“It’s me. Listen, Mom, it’s okay. I don’t I don’t hate you for staying away. I think I even understand why you did, why you didn’t want to come to City Hall for me and Kelly. But I’m worried. Please, Mom, please just ping me. You don’t have to come home, just ping me.”
She swallowed, suddenly aware that if she kept going that she might very well break down. She finished by saying, “I just want to know that you’re okay. And to say that I love you. And you can come home anytime.” She took a deep breath. “When you’re ready.”
She set the device on the desk. A moment later, the screen blinked off into sleep mode. She sat in silence for the next half hour, breathing and listening to the house tick around her. Finally, she leaned forward and reconnected the Link to the computer.
When she finally found the file, it felt to her as if the world was collapsing. She didn’t want to believe it, but there it was, clear as day. The file she’d been looking for, the one which didn’t belong, hadn’t been hidden away deep inside the bowels of her Link. It had been sitting in plain view the whole time.
And that’s when she knew that Micah hadn’t betrayed them.
Her own husband had.
‡ ‡ ‡
Chapter 14
“I’m not going to school,” Jessie groaned. “I’m sick.” And she really was. Her heart was racing and she was short of breath and her body felt feverish. Her face was burning while her feet were freezing. She was sweating, yet shivering.
Is it possible for a body to reject itself?
Because that’s what she felt like was happening.
She heard Eric clear his throat on the other side of the bathroom door. “Jessie, this can’t—”
The world, which had been content to perform lazy loops and twirls around her, suddenly began to gyrate faster and wilder. Jessie lurched off the edge of the tub and collapsed to her knees in front of the toilet bowl. She clutched at the rim with shaking hands. The sound of her retching seemed terribly loud to her ears. But nothing came up. Saliva dripped from her lips. She grabbed a wad of toilet paper and wiped it away.
Eric was silent, waiting.
“I’m not faking it,” she groaned. She spit into the toilet, where a couple slightly grayish, barely recognizable noodles floated.
She had spent the night on the floor of the bathroom, the door locked. If Kelly had come home last night, he hadn’t bothered to come looking for her. Jessie knew he wasn’t here now, because Eric had gone looking for him and returned empty-handed.
“Is there anything I can do?” he now asked.
She didn’t want him to see or hear her like this, but she also didn’t want to be left alone either. She didn’t want to be alone if Kelly returned.
“Jess?”
“Stay home,” she whimpered. “Please.”
Eric didn’t answer. And that was enough to tell her that he wouldn’t. Couldn’t.
She leaned her head on the rim and closed her eyes, waiting for him to leave. Waiting for this horrible, terrible sickness to leave her. She was so exhausted, so utterly spent, tired of the constant weariness and the unending, overwhelming sense that the world was going to come crashing down on her at any moment.
It already did, last night.
“I have to go, Jess. Work is—”
“Why can’t someone else do it?”
“You know why.”
Snippets of reports from the Media Streams. Rumors everywhere, in school and on the bus. Reggie pinging her last night, leaving on her Link a list of cities possibly affected, either under lockdown or with new curfews or quarantined: Philly and Boulder and Chicago now, in addition to St. Louis. The situation wasn’t just gray in Manhattan, it was gray everywhere. The whole world was deteriorating.
“The network’s on the verge of collapsing, Jess,” Reggie told her voice mail. “And there’s a hundred thousand people still without implants. I’m worried. Jess, ping me when you get a moment.”
But what did those people matter? If Arc was losing control, if the networks were crashing, implants weren’t going to help. Without a network, every infected person, every zombie, would no longer be controllable. It would be like they’d rejected the network.
Jessie hadn’t pinged him back. She’d listened to his messages, read the texts, all while cowering in the corner of the bathroom, the unending tears flowing down her cheeks. She hated being so emotional, but, lately, she just couldn’t seem to help it.
Eric coughed lightly on his side of the door. “I’ll ping Kelly, see if he’ll stay with you.”
