S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11)

by Tanpepper, Saul

  “Looks like a fight,” Ramon said, struggling to keep Shinji down.

  Something hit the side of the van. Cassie began to whimper. “It’s alright, honey,” Lyssa told her. “It’s just soldiers letting off some steam.” She turned to Ramon and asked why they weren’t going.

  “There’s a police car in front of me.”

  As if on cue, its siren began to sound and its lights began to spin. A second black-and-white, appeared from around the corner. It jumped the curb and came screeching to a stop about thirty feet beyond the other car. The officers jumped out, pulled their service revolvers from their holsters, and aimed them directly at the soldiers.

  “Jesus Christ. What are they going to do, shoot them for having an argument? Maybe they ran out of provolone or something.”

  Lyssa tried to see. She could hear the officers shouting at the soldiers to break it up.

  “It’s like a rugby scrum,” Ramon said. “I hope they don’t start shooting. All it’d take is a stray bullet and— Damn it, Lyssa! I said stay down!” He put the van into reverse and checked the mirrors, but there was nowhere to go.

  To Lyssa, the group of soldiers tussling in front of the store really did look like a rugby scrum. The ones toward the outside were reaching over the ones further in. All at once, the whole group surged toward the van.

  The officers swiveled their weapons.

  “Get down!” Ramon shouted.

  The officers were shouting and waving their hands. “Break it up! Separate!”

  Several of the soldiers peeled away. The group lost cohesion and began to disintegrate.

  “Well, looks like the show’s over.”

  From somewhere in the center of the scrum came the sharp report of a gunshot. Then another.

  “Holy Jesus!” Ramon shouted, ducking. “What the f—”

  “Hold your fire!” the police officers screamed. “Hold—”

  Several more shots rang out. A soldier fell, bleeding from his chest. Others spun away. They ran screaming across the cement. The officers opened up, shooting anything that moved.

  “Oh my god!” Ramon cried. “Oh shit!” The van lurched backward, slamming into the car behind them and turning from the impact. Lyssa could see the soldiers now, the ones the officers were firing upon.

  A bullet pierced the corner of the windshield and exited through the roof.

  “God damn it! Stop shooting! I’ve got a child in here! Get down, Lyssa. Keep Cassie down!”

  He shifted into forward and tried to ram the police car, but the van’s engine coughed and stalled.

  The small cluster of soldiers finally fell apart. The few who could escape ran or limped away. Several were crawling, their wails of anguish punctuated by the unending barrage from the police pistols.

  At least four dead. That’s what Lyssa had counted before she ducked. More than a dozen wounded. She couldn’t tell exactly because there was a pile of them just inside the store. And for what? A hoagie?

  The cluster in the doorway shifted.

  “Hold your fire!” an officer shouted. The thunder quieted. Smoke drifted across the parking lot.

  Out of the darkness of the sandwich shop, like a spirit rising from the deceased, a single figure rose. He was dressed in a flowing green robe, now splattered in red. And but for the foam crown of thorns on his head, he looked like a ghost.

  “The dancing statue,” Cassie whispered.

  “Is he hurt?”

  More shifting from the pile, this time one of the soldiers. Then another. The bodies appeared riddled with bullets, and yet they rose to their feet and began to stumble out of the store.

  Now others who had lain on the cement began to move. One further away. Another nearby.

  The soldiers who had managed to get away first now took up defensive positions behind the police cars. They pointed their rifles at their comrades-in-arms.

  “Is it a training exercise?” Lyssa asked, even as she knew how ridiculous that was. The bullet that had shattered the corner of their windshield hadn’t been made of rubber.

  The man in the Liberty costume pushed past the soldiers. He raised his head and seemed to look straight into Lyssa’s eyes. She gasped in horror as she saw the bright red smear on his face and knew that he’d succumbed to the Stream. He’d attacked the soldiers, and they had tried to stop him.

  More figures occupied the parking lot.

  “There’s more inside!” shouted one of the soldiers. “Save your ammo!”

