S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus (95 page)

“
You're dragging,” Micah says. “Trade bikes with me for a while.”

But I shake my head. Pulling Shinji isn't what drags on me. If anything, knowing he's there spurs me onward, more so even than knowing Jake is dying. How sorry is that?

The closer we get to our destination, the more spent my muscles feel. But it's more than just physical weariness that makes pedaling so hard. My brain hurts and my heart seems to have lost its urgency. A sense of dread has descended over me, a pall of uneasiness that whispers unendingly inside my head that I'm just building myself up to be disappointed. Pessimism tells me that this isn't going to work, a stubborn refusal to let my hopes get raised. It seems almost too good to be true that we'd stumble across a treatment for the infection just when we most desperately need it.

If feels like just another page out of Arc's script.

But what worries me the most is that the very person promising that treatment is also the father of the man we've killed. This raises too many doubts and alarms inside of me, concerns that we may be getting ourselves into something from which we may not be able to get out. I need to remember to talk to Micah about it, to ‘get our story straight,' as Brother Matthew said earlier. I don't want to slip up and say something we'll come to regret.

But for now I wave him off with an irritable grunt and make a show of keeping up the pace. I tell myself that it's senseless to worry now. This
has
to work. And even if there are so many reasons for it not to—so many forces working against us—it's not like I can turn back now.

The area we're riding through is flat and thinly forested. We've left behind the skyscrapers of Central Islip, once a burgeoning metropolis of towering glass and metal skyscrapers. I'm glad for it. The cities now make me apprehensive. I worry that they're all filled with Players. I know there aren't any CUs out here—not on this side of the Gameland wall—but each time we pass through another city where the buildings crowd together and rise up like mountains on some alien landscape, I can't help but envision Players hiding inside of them, just waiting to charge out to capture us.
Deceivers
, my mind whispers. And I can't help imagining people glued to their television screens cheering them on while commercials for Red Bull and male impotency drugs flash across the screen.

“
Have you ever read the book
Frankenstein
?”

I look up, startled by the sudden sound of Brother Matthew's voice suddenly layered over the sticky hiss of the tires on the road. I blink stupidly, not understanding the meaning of this absurd question.

“
Um… The monster story, you mean?”

He nods.

“
It was made out of the body parts of dead people and brought back to life using electricity, wasn't it?” I say these last words somewhat hesitantly, as I try to render coherent the fragments I barely remember of the tale. It's one of the books that was banned by the New Merican government years back, and so my knowledge of the story comes from an old black-and-white movie we'd watched in Micah's basement. I remember the acting in it had been stiff and unrealistic. Comical, even. We'd spent most of the time not really watching, but instead miming the scenes and adding our own lines, much to Kelly's horror and Reggie's amusement.

“
Actually,” Brother Michael says, “it was the scientist who created the monster that was named Frankenstein, not the monster itself. It's a common misconception.”

I frown, not really caring very much for his condescending tone or the subject he's chosen to bring up. Not caring, in fact, about much of anything at all. Just wanting to get to where we're going. Glad knowing we won't be going back today. I'm too tired.

“
Frankenstein: the Modern Prometheus
was the full title of Missus Shelley's work.” He pronounces it
frahn-kun-shteen
. “Do you know who Prometheus was?”

I shake my head, now regretting not staying back behind Micah. I turn my head and give him a baleful look, but his face is graven in effort, dripping with sweat like molten wax, yet otherwise unreadable.

“
Prometheus,” Matthew continues, “was a Greek god—a Titan, actually—the creator of man from clay. Against Zeus's wishes, he gave man fire, thus allowing us to become stronger and more civilized.”

I wipe the sweat from my cheek and try not to think about water. I wonder how much further we have left to go and whether we should stop for a break. Behind me, in his shaded carrier, Shinji pants with his tongue hanging out of his mouth. His water bowl is dry.

“
For punishment,” Matthew continues, “Zeus bound Prometheus to the side of a mountain, there to suffer for all eternity by having an eagle peck out his liver each and every day, only to have it grow back again overnight.”

I shiver. “That's a lovely tale.”

He grimaces at me. It's not quite a smile. Perhaps it's twisted a bit by the heat and the exertion of riding. Or maybe he finds my sarcasm not to his liking. Frankly, I don't care about that, either.

“
It's not just a tale,” he finally says, “it's a metaphor for the human condition.”

I think about this for a moment and think I'm beginning to understand why he's telling me this. Is he saying that
we
are like Prometheus? That
we
created zombies and now we're being punished for it? I suppose mankind has had its back strapped to the allegorical wall. I suppose the Undead are like the eagle feeding upon the liver of humanity.

“
Why do you call them Elders?”

He sighs and doesn't reply. Instead, he ducks his face down into his side to wipe the sweat off on his arm. He goes back to riding without answering right away. I'm beginning to think this conversation is over when he says, “We made the Elders. Then we gave them fire.”

I don't know what he means by this. Does he mean the CUs with their implants? Is he talking about our giving them the power to think, even if only by proxy?

He looks at me and struggles for a moment as he tries to put his thoughts into words. “The Deceivers,” he says, confirming my suspicions.

“
What about them?”

“
They are an abomination.”

Abomination?

“
Aren't they all?”

“
No,” he firmly answers.

“
Look,” I say, “Reanimation isn't exactly something natural.” If anyone is aware of this, it's me. My own family is responsible for creating the process that brought them all into being. I say, “Nature would never have come up with something like this on its own.”

