S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus

by Saul Tanpepper

  The muscles in her face ripple, but she doesn’t reply. The same deadness enters her eyes that I remember from back in the airport.

  “Just do it, Miss Novak,” Casey whispers. “Please.”

  He’s close to completely falling apart. I can see it in his eyes.

  “Into the vein,” Ben says. “Directly in. All of it. It’s thick. I don’t want to waste any of it.”

  “Into the vein? But—”

  “Just do it, damn it!”

  He looks over at the rest of us as the needle goes in, not even wincing. I stare back. I know this is our last chance to save Jake—my last chance. I have to do something. I have to act now!

  But I don’t. The end of Shane’s rifle looks like the gaping black maw of the Undead, only ten times as deadly. Once shot, once dead; no chance of coming back, not unless they miss. And something tells me he wouldn’t.

  So I just sit there and watch Miss Novak push on the plunger until it drains every last drop of the treatment—of Jake’s last chance at living—into Ben’s arm. There’s nothing I can do, and because of it Jake will die. I’ve sentenced him to death.

  Chapter 17

  The reaction is almost immediate. Ben’s body goes rigid. His arms and legs shoot straight out. His spine straightens. He goes as stiff and straight as a board.

  “Jesus!” Casey gasps.

  Ben’s eyes bulge from their sockets and Ashley screams and tries to back away. She knocks over a couple chairs as she goes. Miss Novak steps back, too. She drops the syringe. Incoherent sounds issue forth from Ben’s mouth. He seems suspended for a second, floating. Then he drops to the floor like a felled tree, bouncing off a chair and rolling onto his back, where he writhes in apparent agony.

  “Sit down!” Shane shouts at us, as we all get up out of our chairs and try to move away. He waves the rifle, but Casey backs directly into it in his own fright and it’s a miracle he doesn’t get shot. Instead, he twists his ankle stepping on Shane’s foot, and crumples to the ground. “Get the fuck up, you moron!” Shane screams.

  Casey jumps back to his feet, favoring the twisted one.

  “God, if you weren’t so clumsy!”

  “What the hell is happening to him?” Novak screams. She looks frantically around at us, her eyes wide with panic. So much for her composure. Getting no response, she steps over Ben’s body and grabs me by the shirt and shakes me. My teeth clack against each other. “What’s happening to him?”

  “I— I don’t know!” I say. I can’t stop looking at him lying there, like he’s getting zapped by a hundred thousand volts of electricity. “I don’t know!”

  “You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?”

  “No!” But there is something familiar about it. I wasn’t expecting this to happen, but it does look familiar.

  Kelly yanks Novak off of me and pushes her away. “Get back!” he yells, but Shane steps forward and slams the butt of his rifle into Kelly’s head and he drops senseless to the floor.

  “Kelly!”

  “Get the others back!” Shane orders Casey, who quickly bends down and drags Kelly off to one side. Reggie lurches to his feet, but quickly sits back down when Shane points the rifle at him.

  Novak drags me over to where Ben is, his body stiff and vibrating. Spittle flies from his mouth and he sounds like he’s choking on his tongue. “What the fuck is happening to him? What was in that syringe?”

  “I don’t know! It’s the treatment. Brother Matthew said there might be side effects. He said there were risks.”

  “What kinds of risks? What side effects? Tell me!”

  “I don’t know! We were attacked before he could tell me. There was an accident and the car— I don’t know!”

  “What car? Don’t you lie to me, you little bitch!” She slaps me across the face. “You knew this—”

  “It’s Stephen,” Ashley says.

  Everyone looks over at her. “What did you say?” Novak demands. While she’s distracted, I reach into Ben’s shirt pocket and pull out the two Links and slip them under my shirt.

  Reggie wraps his arms around Ashley, trying to protect her, trying to stop her from seeing the horror that is Ben. She pushes against him, trying to extract herself. She’s staring down at the floor, her eyes wide and terrified. “It’s just like what happened to Stephen,” she stammers. “After we got back to the terminal. It’s the same thing, the seizures and—”

  “He was acting, Ash,” Reggie tells her. “He was lying to us, trying to trick us. Remember? Jake pegged it when he said he was fucking with our heads, Ash. This isn’t the same thing at all.”

