S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus (50 page)

“
I know. Sorry.”

“
Yeah, but this isn't the government we're talking about here,” Kelly argues. He can see how much this is upsetting me. “It's Arc.” He spits the last word out. I suppose it tastes bad in his mouth, now that they've betrayed him, used him. Lied to him.

“
Arc would have its own reasons to roll out a new and improved zom,” Reggie says. “Entertainment. Blood and gore and viciousness have always been good entertainment. Good for profit.”

I let out a long, shuddering breath and shake my head. It troubles me to think of the possibilities: zombies who might devour their entire victims. What next? Zombies that can heal? Zombies that can…
think
?

“
This is all very interesting,” Kelly says. “But it doesn't tell us anything about what Arc wants to do with them. Or us. Nor does it tell us where the other person might be.”

“
We have to assume they're still alive,” I say.

“
Yeah, but
alive
alive? Or alive undead?”

I'd almost rather deal with an IU. A living, thinking human being? No matter how smart or quick or strong a zombie might be, it's nothing compared with what a living person can do.

Reggie sighs and looks around us with resignation. “So, what now?” he asks. “We can't stay here.”

“
And we can't leave—”

A muffled cry of surprise interrupts me. It's followed by a scream, almost certainly from Ashley.

We race down the hall and slam through the security door just as the scream hits us a second time. But now I can see that it's not coming from Ashley, but from Jake.

“
What the hell is going on?” Kelly demands.

Jake points at Stephen and wails, “He spit on me! I'm infected. I'm infected!”

“
Christ.” Reggie says under his breath.

I turn to Ashley. “I blame you,” I tell her.

“
Why?”

“
You're the one who invited Pukeboy to come with us in the first place.”

 

I feel bad
about calling Jake Pukeboy, so, as a compromise, I agree to put Stephen in INTERVIEW 1 with the guillotine. I don't like it, but it's not worth arguing over.

“
It's the safest thing we can do,” Kelly assures me.

Stephen struggles a bit as we strap him to the metal examination table, but he quickly yields and just lies there staring at us. Not once does he look at the blade hanging over him. Not even when we lower the block that locks his head in place.

“
It's called a lunette,” Jake explains, snapping the latch closed.

“
How the hell would you know crap like that?” Reggie asks.

He shrugs. “I just do.”

“
You're whacked.”

I lift my eyes to the medieval-looking torture device dangling directly over him, and a shudder passes through me.

“
What kind of monster would create such a thing?” Kelly wonders.

What would someone be doing that they might need to use it?
is the question that plagues me.

Jake laughs. “Who cares? This is a lot easier that shooting him if he reanimates. And a hell of a lot more certain. Just pull the switch and,
voila
, he's quiet. No fuss, no muss.”

I don't like that that's how he puts it: quiet. I don't like that term. Maybe because it means more than killing Stephen. Quieting him will forever shut him up, and right now getting him to talk is our best hope of figuring out how to escape.

As if he knows what I'm thinking, Stephen looks straight at me. His eyes bore into my skull and he says, “You need me.”

Everyone's silent for a moment, either stunned by his audacity or doubtful of his veracity. Then Jake launches into an explanation of how the contraption works, as if Stephen hadn't spoken at all. He explains the series of levers that extend from the device through the tiles of the dropped ceiling and into the adjacent room. Anger roils inside of me, seeing how the trigger can be controlled by someone standing on the other side of the safety glass, who could watch without any fear of personal harm if things go terribly wrong. Just a squeeze of the finger and the person lying on the table is no more. A life snuffed out. A death stolen.

After that, I make sure both rooms stay locked. I don't trust Jake. Frankly, I don't trust any of them. They all think I'm wrong and that we'd be better off not letting Stephen live. Even Ashley tells me I'm being stupid.

“
That shithead was going to inject you with whatever he injected into himself,” she tells me. “He was trying to inject Kelly, too. What if he'd succeeded?”

The image flashes before my eyes, the struggle between them on the tram as Stephen tried to stick the needle into Kelly. The green—
no, white
—solution inside the syringe.

It was green.

In my memory, the liquid is always green.

That's what I'd seen in the moments before my body fully rejected the implant. I was in pain. I wasn't thinking clearly. It had to be white.

We get Micah settled in a bed in one of the other rooms, then Reggie leaves to see if he can find us some water to clean up in. He returns a half hour later. “There's a tank behind one of the maintenance trailers outside. It's filled with rainwater. Not the nicest stuff. Kind of smells oily. But it'll do.”

The walls of the container are covered an inch thick in slimy green algae and the surface is carpeted with mosquito larvae and a grayish-green sludge. Kelly skims it off as best he can before dumping in a couple gallons of bleach we tote down with us from the storage closet. Then I climb in to wash the gore off. But neither the smell nor the slime nor the mosquitoes bother me. I scrub until my skin is raw and even the dirt under my nails disappears.

After everyone is cleaned off, Kelly and Jake go back downstairs to watch the tram entrance. They're an odd team, particularly because of the friction between them over me, but also because of the way Jake has been acting in general. He's unpredictable. Kelly is logical and consistent. And secretive. I'm not sure I can trust either of them.

I go back and sit with Micah. He finally regains consciousness a couple hours later.

“
What time is it?” he asks, bleary eyed. He's obviously still out of it, though, since he thinks he's late for school.

“
Classes don't start for another week and a half,” I tell him. But this only makes him more agitated.

Last week, we'd all sat around dreading the inevitable horror of the first day of our last year of high school. Now there's nothing I'd be more happy to do than to sit in a boring, overheated, overcrowded classroom.