“
Perhaps not, but now that it's out there, nature will determine whether it survives or goes extinct. Nature, not technology.”

“
It'll go extinct when we do,” I muse.

“
I don't think we will.”

“
How can you be so sure? Just because we managed to control a few small outbreaks?”

“
In the book,” Brother Matthew says, stubbornly returning to the tale of Frankenstein, “the monster commands his creator to make for it a mate. Doctor Frankenstein agrees and begins work on it immediately—under duress, of course. But in the end he fears that it will lead to a race of such monsters and so he destroys it.”

“
Thank God the Undead can't mate.”

“
No? But they can make more of themselves, can't they?”

“
Infection isn't reproduction.”

He chuffs at me, shaking his head. “I was beginning to think that you and Father Heall would get along nicely.”

“
Why would you think that?”

“
I thought you were a lot like him. But now I see I'm wrong.”

“
I just want to help my friend. I'm not interested in philosophical discussions or a place in his cult.”

“
We're not a cult. There are those who believe in what he stands for…to varying degrees. There are those who disagree with other aspects. But we are all brethren.”

“
And what exactly
does
he stand for?”

“
You can ask Will yourself.”

“
Who's Will?

“
Sorry, Father Heall.”

He points ahead of us at a faded road sign. COUNTY ROAD, it tells us. MEDFORD. Half a mile. “Almost there,” he says. He sounds just as relieved as I feel.

He shields his eyes and peers at the sun. “Almost three o'clock. Father Heall will be in his chapel.”

“
Praying for miracles?”

It's a stupid thing to say, and I immediately regret it.

“
I'll take you in and get you situated for the evening. You can get washed up and have something to eat and drink. You'll have about an hour or so to rest before—”

“
I don't want to get washed up or eat,” I protest. “I want to meet with him right away.”

“
That won't be possible.”

I scowl at him, but it fails to elicit any kind of reaction at all.

We take the long circular exit and descend without another word onto another highway. SILLS ROAD the sign says. There are a lot fewer buildings here than I'd expected, fewer, if the blackened, burnt stubs of foundations are any indication, than there once used to be. The forest has grown back, lush and green. We take a left onto DUNTON, the street sign nearly covered in vines, and ride through the trees. The air is much cooler here in the shade, much more pleasant. Everything's so peaceful. I feel my spirits lifting once again.

But then the first buildings come into view, low structures, once painted white, now surrounded by neglected landscaping. It's so hard to imagine that people once lived here. That they live here now. It's hard to imagine a place like this in Long Island. It might as well be the dark side of the moon.

Except, of course, for the Undead.

 

A hot wind blows
a smattering of leaves from years past across Patchogue Road, sounding like bones rattling and ghosts whispering. The overgrown grass ripples and the trees rustle, as if our passing agitates them. We turn onto a weedy drive and pass beneath the low-hanging canopy of older elms and maples, all choked by the newer vines of the strangler figs. A large white colonial mansion appears. The columns in front are peeling paint and half of the black shutters that once adorned its outer walls have come off or are in the process of coming off. Several rest against the base of the house; others are scattered about on the front lawn. The roof is green with moss, and grass grows from the gutters.

“
Charming,” Micah says. He looks warily about, at the ramshackle shed off to one side and the delivery truck parked out in front. Not a single living person is in sight, just the handful of Undead standing like silent sentinels for the living.

I'm about to point out a light shining in one of the upper story windows when I realize it's just the late afternoon sun reflecting off the glass.

“
Jessie!” Micah hisses, swerving away from me. “Pay attention.”

Brother Matthew speeds up. He ignores the zombies standing further out in the fields, but he veers to the far side of the driveway to avoid the closer ones. As we pass, they turn and begin to moan and stumble toward us.

“
Quickly now,” he says, throwing his leg over the seat and coasting to the front steps. He jumps off and lets the bike fall onto the grass to one side. “Be careful not to block the walkway,” he warns.

As soon as I reach the steps, Micah's off his bike and over to the trailer behind me, unzipping the carrier the rest of the way. Shinji slips out and growls at the IUs, though not with the same sort of ferocity he'd had back in the parking lot where the Player attacked us. I wonder if he can tell the difference.

“
Shinji,” I call. “Come!” We bound up the steps where Brother Matthew is already slipping a key into the door and opening it.

“
Inside, quick now!”

“
I have to get his rabbit!”

“
Jessie, come back!”

I run down the steps and grab the toy out of the trailer as a hand slaps unfeelingly at my back. But I whirl around and slip beneath it and sprint up the steps. The IU is too slow to follow.

“
That was stupid!” Micah exclaims.

He's the first inside; I follow with Shinji's collar in my hand. Matthew is last, and just as he's shutting the door, the first IU hits the steps and tumbles over.

It takes several seconds for my eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness.

“
Welcome to the dormitory,” Brother Matthew says. He pushes past us and into the vestibule. “Hello?” he calls. His voice booms through the house, making it seem that much more empty.

And, of course, there's no answer.

“
Everyone must still be in the chapel.”

Micah gives me a look. Even in the gloom I can read it:
What have we gotten ourselves into?

“
This way.”

Matthew leads us up a broad set of stairs. The carpeting is worn and dirty. A sharp tang of burning kerosene hangs in the air, but underneath it is the aroma of something cooking. My stomach growls long and noisily. Micah chuckles at the sound.