Chapter 69
Startled by the shout, Jessie jerked away from where she’d laid Siennah down. Someone was running toward her. Actually, two someones. And they were coming fast.
She swiped the tears from her eyes, and stood up to surrender. She was so tired, so exhausted. She just wanted to be done with everything.
“Jessie!” the lead runner shouted. “You’re alive!”
“Kelly?”
He bounded through the tall grass, laughing and crying all at once.
“Kel?” She ran to him then. Her legs felt so weak that they shouldn’t have been able to carry her, and yet she somehow found the strength.
They crashed into each other at full speed and fell in a tangle to the ground, smothering each other in kisses and tears, their hands on each other’s face, both of them talking at the same time, asking questions that didn’t get answered, answering questions which hadn’t been spoken.
Reggie allowed them to continue their embarrassing display of affection for as long as he could stand it, then he stepped over and bent down and planted a kiss on Jessie’s cheek without even bothering to wipe away the tears and dirt. “Hate to break up this reunion,” he told them, “but we’ve got company.”
He pulled them both up and was alarmed at how light Jessie felt. Without meaning to, he stole a glance at her belly, but he saw no evidence that the doctor had spoken the truth. “Can you run?”
Jessie hesitated. She glanced at the Infecteds and nodded. “My stuff is back there,” she said, pointing.
They returned to where she’d been sitting, the couple still holding hands. Neither one looked like they wanted to let go of the other. Reggie kept his eyes on the Infecteds as they walked, so that he nearly stumbled over the body.
“Is that—?” he asked.
Sienna Davenport lay on her side, her eyes staring dully at the grass. Her neck was a bloody mess, skin sliced from ear to throat. The black handle of a knife protruded from under her jaw.
“Yeah,” Jessie replied, “it is.”
“What the hell is she doing here?” Kelly asked. He let go of Jessie’s hand and stepped back, frowning. “I thought she was— You killed her? Why?”
Jessie bent and plucked the sword from the dirt, but left the knife where it was. “I don’t want to talk about it.” Her voice was hard, yet the hurt in it was clear.
“Seems obvious enough to me,” Reggie said.
Jessie broke off the stare between her and Kelly first, then turned her back and started down the hill, angling away from where the Infected were coming out of the woods. “Coming or not?”
A chill had developed between the couple. Reggie didn’t want to intrude, though he was curious to know how it had happened. But he kept his mouth shut, so none of them spoke again until they reached the compound.
When he saw the damage the storm had wrought, Reggie couldn’t restrain himself any longer. The tension in the air was killing him.
“Damn, girl,” he joked. “You did all this damage with just a sword?”
It seemed to deflate the tension. Jessie laughed. Then Kelly smiled. And soon they were all laughing and crying and apologizing all over again.
She asked them how they’d gotten onto the island, and then, over the next ten minutes, briefly told them what had happened to her since she’d shot the guard to get in. “But I swear I didn’t kill him,” she insisted. “I shot him in the leg. Arc lied about me killing him!”
Both Reggie and Kelly nodded.
When she got to the part about running into Siennah, her voice trailed off.
“You don’t have to explain,” Kelly said. “Back there, I wasn’t judging you. I was just . . . surprised. I didn’t expect to see her here. I didn’t expect to see her dead. I mean, we knew her.”
Jessie shook her head. “That wasn’t Siennah. I don’t know what happened to her, but that wasn’t her. She wasn’t the same.”
She sighed and looked away. “None of us is. Not anymore.”
She finished by telling them about the failure to Arc’s codex and how it would all end with a command being sent for all implants to self-destruct. “But if we can get the mainframe back up and running, I can hack in and stop it. We can, together. I know where Micah’s tablet is. Everything we need is on it.”
Both boys were silent for a moment. “I’m telling the truth,” she said, sensing their doubt. She had left out certain details, like how she’d managed to speak with Micah after his conscription. She didn’t want to have that conversation just yet. It would just lead to too many more questions, and there wasn’t enough time to explain.
