Jessie?
“Shh! Someone’s here.”
She hurried over to the closest window. The ground was littered with bodies.
What’s happening?
A crash from the front spun her around. The doors slammed against the walls as they flung open. The board she’d wedged in the handles to keep them closed splintered apart.
Brother Walter stirred.
Jessie?
But she could say nothing. She could do nothing but watch as Jo Vail strode in, pistol raised and aimed straight at her head. The Live Player was covered in blood from head to toe. Jessie’s sword was in her other hand, and it was dripping black gore.
Behind her, another figure slipped into the doorway, a silhouette backlit against the bright sunlight outside. Rosie Haycock, Grant’s Live Player partner, stepped out of the glare.
Jessie, please tell me.
“Jo,” Rosie called, her voice a low, mean growl. “We agreed how this was going to go down. Let’s do this right.”
“Right is ending this now,” Jo replied. “Right the fuck now.”
Brother Walter tried to get to his feet. Without breaking stride, Jo swung her arm to the right. The pistol barked once. Jessie jumped. Brother Walter’s body jerked, then crumpled back to the floor, a new flower of red blooming on his shirt just above his heart.
Was that a gunshot? Jessie?
The pistol swung back to her, and suddenly the barrel looked very big and very black. A tendril of smoke drifted lazily out.
“Game over,” Jo said. “Looks like the girls win. Well,” she added, smiling crookedly, “two out of three girls anyway.”
Jessie raised her hand, as if she meant to ward off the bullet.
Jessie? Who’s that? Who’s here?
Jo’s smile faltered as she heard Micah struggle beneath the pew. “Now see?” she said, raising the sword over her head. “That’s just a terrible waste of good tape.”
“No!” Jessie screamed. She tried to reach out to stop her and realized she was still holding the book in her hand.
The sword whistled as it sliced through the air, landing deep into the worn wooden church floor, and the last whisper in Jessie’s head fluttered away into silence.
Chapter 56
“I don’t know if we should watch this.”
Kelly didn’t reply. He seemed lost, in a daze, his eyes glued to the macabre mother-daughter reunion playing out in the back yard.
The dead girl hadn’t yet noticed the woman cautiously approaching her. She stood turned to one side, not moving, her head held at a queer angle and her arms dangling just as still and limp as a flag on a windless day. She appeared remarkably clean, with the exception of the mud on her arms and hands and knees. Well-preserved, Reggie thought. At least when compared with the other outbreak victims he’d encountered on the island. And her skin was pale white instead of dark and leathery or bleached ash gray. The squiggly lines of her veins, which hadn’t pumped blood in over a decade, were still clear on her neck and forehead.
“Come on, Kel,” he said. He was itching to move on, to be free of the woman and her demented idea that she could raise the Undead. The whole situation gave him the heebie jeebies. She gave him the heebie jeebies. “We’ve got stuff to do. Time to go. She doesn’t need us anymore.”
Doctor White was slowly closing the distance between herself and the girl, creeping stealthily through the tall, dead grass. Her fingers curled unconsciously around the rusted metal of the swing set’s frame and rested there for a moment, as if she were afraid of losing her balance or her tenuous grip on the world. A moment later, she stepped past it and her fingers lost contact, though they continued to hover in mid air by her side.
“Go?” Kelly turned his head slightly toward Reggie, though his eyes didn’t shift from the scene. The blank look he’d worn turned to confusion. “But we can’t just take off and leave her.”
“If you’re worried about that thing eating her—”
“That thing is her daughter,” Kelly quietly said, his voice hard. “And, no, I’m not worried about that.”
Reggie was quiet for a moment. “Daughter or not, she’s dead.”
“I know.”
Reggie pulled him around so that they were standing nose to nose. “And what she’s about to do, or try to do, it doesn’t bother you?”
“She has the cure.”
“And she’s wasting it on something that’s been dead for a dozen years! She’s crazy thinking she’ll be able to bring her daughter back from this. I mean, how many books do you have to read, how many movies do you have to watch, to know that it won’t work? It always — always — goes horribly wrong.”
