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

by Saul Tanpepper

  Reggie reaches down and snatches the rifle from the ground with a grunt. I don’t stop him. If this is how he wants to spend the last minutes of his life, who am I to judge?

  Eric struggles to his feet, holding his side, and follows after. I don’t stop him either.

  I watch them go, Reggie sawing at the tall grass with the rifle, his shoulders set like a bulldog’s, Eric snapping at his heels. The image brings up even more regrets. I think about Shinji and suddenly the tears come, not in great heaving waves, but a quiet rush that won’t be stanched. They fall in a cascade over Kelly’s face and hair, and I wipe them away and think, how stupid is that? I don’t cry for myself or for my boyfriend. Instead I cry for a stupid dog out there somewhere. I hope that he’s running and playing in these last few minutes of his life. I hope he’s happy.

  Time slips away—seconds or minutes or hours, I don’t know—and the sun dips ever lower. The tears stop. I’m just too tired and too dehydrated to cry anymore. Or maybe I’m just finished crying. I never used to be like this, not until we came to this forsaken hell-hole. But now I’m finished. I’m done.

  Check my Link and see that only nine minutes have passed. Nine. How can that be? How can I feel all cried out in so short a time?

  Five ten…eleven. Seventy-nine minutes before the bombs.

  Seventy-eight.

  Why are we just sitting here? What are we waiting for?

  As gently as I can, I work my way out from under Kelly’s head and rest it on the grass. He doesn’t wake, and for that I’m grateful. Let him sleep a little more before we go.

  I turn and run after the others. I can’t give up like this. I won’t. Not while we still have a ghost of a chance. Not until the planes are over us.

  “Eric!” I yell as I get to the buildings. “Reggie!”

  As if summoned, they emerge through the door of Building Two, Eric leading the way. He’s clutching his side and breathing hard, the EM pistol in his hand and the rifle slung over his shoulder. Reggie is behind him, carrying something large. There’s no mistaking what it is. It’s a body.

  Not Jake’s, but Micah’s.

  † † †

  I tell them my idea. They don’t argue, which surprises me. They’d already given up hope and don’t care where they die or how. They do as I tell them without argument, drawing the IUs away from the gate long enough to get everyone into the car, including Halliwell’s body. Reggie throws him into the front passenger seat and then gets into the driver’s seat himself. The back is crowded. Micah sits slumped over behind Halliwell, still unconscious, Eric on the left. I’m in the middle with Kelly on my lap.

  “You sure about this?”

  “Just start the car, Reg.”

  He does and it sputters to life. Immediately the gas gauge shows empty and dings its warning at us, but the engine doesn’t cut out on us.

  “We’ll be lucky to get out of the parking lot,” he mutters, but he puts it into gear and we edge our way through the IUs crowding around the sides of the car, knocking them aside, rolling over them. We don’t even flinch anymore. They’re just objects, like mailboxes.

  He takes us through the woods, back the way we came, then noses us out of the parking lot. We all hold our breath and wait for the inevitable final stall. It doesn’t come. Up the road we go, up the exit ramp to the Northern State Parkway. Reggie slowly accelerates, thirty, thirty-five, forty. He holds it steady at forty-five. We head toward the setting sun. It’s almost five thirty and we’ve got an hour left to live.

  “He was messing with the computer,” Eric says to me. “Micah was.”

  Reggie lifts his eyes at me in the rearview mirror. I can see the betrayal in his eyes still, the belief that I would rather sacrifice Julia than shoot Jake. I can’t say that he’s wrong. I don’t know if he’s right.

  “Why the computer?”

  “He said he was trying to fix it, get the network back online.”

  “That’s bullshit and everyone here knows it,” Reggie snaps. “He was controlling Jake down there. Had to be. You saw how he was acting. That was totally unnatural.”

  Unnatural, I think. The Undead are the very definition of unnatural.

  “He wasn’t controlling Jake. You need a controller to do that.”