“How much time do we have?” Kelly finally asked.
She gave her head a quick shake. “I don’t know. Once we start getting headaches, an hour. Maybe two.”
Reggie grimaced remembering the pain of having his implant partially activated because of the failsafe. He seemed to be more sensitive to it than the rest of them, which meant that he’d have less time once it started. “Then we better get moving.”
“The tablet’s buried beneath the rubble of that collapsed building.” She turned to Kelly. “Reggie can help me get to it. I need you to get to the backup generator in the shed near the back fence and reboot the mainframe.” They both nodded. “And Kel, be careful. With the fence down and no power, the Discorporated have gotten inside.”
“The what?” Kelly asked, frowning.
“Them,” she said, pointing toward the forest. “Try not to kill them if you don’t have to.”
* * *
“Try not to kill them?” Reggie echoed, as Jessie led him around to the other side of the collapsed building. “Suddenly they’re not monsters anymore?”
“No, they’re not,” Jessie replied tersely, and she didn’t elaborate.
They stopped near a bare spot where the ground had been dug up, and she pointed to the ground and said, “There.” It was clearly a grave.
The mud had begun to dry, and the crust was cracking as it collapsed into itself. Melted clods of dirt spotted the ground all around, but if there had been blood — and judging from all the scrapes and cuts on Jessie, there almost certainly had been — it had thankfully been washed away.
“That’s where I buried her.”
He didn’t look at it, just stared at her, forcing her finally to turn toward him.
“I’m through with killing,” she said. “I can’t do it anymore. Not them. Not anyone.”
He slowly inhaled, then nodded. “Okay.” But still he wouldn’t turn away from her.
“I’ll be around the other side, Reg. When you’re done here, you can help me with the tablet.”
“How?” he asked, before she could leave him alone. “How did she do it, hack my implant? And Kelly’s?”
“There’s no time, Reg.”
“Please. I need to know.”
She sighed, shrugged. “I’m not exactly sure. All I know is that she needed an intact implant to do it, possibly as a key or a bridge. She extracted it from a Player.”
“How?”
She told him briefly about the instructions she’d discovered on Ben’s Link. “It’s too bad. She was such a smart girl. She could’ve helped us with this.”
Too smart for her own good, Reggie thought.
“Don’t take too long,” she told him, then left him alone to deal with his grief.
Reggie watched her walk away. He knew that she was giving him a gift, a luxury of a few minutes they couldn’t really afford, time to say his goodbyes. He had been dreading it, had told himself that he wasn’t going to even as he knew that it was why he’d come. He needed closure.
“You don’t deserve it,” he said at the bare ground. “Not for what you did.”
The girl he’d thought he loved — well, maybe not loved loved like Kelly and Jessie loved each other, but really enjoyed spending time with because she was fun and sexy — had turned out to be exactly the girl his parents had always warned him she was, a selfish bitch.
; “And Jessie didn’t deserve what you did to her. She was your friend.” He shook his head. “You did this to yourself.”
He turned away. He didn’t want to leave thinking about her like this. He wanted to remember the good times, but it was so hard. “This wasn’t you,” he whispered.
Yet even as he left the side of the sunken grave, he knew how hypocritical he was. He was still making excuses for her, even while finding it impossible to forgive Micah.
He followed the mud trail that led away from the hole until it ended at the sidewalk, where the rain had washed it away, before remembering he hadn’t actually spoken the words out loud. He hadn’t said goodbye.
He found Jessie standing at the edge of the rubble along one side of the collapsed building. She had her back to him and her head lifted as if she were listening.
“What is it?” he asked, coming up to her and touching her elbow.
She turned to him, startled, and there was fright in her eyes. “Nothing,” she said, blinking it quickly away. “It’s nothing.”
She gave the grounds another sweeping glance, then turned and began to pull at a piece of the corrugated roof.
“You heard something. What was it, Jess? Was it Kelly? Do you want me to go check on him?”
“Kelly’s fine.” She tugged harder, but the panel wouldn’t move.
