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

by Tanpepper, Saul

  “What am I being charged with?”

  Castle snorted. “Really?” He shook his head. “You’re fucking clueless, Daniels, you know that?”

  They reached the sentry for lockup. The guard and Castle exchanged the usual pleasantries, which is to say they each told a couple dirty jokes while the transfer was cleared.

  “Three’s empty,” he told Castle. He actually looked a little sympathetic to Eric.

  Castle brushed the recommendation off. “Ain’t gonna waste a clean cell on this scumbag. What else you got?”

  “Purse snatcher in one. Coupla street pushers in two.”

  “Pushing what? Zoners?”

  The guard chuckled. “High society? No way. The hard stuff. Tough guys.”

  “Put him in two.”

  “But—”

  “Captain’s orders.”

  “They’ll kill me if you put me in there,” Eric said. “They’ll find out I’m a cop.”

  “Cop?” Castle’s sneer deepened. “Don’t flatter yourself. You’re a dog catcher at best, and I say that meaning no disrespect to dog catchers. Or dogs.”

  He turned to the guard, who could only offer Eric a shrug. “Sorry. If he says the captain is okay with this . . . .”

  “She is,” Castle grunted, and handed him over. “Cell two.”

  * * *

  Eric knew it wouldn’t take long for the two prisoners to figure out he worked for the department. Criminals had a sixth sense about such things, and of their ilk drug pushers seemed to be most exquisitely attuned to individuals who didn’t particularly subscribe to the chemical lifestyle. Plus, it didn’t help that he kept his hair clipped regulation short.

  He stepped into the cell, then turned to allow the guard to remove the cuffs on his wrists. “You know what’s going to happen, don’t you?” he said, keeping his voice low.

  “Might not,” was his only response.

  “Do me a favor then?”

  The guard frowned at him. “No favors,” he announced loudly. He planted a hand on Eric’s chest and pushed him further into the cell, then swung the cage door shut and locked it. He really did look apologetic. “And keep it down in here. All of you! I don’t want to hear a peep.”

  Eric rubbed his wrists and watched the guard leave. The heavy steel-plated door giving access to the holding cells clanged shut. He turned, eyed the two men on their bunks, then walked over to the toilet. With each passing minute, his chances of being jumped increased. When it happened, he’d rather not piss on himself.

  He could feel their eyes on his back, watching him, judging whether he was a threat or not, deciding whether he was worth their trouble. All of that figuring would be discarded when they realized he was a cop.

  He zipped up and flushed, then washed his hands in the stainless steel sink. The water pressure sucked, and there was no soap. There were no towels either. He dried his hands on his pants, then went and climbed onto one of the empty upper bunks.

  He’d just settled in when a head popped up over the side. “What’s your story?” the man asked.

  Eric hesitated. If he was a regular police officer dealing with the living on a day to day basis, interrogating criminals instead of containing the dead, he might’ve had a better idea of how to deal with the situation. As it was, he could only guess what might be the best way to keep himself alive long enough to be transferred out. “Not really sure.”

  The pusher turned and smiled at his partner. “Yeah, us too. We was jus’ minding our own business and the cops came and dragged us here. I hate cops. Fuckers.”

  Eric didn’t respond.

  “You must hate cops, too.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” A few in particular.

  “You sure? ‘Cause you don’t sound too sure. Me, I hate cops so much I just want to— Um, you ain’t a cop are you? You know you have to say if’n you are one. If you lie, that’s like perjury or something. You a cop or snitch?”

  Eric looked over. He hated playing these games. He knew the man didn’t have a clue what he was talking about; he had no obligation to admit that he was a police officer. On the other hand, he suspected the man already knew. “I work in Necrotics Crimes. I’m in here, I presume, for aiding and abetting a fugitive.”

  The man raised his eyebrows appreciatively and whistled. “Dead man walking,” he exclaimed with a giggle. The other man laughed at the bad pun. “No offense. What’d you do, help someone evade conscription? Helped send your ma or something to Canada?”

