Eric chuffed.
“Besides, I liked you. And that’s true despite who your father was. And your grandfather. You just wanted to do the right thing, and that struck a chord with me.”
“I still do.”
“Most people hate you simply because of where you came from. They hate you because of your family name. They don’t care about anything else. But you’ve always been a good officer for me, so I’ve tried as best as I could to insulate you from the hatred and the hostility.”
“What happened to change that?”
“Everyone answers to someone else, you know that. Everyone must play by the rules.”
Flashing lights on the ground caught his eye. He pulled the curtain aside again. At the far end of the building, nearly hidden around the corner, he saw the patrol cars circling with their lights on. One stopped just outside the emergency entrance. The doors swung open and several officers he recognized from the department got out. They had their hands on their holsters, but they didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry. More cars were pulling into the lot.
“What are you doing?” Eric whispered.
“You know my hands are tied in the matter,” Harrick said. “Don’t make this any ha—”
But he had already disconnected the ping and keyed in Kelly’s number.
Kelly answered almost immediately. He tried to speak, but Eric cut him off. “You’ve got to lay low. The police are coming for me, and I have a feeling they’re going to want you, too. Anyone associated with Jessie is in danger.”
“Where are you?”
“At the hospital,” he said, stepping into the hallway. “I’m looking for a wheelchair. I need to get my mom out.”
“Is she okay? Listen, just wait there. I’m already on my way.”
“No! Stay away! I’m leaving, too.”
“Where will you take her?”
Eric didn’t answer immediately. The truth was, he didn’t know. In fact, from the moment he learned that Jessie was going to be hunted down, all he’d been able to think about was how he was going to save her.
He spotted an empty gurney outside a procedure room. The sheet on it was wrinkled and stained with yellow spots at one end.
“Somewhere safe,” he finally said. “I’ll figure it out.”
“Stay there. I can help.”
“No! Keep away from here.”
“I need to see Doctor White. I think she’ll be able to help.”
“They’re already here, Kel. And for all I know, they’re probably looking for her, too. You need to stay away.”
After unlocking the wheels, he rolled the gurney back to the room. So far, the hallways had been clear of officers searching for him, but he knew he had mere seconds before they’d arrive.
“I have to go, Kel. Go back, grab what you can from the house — but leave the gaming console, I’ll collect it — and get the hell out of sight. I’ll ping you after I’m safe and we can figure out what to do next.”
He slipped the gurney into the room and swung it alongside his mother’s bed. Moving her over was not going to be easy. The mattress was angled wrong, and there were a half dozen lines and wires attached to her. Not to mention the monitors, all networked to the nurse’s station. Within moments of disconnecting her, they’d be in the room to investigate why.
“Mom,” he whispered. He shook her and repeated the word a little louder. She looked up at him, blinking in confusion. “I need to get you on this other bed. We’re moving you.”
He disconnected the lines first that he knew wouldn’t alarm. When he was done with that and she’d scooted over, he was left with the cardiac monitor and oximeter. The process had taken perhaps a minute. He could sense his window for escape closing. He imagined the officers already at Reception downstairs, asking which room his mom was in, possibly even boarding the elevators.
There wasn’t enough time! He needed more time.
“Hold still,” he told her, and then ran out of the room. As he went, he pulled out his EM pistol and prayed that all of the staff were in the nurse’s station. He didn’t wait to find out. He slid to a stop at the desk, startling a nurse. She watched with a frown as he backed up to the opposite wall.
“Can I help you?”
Several more people looked up. No one had a chance to say another word before Eric pulled the trigger. Eight people dropped where they stood or sat. He’d aimed high so that none would get the full direct blast.
The lights in the hallway blinked out and alarms began to sound, which meant he’d hit a power node somewhere in the ceiling. It hadn’t been intentional, but there was nothing to do about it now.
He hurried back to the room, disconnected the wire leads from the instruments, covered his mom with the blanket from her bed and began to wheel her out.
He made it as far as the utility elevator before they caught up with him. They had him cornered, and the lift wasn’t coming.
“We’ve got it locked down on the ground floor, Daniels,” an officer announced, a grizzled veteran named Travis Pettit who seemed perpetually stuck at the rank of corporal. He stood right in the middle of the hallway, as if daring Eric to shoot him with the EM pistol he was pointing at them. “I know you’ve got no juice left in that thing.”
“Let us go. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I honestly don’t give a flying fuck, man.” Pettit shifted impatiently and half turned to the officers standing behind him. “Someone get those civilians outta here!”
“Eric, please,” his mother begged. “What’s happening?”
“Quiet, Mom,” he snapped. He’d never spoken to her in such a voice before, and it shut her up.
“You don’t want us to hurt her now, do you?” Pettit warned. “Nobody has to get hurt.”
Eric was trapped and he knew it. He placed the EM pistol on the floor, then stepped out from behind the gurney, his hands in the air.
“Stand down, fellas,” Pettit told his men. He waited until Eric was close enough to grab, then he reached for his hands, spun him around and laid him on the floor face first.
