Because I couldn’t lie to you anymore. I was going to tell you the truth when we got to Brookhaven. Brother Walter suspected I was about to, which is why he shocked me with the EM pistol and kept us separated.
“He shocked us both.”
The point was to silence me.
“But what does the virus do?”
“It reconfigures the implants, severs their connection to the Stream so Arc will no longer have control of them. It basically wipes them clean.”
“And the outages? How am I responsible for them?”
“By leaving Gameland, you allowed the virus to spread and infect other implants. The sporadic shutdowns are the network trying to restrict the infection.”
Brother Walter winced as he tried to find a more comfortable position.
“The codex’s response to infection is to attempt to repair itself. It continues to do so until and unless someone activates the DR Contingency.”
“What’s that?”
“Ask your friend there on the ground. If you really can hear him, then he should be the one to tell you. His created it.”
“Micah?”
She could feel his reluctance. Finally, he said: It’s a program that prevents anyone from taking control of the implants.
“How?”
It activates them.
Jessie gasped. “But that will kill anyone who has one inside their head!”
“Arc had a name for it,” Brother Walter finished. “They call it Dead Reckoning.”
PART THREE
FOR IMMEDIATE TRANSMISSION
FROM: Qi Jacque Ma, Chairman and Founder, Abalila HG
TO: Padraig Harrison, President, Arc Properties
DATE: September 18, 2043
SUBJECT: RE: Gameland Long Island
Dear Mister Harrison;
Abalila HG is fully committed to bringing The Game to our market of over three billion viewers and one hundred million gamers. Our offer will hold for the next seventy-two hours. If we do not receive confirmation within that time, we must conclude that you are no longer interested in pursuing discussions and will rescind our offer for syndication.
(signed)
Qi Jacque Ma
Chapter 54
As soon as they emerged from the creek bed, Doctor White set an aggressive pace. The boys were more than happy to maintain it, as the Infected which had become part of the natural environment creeped them both out.
Golden-white sunlight sifted through the canopy overhead, catching the gossamer wings of a million insects. Gnats rose from the roadside brush and swirled around them in ghostly wisps. Tiny purple butterflies danced over wildflowers of every color. And a seemingly endless supply of leaves rained down upon them. If not for the potential danger of the Undead, the scene could not have been more idyllic.
The trees abruptly ended about a half hour later, however, relinquishing themselves to a long narrow vista of gently rolling hills. Upon stepping out, Kelly exclaimed in surprise, “This was once a golf course!” It was now badly overgrown, marshy in places and thick with dragonflies. Raucous croaking from a million tiny frog throats serenaded them. Whole cities of gopher mounds dotted the putting greens.
They stayed to the middle of the fairways and ogled the majestic mansions in their various states of decrepitude. Many were little more than crumbling mounds of blackened timber, but a few looked as if they might still be tended. They avoided them all.
They encountered their first horde of Undead just after the eighth tee.
It was a strange sight, a tight cluster of roughly fifty or sixty of them suddenly emerging from the trio’s right. They followed the cart path to the next tee like the ghosts of some forgotten tournament gallery. The three froze in stunned silence, but not before they were noticed, causing part of the horde to peel off in their direction.
Reggie pulled out his machete. He held the weapon out in front of his body, fully prepared to fight his way through them. Adrenaline pumped through his veins. Colors brightened; sounds became clearer. The exhilaration made him sick to his stomach.
But Doctor White stopped him. She pushed past with her own arm raised, as if to hail the dead, and before he could figure out what the hell she was doing, several dozen of them collapsed in silence, clearing a large enough swath that they could safely escape.
“I’d give my left testicle to see what else that woman has packed away in that bag of hers,” Reggie murmured to Kelly a few minutes later, after they’d outrun the ones which had not fallen.
The second horde, quite a bit larger than the first, was just outside the clubhouse. They, too, were moving from the group’s right, as if following some invisible quarry.
The three stood atop a small rise and watched for a few minutes. “Something’s strange,” Kelly observed. “It’s like they’re herding or something.”
“Reminds me of our first day here,” Reggie said. “Back in Long Island City. Ash and I thought they were going after something.”
“Yeah, Jessie and Jake,” Kelly said.
Reggie looked over and thought he saw anger flash in his friend’s eyes. But when Kelly returned the gaze, it was gone, leaving only the appearance of a man who was emotionally depleted.
“I remember that they weren’t chasing anyone at first. They were all moving together.”
“It was the Coalition,” Kelly spat, and stepped down from the knoll toward the receding horde.
The clubhouse was locked up as tight as a drum, but they managed to break in and scavenge for food and water. Rustling sounds and moaning came from behind a door marked as a meeting room, convincing them not to open it. Each of them restocked his own pack, then Doctor White had them on their way again.
Once more, she set a brisk pace. She was clearly on a mission and nothing was going to slow her down, neither the prosaic scenery nor the dead.
They finally arrived in the town of Woodbury late in the afternoon, just as the sun began to sink low in the sky and the shadows stretched long. A delicate fog merged into a quilt of gray over the world. Heavier mist, like cotton padding, floated out of the shadowy places. White’s pace quickened, and the two boys fell behind.