“Maybe not this time.”
Reggie threw up his hands in resignation. “It’s fucking hubris. I want no part of it.”
Kelly shrugged. There seemed to be no urgency in him anymore. He turned back to the glass.
Reggie followed his gaze. The girl had finally noticed her mother. She was turning toward her now, slowly. She opened her mouth, as if in surprise, but Reggie recognized the gesture as the first step in an attack.
Run! he wanted to shout to the woman, but he just stood there and stared.
And she just stood there too, her arms outstretched, as if to receive in them this horrible, terrifying thing that was no longer the thing she remembered it had once been.
The dead girl stepped forward out of the sunlight, and in that brief moment, she looked very much like a child.
Then she lunged.
Doctor White deftly redirected the tiny, stick-like arms, folding them behind the girl’s back. Then, before Reggie could react, could even cry out in dismay, she had the girl face down on the ground with her knee between her shoulder blades.
“Jesus. Looks like she’s done that before,” Reggie whispered.
Kelly didn’t answer.
So Reggie watched, fascinated despite himself, yet horrified in spite of his loathing for the Undead. The woman bound the tiny zombie’s wrists and stuffed a cloth into her yawning zombie mouth.
“She actually truly believes she can bring her back?”
Kelly shrugged.
“Do you?”
“I believe in the cure. I have to.”
“Well, sure. I mean, because of Kyle.”
“And me.”
“But both of you are still alive.” He gestured at the back yard. “That girl? She’s been dead for thirteen years, Kel.”
“I wish you’d stop saying that.”
“It’ll never work.”
“It might.”
Reggie exhaled in disgust. “Fine. Gimme a sec while I put on my A-brain. Let’s say this cure somehow restores a body that’s been dead probably twice as long as it was alive. I’m no doctor. I’m not a scientist, but even I know that when cells die, the proteins and everything inside of them break down. It’s basic biology.”
“This isn’t,” Kelly quietly countered. “Besides, we know they don’t decay, not entirely. We know they continue to function. The muscles. Vision. Hearing. All of that stuff. Certain parts of the brain remain intact and functional. So why is it hard to believe that they’re still alive in some rudimentary way that we don’t fully understand?”
“I’m not just talking about that, Kel. What about her mind? Her soul? Those things died when she died. They’re long gone, Kelly. What do you have without a soul? A shell, nothing more.”
“You don’t know. Nobody knows what happens. Maybe they’re still inside somewhere, trapped.”
“They’re not, brah.”
Kelly stepped closer to Reggie. “What if they’re just . . . sleeping? Maybe this will wake them up.”
Reggie shook his head. “I understand why you need to believe in the cure, Kel. But this is different.” He sighed. “Anyway, it doesn’t change the fact that we need to find Jessie. Every minute we waste here is another minute Arc’s Live Players have to get to her before we do.”
But Kelly still didn’t move.
“No good can come of this,” Reggie said. “It’s just wrong. That girl is long gone, and it’s going to drive Doctor White insane when she figures that out.”
“It’s already too late,” Kelly whispered, his voice so low that Reggie wasn’t sure he’d heard him correctly.
“What?” He shook Kelly. “What did you say?”
“It’s too late to leave.” Kelly gestured at the sun, which was hanging low in the sky. “We’ve only got a couple hours before it gets dark. We’ll set out in the morning.”
“In a couple hours we could be at the mainframe. Please, man, I really don’t want to witness this. I don’t want to see what happens. I can only imagine one possible outcome, and it ain’t a good one.”
The girl was now back on her feet, twisting around and trying to get to her mother. Doctor White was carefully but firmly guiding her back to the house, one hand on her bound wrists, the other on her shoulder. Her eyes met Reggie’s through the dirty glass and she mouthed: “I need your help.”
He wanted to shake his head no.
Kelly slid the door open, then turned to Reggie and said, “After this. I promise.”
