S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus (135 page)

What if he tries to open the stairwell door?

He can't. It's a push from this side, and the zombies are piled up on the other side.

I strain my ears, but they pick nothing up, nothing but the faint scratching of the IUs in the stairwell.

Shadows leap out at me as I step through the main room. My own shadow stretches out and I realize that I'm totally exposed standing here, silhouetted in the light from the elevator. And yet I can't seem to get my body to move faster. I feel like I'm walking through mud.

The air conditioner turns on again, rattling the vents and making me jump. Something catches my eye in one dark corner, a whisper of movement, slipping quickly from one shadow to another. I flinch. But it's only a piece of paper slipping off a table. I let out a breath, slow and even, through clenched teeth.

“
Jake?”

The building waits, ticking quietly, breathing. This is what emptiness sounds like. It's what loneliness feels like. It feels like teetering on the edge on insanity.

But the building isn't empty. And I know I'm not alone down here. Either somebody is playing a really bad, stupid trick on me or Jake is walking around here somewhere. Alive, or Undead.

Or maybe climbing up the elevator shaft.

This stops me as I start to take another step. Is it possible? An hour ago, he was dying of fever. Is it possible he regained consciousness and enough awareness that he got himself up and into the elevator shaft?

Or maybe Kelly came back and got him.

This seems just as unlikely. Kelly wouldn't come back and not tell me. He'd have come and found me. He wouldn't take Jake without—

Crash!

I spin to the left. The sound of glass breaking and tinkling to the floor comes to me. The glass in the reinforced window. The moans start again and grow loud for a moment. Louder, less muffled. I hurry over and peek around the doorway into the hall. Hands and arms reach out through the shattered window, slashed by the glass, squeezing through, breaking the thin metal wires. They wave yearningly, grasping at nothing. Do they remember I'm here? Did Jake come this way? Did he rile them up?

I slip silently past those yearning fingers and rest my ear against the door of the first of the two rooms down this way. I don't hear anything, so I quietly turn the handle and crack open the door.

Nothing rushes out to attack me, but the room is dark as night. I hesitate, reach in, feel for the light switch. It's not where I expect it to be. I have to stretch. I choke down my whimpers as I sweep my hand over the wall until my fingers find the switch and I flick them on and jerk away.

Light floods the room. It's full of the Undead.

I stumble backward and into the far wall. The door clicks loudly closed before I realize they're the bodies Reggie and Kelly put in here. I step forward and open the door again and make a quick visual inspection. Nothing moves. The stink reaches my nose now, the stink of plastination. The stink of rot hasn't yet set in. I flick the light off and turn toward the second room, the bathroom.

There's no handle, just a push, and that means no latch. As soon as I crack the door, the smell of urine wafts out at me, stale and pungent. Urine and the cloying aroma of shit and fossilized hand soap. The ceiling lights flicker and buzz. There's a motion sensor on the light switch, cracked, pieces of the plastic crumbling away. The lights were already on when I opened the door. They should've been off. I don't know if they were stuck on, if the sensor is broken. If it still works, they should've been off.

Two sinks line the wall to the left. Straight ahead, two stalls, their doors partially closed. Shadows behind them.

“
Jake?”

I bend down and check underneath. Unrolled toilet paper litters the floor of one. The other is clear, only the silhouette of the toilet and an old Styrofoam coffee cup occupying it.

The paper in the other stalls moves. The cup rolls.

I freeze. I'm stuck in the doorway, the door propped open against my shoulder. Behind me the zombies in the stairwell move restlessly, chipping away at the last few pieces of glass, which fall ticking onto the floor. The air conditioner hums and rattles, clicks, shuts off. The air around my face grows still.

The toilet paper moves again.

No, it's the vent.

I wait.

The paper jerks back a few inches, as if an invisible hand is pulling at it.

More moaning behind me. I filter it out. Every nerve of mine is focused on that stall, on that toilet paper, on the shadows I can't seem to see into.