A knee pressed hard against Eric’s kidneys. His wrists were cuffed.
“Damn it, Daniels,” Pettit said. “Stop resisting.”
“I’m not.”
“Hey, did anyone see that? He just resisted.”
There were several enthusiastic yeses. Eric tensed up for the inevitable kick to the ribs, his reward for defying his fellow officers, but it didn’t come. Instead, he felt the hair on his head stand up.
It was the last thing he remembered until he woke up handcuffed to a cold interrogation room table and his head pounding with an EM hangover.
Chapter 4
The approaching nightfall prevented Jessie from leaving the compound until morning, but it was the storm that forced her to seek shelter inside the very building where Ashley had conceived and carried out her plan to kill her mother.
The rain, which had started as a thin drizzle, quickly became heavier as she filled the hole back in with dirt. The bodies began to float, forcing her to shovel faster. By the time she’d finished, the downpour had turned into a hard sleet. Painful needles of rain, frozen to hail by a wind turned suddenly frigid, lashed at her face and neck, and, despite the exertion, she was shivering uncontrollably before she was finished.
Afterward, as the heart of the storm rolled in and tore at the cinderblocks with its million tiny fists, Jessie likewise raged through the hallway of the building, lashing out with her bruised hands at the helpless plaster walls and bitterly howling in anguish. Pain and fatigue wracked her body, but so did her anger. Nothing could quench it, so it was probably a good thing that her shoulder hurt as much as it did, as it kept her from doing any more damage.
She found herself standing over the thin makeshift mattress where Ashley had confessed what she’d done, her fists clenched and her clothes stiffening up as they dried. She couldn’t remember consciously returning to the room, nor did she know how long she’d been standin
g there feeling as if the world had come to a stop. It terrified her to consider how much Ashley had accomplished here alone in just two short weeks, how she’d plotted and executed her revenge in this very room.
She betrayed you. She deserved to die.
So why did Jessie feel like the blame was all her own?
She was your best friend. You made her that way. You turned her against you.
The voices inside of her waged their own battles. Blessedly, Master Rupert’s wasn’t one of them. She seemed to have quieted him down for good, as if the act of ending him had erased him from her memories as well.
The remains of the packaged food and bottled water that Ashley had collected lay scattered about the room. Most of it was no good, just empty wrappers, though a few meager edible bits remained. They seemed to taunt her, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten much of anything since setting out that morning.
Jessie was hungry — starving, in fact — yet the thought of putting anything into her stomach made it cramp up enough to make her want to vomit again. She was getting tired of feeling this way. She was weary of the bouts of nausea interspersed with episodes of insatiable hunger. It had been weeks since she’d last felt she’d had a normal appetite.
But at the moment, food was the least of her worries. She knew she could easily find more when she needed to. Many of the houses on the island still had some kind of canned and dry goods inside, left behind during the rushed exodus from the outbreak. Some still had fully stocked pantries. Of course, the perishables had long since rotted away or been eaten by mice. The rest had shriveled to unrecognizable petrified lumps turned black by toxic mold.
She’d seen clear signs of scavenging in some neighborhoods, whereas others appeared wholly intact and untouched. This told her several things. First, when the outbreak happened a dozen years back, the residents had fled all at once without packing very much. Second, the people who remained had banded together, traveled together, scavenged together.
And third, they had died together— very quickly, in fact.
She didn’t know how many people had been left behind. Some reports said it was hundreds, while others suggested as many as a few hundred thousand. Doctor White claimed it was much more. Whatever the count, their numbers would’ve fallen at an accelerating rate while the number of infected increased at an equal pace. The island had probably become devoid of nearly all the living within just a few weeks time, leaving only the most resilient, the most lucky, the most brutal.
As for the dead that the infected had become, they had no appetite for crackers and canned stew. They only knew hunger for living flesh.
She wondered what it must have been like in those early days, when that flesh was plentiful, when they could feed until their stomachs burst, torn open by the pressure of too much, their rotting guts unzippered by the razor-sharp splinters of the bones they had half-chewed and swallowed, the meat of their victims spilling through. And still they would hunger.
Relentlessly eating.
Scavenging not in pantries but on the streets and in cars.
Until there was no more to eat.
She swallowed a pasty lump of peanut butter with some difficulty, cringing at the rancid aftertaste, then washed it down with a swig of lukewarm water from a half-empty bottle. Mindlessly, she repeated these steps until she could eat no more.
Her head began to clear, at least enough to measure her plight with some objectivity. She had perhaps another day’s worth of food and water, maybe two. Plus weapons. She could stay if she needed to, though she knew it would be suicide to do so. The Live Players would be heading straight here; and so would the dead ones.
She planned on leaving at first light, or as soon as the Undead fled ahead of the new day’s sun.
She listed the advantages she had over her pursuers. No longer encumbered by Master Rupert, she could now travel swiftly, perhaps even by bicycle or car. She knew the terrain by now, knew with a greater level of confidence where to find supplies and safety. And even weapons, if need be. She understood Gameland in a way few others did.