“No!”
She could almost feel her brother’s alarm, the questions that must be piling up inside his head. She knew she should tell him about the file on her Link, but she knew that once she did, it would just make it that much more real. And, oh God, she wanted so badly for it not to be.
“Jessie?”
“I’m fine. Please, just go. I’ll be okay.”
She could hear him shuffle his feet outside the door. “If you’re sure . . . .”
“Go,” she said. It came out sounding hard, bitter.
“Ping me if you need anything.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t,” she managed to say, before her throat closed off and her stomach cramped again.
She heard him gather his keys, then the low murmur of his voice as he spoke with someone on his Link. She didn’t know if he’d pinged school, or someone at his work; she didn’t care, as long as it wasn’t Kelly.
The front door clicked shut. Eric’s car started up. She heard the engine modulate from idle to drive. Heard the sticky sound of the tires as he backed out of the driveway. The brief crescendo of the motor as he drove away. After that, when everything was quiet, she pinged a message to Reggie, asking him to come over after school.
Without Kelly.
† † †
She woke up on the floor around ten. Sunlight streamed in through the uncovered window of her bedroom, and she briefly tried to remember why she was there. When it hit her, she wondered why she’d even left the safety of the bathroom.
Her tee shirt and shorts reeked of sweat and vomit. Her hair was a mess.
She went downstairs and stood in the living room for a few minutes before sitting down on the couch. Then standing up again.
The heat of the day pounded oppressively on the walls of the house, seeking to displace the coolness inside. She went around and closed all the curtains to shut it out. Then wandered into the kitchen for a glass of water.
She felt jittery, light-headed and heavy-hearted. She forced herself to eat an egg, quelling the hunger, but the unease remained. It was a nervous sort of agitation, expectant and full of vague anxieties and self-doubt.
What if you’re wrong about the file?
She just couldn’t believe Kelly would do something like this to her.
And yet he had sent it to her. That much was incontrovertible.
Unable to sit still for very long, she took to cleaning, at first avoiding the kitchen and the greasy smell that seemed to clot in her throat and stick to the walls of her belly until she was forced to go in and open the window to air it out again. Her head swam and her skin was clammy. The hot air swooped into the house and enveloped her. She swooned for a moment.
She decided to start upstairs and tackled the bathroom first. She scrubbed the toilet until it gleamed, then the sink and mirror. Finally the tub, scraping away the mold between the tiles with an old toothbrush, and then finishing with a cold shower to wash the sweat and dirt from her skin.
Feeling reenergized and grateful for the distraction the cleaning provided, she moved onto the living room. She vacuumed the floor, pushing and pulling the couch away from the wall to get underneath. She was working up another sweat, and it felt good, cleansing. The whine and roar of the vacuum abraded her ears, but it was better than the scratchy whispers of her thoughts; the vacuuming seemed to suck them all away, leaving everything inside of her swept clean.
At last was the k
itchen. Except for the faintest of odors, the greasy egg smell had dissipated. The kitchen was baking hot, and a thick, dry breeze was blowing the curtains back, but she didn’t bother closing them or the window. She washed the breakfast dishes, emptied the refrigerator of old leftovers and spoiled meat, took out the trash. Sweat began to pour off of her again, soaking her sundress to her body.
When she was finished scrubbing the surfaces, she looked around, inspecting her work. The sink gleamed, much to her satisfaction, but the stains in the worn Formica countertops stubbornly persisted. In her eyes, they even seemed to stand out more.
She took the dirty towels to throw into the laundry basket in the hallway by the cellar door and saw that someone had tracked mud in from the back porch. It looked days old, and she frowned at it, complaining to the empty house that Eric needed to wipe his feet before coming inside. She swept up the loose dried clumps, scraped at the more resistant ones with a screwdriver, then went to go find another old towel under the kitchen sink to wipe up the rest.
