S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (130 page)

None of this was legal, Eric knew. He should never have been held as long as he had without being charged or at least brought in front of his supervisor to answer for whatever his supposed crimes were.

But other than the day she'd stopped the two drug pushers from killing him, he hadn't seen nor heard from Harrick at all.

The request for a holding cell was denied. Instead, he was taken to one of the regular blocks at the county prison, where he was unceremoniously shoved through the door of a double cell after being rushed through the guard's entrance. The gate clanged shut behind him before he even had a chance to turn around.

“Gimme yer hands,” the guard snapped. He looked like hell, like he hadn't slept in days. “Through the bars here so I can unlock you.”

Eric did as he was told. The guard unshackled him. There hadn't been ankle chains this time, probably because Eric looked and walked like he was in a lot of pain, which he was.

He turned and inspected the cell, grateful to find it empty.

“Any idea how long I'll be here?”

“I got you on the books for a noon visit. Someone from yer precinct, union rep I guess.”

“Harrick?”

The guard checked his Link and shook his head. “Gilfoy. Ring a bell?”

Eric nodded. He wasn't sure what it meant. He had no relationship with the man, and Gilfoy had no authority as far as he knew. The officer had never been mean to him, though he'd also never gone out of his way to be nice, either.

The guard exited the block, leaving him alone. Eric went and sat on the bunk. All he'd done while in the infirmary was sleep. Nevertheless, he found he was barely able to keep his eyes open. He yawned widely and lay back. The blanket was scratchy on his bare arms and neck. The pillowcase was stiff.

He closed his eyes and was out within minutes.

* * *

It was the sensation of being watched that woke him, like bugs crawling on his skin. He opened his eyes, expecting to see Officer Gilfoy standing outside his cell. But the view was empty. There was a lot of background noise— guards shouting at recalcitrant prisoners, the squeak of rubber soles on the slick cement. Prisoners from one block being ordered to the yard outside, while another block was being cycled in.

He had a vivid memory of seeing the young cop standing there, not saying anything or moving, just watching him as he slept. But he must have just dreamed it, because why would Gilfoy come and not wake him up?

He tried to raise his hand to his face, but it was cuffed to the bed frame, and it took him a moment to realize what was happening.

“Guard!” he shouted, lurching up and off the cot. “Help!”

But they were on him in a flash. One of them grabbed his free arm and wrenched it behind his back. The other kicked him in the gut, then shoved him to the floor. His bound arm was wrenched behind him at a painful angle.

“Remember us, pinhead?” a husky voice asked, his breath fetid with dental neglect.

“Sorry,” Eric said, grunting in pain. “But I'm bad with names.”

He knew it was the wrong thing to say, even though it was true. And he realized it would be taken as sarcasm, though that's not how he'd meant it. He honestly couldn't for the life of him remember the names of the two men who'd put him in the infirmary in the first place.

He supposed it didn't matter. They were going to kill him. Somebody was trying hard to make sure he didn't survive. Did he really want their names to be the last thing he learned?

“Call me the Equalizer,” the man kneeling on his back said.

“I thought I was going to be the Equalizer,” the other man whined. “That was my idea.”

Eric felt the pressure on his back lessen as the first man shifted his weight and attention. “Shut up, Marco. If I wanna be the Equalizer then that's who I am.”

Marco. Marco and Stu.

“Then I'm going to be the Exterminator,” Marco said.

There was a moment of silence as Stu appeared to weigh this unexpected development.

“Exterminator does sound better,” Eric said. The concrete floor was cool on his cheek. It smelled like vomit and bleach, and yet the coolness calmed him. “Or worse, whatever the case may be.”

“Ha, Stu! Told you. I'm the Exterminator.”

“The both of you just better shut the fuck up. Now gimme that knife.”

“I ain't got it.”

“Fucking check your pocket.”