“
Jake?”

I take a tentative step in, and in the deepest recesses of my mind I hear that chant:
Ollie, ollie, oxen free
.

Something tiny quickly shoots out from under the stall and it heads straight for me. I squeal and tumble back against the door before realizing the tiny thing is just a mouse. The little creature veers off to the left and disappears into a crack in the wall beneath one of the sinks. The door shuts behind me.

“
Jesus Christ!” I cry, swiping the tears away from my eyes. “Jesus Christ. Just a god damn mouse!” I'm crying with fright, but also relief. “Scared the fucking crap out of me!” I scream at it, laughing hysterically, and the zombies behind me grow restless and begin to call out. But I don't care. I don't care. A god damn fucking mouse.

I get up off the floor and wipe myself off. More habit than anything. I turn around and pull the door open.

And Jake is standing right there. His arms are reaching for me, and his eyes black and his mouth hanging open, as if preparing to speak. And in my mind, I hear the other kids chanting in their mocking voices:

Tag, you're dead.

 

If insanity has a sound, it would be the roar of a trillion gallons of water crashing down all at once. It would be the sound of Niagara Falls on a crisp, clear winter day, the tinkling of ice cracking. It would feel like cold sleet striking my face. Like the deepest ocean. It would feel as wet and as hard as all of that, and it would annihilate all sense.

If insanity had a smell, it would sting of plastic smoke, like burning hair and scorched metal. It would stink of the inside of a volcano and taste of ash. It would be the rot of death and blood and the insides of bones.

“
Jessie?”

And if it had a name?

I open my eyes and look into his face. But it's all wrong. He looks like so much like Kelly, thinner, hollow brown eyes, curly hair turned brown from the dirt and grease. I blink and he blinks back and now I see his eyes are blue.

Reggie?

I must be dying. I'm dying because I see everyone I ever loved.

I feel myself being shaken, my body, numb and stiff. My head wobbles on my neck and my jaw clacks. I want to cry out in pain and despair, but only the slightest whisper of a moan escapes my lips.

And the lighting is all wrong. And the angles, the angles don't fit right. And sounds are…are too quiet.

No rush of water. No roar, just a quiet insectile drone…

Computers clicking their digital thoughts…

Lights buzzing…

And the cold, cold air.

“
Kelly?” Another whisper.
Did he hear me? Did I speak?

Kelly rocks back on his heels and exhales before lunging suddenly back into me, grabbing me. I'm falling. He's holding me and I'm falling. I don't react. I can't move. I'm stone. I'm water. Air. Ice.

He sweeps me up in his arms and holds me to him and whispers into my ear, “I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I left you. I shouldn't have left you.” And he's crying, sobbing. “Aah, God,” he wails. “I'm so sorry. I did this to you!”

“
R-reggie?”

Reggie looks over. I can see the wetness in his eyes, the redness. He wipes away the tears and sniffs. A thin smile plays over his lips, but his eyes betray pain and guilt. “It's okay, now, Jess,” he says. He stands by the door and looks out. It's the same glass door I smashed that first day we broke onto the island, at the fueling station. Except it's not the same door. There's still glass in this one. And we can't be there.

Was it all a dream?

But the lighting is all wrong for a dream. It's too… green.

The mainframe. I turn my head. It feels stiff and resists my efforts. We're back inside the computer room. Under the hill. In Gameland.

All of it was real. None of it was a dream.

But that's not possible. Reggie can't be down here.

“
Where's…Jake?”

Nobody answers.

“
H-how did I get in here? How did
you
get here, Reg? Down here? You're not…?”

Kelly rocks me like a child and weeps. A part of me grows impatient with him. He's acting like I'm dying. I'm not dying.

Am I?

“
Where's Jake? He woke up. I saw him.”

Reggie stares out through the door. He won't look at me.

No, that's not entirely true. He's doing more than just avoiding my eyes. He's keeping watch.

For what?