  “Something like that.”

  Actually, nothing like that at all.

  “That’s cool,” the man said. “I can ‘preciate that. I’m Stu, by the way. What’s your name?”

  Eric could feel himself beginning to relax. Perhaps this wasn’t going to turn out the way he’d feared. “Eric.”

  “Well, Eric, that’s a real touching story and all, but you’re still a cop in my book. And I sure do hate cops. We both hate ‘em, don’t we, Marco? Don’t matter what kind.”

  “We do, my brutha.”

  “Did I tell you what I’d like to do to cops?”

  Eric rolled his eyes at the ceiling.

  “I like to eat them for breakfast. Uh huh. So, Mister Copper Man, what do you think about that?”

  What Eric thought about it was how unfortunate it was that the situation had devolved as quickly as it had. He was still a little foggy from being hit with the EM blast.

  You didn’t have to help them out by admitting who you were, idiot.

  But he knew it was going to happen anyway. That’s why Castle had put him in here with these guys to begin with.

  “I asked you something, Mister Copper Man,” the bigger guy said. “What do you think about that?”

  “What I think,” Eric said, sitting up, “is that this is probably going to hurt like a son-of-a-gun.”

  They had him by the ankles and pulled, which he’d expected, which is why he grabbed the bed frame even as he fell and twisted around. The motion torqued his abused torso until it felt as if he were being torn in two, but it succeeded in achieving the desired effect, which was to free his leg from Marco’s grip. Using Stu for leverage, he kicked out and landed a heel on Marco’s chin. The smaller, wiry man let out a cry and fell backward against the other bunk.

  “Son of a bi—” Stu started to shout. Eric didn’t give him a chance to finish. He let go of the bed and curled his body under, grunting from the pain. The sudden shift in their center of gravity pulled Stu forward and he fell with Eric beneath him.

  The beating came then, fast and furious, and while neither of the two drug pushers was especially adept or strong or even very effective in their attempts to kill him, they still came very close.

  His screams drew a crowd. He remembered looking up and seeing Officer Castle’s face grinning in through the bars of the cell. How long he’d been standing there, how long he’d been waiting, Eric couldn’t say, but the man made no attempt to stop the two pushers from finishing him off. Nor did any of the others.

  Eric’s eyes swelled shut like a kid with a peanut allergy and his consciousness was quickly fading. He heard Captain Harrick ordering the men to stop, but they wouldn’t. Now she was yelling at the other officers, telling them things that Eric couldn’t seem to make sense of. His brain felt like it was short-circuiting.

  He remembered Officer Gilfoy, Castle’s partner, stepping inside the cage and dragging him out, a grim look on his face as he lifted Eric’s shirt to examine the wounds. Medic, he called. Get a medic down here now! But it seemed like hours before someone came.

  As the blackness drifted over him, and the sweet numbness of unconsciousness began to infuse his body, he heard someone tell the others to get to the hospital.

  “There’s been another outbreak,” they said. “And this time it’s bad.”

  Chapter 14

  “What the fuck?” Siennah cried. “Oh, that stupid, stupid FUCKING BITCH!”

  She craned her neck forward, then turned her head to the sid
e, as if it might help her see beyond the limits of the goggles. But her player wasn’t responding. If anything, the view before her narrowed. All she could manage to see was a thin wedge of dusty wooden floor and a tiny square of whitewashed wall.

  “God damn it, Daniels!” Her voice grew louder, making her mother flinch and worry that the neighbors might hear. “Bitch! What the fucking hell did you do to my Player? You broke him! Move, god damn it! I said move!”

  The view jerked slightly, bringing more of the wall and part of a ceiling into view.

  Claire Davenport, who had woken that morning determined not to let her daughter’s behavior frighten her anymore, quietly sneaked away. Siennah’s moods had taken a dramatic turn for the worse of late, and the girl was beginning to terrify her.