“It ain't in my pocket, Stu. You check—”

Eric bucked his body off the floor, freeing his trapped arm. Pain exploded in his side, but it was a small price to pay. Stu toppled head over heels past him with a cry of dismay. He landed hard, yet recovered quickly and spun around. Eric was quicker, already on his feet and ready for him. He grabbed the bed frame with his cuffed hand for balance and backed as far away from the two men as he could get.

“Don't just fucking stand there, moron!” Stu shouted. “Get ‘im!”

As Marco turned, Eric saw the makeshift knife in the man's back pocket. He stretched out to grab it, but the cuffs yanked him back, catching Stu's attention. The drug pusher yanked the shiv out of Marco's pocket, then turned back to Eric, grinning toothily. There was a gap where one of his incisors was missing. The gum was purple and raw-looking where it had recently been torn out.

Eric grabbed Marco by the collar and yanked him off balance. He pirouetted around to stay on his feet, then collided with his partner. Marco stiffened and looked up in surprise. He coughed once and collapsed to his knees.

Stu watched in disbelief. “Marco? Hey, man.” He looked down at the bloody shiv in his hand, not understanding. “Marco?”

“He needs a medic,” Eric said. “
Medic! Guard!
”

Something snapped inside Stu. He raised his eyes and Eric could see that they were filled with nothing but pure hatred. His fingers tightened again around the sharpened piece of metal, cutting into his own flesh. Dark red blood glistened across his fingers and dripped to the floor. “I'm going to kill you for that, motherfucker!”

He stepped over his friend's body.

But Marco wasn't dead. He reached out, coughing, sputtering. Blood sprayed from his lips as he grabbed a handful of Stu's pant leg. “Help . . . me.”

Stu ignored him. “I'm going to fuck you up, Copper Man!”

The lights in the cell flickered, then went off, throwing them all into an eerie red twilight. The backup generator kicked in, triggering the emergency strobes and siren. Still, Stu didn't seem to notice.

Eric held up his free hand. “He needs help or he'll die!” he shouted. “We need to call someone!”

The siren warbled uncertainly, then faded away. The harsh rattle of the ventilation system followed suit. The emergency lights remained on.

For a moment, all was eerily silent. Both men turned to look out through the cell door, as if sensing that everything had changed.

Marco sputtered on the floor, coughing up another geyser of blood that spattered on Stu's standard issue prison pants.

From elsewhere in the block, someone shouted in anger to turn the damn lights back on. Another shout came, this time of dismay. After that, the racket crescendoed as the other prisoners began to yell.

Stu turned back and stepped toward Eric again. “No one's coming to help you, shithead.”

Marco was still holding on, his fingers in a tight little claw. He was gawping for air. “
Stooooo . . . .
”

“Get offa me, homes!” Stu growled as he tried to shake him off.

Eric stepped forward. “Wait a minute!”

A scream pierced the growing clamor, shocking the entire prison into near silence for a moment. The scream rose and was joined by another. Then several more. They coalesced into shrieks of pain and terror.

But Stu was too focused to hear any of this. He leaped.

Eric hadn't been expecting it, and yet he stepped back reflexively, barely managing to avoid what would have been a fatal attack. Stu stumbled, allowing Eric to grab his shirt and pull him to the floor. He pinned him with his knee. “Something's happening out there! You need to stop this
now
!”

“It's nothing compared to what's happenin' in here, fucker,” Stu growled.

He wrestled his way free and stood up again. His eyes flashed red. This time, when he attacked, he didn't miss. He pressed Eric up against the bunk and laid the edge of the blade against his nose.

“Now you gonna see what I'm gonna do to you for fucking up my friend Marco.”

Marco gurgled, then let out a scream so shrill that both Stu and Eric were forced to turn.

A guard had a hold of one of Marco's hands through the prison bars. He was dead, dead and resurrected. He was eating it. Marco screamed again.

“Hey, you can't do that, man” Stu cried. “Hey! What are you doing? Stop it!”

Eric laid him out with a single blow aimed to his temple. As he fell the shiv slipped from his fingers and slid across the floor.

Marco's screams grew louder as the Undead guard pulled harder, trying to get to his brain.

Eric got as close as he could to the bars and tried to see out. Marco's body was beyond his reach.