  “When we found him—before Eric zapped him—first thing out of his mouth was whether we saw Jake. Micah was tracking him!”

  I mull this over for a few minutes. “Assuming he really was fixing the network, why?”

  “To get out.”

  “What else did he say?”

  “Nothing,” Eric says. “Reggie was going to shoot him right there on the spot. I stepped in to stop him and Micah tried to run. Reggie decked him.”

  “Twice in two days,” I muse.

  “Didn’t knock him out like you did. Only made him madder. That’s why I shot him with the EM.”

  “You got his tablet?”

  “It’s on the floor up here,” Reggie says.

  “Evidence,” Eric adds.

  Evidence? We may not even get out of this alive and he’s worried about evidence.

  Micah begins to stir just as the wall heaves into view. I want to know more about what happened, but Reggie turns hostile again. “Shoot the fucker again,” he tells Eric.

  But Eric shakes his head. “Can’t do it in here. The car will stall, not to mention knock us all out.”

  “You should have let me shoot him with the rifle back there.”

  “We take him back alive,” Eric says.

  “We may not even make it out alive.”

  “If we don’t, you can be the first to shoot him,” Eric says grimly.

  “Don’t talk like that,” I say. “Let’s stay positive.” But right then the car coughs and stalls. We’re still over a tenth of a mile from the wall. It’s too far to walk.

  “Time to give this asshole his trial. Asshole, do you have anything to say in your defense?”

  Micah mumbles something and tries to raise his head.

  “Never mind that, Reggie. Just start the damn car.”

  He tries, but it won’t start.

  “Well, nice plan, Jessie. Out of gas. Just another fuck up in a long line of fuck ups.”

  I ignore him and instead push Eric to get out. “Pop the trunk. We need a gas can.”

  “Really? That’s your brilliant backup plan? Why didn’t you think of getting gas before?”

  “I can’t think of everything!”

  “No, you just—”

  “Regggge,” Kelly says, slurring his words. His skin is burning up. “Please. Cut…slack.”

  “Come with me,” I tell him. “The rest of you, stay here and keep quiet. Tie Micah up if you have to, but don’t shock him again. Something tells me we may need him.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. Bait, maybe.”

  “I could go for that,” Reggie says. At least it gets him moving.

  There’s nothing in the trunk of the car but a spare and a tire iron and something that looks like a petrified cookie. Seeing it makes me realize how hungry I should be.

  “Come on, we need to hurry.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.”

  “Stop being such a hardass and help, okay?” I click the trunk closed as quietly as I can and scan the sides of the road for houses. Luckily we’ve stalled out near a residential area. “We need to find a gas can and some tubing.”

  “So we get some more gas. Then what? Drive this piece of shit another couple hundred yards?” He points at the wall running across the highway. “We could walk there faster.”

  “I don’t know, Reggie! Okay? I’m making this up as we go along. It’s more than anyone else is doing.”

  “That’s because there’s nothing else we can do, Jessie! It’s hopeless.” But he jogs to catch up with me.

  “It’s not. Now be quiet!”

  After we drop down on the other side of the fence, we sprint to the nearest house. We get lucky and find a gas can and an old ga
rden hose right away. The hose is stiff and brittle. Reggie breaks off several lengths and tucks them into his fist. Unfortunately, there’s no car.

  “Plenty out on the street,” he says.

  I shake my head. “Garages. Better chance that the gasoline is good.”

  “Since when did you become such an expert?”

  “Since this morning.”

  We find a pickup truck in the garage of the second house, but it’s a diesel.

  “Wasting time,” Reggie says.

  Time is all I can think about. It’s twenty-five miles to LaGuardia and we have less than forty five minutes. And we still have to get through the Gameland wall.

  We hit pay dirt at the third house.

  “Another truck,” Reggie says.

  “But it’s not a diesel,” I say, spinning off the gas cap. “Start sucking.”

  “Great. Just what I need when the bombs hit, a mouthful of flammable liquid.” He sucks and spits and sucks and spits and soon it starts gushing out and onto the floor. But when he tries to angle the end into the gas can, the hose snaps in half.

