S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus (99 page)

“
What decisions? How do I know which choice to make?”

“
You'll know if you have faith in yourself. The answers are all inside of you.”

The boom of my fist slamming onto the table surprises me, but Father Heall doesn't even flinch. “This is bullshit!” I yell. “I didn't come here looking for spiritual guidance or incense or tea or
oooh
spooky bullshit! I thought you could help me. I thought you had something real, medicine or something, that could help treat the infection. Instead, you offer me this—” I sputter.

“
You saw the bites on Brother Matthew and Sister Jane.”

“
I saw bites.”

“
They are from the Elders. Their infection has been treated. That's all you need to know.”

“
But—”

He sighs. “There is a treatment. My people are preparing the stabilizer right now.”

“
What? What stabilizer?”

“
On its own, the treatment is highly unstable and quickly breaks down. It requires a special solution that not only activates it but keeps it active, which you will need for the journey back.”

He drains his cup and reaches back and pulls a string. There's a distant chime. Minutes later, one of the men returns with a replacement. The strong aroma fills the room once more.

After we're alone again, Father Heall assures me that I will be able to leave in the morning with the treatment—if that is what I choose—then he asks me about my family. I don't want to talk about them, so I tell him instead about swimming here through the tunnel and the things that happened afterward.

He doesn't ask any more questions. He just listens, never once shifting in his seat, just nodding and shaking his head in all the right places. When I get to the part where we tried to escape LaGuardia, I tell him about the failsafe program (though I don't mention that my own implant has been rejected, nor that Stephen claimed it was his code, nor that it now seems to have been Micah's). I tell him of the experiments Stephen claimed to have performed on Tanya that caused her to begin acting like she was turning into an Infected. Only then does Father Heall speak.

“
Then he has done it,” he says, once more burying his face in his hands. “I should have stopped him when I had the chance.” He lifts his head and asks what became of Tanya.

“
Jake thought she was turning and he tried to stop her.” Once more my blood pressure rises. Anger at Jake for acting so rashly; anger at my own role, however unintended, in causing her to be brought into all this. “She held on for a long time—Stephen tried to save her; he was very upset—but then she died. She lost too much blood. And then she really did turn.”

“
She bit my son, then.”

“
Yes.”

“
Irony, it would seem, has dealt me the final hand. He wanted to be bitten. He wanted to prove he could defeat the infection.”

“
Yes. He didn't think he could be infected. He thought he was immune.”

“
He knew he wasn't.”

“
No, he said he'd developed a vaccine or something. He gave it to himself. It didn't work.” I picture him lying on the table with the guillotine above him and the deadman's switch in his hand. He had a death wish, I'm sure of it now.

It makes me wonder what happened between the two of them, to force him to act the way he did.

The memory of his death is still vivid inside my head that I can still feel his fingers around my throat, squeezing. I can still hear his last words to me:
Now we will be the same.
It seems almost inconceivable that it could be just last night. It feels like it was a lifetime ago.

The conversation drifts from there. Father Heall talks about life here, about his garden and his prayer ritual, but I stop listening. I'm so tired that it all just runs together in my head. My body is shutting down from fatigue. The next thing I know my head is resting on a pillow.

Shinji is there, and I am in bed.

So I sleep. I have a lot to think about.

And so much yet to do.

 

“
Micah?”

My ears hear nothing but silence and the drum of my own heartbeat.

I shift, lifting my head from the pillow, and the moon is a hollow ghost in the window, its pocked face riven by the tattered storm clouds. Thunder rumbles in the distance.

“
Micah?”

Louder this time. This time the bed shakes as someone else wakes. The mattress dips beside me and I feel him move closer.

“
How long have I—Hey! What the hell? Stop licking me!”

But it's not Micah's tongue on my face, it's Shinji's.

“
Hey, boy,” I whisper. I'm glad to see him. He pants his dog breath in my ear, glad to see me too, even though it's got to be deep into the early hours and I know I've just woken him from whatever happy doggy dreams he was having. “It's good to see you too, boy.”

I realize Micah's not there. And that too is good.

My eyes soon adjust to the gloom. I see my backpack on a chair beside the window. It's a different room than the one I was in earlier. I lift the blankets off of me and pad quietly over to the window. My clothes are there, washed and partially line-dried to a cardboard consistency. They smell of soap. I slip my hand into the pack and fish around until I find my Link. I pull it out and wake it. But it's the temporary one I'd gotten in Hartford, the one that doesn't allow me to send or receive pings. I drop it back into the pack. I'd forgotten I still had it, and now I feel a twinge of guilt. I was supposed to take it back and exchange it for my permanent Link replacement last week. Now on top of everything else, Eric will get stuck with a bill for three hundred and forty-six dollars in the next tax cycle. And if he can't pay it, three hundred and forty-six days will get added to my LSC.

Days that I'd gladly give too, if only I had some assurance I'd make it back home, for a chance to live long enough to reach my LSC age. All these things seem out of the question.

I find my own Link, the one I thought I'd lost. There's a message waiting on it from Kelly:

<>

I text him back that I'll be leaving in the morning and will be there by noon at the latest. After I send it, I close my eyes and hope I'm not wrong.
Hold on, Jake
, I whisper.
Hold on, Kelly
.

I hope I'm making the right decision.

Despite having slept only about five hours, I'm totally awake now, restless. I pace across the room and hear Shinji's feet hit the floor, then pad over to me. He whines quietly, worried that I'm not taking advantage of what is so obviously the softest bed in the whole entire world.