  The costumed man opened his mouth, and even through the walls of the van, Lyssa could hear his moan. His tongue slipped out, a blackened slug of muscle, thick and tattered by his own teeth. A chunk of red meat fell from his lips.

  “Get us out of here, Rame.”

  But the van wouldn’t start.

  The robed man and the other soldiers began to lurch toward them. Gunshots rang out and puffs of red filled the air about their bodies. The back of one soldier’s scalp exploded and he fell. Lyssa screamed.

  The van finally roared to life and rocketed forward, straight into the line of fire. Lyssa and Cassie were thrown against the back door. The van crunched to a stop and they tumbled forward.

  “Move the car!” Ramon shouted. “Move the goddamn car!”

  “Get out of the way!” the officers shouted back.

  The back doors of the van were pulled open. The light was blinding. Cassie screamed and tried to scramble away.

  “Help . . . me,” the soldier panted. He tried to climb in, his rifle still in his hand. “Please, help—” A bubble of blood formed on his lips and burst.

  But then he was gone, jerked suddenly away. Lyssa heard his body hit the pavement with a sickening splat. He let out a bloodcurdling scream, which stopped when Ramon backed over him.

  “Ramon!”

  Another soldier appeared, but he, too, was pulled away. He waved his arms to keep his balance. And then his head exploded as a bullet tore through his skull. He dropped, leaving only the robed man to fill the opening.

  He stood there for a moment. He almost seemed to smile, and Lyssa had this crazy idea that he was going to start dancing.

  But he didn’t. He lunged.

  Cassie screamed. They were all screaming. And yet Lyssa was aware of other sounds around her, boots hitting the pavement, cries of pain, bodies slamming against the sides of the van. And gunfire. A hole appeared next to her head, piercing the darkness. Then another. They looked like stars.

  “Go!” Lyssa yelled. “Get out of here! Why aren’t we going?”

  She kicked out at the horrible bloody statue.

  Don’t get bit.

  The soldier’s warning repeated inside her head. Don’t get bit don’t get bit don’t—

  She kicked again, but her foot hit nothing. There was too little room inside the van for leverage. And Cassie was still scrambling on top of her. Lyssa could barely move. She could barely see.

  A bloody hand slapped the floor, a hollow, wet sound like a slab of meat flung onto a butcher’s block. Then a second hand. Now the dancing statue leaned in and began to claw his way inside.

  Grab yer pardner, doh-see-doh!

  Bite them, chomp them, to and fro!

  Lyssa’s foot connected with the side of his head, but it didn’t seem to faze him at all.

  Behind him rose a second figure. It was the first soldier who’d tried to get in, the one Ramon had run over. Half his chest was collapsed, his lungs oozing out of a hole beneath his arm.

  He’s alive! Oh god. How can he still be alive?

  He was still holding the rifle.

  “Shoot him!” Lyssa screamed, pointing to the costumed man. She knew how insane that was. She knew the soldier wouldn’t.

  What was his name, the costumed man? What the fuck was his—

  Adrian! It was Adrian!

  “Listen to me, Adrian. Please, you don’t want to—”

  But Adrian wasn’t listening. He reached in and his fingers raked Lyssa’s ankle.

  Now l
ink arms and one-two-three!

  Bite yer partner, make ‘em bleed!

  “God damn it! Shoot him!”

  But the soldier ignored her words. They were all ignoring what she was trying to tell them! They opened their mouths at once and began to moan.

  And when they shut their mouths, they made chewing motions with their jaws.

  Oh god, they want to eat me!

  “Mama! Mama!”

  The engine roared and the tires spun, sending a spiral of smoke out behind them. Both men fell heavily to the pavement as Ramon peeled away. They immediately rose again.

  Lyssa watched in horror through the open back doors as the scene descended into complete chaos. A tank appeared from the side, the turret slowly pirouetting. A string of white streaked from the cannon and the storefront exploded in a ball of flames.