  It’s that damn computer game of hers, she cursed silently as she slid into her bedroom and quietly shut the door behind her. There’s something wrong with being rewarded for killing zombies who were once people.

  And she was apparently very good at it, at least as far as the money she made suggested she was. Of course, Claire never got to see any of it, as it went straight into her daughter’s private account, where she spent it freely on flashy clothes and expensive drugs.

  Don’t forget that fast car of hers. It’s going to get her killed.

  The girl had been getting increasingly more violent at home, screaming and throwing things, both fits and physical objects. A few weeks ago she started slapping. Last week, for the first time, she used her fists.

  Claire rubbed her hands over the bruises on her arms and chest. They were from Siennah’s last tantrum four days before and were finally starting to heal. The girl had come home from school in a dreadful mood complaining that a gang had jumped her in the bathroom. Missus Davenport had offered to go speak with Principal Patterson about it, but that had apparently been the absolute wrong thing to suggest.

  “Did I ask you for your opinion or your help, you fat cow?” Siennah screamed. The first hit knocked her to the floor, but Siennah fell on her and pounded her mercilessly before getting up and leaving without even a backwards glance.

  Even from the opposite end of the house, she could still hear her daughter shouting in the game room, playing that damn stupid game.

  I should never have let Henry get it for her, I don’t care how good she is.

  Her thoughts drifted from her daughter to her husband, and she wondered, as she had so many times since discovering his secret stash of recordings, how his own despicable behavior and Siennah’s were related. But whereas his fetish appalled and disgusted her in ways she could never articulate, it had one unexpected benefit: it turned Henry into a sexual dynamo in bed. After nearly eight celibate years, he suddenly couldn’t get enough of her.

  And she sure as hell wasn’t going to complain about that.

  “Mom!” Siennah shouted.

  Missus Davenport pulled her knees up closer to her chest. She didn’t want to go out there.

  “Mom! I’m thirsty!”

  I’m not here. I’m not—

  “MOM!”

  She practically leapt off the bed in her panic to respond.

  The moment she stepped into the game room, Siennah demanded again, “Get me something to drink.”

  The girl was fully geared up, her eyes covered with those goggles that always made Claire think of praying mantises. She was twitching her head and arms and muttering under her breath, something that sounded like, “Stand up you broken piece of shit. Get the fuck on your feet.”

  On the holographic projection in the middle of the darkened playroom was the flickering image of another, larger, room. It was tipped sideways. She thought she saw the corner of a stained glass window.

  Her eyes drifted away and over to the side table, where a baggie of pink pills sat, the closure pulled open.

  Designer drugs.

  Claire knew all the privileged kids were being “prescribed” them by their doctors. Zoners. They were supposed to have this calming effect, help teens with attention disorders to focus better.

  “What the fuck are you just standing there for? Get me something to drink, you fucking cow!”

  Missus Davenport jumped, then rushed off to get a glass of water. She made sure it had three cubes of ice in it, which is how Siennah liked it, and returned in such a hurry that some of it sloshed over her hand. “Here,” she said, her voice shaking as much as the rest of her body.

  “Pause play.”

  Siennah flipped the left eyepiece over her forehead and turned and stared at the glass. “What the fuck is that?”

  “It’s water, honey.”

  “I know what the fuck it is!” Siennah slapped the glass out of her mother’s hand. It flew across the room and shattered against the wall. “I asked for a god damn Red Bull! Don’t you fucking listen to a god damn thing I say? Jesus Christ, what are you, fucking deaf? Imbecile! Can’t you hear? How is it even possible I’m related to you?”

  Claire’s lip began to quiver. It wasn’t the insult that hurt so much as the broken glass, which was one of the few remaining pieces left over from her mother’s collection, handed down to her after she’d been conscripted the previous winter. She had so little to remember her by anymore.

  Henry had promised for years to buy an exemption, but when it came time he refused. “How would it look,” he told them, “if the mayor’s own mother-in-law got out of doing public service?”

  She suspected the real reason was because an exemption would’ve cost them more money than they had.