  “It is! It’s the same. You don’t know because you were busy with that nurse zombie and—”

  “No!” I say. “Reggie’s right, Ashley. It isn’t the same. It’s not!”

  Ashley looks over at me, confusion in her eyes. She opens her mouth to protest, but nothing comes out. I glare at her, willing her to see that I’m actually lying, that I want her to keep quiet. I pull my hand away from the skin at the base of my neck, unaware that I’d raised it there, and stare at it expecting to see blood. But there isn’t any.

  “Jessie?”

  “It’s not the same,” I whisper. And I feel like I’m on the verge of understanding something, something terrible and dark, something I don’t want to know.

  Ben’s body arches and a wet sound gushes forth from his lips, high-pitched and rising into a piercing screech. He gives one final spasm and then lies still. His chest rises and falls quickly and shallowly, but the tension has otherwise left his body.

  “What the hell just happened?” Casey says. He tries to yell, to sound commanding, but his voice comes out weak and broken. It’s the old Casey back again.

  Miss Novak spins back around and kneels by Ben’s side. I watch her reach out and push her fingertips into his chest once, before snatching her hand back. “Ben?”

  He doesn’t move.

  Nor does Kelly. A thin line of blood trickles from his brow and his head is canted off to the side. I reach over, afraid to move him, afraid his neck might be broken, but he groans and turns, blinking.

  “Jess?” He tries to focus. “Jessie? What the—”

  “Lie still,” I whisper. Reggie slips over and joins me, pressing his hand on Kelly’s chest and shushing him.

  “I told you people not to move,” Shane growls.

  Reggie ignores him. “Kelly, hey, brah, lie still, okay?”

  Shane reaches over and grabs Reggie by the collar and Reggie backhands him without looking, without even checking to see where the rifle is pointing. Shane falls onto his ass. The gun clatters to the ground next to him and for a moment it’s up for grabs. But he snatches it and tries to scramble back to his feet, except he slips on Brother Nicholas’ blood and falls again, his hand slapping the floor with a loud smack! “Sonofabitch! I am going to fuck all of you up!” he shouts.

  “No!” Miss Novak holds out her hand, stopping him. “That’s an order, Shane!”

  She turns and there’s the tiniest hint of a smile on her face.

  “But, Miss Novak, I—”

  “It’s alright, actually. In fact, this actually works out. We’ll get more of that medicine. It’ll be easier, now that Ben is out of the picture. He was unpredictable. Padraig knew it. So did Beaucorp. Well, looks like it finally got him killed. Or…whatever you call this.”

  “He’s dead?” Casey gasps.

  “No, but he might just as well be.”

  But that’s not what’s worrying Casey. I can see it in his face, the realization that what just happened to Ben may very well happen to him.

  “I’ll be damned if I know what this is,” Novak says, holding up the empty syringe. “And I don’t like not knowing.” She turns around. “We go back to the original plan, boys. We find and we capture the man who made this. We make him tell us the secret to whatever his cure-all is and why it works sometimes and…” She stands up, nudging Ben with her shoe. “And why it doesn’t in othe
rs.”

  “You still think it works?” Casey asks, barely able to contain the shaking in his voice.

  Novak turns to him, a sympathetic frown on her face. She pats his arm gently. “You’ll be fine, Casey. Trust me. You don’t have a thing to worry about.”

  “Are we going to take them all with us?” Shane asks. “We can’t take them all with us.”

  Novak shakes her head. “We don’t need all of them. Casey, keep an eye on Ben while I work through this.”

  “But—”

  “If he dies, cut his spine. We don’t want any loose ends.”

  “Yes ma’am.” He takes another look at the bite mark on his arm, staring at it with renewed fear. “He gave that stuff to me. He made that zombie bite me so he could test that stuff on me. Why did he do that?” he cries. “And why did it do that to him? Is it because he wasn’t already infected?”

  “Casey! Focus.”

