“Jessie! What are you doing?”
I let go of Reggie’s shirt and step over to help Kelly.
“Get the one in back!”
“The bigger one?”
But the smaller, quicker one lunges at Kelly and they go down, Kelly’s hands around its tattered throat and the pitch of that hissing sound changing as his fingers squeeze, changing the shape of that hole.
Jessie! Get moving!
I catch a flash of movement beside me, a blur of faded colors, blue and brown and mossy gray, and something knocks the side of my head. I duck and spin and my foot connects with what feels like a tree trunk and the shock of it travels up my leg and into my hip. I immediately follow it with a second kick, chambering quickly and snapping out. I throw all of my weight behind it and the tree shudders and begins to fall.
Just like a giant tree.
But unlike a tree, this thing isn’t going to stay down.
I pull the gun from my waistband and aim at the thing’s head, following its downward arc, ready to squeeze the trigger as soon as it hits the floor. The thing takes forever to fall, ponderously slow. It doesn’t try to catch itself. It falls like it stands, fully extended, its arms reaching out like branches and its mouth gaping like the hollow in a trunk. It crashes onto its side with a heavy crunch, and its shoulder seems to collapse halfway into its neck. The head slams into the floor with a sharp thud. I feel the impact right through my shoes. My hand squeezes, finger pulling, thumb pushing. Its head is square in my sights.
But then I’m hit in the side and the gun goes flying and I go down. I roll reflexively and find myself back on my feet.
“Where’s the knife?” Kelly yells. He’s on his back with the small zombie on him. He jerks his head away as it strains against the stitches to bite him. I can see the teeth beneath the skin, the jaw clenching and releasing. Then, suddenly, the stitches give way, ripping through the leathery flesh of its lips, leaving them ragged and oozing. Its tongue falls out, a thick worm, black and tattered, pieces of it freshly chewed away falling out like dead flies.
Kelly turns away, a look of abject horror on his face as the heavy pong of decay fills the room. My stomach clenches. But there’s no time to be sick, no time for the luxury of disgust. I plant my feet and spin and land a rear foot kick square to its abdomen and it lets out another lungful of that stink and bends sideways. The thing practically leaps from Kelly’s chest before coming back down on him, its hands still wrapped firmly around Kelly’s shoulders.
I spy the knife then, resting on the floor behind the other two zombies. They’re climbing to their feet. I run over to them and knock them back down, then grab the knife. Three steps and I’m back by Kelly’s side. The IU is leaning down again, flapping its shredded mouth. Kelly thrashes desperately, pawing blindly at its face. He’s going to get himself bitten if he’s not careful. I plunge the knife down and under the thing’s neck and quickly draw the blade up and to the side, but I almost lose my grip when it catches on the collar of its New York University sweatshirt. I wrench it free. The zombie’s head hinges on the few remaining intact tendons. Now it seems to be looking to the side. Yet, incredibly, it’s still trying to bite him.
Kelly thrusts his hand upward, his palm hitting the thing on the chin. The head snaps up and the neck breaks. And now the head drops, limp, below its shoulders. And still it tries to bite Kelly.
“Get it off of me!”
I don’t want to touch it. I don’t want that fusty skin and its rotting clothes to touch me. I don’t know why this one is having this effect on me, not when I’ve had my arm inside the chest of one. But it looks like it spent the past decade moldering away beneath a wet pile of hay. It stinks so badly that I don’t ever think I’ll ever get that smell out of my nose.
You won’t have to worry about that if you just keep standing there!
So I reach over and grab a handful of its hair and pull to expose the rest of the neck. I thrust the knife underneath and pull upward in one swift movement, and the head separates so suddenly that I’m thrown backward and onto my ass. The knife clatters away.
“Look out!” Kelly shouts.
I have half a second to react by ducking out of the way before a hand swishes through the air where my head just was. It still manages to get a handful of my hair and my head snaps around as it pulls me toward its mouth. The pain is exquisite, blossoming from the base of my neck and burning upward. When it reaches the wound at the back of my head, the pain explodes like a firecracker. I scream and lurch to my feet and the monster moans as it pulls me closer.
“Kelly!”
A glint of metal, a shing! And then I’m being yanked to the floor by the falling zombie, my hair still in its hand, its head rolling away.
I land on my shoulder. There’s pain. Just a little more added to all the rest. I’m barely aware of it anymore. Not sharp like the pain in my scalp.
“It won’t let go!” I scream, trying to free myself.
But Kelly’s busy thrusting the knife into the front of the third zombie’s throat, the armless one. It dances for a moment, looking like it’s giving an interview into a microphone, before it too falls.
There’s only one left. Unless more have gotten in.
“Kelly!”
He turns and starts to bend down to help, but the last zombie jumps on him. They crash over a desk and roll to the floor on the other side. I can’t see them now. I can’t even turn around without feeling like the top of my skull is being torn off by the damn dead zombie. I’m crying and my tears are blinding me. I can’t stand the pain. I hammer at the arm with my fists, but the fingers won’t relax.
I can hear them wrestling. I can hear Kelly’s grunts of effort and the snapping teeth and the hissing of the IU, but I can’t see what’s happening!