The three of them wrestled the girl into the living room and onto the couch. Dried gore hardened the cushions and made the carpet scratchy. Someone had started to wipe it away, but gave up. There was too much of it.
The little zombie’s movements were stiff and slow, yet preternaturally strong. She fought them as they rolled her onto her stomach. Reggie saw only two marks on her skin: a single bite on her right forearm, and another on the back of her left thigh. Neither was deep. Neither showed much tissue damage.
Her skin was as cold as ice and as hard as dense rubber.
“Hold her still,” Doctor White instructed. She pulled her pack to her side and unzipped it braced beneath a knee. The other rested on the girl’s head. From inside the bag, she extracted a plastic case about the size of a shoebox. This, she thumbed open.
The girl bucked beneath Reggie. One of her arms worked free and swiped ineffectively at his leg. “What are you going to do?” he asked Doctor White.
“Just hold Cassie still.”
She loaded a large syringe with a viscous pink fluid which she extracted from a small IV bag, then moved to her daughter’s side.
“Where’s that going?” Reggie asked.
“In her neck.”
But they couldn’t hold the girl still long enough for the injection. After a couple tries, Doctor White shook her head. She recapped the needle and set it aside.
“What now?”
Once more she reached into the pack. This time she brought out the EM pistol. “Step aside,” she told them. “Now!”
Unburdened by the boy’s weight, Cassie rose from the couch, but she didn’t get far before she was flattened by the blast from the pistol. Reggie could feel the tingling of it on his skin and the itchiness in his head, even though he’d been standing well enough to the side to avoid the blast. It was like being next to the Gameland wall.
Stepping quickly back, Doctor White inserted the needle into Cassie’s neck. It took all of her strength to force the liquid in.
“Is that the cure?”
She shook her head at Reggie. “It liquefies the clotted blood, allows it to flow again.” She checked the time on her Link and waited.
After two minutes had passed, she withdrew the needle. “Now,” she said. “It’s time to wake her up.”
* * *
It took Cassie much longer than expected to recover from the EM hit, almost an hour, during which time Doctor White flushed the girl’s veins a dozen times with saline and replaced it with synthetic plasma. When that was done to her satisfaction, she nervously busied herself checking for signs of life.
Once more, Reggie quietly tried to get Kelly to leave. But the sky had darkened to a deep golden hue by then. It was streaked with luminescent white and red clouds. Night was falling, so they stayed.
By the time the girl finally began to move again — her hands and feet twitching first, then her arms and legs bending — the entire sky had bruised a deep purple.
“What’s happening?” Reggie asked.
Doctor White didn’t answer. She pointed to the large stew pot she’d gotten from a cabinet in the kitchen and asked him to dispose of the contents. It was filled with the girl’s useless blood, a nasty black goo with the consistency of tar. He set it outside the sliding door beside the rotting corpse.
“It’s going to take some time,” she said, when he returned. “I don’t know how long.”
Neither boy spoke. They made themselves comfortable in chairs on opposite sides of the room and waited and watched as Cassie resumed being an Infected Undead. There was no sign that the treatment had worked.
Eventually, darkness slipped into the house. Doctor White asked Reggie to turn on the lights in the hallway, and he was surprised to find that they worked. “Solar panels,” she explained. And that was the sum total of the exchange between the three of them until sometime close to four in the morning.
Reggie was lightly dozing when he heard Doctor White speaking softly. He opened his eyes and carefully raised his head and peered over at the couch. In a dark corner on the other side of the room, he could see Kelly’s eyes reflecting the light from the hallway.
“Cassie?” she was saying, repeating it over and over again. “Cassie? Honey? Can you hear me?”
Reggie shifted and threw Kelly a questioning look.
“She has a pulse,” he quietly said.
Doctor White’s chant continued unchanged.
“Really?”
He saw Kelly nod.
Movement on the couch drew his gaze back. He realized the girl had stopped writhing. She was lying still now, as if asleep.
Or dead.
Her mother was gently pulling the girl’s hair away from her face. It was brittle and kept breaking, and she’d flick her fingers to one side to get the strands off. She’d then resume brushing more of it away from the skeletal face.