“
I know, boy.” I smile down at him and pat his head. I want desperately to sleep. I want to slip away into that netherworld where I don't have to think about the Undead and infections and people dying. And choices. A place where I don't have to constantly be on the lookout. Where I don't have to protect. And defend. And kill. Where my friends are exactly who I think they are and not stupid dumb betrayers.

I'm so tired, but sleep has fled from me.

I slip over to the door. The floorboards yield beneath my feet, letting out a somnolent groan. There is no other sound but the wind outside my window and the occasional low rumble of thunder. I find the knob and twist. It turns easily in my hand, the springs twanging softly inside the mechanism. But when I try to pull the door open, it doesn't budge.

“
Locked,” I whisper, exhaling with disappointment.

Out of frustration I give the door an extra yank and, to my great surprise, it pops open with a loud
crack!
as the old paint unsticks. I poke my head out. The hallway is dark, illuminated only by the soft glow of a nightlight in the bathroom.

Shinji whines worriedly at me.
See bed? Sleep good.

“
Shh,” I tell him. I pull him by his collar back to the bed and he eagerly jumps onto it. After a few minutes, he settles down with a contented groan. I rub his fur and wait for him to sleep, but his eyes glisten in the darkness. He won't as long as I don't.

“
Stay,” I tell him. He lifts his head. I repeat the command, then slip out into the hallway. I wait for him to bark, but he doesn't. Ever so quietly, I shut the door behind me, lingering only long enough to make certain he won't freak out.

My first stop is the bathroom. There's water in the bowl, a blessing after going primitive for the past two weeks. Even the tinkling sound it makes almost brings tears of happiness to my eyes.
Silly
, I tell myself. I don't flush it down. I don't want to wake anyone.

A gust of wind buffets the side of the house and the walls creak and moan. The noise doesn't mask the sound of my bare feet on the floor or the mad battering of my heart against my ribs. They are loud, at least to my ears. And I fear they'll rouse the entire house.

I pass by the room Micah and I were in earlier and I pause to listen through the door. I can hear him inside, talking quietly, incoherently in his sleep. I wonder if this is something he's always done or if it's something brought on by the stress of our situation or his weakened mental state. His voice rises and falls, lapsing into prolonged periods of silence before picking up again. I smile at myself and test the door, but unlike mine, his is locked tight. I am not surprised.

I pause only for a moment outside Brother Jasper's room and hear him snoring away. This makes me feel better, although I'm tempted to check to see if his door is locked like the others, wondering if they all lock their doors. Protection from the things that might wander these hallways, if they're ever allowed to.

My hand slides over the banister as I descend the stairs. Lightning slashes the darkness outside, filling a void of utter silence with blinding light. With searing clarity, the flash illuminates everything: the walls, me in my borrowed clothes, the stairs, the ancient piano below me with the warped lid and the vases of fossilized bouquets. The afterimage lingers behind my eyelids. Before it fades, I finish my descent.

Thunder rolls for several seconds, low and distant. By then I'm in the adjacent hallway.

I hope the storm passes us quickly. I'd rather not have to return to the hill during a drenching downpour. More than that, clouds increase the risk of running into the—

Elders

—
Infected.

More lightning. Visions of the other house where Micah and I had stayed last night come to me. I'm safe here, I tell myself. The doors are locked. Nobody is going to let the Undead in.

Olly olly oxen free
, my mind whispers.
The monsters are already inside.

A flash, a loud
CRACK!

The house slumbers away.

What do the Undead do, when the wind howls so? Do they stand out in it, waiting to be blown away? I remember when we were kids and on those late fall days when the winds would pick up and rustle the leaves from one end of town to the other. I remember standing outside during recess and watching the other kids leaning into it to see how far they could go before the wind released them and they tumbled to the ground. I remember laughing, outside and away from the others, wanting to be inside their little circles, to be a part of their games, their lives, their happiness.

Do the Undead play such games?

Now I pause outside the door to the cellar, and there's a faint light bleeding through the space underneath it. It's not fully shut. I reach out and lay my palm against it and it swings silently open. It suddenly occurs to me that I might be dreaming, but then the smell of earth and wormwood tea wafts up to me and the wooden steps stretch out below me like a tumbling accordion, and my heart pounds so that it doesn't feel like a dream at all.

Hello?

The walls are rough, made of unfinished wood. My fingers travel over the grain, catching on splinters. I step down into that feeble glow, no longer frightened, just curious. My toes check the surface of each step, find each edge, feel their firmness. They don't creak.

Olly olly
.

Not even the sound of the wind finds its way down here. Only silence.

Silence which finally yields as I descend, giving way to the first faint murmur of voices.

I close my eyes and try to remember the path through the maze, but it doesn't come to me. I'd been so terrified earlier that none of it had registered. I take a deep breath and step out, letting my ears be my guide.

I begin to make out their conversation before I see them, snippets of sounds coalescing into words, words joining together into sentences, sentences forming questions and replies. I realize with a start that they're talking about me and Micah when I hear Brother Matthew say, “You are letting her leave?”

“
It's time,” Father Heall replies. “You must have faith. We all must.”

Brother Matthew grunts, and despite myself I smile. It seems Father Heall's sermonizing isn't just frustrating to me. “She tested positive,” he says.

I hold my hand over my mouth to hide my gasp.
I'm infected?

I don't feel infected.

“
Yes, I could've guessed.”