“Jessie!” He shouts. “I need—ahh! Help!”
“I can’t! I can’t,” I scream. “It won’t let go!” And I pull, but the back of my head feels like it’s on fire.
There’s a loud crunch! followed by smacking and again I hear the teeth clattering. This brings me back. I sweep my arms out, hoping to find something—anything—and the finger of my right hand touches something cool and sharp and I know without seeing that it’s the tip of the knife. I paw at it, trying to pull it toward me, but it just sits there, just out of reach, wobbling and rocking even further away.
“Let go of me!” I cry. “God damn it let go of me.” And I stretch and reach and pull and the knife sits there and I can’t get a hold of it. I lunge toward it, bracing myself against the pain, and it comes, sweeping over me, an avalanche, crushing me. But now I have the knife. I wrap my fingers around the handle. I pull it and start to saw blindly at the zombie’s arm and it slices through the stiffened flesh easily enough but judders to a stop when I reach the bone.
Kelly lets out a bloodcurdling scream.
“No!” I cry. “No!”
I redirect the knife and slice through my hair instead, and suddenly I’m free. I jump up. Kelly and the IU have slipped beneath the desk and there’s no room under there to move. He’s trying to escape, but he can’t push it away. The monster’s head is so close to Kelly’s face that they could be kissing.
I reach under and yank it by its collar and the fabric of the shirt somehow holds. But the monster resists. I slide them both out instead. The knife flashes and Kelly hisses and for a split second I think I’ve sliced off one of his fingers. But as the zombie finally dies and falls away, I can’t see any fresh blood.
“Are you hurt?” I ask, panting. “Did it bite you?”
He sits shakily up and inspects his hands, then uses them to check his neck and face. Finally, he shakes his head.
“What was that scream?” I ask.
He reaches up and touches his ear. It’s red and swollen. “When we fell beneath the desk, I scraped it against the side. Felt like it tore the side of my face off,” he says. He gasps for breath. “What about you? Are you okay?”
“No bites,”
I tell him. I gesture toward the hallway, panting. “But there’s lot more out there waiting to get in, and that door isn’t going to hold forever.”
“Neither are we.”
Chapter 11
We reinforce the blockage with the remaining furniture, piling up chairs and another smaller cabinet to keep the Undead out. Even the old water cooler gets wedged into place. But now we’re stuck in here, and it doesn’t sound like Ben’s IU’s are going anywhere anytime soon.
“What the hell happened in here?” It’s the first thing out of Reggie’s mouth after he wakes up again twenty minutes later.
“Nothing to worry about,” I quietly tell him, placing a wet cloth on his forehead.
He closes his eyes and sighs. “That feels good.”
I frown at Kelly and he returns it with a worried look of his own. Out in the hallway, the zombies have quieted down, but we can still hear them, the occasional shuffle of their naked feet, the infrequent moan. Reggie doesn’t realize the danger we’re still in.
Kelly kneels down beside us, rubbing his cheek. There’s a bruise at the base of his neck and his ear is puffy, the bruise deepening. “We need to tell him about Ashley,” he says.
Reggie’s eyes flutter open. “What about her? You talked to her? When? Where is she? Is she okay?”
I give my head a quick shake. “Ben pinged us. He has her, just as we’d guessed.”
Reggie struggle’s to get up, but Kelly holds him down. “But she’s okay? We need to go!”
“Shh! The hallway’s filled with zombies. We can’t get out.”
Reggie blinks, then slowly turns his head and stares at the pile of office furniture. Then it all registers and his eyes widen.
“Ben sent them here. After he found out… After he found out we were still alive.”
“How did he find out?”
Neither Kelly nor I reply, but understanding comes over Reggie.
“Oh, God. What did I do?” He drops his head into his hands. “Ashley?”
Another exchanged glance between me and Kel. I say, “She was still alive when we got disconnected. She looked scared, but she was alive.”
It’s not the whole truth. I don’t tell him about the scream or Ben’s threat. I don’t tell him that in all likelihood she’s dead. But we don’t know anything for sure, and there’s enough truth to what I say that it’ll at least keep Reggie from flipping out. We don’t need that right now. We need him to be rational if we’re ever going to get out of the situation we’re in now.
“What I don’t understand is how he managed to get them in here,” Kelly says. “These were IUs. He couldn’t control them. Nobody can.”
“He said something about herding them. I think he just somehow drew them here. It was our own shouting that made them come into the building.”
“How many are there?” Reggie asks.
“Lots. Dozens, maybe. There might be more now.”
“There’s something else,” I say.
Reggie looks up. Both boys wait for me to explain.
“He said he was sending something else, to make sure. He said that if we got past them—”
“We’ll never get past them,” Kelly spits.
“He said if we get past them, then we still need to get out of the compound.”
“What’d he mean by that? What’s he going to do, surround the place with more IUs?”
“I don’t know.”
Reggie exhales. I can see the muscles in his shoulder trembling. He’s still shaky from his implant trying to activate. That and the strain of pushing the cabinet over to the door. He doesn’t look well.