  “But what if that happens to me? It could still happen! Oh god! What if it really doesn’t work? He made that zombie fucker bite me! I’m infected!”

  “Casey.” She speaks slowly, quietly. “You’re fine. You’d be flat on your ass by now if you weren’t.”

  He gawps at her. I can see he wants to believe her. Finally, he nods.

  “Good. Now—I don’t know, maybe you should tie Ben up. At least his feet. Shane, take the others down into the basement. Take the stairs. And when you’re down there, block the door. We’ll follow in the elevator.”

  “What are you going to do to us?” I ask.

  “What we should’ve done to you in the very beginning,” she answers. And then she gestures to Shane. She whispers something into his ear and he nods, then reaches into his pack and draws out a black canister and hands it over to her.

  “Get going,” he snaps at us, jabbing his rifle toward the stairs.

  Chapter 18

  Reggie and I each take one of Kelly’s arms and help him to his feet so we can carry him to the stairs. He doesn’t resist. Nor does he help. He still hasn’t recovered from the blow to his head.

  “You, too,” Shane tells Ashley.

  “No,” Novak says, “leave the weepy one here. I want to ask her a few questions.”

  Reggie starts to turn to protest, but Shane stabs the muzzle of the rifle into his back until Reggie grunts in pain. “Keep moving. She’ll be fine as long as you don’t do anything stupid!”

  I turn and catch her eye and give my head a quick shake. I know what Novak wants to ask her. I saw the way she’d reacted when Ashley mentioned Ben’s reaction mirroring Stephen’s behavior back at the airport. I don’t know what’s so important about that, but I do get the sense there’s something we don’t quite understand yet, something vital.

  “Just do what they tell you, Ash,” Reggie tells her.

  “But—”

  “You’ll be fine. Everything will be fine. I promise. We’ll see you in few minutes.”

  “Shut the hell up and go!” Shane spits.

  Reggie snarls, his face beet red. The veins stick out on his neck and forehead and make him look a lot more frightening. Shane hesitates before raising his rifle.

  “I can walk,” Kelly murmurs drunkenly, diverting everyone’s attention. He tries to shake us off, but only ends up getting his feet tangled. He’d go down if we weren’t holding him up.

  “Not yet, brah,” Reggie whispers. “You’re in no shape.”

  “Come on!” Shane says, a little less forcibly. “Hurry up. I haven’t got all day.”

  I can feel my blood pressure rising, but there’s nothing I can do. Kelly’s in no shape to fend for himself if Reggie and I decide to try and fight. Three against two; I doubt Ashley would be much help.

  Reggie looks past Kelly’s slumped head and throws me a look that says, Not now. Now’s not a good time. I know he’s right, and I know he has to be struggling hard to control his own instinct for self-preservation, but it doesn’t make my own struggle any easier.

  So we carry Kelly down the stairs, Reggie holding onto the railing attached to the wall and me gripping the one in the center. Every time I look down that angular spiral, down into the depths, I get a little dizzy. It doesn’t help that I can’t see out of one eye, screwing up my depth perception.

  Each step is painfully slow, and the force of that muzzle pointing at our backs is painfully strong. I find myself imagining falling over the side, just suddenly disappearing. With my luck, I’d only break my neck and paralyze myself on the flight below.

  There are moments when it seems Kelly is recovering. Either I or Reggie slip and Kelly catches us, but his head still lolls and a sticky line of drool stretches from his bottom lip. When we’re halfway down, I know he’s carrying most of his own weight, though he doesn’t appear to. And when I ask how he’s doing, his words come out all slurred. I don’t know whether to be worried or heartened. I can’t tell if he’s acting or not.

  When we get to the bottom, Shane grunts and gestures for me to take Kelly into the main room with Jake. He tells Reggie to stay.

  “What are you going to do,” I start to say, but Reggie waves me away with a thin smile.

  “I’m cool, Jess,” he says. “Don’t worry about me.”