In the gloom, the entire floor below pulsed and throbbed like a living thing as the prisoners who'd been in transit fought one another to escape the horde. They had nowhere to go. The dead were everywhere, biting everyone. He watched the living fall beneath them. He saw them die. The infection itself spread like a tidal wave, and soon it would drown them all.

There was a terrible tearing sound at the base of the prison bars, a popping of joints, and Marco's screams suddenly silenced. His chest still rose and fell; he'd only passed out from the pain and blood loss.

Eric turned away. He knew the man might wake again before he died. He would certainly wake after, and when he did he wouldn't be himself anymore. He'd be a killing machine. And there'd be nowhere for Eric to go to escape its teeth. Or the contagion. He needed to get away.

But first, he had to get himself out of the cuffs.

 

“Over, under, or through?” Jessie asked, looking at Brother Walter expectantly. “I mean, you do know how to get in, don't you?”

He glanced up at the towering, unbroken edifice and placed a palm on the unmarred surface, as if he expected to glean the answer simply by making contact with it.

The energy pumping out of the structure didn't seem to bother him as much as it did her. This made sense, as the implant in her head amplified the effect.

Finally, he sighed and shook his head. “Brother Matthew knew best how to get in and out of the arcade from any point along its length, not me. Father Heale relied on him to keep an eye on things on the island. That was his job.”

“And you? What was yours?”

“Town drunk,” he said with a wry chuckle, before quickly sobering up and adding, “I tended the gardens, gathered food and supplies.” He looked almost sheepish as he said this, as if he believed those things were beneath him.

Jessie pretended not to notice the way his face twisted as he spoke. She decided she preferred the man's stoic side over the emotional one. This one just seemed pathetic. It made her uncomfortable.

“Food's important, too,” she remarked. “Everyone needs to eat.”

“After Laurel died, I drank myself into a stupor,” he went on, as if he hadn't heard her. “Not a day has passed since then that I haven't been drunk. This is— This the longest I've gone without a drink.”

She wanted to tell him it wasn't his fault, but she knew it wasn't entirely true. And he'd know it for the lie it was anyway. Based on what he told her, his refusal to join with Father Heale until it was too late was the reason his wife had died. He was one of the survivors who'd chosen to stay isolated.

“Well, I'm sure you'll figure out a way for us to get through soon enough,” she said, hoping to refocus his thoughts away from his past problems. “Should we go north or south?”

“North,” he replied, sighing deeply.

She was partially relieved to know the Stream was back up. An operating network meant that things were hopefully getting back to normal at home. But there were disadvantages as well. With the Stream functioning, Arc and their proxies could track her Link and implant. And with it up, nothing would hold their Live Players back from killing her once they were all back inside.

“Jessie?”

She turned, blinking at Brother Walter, suddenly aware that he'd called her name several times. It was this damn wall. The itching in her head and the buzzing in her ears was making it hard to concentrate.

“Let's keep walking.”

They soon entered an old manufacturing district. Many of the buildings had been torn down to make way for the wall. Chain link fences were sliced through and peeled back like skin, then left to dangle in the dirt. He pointed and said, “There's our way in.”

A few hundred feet ahead, the wall seemed to split an industrial warehouse right in half. Most of the building's upper story windows were broken, leaving only the rusted steel framework and sheet metal siding. The sun glinted off the few panes of glass that remained intact, casting golden patches of light onto the cracked and weed-pocked cement.

Jessie shook her head uncertainly. The three-story building nearly abutted the wall, but there was still a gap of several feet, and it was too short by at least fifteen or twenty more. They couldn't even try jumping.

“If we can get onto the roof with a ladder,” he said, turning to face her, “We can make our way over.” But when he saw the look on her face, he frowned. “You did say over was one of the options.”

Jessie didn't like the idea. The building didn't look very stable. And if they were able to find a ladder long enough, would the roof even hold them? And who knew what they'd find on the other side. How would they get down? “I was hoping for through,” she muttered, but she followed him toward the structure.