“At least we know he’s still close by,” Kelly says. “That’s a good thing, because now we know he hasn’t gotten very far, and that gives Heall time to get away.”
“That would be true if we could get a hold of him,” I say.
“Did you try to ping Micah’s Link?” Reggie asks.
I nod. “But Micah answered.”
Reggie looks confused.
“The brothers took it away from him last night. They were going to hold onto it—and Micah—until I got back with Kelly and Jake. Looks like he escaped.”
Reggie’s look of confusion grows. “Go back?”
“I was supposed to get you and Ash off the island, then return to Brookhaven with Kelly and Jake.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re infected and the treatment only works for a limited amount of time. They need repeat injections.”
“Repeat injections?”
“They need to stay with Father Heall.”
Kelly gets up and walks away. “No, I don’t believe it. Arc will have—”
“Arc doesn’t have anything like this, Kel,” I say over my shoulder. I turn back to Reg. “Anyway, the fact that Micah answered this Link means we can’t get a hold of Heall.”
“He could already be dead,” Kelly says. “All the more reason to forget about going back to Brookhaven.”
I bite my tongue. Reggie turns his dark eyes toward Kelly, but he doesn’t say anything.
“We won’t leave without Ash,” I tell him. “I promise.”
He looks at me so hard that I have to look away.
“Don’t lie to me, Jess. You just told me that Kelly can’t leave, so neither will you. That’s an empty promise. Stop wasting my time.”
“We’ll still go after Ash. We still need to get to Ben before he gets to Heall.”
“How often does the injection have to be given?”
I shrug. “Every few months. They don’t know exactly.”
“They don’t know exactly?” he cries. The noise in the hallway grows. Reggie lowers his voice and asks, “And Kelly doesn’t want to go after them? I don’t understand.” He raises a hand to his head and runs his fingers through his hair, making it stand up on end. He looks like a cartoon of somebody who’s just been badly frightened. I guess he has. We all have. We should all be looking like that.
“I don’t buy it,” Kelly whispers. “So, Heall knows how to make the stuff. I’m sure there must be notes about how to make it. Someone else must know. He can’t be working alone. One of the brothers, for example. They have to have some kind of laboratory set up, right? I mean, wasn’t Brother Matthew some kind of scientist before the evacuation?”
“Chemist,” Reggie answers.
I shake my head. “There is no lab, Kel. At least not to make the stuff.”
“What the hell do you mean? Of course there’s a lab. Unless you mean he’s cooking it up in his kitchen, which I wouldn’t doubt, not after that crap they were making with those leaves.”
I feel my face flush with anger. “If there’s a lab, it’s for testing. And, no, he doesn’t make it in his kitchen, either.”
“So, how does he make it?”
“By staying alive.”
Both Kelly and Reggie frown at me.
“It’s his blood,” I tell them. “The treatment is his blood. I saw Brother Matthew extract it from his neck. He makes it in his blood. So, yes, if he dies, then there will be no more treatment.” I turn to Kelly. “And you will—I don’t know when, but it’ll happen—you’ll turn into one of those things out there. Except somewhere inside of you, you’ll still be aware of everything.”
I stand up. They both watch me, stunned looks on their faces. “So, stop arguing about whether we’re going to leave or go find Ben or rescue Ashley. We need to figure out how we can get out of here. Then we stop Ben.”
Chapter 12
Reggie stands and looks around at our twenty-by-twenty prison cell, then at the elevator car. We’ve turned off all the lights in the room, so there’s only the light spilling in from the hallway. He exhales noisily.
Kelly looks over from his perch beside the door, careful not to get too close, in case an IU reaches through and tries to grab him.
Reggie looks a lot better. He’s still stiff and a bit shaky, and he keeps stopping and blinking, as if to clear his head. And he’s squeezing hi
s Link like he wants to crush the life out of it. Under different circumstances, I might think it was funny, since it’s already dead. But it’s not funny, and I’m worried that something’s not right with him.
“I tried to fix it,” Kelly quietly tells him. “I think something’s loose inside, a connection or something.”
The news doesn’t seem to make Reggie feel any better. He grunts and squeezes and blinks and paces.
“Still out there?” I ask.
Kelly carefully leans over to look out into the hallway. He nods.
“How many?”
“I can see maybe…twenty. At least. Maybe thirty. Hard to tell.”
“What are they doing?”
“Just stand—”
He ducks down again, looking like a turtle that’s been spooked.
“They can’t see you,” Reggie snorts.
“The hell they can’t.”
“I think they can,” I tell him. “I don’t know how, but I think they can see. They can definitely smell and hear. Just don’t get too close.”
Reggie shivers. “It just doesn’t seem possible. They’re supposed to be dead. They have no heartbeat. They don’t breathe.”
Tell that to the neck-breather, I think.
“Their blood is clotted and their brains turn to dust after a while,” he goes on. “Their eyes are all fucked up. How in the hell can they see or hear? How in the hell can they do anything? They haven’t fucking eaten anything for thirteen years!” His voice rises. “How are they even possible?”
Kelly frowns at me. He looks worried.
“I think there’s a lot we don’t know about them,” I quietly answer.
S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus Page 94