“
What the hell's going on, guys?” Panic creeps up inside of me. My side hurts. “Kelly, let go. Reggie? Why am I…? I- I don't feel right. I…”

My head feels heavy, my body too light.

Reggie turns and comes quickly over. He bends down in front of me. “You were bitten, Jess.”

Kelly moans and rocks me. I don't want to be touched. I don't want to be held. I don't want to hear this.

I want to tell Kelly to stop. And yet I want him to hold me and never let go. “What? How? No! I saw…I saw Jake. He was—”

“
It was him,” Reggie says, nodding, shaking his head, shrugging. He doesn't seem to know what to do with his hands. He's all nervous movement, energy, restlessness. He won't sit still. He still won't look me in the eye. “Jake's turned,” he whispers. “He attacked you. We got here and stopped him, but not before he… Before he…”

I lower my chin to try and see and my gaze sweeps ponderously past Kelly's arm wrapped around me like a wide-angled shot of some grand view, a panoramic picture of…nothing. I look down, past his elbow, past the muddy landscape of my shirt and—

No, it's not mud. It's blood, bright red but appearing brown in this green light, and it's leaking from my side, leaking through the bandage somebody wrapped around me.

How long ago? How much blood have I lost?

“
We didn't get down here in time,” Reggie whispers. “He was trying to eat you.”

And suddenly the world is melting, metal and rock and ice and air dissolving and leaving an acrid sting in my head. It's all pouring over me, roaring. Freezing me.

I'm drowning.

I'm turning to ice.

I am freezing and soon I'll shatter.

† † †

The stinging cold mist envelops me, heavy and sharp, like tiny needles. It condenses on my skin and freezes in the chill wind and flakes off my rented raincoat. Eric looks over at me and smiles and waves for me to join him at the railing. “Big, isn't it?” he shouts.

The water roars all around us, tumbling over the edge far above and shattering down here in the midst of the cataract below, showering us with its billions of tiny broken pieces.

It's beautiful. Niagara Falls is so beautiful.

I scowl at him. But he shrugs it away. He won't be discouraged by my negativity. Not today. Not the day he's chosen to bring me here to tell me he's joining the Necrotics Crimes Division.

“Does Grandpa know?”

“I told him this morning before we left the house.”

Seven torturous hours of stony silence in the car as he drove us here across the heart of New York State on the coldest day in two decades. There was snow on the ground, real snow, and he was making me waste it by sitting in a car.

Seven hours, and he could've said something to me about why, but instead he just told me he wanted me to see the falls just once, once when there was snow on the ground and the mist turned everything into a frozen wonderland, the lanterns into glowing angels and the railings like the railings of ghost ships like they used to have before the polar ice caps melted.

Once before they closed the border.

They never did close them, but they did put in checkpoints.
So I'd listened to the Music Stream on my Link and zoned him out, watching the alien white landscape drift by. Snow. Snow and ice and there I was sitting in a car with the heater we never used blasting hot air on my face, smelling of burnt plastic and metal and dust.

He scared me, Eric did, after he returned from the Marines. I didn't like the way he drifted through the house like a ghost. Haunted. Haunting. Ever since he came back, he'd been acting strangely. It was a few weeks after we'd returned from Seattle. The outbreak had been in full bloom there by then, but all of a sudden there was this freeze all over and it was winter for a week. The infections suddenly stopped.

“You're crazy going into the NCD,” I'd told him.

“Maybe I am,” he replied.

“What did Grandpa say? What did Mom say?”

“Nothing. Everything.” He shrugged. He actually looked like a heavy weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He looked more alive, less like a ghost. On this day of white, he had more color to him than I'd seen in a long time.

“Why?”

“Because I need to.”

I remember chewing on all this for a while. Did he mean that Grandpa said nothing and Mom everything? And what did he need from the Undead anyway? Revenge? What did he intend to give them? Retribution?

In the end, I figured it didn't matter. I didn't really care.