S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (121 page)

Someone alive.

Or partially alive.

The rush of her blood grew louder as she grew anxious again, awaiting another sign that she wasn't just letting her imagination run wild. Now it seemed to her that spending the night in this room hadn't been such a smart thing to do. There was only the one door, against which she'd propped a chair. But now that chair locked her in as much as it kept all else out. She felt trapped.

Her shoulder hurt, and she rubbed it, working the stiffness out, warming it again. The skin around Ashley's bite was starting to itch.

And there it was again, the faintest flutter of noise, a footstep or a joint creaking. Not her imagination. The sound came from the warehouse, from somewhere among the stacks of bicycle parts stored in rotting cardboard boxes, their corners nibbled through by the million tiny teeth of a thousand generations of mice.

Something clattered to the floor, just the faintest sound, the metallic tinkling of a dust particle, a flutter of paper. A falling hair.

Jessie's skin turned to ice. She stood up on her makeshift mat of oily throw cloths and unsold biking outfits. She pulled her Link from her pocket to use the light, but on rethinking it, put both it and the pistol away. The light would make her more of a target. And the gun was more of a hindrance than her bare hands in the dark.

Moving as carefully and quietly as she could, she removed the chair from against the door. It scraped on the floor, and the knob made a click that seemed louder than any alarm.

Another sound came from beyond the door, a frantic scurrying followed by silence.

How could someone have gotten in past the pile of empty soda cans she'd propped against the front door? How could they have broken the metal bar across the back without her hearing?

She swung the door open and it squealed like a freight train braking.

Scratching.

She heard it coming from one of the top shelves on the other side of the room, like fingers reaching blindly in the dark, searching for a hidden key.

“I've got a gun!” she whispered loudly. “Who's there?”

The scratching continued.

“Hello?”

She skirted a row of shelves. Now the sound was coming from her left, down the next aisle.

To her right, the shop opened up into the showroom, a vendor's counter like a low wall between the front and back of the shop separating it from the storage area. It was a cloudless night, but the storefront window was frosted with dust. Ghostly shadows passed it outside, the shuffling of their feet muted by the glass.

She took another step forward until she stood at the end of the shelving unit, then bent her head into the space and tried to peer into the darkness. To use her Link's light here would be reckless. It would make her a target. Nevertheless, she pulled it out of her pocket.

The sound was louder now, not because she was closer, but because it seemed more urgent.

But she could see nothing where it came from.

“Hello?”

No break in the pattern.

She stepped forward, stopped. Stepped forward again. The sound was now above her.

She looked up and felt something fall onto her cheek, making her blink and flinch back. She pressed her hand there and felt something wet.

plink

She extended her arm until she felt the drip.

It was the damn roof. Water was leaking in from above, dripping through and onto the flap of an old box, running down the side, dripping onto the floor. A small puddle had formed at her feet. Kneeling, she brushed her fingers through the puddle.

The tension left her body in an explosive exhale, and she shook her head at her own foolishness. A god damn leak in the roof. That's what had woken her. The rain.

She frowned and spun on her heels to peer out through the front display window. It wasn't raining. It hadn't rained for well over twelve hours, so why was the roof leaking now?

The dripping became a steady stream, a silver thread linking roof to floor. The puddle expanded rapidly. Above her, the roof creaked and moaned.

Jessie tried to push herself away, but her feet slipped on the slick floor and she landed on her hands, dropping her Link. It skittered across the floor. At the same moment, the roof collapsed beneath the weight of several hundred gallons of trapped rainwater which had entered the space through a break left by the previous night's winds.

The metal shelving units took the brunt of the hit. They fell like dominoes, pinning Jessie underneath.

 

Lana Daniels settled into the chair at her kitchen table with a grunt and warily eyed the oatmeal Kelly had warmed up for her for breakfast. It was from an old packet he found in the back of a cabinet, and he'd used milk that was borderline sour. He'd added a lot of sugar, which didn't appeal to her; though, to be honest, nothing would have appealed to her right then, not even if it had been fresh.

She appreciated how much he was trying, searching through the scanty supplies for something appetizing for her and commenting how she needed to keep up her strength, while also apologizing how there was so little left in the house to eat that wasn't packaged, as if he were the one responsible for the sorry state of their pantry.

“Go,” she said, waving him off. She didn't like being reminded how terrible of a parent she was, especially by her son-in-law.

The title still sounded strange in her head, and she almost resented him for making her think of him that way. It hardly seemed possible that he and Jessie were old enough to be married.

She knew how deeply he loved her, had always loved her. And Jessie had always loved him. Yet somehow this marriage of theirs, which Lana had simultaneously wanted and resented, now seemed completely wrong. Everything had changed between them since the kids returned. Everything between them felt forced.

He placed a hand lightly on her shoulder. “Are you sure you're going to be okay?”

She nodded. “You've already sacrificed so much saving me and then staying here overnight to help out when your own family needs you. Go take care of them now. I'm sure they're frantic with worry. I'll be here when you get back.”

“You should come with me, Missus D. All you need is a change of clothes and—”

“No. Let me rest. I'll . . . eat. I promise.” She smiled up at him, hoping that it would be enough to satisfy him. She
needed
him to leave.

“All right,” he finally said, sighing. “I won't be long.”

She could tell that he was anxious to be going, to reunite with Kyle and his parents after the long sleepless night. And yet he hesitated. She watched as he grabbed a glass from the cabinet and began to fill it beneath the kitchen faucet, staring out onto the street as he did. Daylight was just beginning to break.

“There was this little girl,” he said, and his voice cracked.

She could see the ghost of his reflection in the glass. His lips were still moving, forming a single word and repeating it, over and over again, though he made no sound. She could see that he was still in a state of shock.