  “Try again. Bend it slowly next time.”

  I find an old milk jug in a recycling bin and bring it over. The traces of milk inside have long since dried up. I shake the flakes out and hand the jug over. “Fill this one, too.”

  He gives me a dirty look. More gasoline sloshes onto the floor of the garage, but now I can see the change coming over him, the first glimmer of hope.

  He finishes filling the can and switches the hose to the milk jug.

  “I’m going to die with this nasty taste in my mouth.”

  “You’re not going—”

  Crash!

  The garage door rattles, but Reggie doesn’t even look up. “I hear you knocking,” he mumbles, “but you can’t come in.”

  More banging. And moaning.

  “Wonder how they knew we were here.”

  “Does it matter, Jess? We can probably go out the back way.” He pulls the hose out and asks if there are more cans to fill up. Gasoline splashes over the floor, spreading. The fumes bite into my nose.

  “That’s it. Let’s go.”

  We slip through the house, Reggie carrying the two-and-a-half-gallon jug while I have the smaller one. We each have a knife in our other hand.

  “Looks like they’re mostly out front,” he says, peering cautiously out a window. But while we stand there, several turn toward us, as if they’d heard, and they begin to head for our hiding place.

  “Okay, that’s freaky.”

  “I think they smell fear.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “Then it must be your stink.”

  Reggie checks the drawers in the kitchen and yelps triumphantly when he finds a box of safety matches. I don’t ask why he needs them.

  The back door squeaks a little, but the porch is empty. So is the back yard. We step out.

  A wooden fence borders it on three sides.

  “Left or right?” he asks, but as we stand there, the Undead appear around both sides of the house. “Okay. Looks like we’re going straight.”

  “Are you crazy?” I whisper.

  “Trust me!” He hands me his knife, grabs my jug of gas, then jumps off the porch.

  “Hey!” I cry.

  “Come on!” He heads straight for the back fence and for a split second I think he’s going to smash his way right through it. I want to yell at him to stop, that we don’t know what’s on the other side, but then he turns. “Come on, Jessie! Now or never!”

  I fly down the steps, the Undead right behind me. This is suicide, I think to myself. But as I come, I see what he’s doing. He uncaps the milk jug and starts splashing the gasoline in an arc around him on the grass.

  “Jump over it!”

  I do, slamming into the fence. It rocks, creaking against rotting posts. Before I even have a chance to turn, the smell of burning fuel pinches my nose. The heat sears my skin. It stops the Undead in their tracks.

  And leaves us with no place to run.

  Chapter 25

  Reggie’s still laughing when we get to the highway. Actually freaking laughing. I’m livid and slap his hands away when he tries to help me over the fence.

  “I do come up with some good ideas sometimes.”

  “As I recall, it was your idea to come here in the first place.”

  This shuts him up and I immediately feel guilty. I think we all know by now that none of this was his idea. We all deserve the blame for coming, but it wasn’t his idea.

  We scurry up the berm. Eric is standing outside the car, keeping watch. When he sees us, he frantically waves us over.

  “We might have a way to get through the wall,” he says.

  “How?”

  I watch as Reggie goes over and begins to empty the fuel into the tank. He tries to listen over the noise it makes. Behind us, black smoke rises up into the sky. Eric eyes it, but doesn’t ask. Several IUs have followed us through the broken fence, which means they got through the flames. In fact, some of them are still on fire.

  “You won’t like it.”

  “What’s your plan?”

  “Not mine, Micah’s.”

  Reggie’s head snaps up. “I won’t have anything to do with that idiot.”

  Eric holds his hands up. “Would you just listen for once? Tell me if this makes any sense.”

  He goes over and opens the side door. “Tell them what you told me,” he says.

  Micah looks over at us. His eyes come to rest on me and there’s something in them that startles me. It almost looks like remorse.