  I get Kelly settled on the floor against the wall and then go over to check on Jake on the table. In the gloom, he looks like he’s already dead, but after a few seconds of watching, checking for any sign of life, I detect the slightest rise and fall to his chest. Heat rolls off of him and bakes my skin, and I realize that even if we had another syringe of the treatment and gave it to him now, it wouldn’t be able to reverse whatever damage the fever has already done to his brain. It’s probably mush by now.

  Shane sets Reggie to work barricading the stairwell door. I can hear him bending pieces of metal around the handle, grunting as the metal squeals. He talks as he works, asking Shane questions. His voice sounds hollow and flat. But Shane doesn’t answer, just grunts.

  “What’s that bitch want with Ashley?” Reggie asks after several minutes of this, the frustration clear in his voice.

  “Better watch your mouth, asshole,” Shane replies. “Just shut up and keep working.”

  I don’t know if Reggie’s trying to antagonize Shane on purpose or not, but I worry either way.

  Kelly tries to stand up. He slips sideways against the wall, stumbles and catches himself.

  “You should sit down, Kel.”

  He winces. His face is pale and waxy. “I’m fine,” he whispers, giving me a weak smile. “Most of that upstairs and on the steps coming down was an act. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

  I help him over to a chair, where he collapses with a loud exhale. Most of it may have been an act, but not all of it. That much seems clear enough.

  “Got anything for my head?” he asks, holding it in his hands.

  All I’ve got in my pack is a bottle of aspirin that expired seven or eight years ago. I think about the pill Casey gave me, about how well it worked to ease my own headache, and wish I had one of those to give to Kelly. But I thumb off the cap and tap out a half dozen aspirin tablets and hand them over. He sticks them in his mouth and chews, cringing at the bitter taste.

  “We need to get out of here,” he says, whispering. I see him glance cautiously through the curtain of his hair. Reggie and Shane are still barricading the door. The elevator’s still upstairs, and I’d be willing to bet anything Novak is holding the car with the door propped open, making sure we don’t call it down to us before she’s ready. “I have a bad feeling about this,” he concludes, stating what is painfully obvious.

  “Me, too.”

  When Shane is satisfied with the job of blocking the door, he and Reggie join us in the main room. Kelly immediately droops in his chair looking for all the world like he’s about to pass out again. Shane fumbles for the light switch and flicks it on. I wince against the glare.

  “Looks like your friend is fucked,” Shane says. He stands over Jake and stares, his face twisted with revuls
ion. After a minute or two, he bends down, lowering his face until his eyes are at chest level. “Fact, I think he’s beyond fucked. He’s dead.”

  I jump to my feet and run over. “Jake!”

  Nothing. No breathing, no movement.

  “Check his pulse,” Reggie says.

  I reach over and place a shaking hand on his neck, digging a finger in. The flesh is boiling and it feels soupy, like a sac filled with liquid, like all the muscle inside has dissolved. I can’t help but shudder. I feel for a pulse, my heartbeat racing ever faster with each second I can’t find it.

  But then, there it is, rapid and weak. Thready. Jake’s chest rises ever so slightly, and then it falls again.

  “I don’t know why you don’t just put him out of his misery,” Shane says, sneering. “He’s going to die. And when he does—”

  “No thanks to you!” I shout, and he jumps at the sharpness of my voice.

  “Hey, don’t blame me, bitch! Why don’t you blame yourself? I know who you are and who your family—”

  “Shut up,” Reggie growls. The fury on his face is intense. “Everybody in this room is as much responsible as anybody else. Just as responsible as every other citizen. So just shut the hell up.”

  “Citizen, right.” He laughs.

  “That’s right!”

  Shane doesn’t push the issue. He turns back to me. “Just say the word,” he says. “I’ll make it so your friend doesn’t have to come back. I can be merciful.”

  “You don’t get to touch him. You don’t even get to talk about him.”

  “Yeah, back off, asshole,” Kelly says, coughing weakly.

  Shane fingers the trigger of the rifle, his eyes flicking between the three of us. Finally he shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

  His boots make jarring clicking noises as he circles Jake’s table, careful not to let us out of his sight.

  When the elevator finally dings, he backs his way toward it. “Go stand over there,” he tells us, pointing to the back of the room.