  Soldiers and police officers alike were gunned down. Some rose out of their pools of blood, like the physical embodiments of their own murdered souls. The guns fired and fired and the bullets tore into their bodies. They didn’t fall right away, not like they should.

  Instead, they danced. They all danced.

  Fleeing from that scene of horror, Lyssa saw the flagpole tip away from its base on the roof. She watched as it began to fall, the flag flapping madly in the wind. She watched as it speared the man in the costume, impaling him to a small planter of bright marigolds.

  This time, he didn’t rise. Liberty had danced his last.

  CHAPTER FIFTY FIVE

  It felt like weeks since he’d lain in his own bed, since he’d had a shower and shaved his face, since he’d eaten cereal from a bowl in his own kitchen. Weeks instead of just a few days.

  He could hear Lyssa and Cassie speaking behind him in the back of the van, the soft murmur of their voices. What were they talking about? Him?

  He wiped his forearm across his brow and felt the sweat there, dripping down, slippery and thin, oily. Nothing like blood. Nothing like what covered Lyssa. Why the hell didn’t she wash it off?

  There was no breeze tonight, nothing to mask the night sounds. Yet, incredibly, all was silent here in the alley where he’d found refuge. There were too many barriers, too much gunfire, for them to attempt to reach the house. At least there were no agonized groans of the afflicted. None outside, anyway. Just those in his own haunted mind.

  He was still trying to wrap his head around what they’d seen fleeing from that terrible scene in Medford. How long had he careened through the neighborhoods like a madman, past sunlight dappled lawns and massive columned colonial mansions? They’d gotten lost.

  But then he’d found this alley and taken refuge inside it.

  Another car sped past the opening, a flash of lights in the now-dark alleyway, the burp of its siren. There and gone before he could even react. Did they think they could still maintain control?

  He leaned forward to switch the radio on and scrolled through the stations, past all the speculation about viruses and hallucinations and quarantines. He stopped when he came to the one voice he’d stubbornly dismissed before. He’d never wanted to believe what the man said because it was too crazy, some of the shit he was spouting. But Medford had opened his eyes. What had happened at the bridge and on the bike path forced him to accept that he was the one in denial.

  I’ve only got a few more minutes on this battery before I need to juice it up again, folks. I’ll be off the air then for a while, moving to a new location. Until then, I’ll be putting the truth out there about what’s happening on Long Island. Those within range, I implore you to spread the word.

  People, there is a disaster unfolding. They would tell you that it is being contained. They would tell you that the threat isn’t human, or even organic. They tell you in one breath that it’s strictly animal and in a second breath that it’s psychological. They claim there’s a new form of virus, but then argue they don’t know a thing about it. Well, which the fuck is it?

  Sorry. No one to bleep me anymore. It’s just me, this mic and my portable transmitter.

  Listen, people, there have been fatalities— dozens, if not hundreds by now. They’re lying and saying there are few, if any.

  But the worst lie is now they’re telling residents they’re free to evacuate, and that the military is there to help.

  Lies, people. All lies.

  “Turn it off, Ramon,” he heard Lyssa mutter.

  She reached forward and turned the dial to static.

  “Let’s just hear what he has to say,” he told her, and flipped it back.

  He knew she felt betrayed. By the man on the radio. By her own husband.

  So, what is the truth? Folks, it is this:

  The cause of the epidemic is vir—

  She switched it off. “It’s electromagnetic. They’re reprogramming our brains.”

  Ramon turned it on again.

  —new form of rabies? It’s a cover story. Yes, this epidemic is responsible for what’s happening right now. It’s the only thing happening here right now. How else does one explain all the infectious disease officials and the CDC and the epidemiologists and strike teams here? They created it. And the other dirty little truth? They planned for this to happen.

  It wasn’t some poor schleps running a tiny mom-and-pop research operation.

  Ramon glanced in the mirror at Lyssa. But she didn’t even seem to have heard.