Reggie could see how weak she was by how much her arms shook, but he didn’t try and help her. Whatever she’d sensed, it had disturbed her enough to stop what she was doing. So why wouldn’t she tell him?
He scanned the grounds again, letting his gaze dwell on the shadows. He didn’t see any Infecteds, and yet he could sense them out there. They would start to come as soon as he and Jessie made enough noise.
The panel let out a squeal, then a grinding shriek as Jessie pulled it off the pile. The veins and muscles in her neck stood out from the strain, and her face was red with effort. He went over and grabbed the piece away from her and flipped it over to the side, trying not to let it bang too loudly. Jessie stopped to rest with her elbows on her knees.
“You okay?”
She shook her head, then nodded. “I’m fine.”
“You should let me do this.”
They had exposed an opening, and in the darkness behind the partially collapsed wall, he saw what appeared to be a large black duffle bag about eight feet in. “Looks like we might’ve lucked out.” He crawled inside and pulled the bag out. “This what you’re looking for?”
Jessie nodded and hobbled over.
“Game controller . . . .” he said, opening it up and dumping the contents onto the ground. I don’t see any tablet, though.”
She dug through the pile, then checked the empty bag. “It was here. It was in the bag.”
“It might still be under there. I can look.”
“No. I don’t understand. It was in the bag! And the implant. It’s not here.” She started pawing through the grass.
“Calm down, Jessie. It’s probably just—”
“Grant!” she said. “Damn it! He was here and must’ve—”
She fell back, her eyes bulging with fright, then jumped to her feet. “Where are you?”
“Jessie, what is it? Who’s Grant?”
“You don’t hear it?” She looked absolutely terrified.
He listened for a moment, then shook his head. “There’s nothing. Just the wind.”
“The screaming? You don’t hear it.”
“Um . . . no.”
She grabbed her head in her hands. “No. Stop it! No no no no . . . . The pain!”
“Is it a headache? Jessie, are you—”
“No! Oh, god. It’s Jake. He hurts!”
“Jake?” The sound of the boy’s name shocked Reggie enough that he stepped back. He wanted to reach out to her, to help her, but he was almost afraid to touch her. “Jessie, Jake’s dead.”
“He’s here. He’s here! I can hear him! I need to find him.”
“Jessie, no!” He grabbed her arm to stop her from running off. “Jessie, please! He’s gone. Listen, I think you’re just—”
But then he heard it too, shouts coming from somewhere near the back of the compound, echoing through the buildings. Except it wasn’t Jake’s voice but Kelly’s. And he wasn’t screaming in pain, as Jessie had said. He was screaming in terror.
She wrenched her arm out of Reggie’s grip and tore off down the path, skirting the main building. She slipped on the grass and nearly fell. He was right behind her and grabbed her arm, lifting her back up. More screams rent the air, now infused with pain.
They saw them outside the lone building across an open field, the door pulled open and the soft chug of a generator coming from inside. Jake was on Kelly’s back, tearing into him with his teeth, ripping his clothes, shredding flesh. Kelly staggered, batting at his attacker to no effect. He was trying not to fall down. Blood poured from multiple wounds on his back, neck, and shoulders.
“Stop it!” Jessie screamed. She started to run, but tripped and went flying. Reggie leapt over her and kept going.
But it was already too late. He stopped and grabbed Jessie. “No!” he screamed. “No, Jessie! Stop!”
“Nooooo!” She tried to pull away from him. She was frantic now, screaming and crying, fighting him. He tried to block her from seeing.
Kelly was on his knees now, Jake still on him. His movements were growing more and more feeble. Some insane sound, a mix of triumph and pain, came from Jake’s mouth. He arched his back and howled, then fell forward and tore off the side of Kelly’s scalp.
Reggie tried to pull Jessie away, but she kept beating at him. “No no no!” she wailed. “Let me go! I just— I just got him back. Noooo!”