The girl’s chest rose. Then fell.
Then rose again.
“She’s breathing?”
Kelly nodded.
“How long?”
“Twenty minutes or so.”
“Cassie? Can you hear me?” Doctor White asked again.
She gently removed the gag. Reggie’s pulse quickened. Don’t do that, he wanted to tell her. Put it back.
“It’s your mother. I’m here. I’m finally here.”
And this time Cassie responded. The sound was little more than a growl, the rasp of sandpaper rubbing against rough fabric, but it was as clear to the boys as it was to the woman sitting only inches away:
“Maaaaaahhhh maaaaa . . . .”
Chapter 57
“MICAH!”
Jessie sprang at Jo, striking her on the cheek with her elbow and ripping the grin off her face. They fell in a heap between pews before the Live Player could redirect either pistol or sword and began clawing at each other’s faces.
Jo wrapped both of her hands around Jessie’s neck. Even as her throat constricted, starving her of air, Jessie was aware that Rosie would be joining in the fight. She slammed the heel of her hand upward against Jo’s nose, and the pressure released.
Jo reeled back, her hands now at her face. “Haycock!” she called. Blood trickled from one of her nostrils.
“You bitch!” Jessie screamed. “You killed him!”
“He was dying anyway. You can’t smell the infection?”
“I wasn’t talking about him.” She pulled Jo down and climbed on top, reaching for Jo’s throat. “I’m going to kill you!”
“Are you talking about the zomb—?”
Jessie slammed her fist against the bottom of the woman’s jaw, and her teeth came together with a loud SNAP!
“Fuggin amn ih!” Jo screamed, spraying blood and spittle onto Jessie’s face. “Hay-gahg!” She thrust her head up, slamming it into Jessie’s nose. There was a sickening
crunch, and pain exploded before her eyes. The back of her head crashed into the pew. Jo repeated the head butt, but this time Jessie was ready for it and jerked out of the way.
The motion threw her off of Jo, who used it to her advantage. She grabbed a handful of Jessie’s hair and pushed her away, then slid out from underneath the bench with a vicious kick. The heel of her boot scraped Jessie’s shin, but she barely felt it.
“Hay-GAHG!” Jo shouted again. “Where fuhgger oo?”
She tried to stand up. Blood was pouring from her mouth. Jessie thought it was a split lip, but then she caught a glimpse of Jo’s tongue, which had a nasty gash in it.
“Fuggin bih mah ung!”
Jessie tried to get up. She was still halfway beneath a pew, yet she couldn’t move. Something was holding her back, pinning her. Something had a hold of her shirt.
She felt underneath the pew and found the stray nail head, a part of her sleeve tangled up over it, but she couldn’t work it free.
Jo spat a wad of blood onto the floor, then realized that Jessie was stuck. A smile crossed her face, twisted by the injury to her mouth. She took her time bending down on her hands and knees to look for the gun.
Jessie redoubled her efforts, trying vainly to tear the tough fabric or loosen the nail, but neither wanted to give.
“Haygahg!” Jo shouted again. “Where a fuh are ooh?”
Jessie changed directions and began pushing herself back beneath the pew. The nail scraped across her belly, then dug into her ribs. She pulled harder as the pain tore through her, but now she was moving. She was almost free!
Hands grasped her shoulders and yanked her the rest of the way out. The nail bit into her hip bone, then scraped her thigh. She felt the metal slice into her jeans, felt the searing heat of it, and she screamed.
Jo pulled her onto her knees. Then looking her straight in the eyes, she slammed her fist into Jessie’s cheek. It was a glancing blow as Jessie tried to pull away. The knuckles scraped along her cheekbone and her ear. Jo reached back again.
Jessie grabbed the front of her jumpsuit. She pushed as hard as she could, using the pew behind her for leverage. Jo’s head bounced against the book rack, wrenching her neck. Jessie pulled back, then thrust again, and they fell.
S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) Page 108