  The virus was engineered three, four years ago as part of the Department of Defense’s Omegaman contract. I have in my hands top secret documents showing how the man in charge, a man known as The Colonel, hid evidence of the program’s many dangers from Congress.

  “Did he say ‘The Colonel’?”

  Lyssa didn’t answer.

  By the time the deception was uncovered, it was already too late. The government had a choice: dismantle a program which appeared to be extremely successful. Which had made many people very, very rich and powerful. Or hide the facts and pretend we were too stupid not to notice.

  I guess we really are stupid.

  So, what does the virus do?

  First and foremost, it kills anyone infected with it. There is no preventative, no treatment, no cure. Period. End of story. Buh-bye.

  Before I tell you what else it does, I need you all to understand something. None of this is new information. You’ve all heard me talk about this before. You’ve all heard me go on and on about how the Omegas — the soldiers, and now the civilian work crews — how there was something terribly wrong with them. And you’ve all thought me paranoid and crazy. The Ames Research Consortium, the people who built the Omega applications, have consistently denied my claims, of course. Over the past year, they’ve done nothing but try and discredit me and my employer. They tried to shut me up. They burned down my transmitter on Jayne’s Hill.

  But the fact of the matter is, this outbreak, it was supposed to happen. Maybe not the way it has. Maybe that’s what accounted for all the confusion and the scrambling. But it was supposed to happen, folks, because it finally gives the government a way to absolve themselves of the lies they’ve been telling us all these years.

  Ramon turned his head, but his neck was stiff from sitting for so long in the seat. It was dark outside the van. Too dark to see. And very quiet. He was glad for both.

  People, this is only the beginning. This is our descent into madness, into the apocalypse. And unless we stop them, it will be a dark and sure path. At the end of it awaits our oblivion.

  This virus which kills people with such extreme prejudice, which was created by madmen in a government-sponsored laboratory, this virus also—

  The radio went silent.

  “I said I don’t want to listen to him anymore,” Lyssa said.

  CHAPTER FIFTY SIX

  Ramon turned his face to the window, exhaling noisily. Nothing moved outside. All was dark.

  When next he opened his eyes, daylight was beginning to lighten the sky. Lyssa was asleep in her seat. Cassie was snoring in the back.

  He reached f
orward and switched on the radio. Lyssa stirred, but didn’t wake.

  He flipped through the stations and found that they were all transmitting the same message:

  This is a broadcast of the emergency notification system. A mandatory evacuation of Long Island has been ordered. This includes the counties of Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk. All residents, whether permanent or seasonal, as well as visitors and day employees, must immediately make their way to any of the authorized egress points located along the western and northwestern traffic corridors. Carry identification. Prepare to be screened. This evacuation order will remain in effect until further notice. Violators will be taken into custody. Looters will be shot.

  He didn’t know what to make of it. If they were in the middle of a deadly outbreak, then wouldn’t they want to quarantine them? Why would they allow travel out of a hot zone?

  “They want us to get away from the towers,” Lyssa quietly told him.

  “If that’s true, then why don’t they just shut them down?”

  She didn’t answer right away. “Maybe they can’t.”

  “Okay. We’ve got about a quarter tank of gas left. More than enough to get us off the island.”

  “Assuming we even make it there.”

  She climbed into the back to find something to eat. Ramon started the engine, then drove slowly toward the mouth of the alley. Nothing jumped out of the dark doorways at them. Nothing attacked. Everything seemed strangely quiet.

  “They don’t like the sun,” Cassie said.

  “Who?”

  “The hungry people. The sun hurts their eyes. It burns their skin.”

  Crossing an empty intersection, they were nearly sideswiped by a large pickup truck. It barreled past doing at least eighty. Ramon wrenched the steering wheel to the right, throwing Lyssa and Cassie against the panel of computers bolted against the left side of the van. The tires hit the curb hard enough to elicit a sickening crunch.

  “Shit. Last thing we need right now is a flat tire.” But there was no telltale thud of deflated rubber as they slowed.

  The pickup fishtailed around the next corner, then disappeared.