“It’s like she doesn’t want to kill them,” Reggie commented. The scene back at the golf course had bothered him all afternoon and he finally decided he needed to get it off his chest. “She acts like they’re still real people.”
Kelly shrugged. “You do understand why she’s here, don’t you?”
They walked down the middle of a street that was cushioned in red and yellow maple leaves, their eyes scanning every corner and hiding place.
“She wants to save her daughter. She’s hoping to cure her.”
Reggie chuffed and shook his head. “It’s twisted that she wants to do that. It’s even worse that you think it’s okay.”
“You don’t?”
“It’s plain fucking crazy loco, brah. How the hell is she even going to find her, assuming she’s even still around? How will she even recognize her?”
“Not so loud,” Kelly hissed. But Doctor White was too far ahead to hear them. They watched her turn left and disappear down a side street. The boys increased their pace.
“She believes the cure will work,” Kelly said. “Excuse me for wanting to believe her.”
“Yeah, but for the already-dead?”
Kelly shrugged.
“Hey, I’m on your side, man. I may not have a dog in this race like you do, but it doesn’t mean I don’t want this cure to work.”
“Two, actually,” Kelly interrupted. “No, three.”
“Three what?”
“Dogs in the race. Besides Kyle, there’s me and Jessie. Not to mention the rest of the world. A cure would mean Jessie would never have to tell anyone the truth about her immunity.”
Reggie nodded. “Yeah, okay, I get it. And I feel fucking terrible that the doctor’s little girl was infected. Is infected. It’d be fucking awesome if she could somehow fix that. But does she even understa
nd the odds against her right now? It happened over twelve years ago, man. Does she even understand the odds?”
They arrived at the corner. Doctor White was about halfway down the street to the next intersection, still striding along without a backward glance. Kelly stopped and regarded Reggie. “And yet you believe we’ll find Jessie, even though we can’t track her, can’t communicate with her?”
Reggie frowned. “That’s different, brah. We at least have some idea where she was just a couple days ago and where she’s planning on going.” He grabbed Kelly’s arm, a troubled look crossing his face. “Are you saying you don’t expect us to find her?”
Kelly shook the larger boy’s hand off. “I am going to find her, Reg. I don’t know how. I’m just saying that we’re not going on much more than hope. Just like Doctor White. As long as she believes she can pull this off, then who am I to judge her?”
Reggie watched Kelly walk away. Sometimes he just didn’t understand what was going on inside the boy’s mind. He shook his head and started to jog to catch up, but Kelly had pulled up. He was standing stock still, his body rigid with tension.
“What is it?” Reggie whispered. He stared at the empty street ahead, searching for movement.
He saw none.
“Where did she go?”
“She gave us the slip?”
They ran almost to the end of the street when a scream pierced the air. It peaked and faded away.
“Where’d it come from?” Kelly cried. “Did you hear where it came from?”
Already, the scream had drawn attention. Infected emerged from out of the shadows, materializing like earthworms out of the ground after a rain.
“Which way?” Reggie panted. He spun around and counted a half dozen Infecteds, IUs, lurching toward them. He pulled out the machete.
The door on the side of a house they’d passed flung open with a loud bang and spit out Doctor White. “She’s gone!” the woman cried. She was sobbing. “Cassie’s gone!”
“Look out!” Kelly shouted at her, but she was too distressed to see the Infected man behind her. She ran out into the street shouting her daughter’s name.
Reggie was the first to reach her. He swept past the doctor and took off the top of the zombie’s head with a sweeping blow of the blade. Thick grayish green powder exploded from the skull, and the walking corpse fell.
“Damn it,” he cried, backing away and spitting. He wiped his face with the palm of his free hand as he turned to address another Undead. “I fucking hate the dried up ones. They taste like Brussels sprouts.”
Doctor White grabbed his arm and shouted for him to stop. He pushed her off.
Kelly gestured at the house. “Inside! There are too many!”
Reggie beheaded the next one, then reached down and lifted the woman from where she’d fallen and threw her over his shoulder. She kicked and slapped at him, but he acted as if he didn’t feel any of it. He followed Kelly into the garage and set her down next to a car covered in a thick layer of dust. The inner door to the house stood open. Beyond it was a hallway and another room, too dark to see into.
“I’ll check that it’s safe inside,” Kelly whispered. “You stay here with her.”
He was gone for less than a minute, the sounds of doors opening and closing drifting into the garage where they waited, before returning and gesturing grimly to Reg. “Stay here,” he told Doctor White. But she refused, asking if it was her daughter. Kelly shook his head.
They entered the house single file and made their way down the gloomy hallway. At the end, they entered a small living room. Dark stains covered the couch and floor. The coffee table lay in splinters. Kelly gestured them over to the sliding door and pointed at a shape on the deck.
“Is that—?” Reggie asked, kneeling closer.
Kelly nodded. “I think so. The clothes are the same. Same jersey we picked up in that sports store.”
“How the hell did he get here, in this house?”