Standing up again, she caught sight of what looked like a shadow sliding across the window over the sink. She froze, then lunged forward and strained her neck to look out into the side yard, but no one was there.
Nothing outside the living room window, either.
The heat hit her with relentless fury as she burst out the front door, but it swept past her nearly unnoticed. Her body had gone ice cold with fear. She was certain that someone had been watching her. Looking down, she became aware of the way her dress stuck to her skin, and the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra underneath.
She raced around the outside of the house, first to the side with the kitchen window. Again, there was no sign of anyone. She continued on until she’d circled the entire property, pausing only long enough to check for evidence of trampled grass or disturbed dirt.
The cicadas played their buzzing song from the trees, and the leaves fluttered in the parching breeze. A car slowly passed, sped up briefly before screeching toward the stop sign at the corner. Jessie ran to the curb, her forearms covering her chest and her fists tucked beneath her chin. The tires screeched again as the car turned the corner, the raucous laughs of high school kids trailing behind in the exhaust.
School’s out.
She hadn’t realized how late it was.
She did another lap around the house before wandering into the back yard and pausing by the opening in the fence. All was quiet in the woods.
You’re seeing things, hearing things.
She wondered if it was time to acquiesce to Eric’s suggestion and see his shrink. She remembered what Reggie had said the other, about going crazy, and she rolled her eyes. Nerves, she thought. That’s all it is. Just nerves.
Once back inside, she finished cleaning the back hallway floor and tossed the towel into the overflowing basket. She paused, noticing the pile of dirty laundry. How long had it been since anyone had done a load? A week? Two?
She picked up the heavy basket and pushed the bottom edge against the handle until the cellar door popped open. A musty smell wafted up from below, and suddenly the closed, dark space of the basement felt menacing. She envisioned her mother lying down there in the dark, like the image in her dream the other day—
Yesterday? Could it really have only been yesterday?
—saw her tripping on the flimsy wooden steps and falling, breaking her neck. Lying dead at the bottom. Rising.
Stop it!
“Mom?” Jessie croaked, her voice barely more than a whisper.
The basket slipped from her numb fingers and tumbled down the steps into the gloom, ejecting its cargo along the way. Jessie grabbed the door handle to steady herself, her eyes wide as she tried to penetrate the darkness below. Except for the dim shapes of the clothes strewn onto the wooden steps, she could make nothing out.
The damp, sweet earthy smell turned rancid, full of rot and mold. An icy finger of air caressed her cheek.
Mom?
She didn’t know if she’d spoken the word out loud; she didn’t dare repeat it for fear someone — or something — might answer.
From below, there came a tiny sound, the barest whisper. Jessie leaned forward, not sure she’d even heard it.
Mom? Oh, God, please no.
Her heart was hammering a thousand times a minute, drumming in her ears. A scream rose in her throat, caught, and held inside of her.
Breathe.
She forced herself to calm down. Nothing moved in that inky blackness below, nothing made a sound.
Because there’s nothing there.
Forcing a dry laugh up her throat, Jessie straightened up again and readied to step down into the darkness. And that’s when she heard it, a dull rasp of sound like the scraping of skin on the packed dirt floor.
Her throat closed up, and the shadows swooped up the stairs and enveloped her, mind and body and soul. Just before she fell, she heard the sound of her name, uttered as a moan, as if propelled on dead air from dead lungs through dead lips.
‡ ‡ ‡
Chapter 15
It wasn’t the dark shape hulking over her which terrified her, it was the way its voice seemed to whisper and roar at her all at once. The tremulous words made no sense, yet seemed to impart some ominous meaning. The shape altered, sprouted another head, split into two distinct beings. The second shadow replied with its own incoherent vocalizations.
Jessie didn’t move. Her neck ached, and the shoulder she’d dislocated weeks before on Long Island burned with fresh agony. Her legs felt funny— there, and yet not there. Her head was pounding like her skull had split open.