Fourteen hours had passed since he had discovered her collapsed between his car and the one adjacent. She didn't remember him lifting her up and placing her back inside. She did remember seeing the haunted look in his eyes in the rearview mirror when she came to. Fourteen hours later and that look was still there, as if they were in some sort of suspended animation.

They had talked little. He told her how he'd escaped through the underground parking garage to find the world outside descended into chaos. Half of the main building was burning, and the fire was quickly spreading to the satellite structures. Emergency vehicles were everywhere, their sirens blaring.

“Nobody was doing anything to help put out the flames or control the crowd. I saw police and firefighters running away like cowards along with everyone else, the ones who were still alive.”

Chased by the dead.

Away from the medical complex.

And into the surrounding residential and commercial neighborhoods.

Spreading the infection to everyone they met.

And all the while the emergency outbreak sirens in town had remained silent and stoic, as if in defiance that there was any emergency at all. No one had received the warning they needed until it was already too late.

He was near tears by this point in the telling, and they were in the car, yet unable to move on the road that was hopelessly jammed up. Not more than a quarter mile from the hospital and fearful that the Undead would soon overtake them.

And still the outbreak alarm hadn't sounded.

“It's full, Kelly.”

He turned away from the sink. “Excuse me?”

“The glass is full. Kelly, go home. You're exhausted. Your family's waiting for you.”

He turned the faucet off, then drank some water without seeming to taste it. “The girl,” he croaked. “She was in the stairwell. She was already dead, reanimated. I think the firefighter had been trying to rescue her or something and maybe he slipped and broke his neck. Or maybe she—” He cleared his throat. “She had this doll that just kept saying—

“Kept saying—”

He couldn't make his throat say the word, though she could easily guess what it was by the shape of his lips:
Mama
.

He placed the glass in the sink and left.

* * *

The knock at the door an hour later startled her. She hadn't been expecting Kelly back so soon, and she surely wasn't expecting company. The streets were empty, the town's residents hiding inside their locked houses, their curtains drawn. Even without the emergency sirens, word had finally gotten out that it was unsafe. But unlike the alarmed shelter-in-place just a few days before, people were taking this silent one seriously, as if the absence of police and sirens somehow made it all that much more real.

She was shocked to find Doctor White standing on her porch, her clothes torn and dirtied. There were bits of leaves and grass in her hair, as if she'd spent the night in the woods.

Kelly had told her that he feared she'd been infected and turned, but here she was, clearly not infected at all.

“What are you doing here,” Lana asked, her voice as hard and sharp as metal filings. She had never liked the woman, nor did she trust her, not since she'd learned about her dealings with Ulysses. And if that weren't enough, there was also something a little . . . off about her, something dangerous.

But now here she was, standing not two feet in front of her on what was quite possibly the eve of a great disaster, like some harbinger of the nightmare to come.

Like a messenger of Death himself.

The woman didn't answer the question. Instead, she pushed Lana back inside and followed her in before shutting and locking the door. Lana tried to resist, but she was simply too weak to put up much of a fight. Clearly the doctor was not as sick as Kelly had informed her she was. Either that, or her recovery had been nothing less than miraculous.

“I can't go home,” the doctor said, her voice strained. “Arc's looking for me.”

“Why? Are you responsible for the outbreak?”

“No! How could you say that?”

But she didn't wait for an answer. Stepping deeper into the house, she scanned the living room with her eyes before moving to the kitchen. “I need to get a hold of Jessica.” She coughed into her fist, and something rattled alarmingly in her chest. “It's important.”

“Sh-she's not here,” Lana stammered. She leaned against the wall, feeling suddenly ill again. Her legs trembled. She should've eaten that oatmeal. She should not have answered the door.

“Yes, I know she isn't here, Lana. I know where she is. I'm looking for a gaming console the boys were using to speak with her. I need it. I need to talk to her.”

“Is this about the file on her Link? Is this about her grandfather, because—”

“I need more blood. I only have enough to cure one person.”

“Kyle Corben.”

The doctor stared at Lana for several seconds before shaking her head. “No, my daughter.”

 

“Fucking stinks like boiled pork in here,” Officer Albert Castle remarked.

His partner, Hank Gilfoy, stepped gingerly over the seared metal springs of a burnt mattress and shrugged. By its placement, he guessed that the pad had been thrown against the door to block yesterday's fire from getting inside the room, but the flames had found their way in anyway, and judging by the scorch marks it had been through the vents.

Everything inside had been consumed.

“Did the hazmat team give us an official clear yet?” he asked.

“Screw them. They couldn't tell their asses from their noses.”

Gilfoy shook his head, then wandered into the en suite bathroom where he found the victim huddled in a scorched heap inside the tub, their legs and arms folded together in a tangled knot.

The tub, being plastic, had melted into a hard black pancake on the floor. The toilet was fully intact, if not permanently stained brown. All of the water had boiled away in the inferno.

Officer Albert Castle mopped his brow with a cloth he'd brought from the car. In the twenty minutes they'd been investigating the hospital as a crime scene, the cloth had picked up some soot. Now it left a large black smudge on his forehead. In the past, Hank would've been inclined to mention it, but he was still furious with the man for what he'd done to the head of NCD. If Hank hadn't intervened when he had, threatening to get Internal Affairs involved, Eric Daniels would now be dead. Instead, he was lying in the infirmary with broken ribs and who knows what other injuries.

He had tried to get over there to check on the kid, but since the outbreak, he'd been going almost nonstop. There was no control anymore, no follow up. He wasn't even sure what he was doing here in the aftermath of the outbreak.

The timing of the event could not have been any worse. With Daniels incapacitated and unable to lead his NCD team, the department was chasing its own tail trying to contain the Undead. The regular staff were poorly equipped to handle anything of this magnitude.