“
Where are we?”

I limit the information I give him. How do you tell someone in such a delicate mental state that he's stuck on an island full of zombies, not to mention people intent on adding us to their Undead rosters? How do you explain you've just dumped an IU with a gaping hole in her chest and a bunch of body parts with human teeth marks on them into the room right next door? How do you explain that we've been kidnapped by a company that makes—of all things—video games?

“
You're in the hospital.”

It'll suffice for now. Maybe later, when he's stronger, I'll tell him some more.

Ash, Reggie and I take turns making sure he stays in bed. He protests, but he's weak and doesn't put up much of a fight. Kelly returns a couple hours later. He holds up a bottle of antibiotics he retrieved from the medical cart on the abandoned tram. After chastising him for not telling us what he was doing, I inform him that the pills won't help if it's a virus.

“
They won't hurt, either.” Later, when he divvies them up between us, I watch as Reggie and Ash pocket theirs. I do the same. Jake swallows his.

Kelly settles into a chair next to the door of Micah's room. “I figured out what was wrong with the tram. The emergency brake needed to be manually disengaged. Wish we'd known about it before.” He reaches into a pocket. “Pulled the fuse from the control panel after I brought it back. Same with the rest of the trams. Hid the rest down there where we can get to them when we need to. Now no one else can use any of the trams, only us.”

Fuses are old tech, just like my brother's jeep and Micah's car, so a bit mysterious to me. It continues to surprise me that Kelly knows so much more about such things. More than I ever knew he did, anyway.

“
One of us should go back to the mainland,” I say. “We could get help.”

“
From who? The police? Arc owns them.”

“
My brother. Grandpa.”

The way Kelly's face hardens tells me he doesn't trust either of them. Eric works for Necrotic Crimes Division, and Grandpa… Well, the Undead are his children, so to speak.

But I know Kelly's wrong.

“
I think we're on our own here,” he says.

He stands up and says he's going to go relieve Jake. “You should get some rest, too.”

“
We need to come up with a plan.”

“
Rest first,” he urges. “You need rest.”

What I need to do is get us all off the island. But I nod and watch him leave without arguing. I stay in Micah's room for a little while longer, watching, praying for his recovery.

It alarms me, how much weight he's lost. I realize with a sudden jolt how frail he looks, lying there, his skin sallow, the rings under his eyes.

He's been a close member of our group since he moved here just over a year ago, and yet he's never really been a part
of
us, instead always somehow…above us. He slipped right into the leadership role that none of us wanted to fill. We willingly followed.

There was never any jealousy among us, neither because of this, nor for his attentions. We all idolized him. Just being in his company was enough. He helped us achieve more than we ever could have without him. Always so passionate and willing to experiment, to take risks. More intelligent. More capable. More…

Well, he was just more.

But now that's all changed. The only way I can explain it is like when you look at a beautiful scene and realize that what you're viewing is about as close to perfection as you'll ever get to experience. And then to suddenly see it marred.

I can't help but feel a little disappointed.

I get up stiffly and remove the IV needle from his arm and throw the setup away. The bag is empty anyway and there isn't another to replace it. He doesn't even wake. As for the urinary catheter, I leave it in for now.

I silently pray that his body heals soon, at least enough to take the strain of moving him.

Even more than that, I worry about his mind. I fear the reality of our situation might just break him, possibly irreparably.

I fear it might be too late. He might already be broken. Just like the rest of us seem to be.

 

“I know you're out there, Kelly,”
I say. It's the next morning, shortly before ten. After a long, restless night, I'd finally managed to sleep. I've been up now for less than an hour after crashing hard for almost six following my midnight-to-three watch. “Come on in.”

He sticks his head tentatively around the doorway. “How'd you know it was me?”

“
Been tracking you.”

He comes in and flops down next to me, bouncing the thin mattress where I'd spent the night, and glances over at Micah's old computer tablet in my hands. “Keeping tabs on me, eh?” he says, trying for lightness but not quite managing. There are circles under his eyes, and his unshaved face is stubbly with whiskers. “Not even married yet and you've already got me on a short leash.”

I frown, but don't bite at the all-too-obvious bait.

A week ago, in sort of a round-about way, he'd asked me to marry him. He'd sent me a picture, a giant marriage proposal spray-painted onto the side of a building in downtown Long Island City. But I couldn't answer him then. Even before I realized we were being attacked by IUs, I'd already been paralyzed with fear.

A month ago, there wouldn't have been any waffling. It would've been an unequivocal no. There were a million reasons not to get married, the very least of which was our ages. Yes, people get married sooner now than their parents did, partially because of the shorter life expectancies, but seventeen is still too young.

Besides, he was supposed to go to college in a year. I would've just dragged him down.

Then came the post on his Link from Arc and his strange reaction to me asking about it. Suddenly it seemed like I might be losing him, and not to some out-of-state school, but to something far more sinister and irrevocable.

But now…

Now, marriage seems like the least important thing in the world, a non-issue, a fantasy that happens to other people.

So why am I so afraid of facing it?

And why do I want it so badly that I can almost taste it?

“
I just checked on Micah,” he says, shifting the subject when it becomes clear I won't talk about his proposal. “He's asleep. What are you doing?”

I'd been scouring the tablet, hoping to find something—anything—that might help us figure how to break the failsafe. I'd stumbled across the tracking app Micah created before we came to LI the first time. It was buried deep inside what can be described as some kind of incomprehensible organizational system of files and programs, either completely insane, or arcane, or absolutely brilliant. How he finds anything on this thing—or his Link, for that matter, since it's the same way—is beyond my puny powers to comprehend.