“Who?” Doctor White asked. She pushed her way between them, then stopped short and brought her hand up to her mouth in shock. “You know this person?”
“He was Father Heale’s son. Jessie’s half-brother.”
Her face went ash gray, and she reached for the handle to open the door. But Kelly pulled her arm back. “We don’t know if he’s . . . you know, dead.”
“He looks quite dead to me,” Reggie said. He made a disgusted face. “Dead and rotting. What, brah? I’m just saying.”
Kelly glared at him. “I’ll check the rest of the house. Reggie, why don’t you make sure about him?”
“Why do I have to do that?” He followed Kelly a step or two, grabbing his arm. “What if we just don’t go out to the back yard? I mean—”
The door behind them slid open and the stink of decay washed in.
“Don’t go out there!” Kelly warned.
Reggie quickly covered his mouth and nose, but not before getting a mouthful of the smell. “Gah! Give me Brussels sprouts any day over that shit.”
But Doctor White ignored them. She stepped over Stephen’s body as if in a trance, her gaze locked on a spot along the back fence. “Cassie?” she whispered.
There, in a dank corner of the yard next to the crumbling shed, stood a tiny figure in the last sphere of soft light from the dying sun. The dress she wore was tattered and worn, half falling off her pale shoulders. In one hand she held the floppy form of a toy rabbit. In the other was the tiny skull of a real one.
Chapter 55
Something slammed into the side doors, momentarily jarring Jessie’s attention away from the ailing man lying at her feet.
There were even more voices now, she realized, many more. And in the middle of all of them, was Micah asking What’s happening? He sounded agitated. His body was thrashing. But she couldn’t be distracted right now, not by him, not by the Undead.
“If you were so afraid that I’d let the virus spread, why didn’t you just kill me when you had the chance back there at LaGuardia?”
“I would have,” Brother Walter admitted, “if I had believed it would prevent something like this from happening. But I feared your death would release the virus anyway. Now . . . .”
She waited for him to continue, to get to the part where he told her there might be a way to stop it. She ignored the growing din coming from the direction of the front door. Ignored the voices in her head and the voices in her ears. Ignored Micah, whose body seemed to be experiencing some sort of agony, or maybe ecstasy, while the living part of him was in a state of panic. But Brother Walter just lay there and said nothing.
“I have to stop it,” she said, grabbing her pack. “There has to be a way to stop the infection. Or the contingency.”
“There isn’t.”
There has to be, Jessie, Micah told her. He actually sounded breathless, which struck her as strange coming from someone who no longer needed to breathe. Who no longer even possessed the ability to breathe. You can hack into their codex. I’ve done it before.
His body had somehow worked its way underneath a pew and become stuck there. He was still shaking, but the violence of the tremors had diminished. The voices in her head also seemed to have lessened.
He’s lying, Jessie. He has to be!
She considered the possibility, but then asked herself what his motivation might be. What possible advantage would it give him to tell her that everyone was going to die and that it was all her fault? If anything, it made her less inclined to help him and more apt to just leave him here for the Undead.
“When?” she asked, spinning back to him. He’d slumped and was nearly prostrate on the floor again. His breaths came in short painful gasps. “How long before the contingency sends the order?”
“Can’t s-say exactly.” Brother Walter coughed weakly and reached over to take another drink, but the bottle was empty. He was shaking now, and not from weakness. The shivers assaulted his whole body, a sure sign that the infection was spreading beyond the wound in his side.
His words were slurring too, making it that much harder for Jessie to understand him. “C-could be soon.”
He winced as he tried to push himself up. It was a mighty struggle, she could see it in the way the tendons on his neck stood out. He was fighting death now, not just the fever. Once again, the stink of his wound assailed her nose.
“You need help.”
“No time.” A wet groan spilled from his lips. “You’ll d-develop a headache, and—”
“I know what happens,” she growled. “I’ve been through it.”
“It might t-take a f-f-few hours, once it starts.”
He’s lying, Jessie, Micah repeated. We can do it. We can stop this. You just need to get my tablet!
She glanced over at him. Whatever had been agitating him earlier was apparently gone. Was it the beginning of the activation sequence?
“You’re right,” she said, getting to her feet.
“I am?” both Brother Walter and Micah replied at the same time.
“I have to try and stop this. If there’s a way, I need to find it. I need to get to the codex.”
Terror flashed across Brother Walter’s face, and Jessie knew that it was the fear of being left alone, of dying alone. Or, worse still, of being abandoned to die with the Undead for company.
“Don’t worry. I’m taking you with me.”
You’re crazy, Jess!
“No,” Brother Walter whispered.
“Micah will carry you.”
I will?
“No.”
The front doors rattled. Jessie didn’t even spare them a glance. Someone, a woman, whispered inside her head: You’re alive? But—
And then the voice was suddenly gone, leaving an emptiness in her mind that Jessie felt as if it were a physical thing.
She looked up, startled, realizing too late that something really was wrong outside. The whispers which had been plaguing her had gone away, not fading slowly, but leaving her one by one as if each had been snuffed out. Only Micah’s remained. She’d been too preoccupied to notice.
S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) Page 107