  “Oh, for Jesus Fucking Christ’s sake!” Siennah shouted, startling her again. “Are you going to start crying again? You’re a disgrace. A fucking disgusting disgrace. Get the hell out of my sight!”

  She turned away and refitted the goggles on her face. “And for the tenth time, get me a fucking Red Bull!”

  * * *

  Siennah chuckled to herself as her mother scurried away. If she had known how good terrorizing her made her feel, she would’ve started sooner. The bitch deserves it, she thought. She needs to be reminded daily what a fucking loser she is.

  Siennah had learned long ago that there were two types of people in the world: those who use, and those who get used. Her mother was in the second category. So was her asshole of a father. She never, ever, wanted to be like them, and she was going to make damn well sure nobody would ever think she was.

  The perspective of the room she received through the goggles shifted, which told her that her Player had finally begun to recover from the EM blast Jessie Daniels had hit it with. Siennah had no idea how long it was supposed to take to recover from such an event, since EM pistols weren’t legal in Gameland and therefore not a part of her gaming strategy. She’d never bothered to listen to that lecture during her Anatomy and Physiology of Reanimates class. Now she wondered if there might be any lasting effects.

  “Oh, sure,” she chided herself. “Like brain damage?”

  She laughed and tried again to get the Player to obey her commands, but it was still not doing much of anything. “Why the hell don’t you get the fuck up, you dead prick?”

  She tried a few different movements, and after several more minutes passed it started responding. She angled her hands and pressed down, simulating getting up off the floor. The Player copied the movement. She lifted it to its knees, then made it get to its feet.

  “Where did that smug little cunt take you?” she wondered aloud. The Player’s face was pressed up nearly against the wall, and she was eager to turn it around. “Why didn’t she kill you when she had the chance?”

  Sentimental, that’s why.

  Siennah grinned, realizing she’d found a chink in the bitch’s armor. She sure as hell was going to exploit it, too.

  It had seemed like a stroke of pure luck a couple weeks back when she overheard her father talking to the police captain about how some group of game jackers from the high school had run afoul of the law and that one of them was going to be conscripted. She immediately
knew which group of kids he was talking about, then was disappointed to learn the one to be executed wasn’t the Daniels bitch. If anyone deserved it, she did. After all, it was her asshole father who made them in the first place. And while Siennah rather enjoyed playing The Game, she was still angry that her grandmother had been taken to become one of them. Her only crime was old age.

  Her father wouldn’t tell her what the kids had done, although he did, accidentally, let slip that the one to be conscripted, Micah Sandervol, was going to become a Player. “But don’t tell anyone I told you that. I could get in real trouble.”

  “I want to buy him.”

  He’d given her a strange look, and for a brief moment Siennah had to wonder if he’d been thinking about keeping him for himself. “But you know him, honey,” he said.

  She couldn’t exactly tell him that it would be the perfect revenge. That just sounded petty, though it was exactly why she wanted him.

  “He’s already been bought by someone else, honeybunch.”

  Siennah didn’t give a rat’s ass if it was the president of New Merica, she wanted him, and, as she knew he would, her father eventually caved.

  God, how she’d relished the idea of rubbing it in the bitch’s face that she was Micah Sandervol’s Operator.

  Never in her wildest dreams did she imagine that she’d be using him to go after and kill her. It was almost too good to be true.

  “Good things come to those who demand them,” she murmured, and then smiled wickedly. “Not to those who wait.” She laughed. “Now, let’s get you turned around so we can see where we are.”

  It felt slow and clumsy, which Siennah assumed was an aftereffect of the blast. The Player was falling again before she realized its feet had been tied together, and she very nearly had another fit.

  She managed to get it sitting up again facing away from the wall. Now she saw that they were in a church. Some of the upper windows had been smashed in and stray leaves littered the floor. Black stains dripped like candle wax from the openings. At the front of the choir hung the figure of Jesus on a cross, his shoulders and arms covered in bird shit.