Somehow, Kelly had managed to get back to his feet. Jake was still on him, clinging to him with one arm wrapped around his neck, the other around his chest. Both of them were covered in blood. Kelly looked up and his eyes locked on Reggie’s, and he knew that Kelly knew this was the end for him.
Jake took his shoulder into his mouth and bit down, and the bones snapped as he crushed them between his jaws, sending another wail up from Jessie’s throat.
Kelly took one step toward them, his hand outstretched. “Take . . . care of her,” he said. He took another step, stopped again. “And . . . the baby.”
He fell to a knee, stood again, and turned away.
“Kelleeeee!”
Jake turned his dead eyes at the sound and locked them onto the huddled pair. He snarled again, then slipped off Kelly’s back.
No, Jake,” Jessie groaned. “No, Jake, I’m sorry.” She grabbed her head, as if she thought it might explode.
Kelly lifted himself off the ground and tackled the monster. He cried out, his voice a drowning gurgle, and told them to run.
Jake launched himself back onto Kelly and took another bite.
“Jessie!” Reggie hissed. He tried to pull her away, but she was straining against him, reaching out, as if she could still touch them across the open distance. “We have to go!”
Kelly lifted himself up, staggered toward the building, and fell across the threshold. Yet even then he didn’t stop. He began to crawl inside, dragging jake with him.
Reggie stared at them, still holding Jessie back. He couldn’t turn away from the horror. Her struggles grew weak, and she collapsed against him. They watched as Kelly reached up, grabbed something, a pipe maybe, and tried to stand up. There was a screech of metal and liquid began to pour out of a valve and splash onto the floor.
With dawning horror, Reggie realized what he was doing. “Don’t look, Jessie,” he whispered.
Flames erupted inside the building, enveloping both figures. They became shadows now, and for several moments longer they danced inside that fluid light.
Then the building exploded.
Chapter 70
“Jessie,” Reggie hissed. He had to wrestle her to the ground. “Listen to me, Jess. We’ve got to get out of here. Now!”
She was wailing in
anguish, trying to pull away from him, clawing at his hands as he held her arms. “Noooo!” she shrieked. “KELLY!”
Her husband’s screams had drawn the first Undead, but the inferno was certain to bring them in even greater numbers. They were piling up against the fence, which was starting to lean in. And Jessie’s cries were stirring them up into a frenzy. They too raised their voices; their moans made the very air thrum with sound.
Reggie wrapped an arm across her chest and tried to drag her away, but she fought him with bitter fury. She dug in her heels and pulled him back. He didn’t blame her. And to come so soon after the joy of their reunion, he could only imagine the depth of her grief.
He had been so wrong about Kelly. This act of his hadn’t been callousness. It had been a mask hiding his abiding terror at losing her.
And now she had lost him.
The flames reached higher into the sky, scratching with their orange fingers and flicking black smoke from their tips like a dark magic spell. The fire grew taller than the treetops. A wall of the shed collapsed with a groan and threw up a swarm of sparks.
Everything grew quiet then to Reggie. The roar of the flames, the moaning of the Undead, Jessie’s screams— they all stopped. His shock made him deaf. All the noises cancelled each other out in his mind, leaving nothing, not even the sound of his heartbeat and the rush of air as he struggled to breathe. Jessie fought him in deafening silence. And time itself seemed to have lost all meaning.
He nearly lost her. She slipped out from under his arm and broke away, but he lunged and managed to grab her shirt and pull her back.
“Stop!” he screamed.
Then everything came back to him in a rush— time and sound, heat and light
“No, Jessie!”
The first Infected appeared around the corner of the closest building. Another quickly followed.
“We’ve got to get away, Jessie,” he growled in her ear.
A third appeared off to their right. Only three, so far, he thought, calculating his odds. They would be fairly easy to handle. He could probably even do it while carrying her. But more would come, and soon. Those that were already inside the place, the ones which had been hiding until they had a reason to come out, would be here soon. Back here against the fence, with only the burning structure, there would be no place for him and Jessie to hide.
S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) Page 114