Just as she felt like she understood the Undead, now that she’d battled them face to face.
Most importantly of all, if the events of the afternoon had taught her anything, it was that she wanted to live, and that she would do anything to make sure she would, even if it meant having to kill anyone who got in her way.
She stood up and paced some more, leaving the room behind to stretch her legs in the long narrow hallway. As she went, she tried to work some of the stiffness from her shoulder. The ache was still intense, though not as bad as it had been that afternoon. There were bandages in the mainframe building which she could use to wrap her arm, and somewhere in the supplies she remembered seeing a bottle of expired aspirin.
The outer door at the front of the building rattled against the wind. Drawing closer, she could hear the individual droplets of rain being driven hard against it. Another fall storm, that’s what she’d thought when it started. She’d expected it to pass within the hour, as they generally tended to do. But this one was different. This one was powered by a rare arctic wind, and here it was late in the evening, hours after starting, and it was still building.
If anyone was out there now on their way to her, they would have to be insane or desperate to take such a risk. She seriously doubted any of the Live Players were either of those things.
She cracked open the door and peered out into the gathering gloom, bracing it with her foot and shoulder to keep the wind from pushing it any further. The rain lashed her face, rewetting her damp clothes. Beyond the fence, the trees thrashed and creaked like unsettled giants. Leaves showered to the ground. A small river ran down the sidewalk across the wedge of light, through her shadow. The water was thick with mud from the grave around the corner. She shivered upon seeing it. It looked like blood.
Your mother’s alive.
The whisper of Ashley’s voice cut through the tumult in her mind.
I lied about her.
Yes, but which time had she lied, the first or the second time?
Jessie realized she’d been avoiding thinking about the confession, if that’s what it was. She didn’t want to raise her hopes. She had no doubt that Ashley would say anything just to twist the knife in her back one final time as she died.
No, the bitch had told the truth the first time. She had killed Jessie’s mom. Maybe not directly, but she was responsible for her death nonetheless.
If only there were some way to prove to herself what was true.
There is, Jessie. All you have to do is connect to your mother’s implant for a second or two.
No! It would be a violation. And it would make Jessie a hypocrite. After all, wasn’t that why she’d come here in the first place, to stop whoever was hacking Reggie’s and Kelly’s implants?
And yours.
But this was different, wasn’t it?
“No,” she repeated, out loud this time. Once again she was startled to find that she’d wandered back into the room. The gaming console was at her feet, and she was reaching for it.
She recoiled in horror.
“Ashley was lying the second time,” she said. “Mom’s dead.” She kicked at the machine and sent it crashing into the wall. “She’s dead, and that’s all there is to it. Move on.”
Moving on was the only way she was going to survive.
She kneeled down and began to gather the supplies she’d need for her departure in the morning. Once the storm abated and at first light, she’d go. She’d get the key from her Grandfather’s Link to unlock the firewall inside her head. Then, somehow, she’d get back home where she’d figure out how to bring Arc down.
Chapter 5
Kelly pulled open the stairwell door and cautiously stuck his head out. The hallway was empty, save for a heavily-bearded orderly busily pushing a linen cart away from him and whistling some tuneless song whose notes varied only in rhythm. He waited for the hairy man to disappear into a room befo
re stepping out into the hall.
His timing could not have been worse. At the same moment, a man in a police uniform emerged from a connecting corridor and turned briskly toward him. He looked up from his Link, met Kelly’s gaze, then turned back to his conversation without registering any recognition. He passed by and disappeared around another corner, murmuring something about a prisoner going to lockup as he went. Kelly guided the stairwell door quietly shut behind him.
Doctor White’s office was three doors down. He didn’t know if she was there. She hadn’t answered any of his pings, not for the past day or so. And the last time they’d spoken, she’d acted strangely, snapping impatiently at him, answering his questions with evasions and ambiguity.
He needed to talk with her, let her know what was going on with Jessie. Maybe she knew people who could help hide her from Arc’s Players, keep her safe, maybe even help get her off the island. It was a long shot, but it was all he could hope for given the circumstances. Going back was simply out of the question.
The office door was shut, as it always was. One of the doctor’s pet peeves was doors left open to public places, and it bothered her whenever he’d forget to close it during his visits to see her.
Raising a knuckle, he rapped lightly against the wood while keeping an eye on the hallway. If it looked like someone was coming for him, he’d run for the stairs. His car was parked in the garage below, giving him a quick escape.
There was no answer.
“Doctor White?” he whispered harshly.
A Link pinged distantly, somewhere down another hallway. A canned voice came over the intercom and requested that someone go to the pharmacy to pick up their prescription.
“Doctor White, it’s Kelly.”
He considered knocking again. Instead, he pressed an ear to the door and was surprised when it yielded to his touch and creaked open a couple inches. The wood where the deadbolt entered the frame was splintered. Someone had forced their way in.
Hot air rushed past him, carrying with it the smell of something old and slightly rotten.
S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) Page 80