She coughed, weakly.
The smaller of the shadows descended upon her so quickly that she jerked away. Pain ratcheted through her body. But she was stuck. She couldn’t move; the larger shape was pinning her down.
“Luh—” she grunted.
There was suddenly more light and a face came into view and spoke. She knew this face; she recognized the word it had spoken: it was her name.
“R reggie?” she whispered. The word tumbled unbidden from her lips, sounding strange to her ears, chunky.
“Don’t move,” Reggie instructed. The words still sounded garbled, like his mouth was full of cotton.
Jessie tried to lift her arm, but the pain was too much.
“Damn it, Jessie! I said don’t move! We need to check your neck, make sure you didn’t break it.”
We? She flicked her eyes to the right. Reggie hissed warningly. The smaller shape swam into view, and she saw that it was Kelly and her relief swelled. Then, unexpectedly, it contracted again.
What’s wrong with me?
“Can you move your fingers? Toes?”
She tried. The result relieved some of the tension in Reggie’s face.
“You fell down the cellar steps.”
She flicked her eyes downward and saw the stairs rising up past the end of her naked ankles. Miles away, or so it seemed, was the doorway at the top of the steps. Above it, the bare bulb dangling from the ceiling.
The boys ran her through a battery of tests until they were convinced she hadn’t damaged her spine. She very nearly laughed at their pitiful attempts to triage her, but by then, the pain in her shoulder had become too insistent to ignore. She tried to sit up, but Reggie pushed gently on her shoulders to keep her still and warned her to be quiet. She tried, but quickly lost patience and shoved him away. “My neck’s fine,” she growled.
The only thing exceeding the pain she felt was her embarrassment, and that was no small thing, since the fall down the steps seemed to have inflicted innumerable bruises. But right now it was the injury to her dignity of which she was mostly keenly aware. The coldness of the floor on the backs of her thighs and her lower back informed her that the sundress she’d put on had worked its way up her body as she fell, up beyond her waist.
A faint image of a bare midriff flashed in her mind, then whipped away and wouldn’t be cajoled back.
Mom?
One of the boys had pulled her dress down to cover her up, but her back was in direct contact with the cold, packed earthen floor.
She pulled her legs down from their elevated position on the steps and tried to sit up. A thick trickle of blood had formed a dark crescent on her knee. The skin had abraded so severely that there were hundreds of tiny spots covering a large patch. At least the bleeding had stopped and nothing seemed broken.
“What happened?” Kelly asked. He ran a hand through his hair, leaving a smudge of dirt on his forehead, adding to the shadows already there. He bent down. “Jessie—?”
Without thinking, she flinched away from his touch, drawing herself out of reach. She was afraid of him; she just couldn’t remember why.
“Jess?”
“Don’t touch me!” she cried, shivering. Kelly recoiled with a sharp breath, pain in his eyes. “But—”
Reggie leaned over and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Jessie, it’s just Kel,” he said. “You’re safe now.”
No. No, I’m not!
She wanted to reach out to Kelly, to hold him. And yet she also wanted to run away as fast as she could. But all she ended up doing was cowering in Reggie’s arms and staring at the pained expression on her husband’s face.
† † †
Jessie closed her eyes, leaned into the steam rising from the tea Kelly made for her, and inhaled deeply. Her whole body ached, but now parts of her were screaming out for attention like baby birds: the side of her head, her left elbow, her whole right side, thigh and knee. The pain was making her head swim.
The boys waited, barely able to constrain their impatience, trying not to seem overly worried. Reggie kept standing up and pacing before sitting back down again after taking only a few steps. Kelly sat nearby on the couch, not touching her, looking as if he was afraid he might spook her again.
“Eric’s on his way,” he said. “We should take you in to Sisters of Mercy, make sure you don’t have a concussion.” He stopped, turned toward her, pretended not to notice the way she flinched. “You honestly don’t remember what happened?”
S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) Page 11