?” I ask.

“
Not really. That was a little suspicious, too. They seemed bothered only when we confessed to having come through the tunnels to get here. One guy got on his Link and sent a few messages, but then he came back and thanked us and said they'd be taking care of that.”

“
Who was he pinging?” I ask, starting to worry. There are too many inconsistencies in Jake's story. I'm not sure if he's telling the truth or not. “The EM barrier would block them from pinging anyone outside.”

“
I don't know. I never got a chance to find out, because after that, they pretty much ran us hard. There wasn't much opportunity to talk. But the further we went, the more of a bad feeling I got. I mentioned this to Kelly. He said not to worry, but I could see he was starting to have serious doubts, too. Later, he told me to be prepared.”

“
For what?”

“
To escape, I guess. He didn't say. They brought us both into the terminal here and they said everything would be okay. They promised us food and water. But it was a trap. Kelly must've known because he suddenly punched one of the guys in the face and shouted at me to run. But I wasn't prepared. They were on me in a second. They grabbed me. I heard a gunshot. I'm sorry, Jessie.”

Reggie stands from where he's crouching, sifting through the last of our stuff. “I knew this was an airport. I was hoping it was Teterboro, though. So you're telling me we're back on the island again?”