  Reggie pulls me back. “Don’t believe a word he says. That asshole got us here. Why would he want to help us now?”

  “Because we’re his only ticket out of this place.”

  “He needs to be gagged. Then blindfolded and shot. No, fed to the—”

  “Just hear him out, Reg,” I say, keeping my voice low.

  Micah purses his lips, inhales for a moment, lets it out. “None of this was supposed to happen,” he begins.

  “Just get to part where you get us through the wall,” I tell him.

  But he tries again: “Why do you think I hung around back there at the hill? Why do you think I came back from Brookhaven after you left me there? I came to save your sorry asses.”

  I reach over and slip the rifle off Eric’s shoulder. He lets me take it. He can see the look in my eyes. I’m done bullshitting. I point the gun at Micah’s head and tell him he’s got exactly ten seconds before I put a bullet in his brain.

  “Okay, okay. But you may want to hear me out on the way.” He looks past my hip. I don’t turn, but I hear Reggie curse under his breath and say they’re coming.

  “Eight seconds. Start her up,” I tell Reg.

  “I need my tablet.”

  “Six.”

  The engine whines as Reggie cranks the ignition. It doesn’t catch.

  “Keep pumping it,” Eric says.

  “Four seconds.”

  “We need to get to the wall!”

  The engine cranks, catches, coughs, stalls.

  “Two.”

  “I can get the wall back online. I swear it!”

  The engine roars to life.

  I hold the rifle steady, feel the tension in the trigger. Micah closes his eyes.

  Finally, I turn it to the side.

  “Show us.”

  Chapter 26

  “This is a waste of time,” Reggie exclaims.

  “How long, Micah?” I ask.

  “Damn it, Jessie,” Reggie says. “It’s almost six o’clock! Thirty…seven minutes before we’re dead!”

  “You hear that?” I say. “Thirty-seven minutes to fix the wall, get us through it and to LaGuardia. You better hope and pray this works.”

  “You can’t trust that fucker! What if he’s trying to take everything down with us? He knows he’s dead. He knows if he goes back, he’s going to jail. And a trial? He’ll be lucky if they don’t do a pub
lic conscription.”

  “Reggie, shut up.”

  “Damn it, Jessie. Think!”

  Micah’s fingers are a blur as he finishes the code he was working on when the boys interrupted him back on the hill. It’s scrolling too fast for me to figure out what he’s doing. He talks as he codes: “It’s the Arc firewall that’s the problem. Their coders overreacted to the hack.”

  “The hack you wrote.”

  “The one Ashley wrote.”

  “Which you used.”

  He shakes his head.

  Eric shuffles nervously behind us, his eyes taking in all the equipment inside the tiny shack, a remote link-up site. We’d gotten lucky and found it within minutes, realizing what it was as soon as we saw the Arc logo on the door. I don’t know how Micah knew about them. He claimed to have seen others like it back when he was looking for rope a few days ago.

  And yet, here you are, giving him free reign to screw up Arc’s network. And access to who knows what else. Defense systems, everything.

  Shut up.

  Too bad you won’t be around to see SSC take over full control. All because of you.

  I believe him when he said he’d get us out.

  Then you’re a fool.

  Maybe I am.

  Maybe I am just a hopeless optimist. And maybe I’m still not sure he’s as bad as we all think he is.

  “Arc has been trying to fight it,” Micah says. “I tracked each of the updates in the registry. The hack almost took control—actually did for a bit a couple days ago. When the power went out yesterday, when the Players and Omegas went rogue, that was because Arc activated a new super-powerful firewall. Basically isolated us from the outside world. They fixed that, but the problem is, the firewall itself is too strong.”

  “How can a firewall be too strong?”

  “It’s starting to block and attack native programs.” He swipes one screen closed and opens another. They all look the same to me, but he seems to recognize them immediately. “Think of the firewall as a body’s immune system. There’s a delicate balance between being too weak and too strong. Too weak and your body allows all kinds of diseases to get in. You get sick, and you die.”