S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (137 page)

He sucked in a deep breath of fresh air, then hopped to the ground.

“Well, we're in,” he said, plastering a grin on his face, though he knew from the look on Kelly's that he wasn't fooling anyone. “That wasn't so bad.”

Kelly chuckled.

“What are we standing around for? Let's get this party started.”

“Pace yourself,” Doctor White said. “We've still got a ways to walk. Eight or nine miles. We should be able to reach the house before dark, assuming we don't run into any trouble.”

She led the way up the creek, which was densely overgrown and tangled with downed branches. The walls of the small canyon they'd emerged into were steep. A tapestry of raspberry bushes covered the rocks, preventing them from climbing out.

“Stay together,” she said, and quickly slipped through the brush along the creek bed.

“No rest for the wicked,” Reggie murmured. And then, when White turned her stony eyes on him, he added, “Because, you know, the evil here doesn't rest . . . .” His voice trailed off as the stare turned into a scowl.

Kelly brushed past him. “He didn't mean anything by that, Doctor White. Let's just go. Like you said, we've got a long way to go, and we're all tired.”

After ten minutes of fighting dense brush and clouds of mosquitoes, they came to the rusted, burned out shell of an abandoned car. It was a strange thing to see, down here in what was practically a jungle with no roads around.

“Must've been some kind of flood,” Reggie wondered aloud. “Otherwise, how'd it get washed down here?”

The others had already climbed over it and pushed on. Reggie hoisted himself onto the crushed frame and stood up. Beyond lay a graveyard of vehicles, looking as if they'd been thrown there by some giant. The glass was broken out of them all, and weeds and vines grew through and over their hulking bones.

Doctor White stopped in front of a large semi truck and stared at the mummified, headless corpse hanging out through the busted windshield.

“She looks like she's seen a ghost,” he whispered to Kelly.

Once more, she turned to Reggie, though this time her face was as white and blank as a sheet. Shivering, Reggie looked away.

“There's a bridge,” she finally said, her voice barely perceptible above the low moan of the wind through the trees. She pointed straight up through the thick canopy to where the bridge's trusses peeked through. “Once we get out of this creek bed, it'll be easier going.”

Kelly slapped at a mosquito, making the others jump. Then he stepped to one side and began to tug at the vines.

Beside his head, a mossy branch peeled itself away from a thick, gnarled tree trunk and began to swipe at his face. Shouting out in alarm, Kelly fell backward to the ground.

The Undead tried to untangle itself from the vines, but it couldn't.

“Jesus Christ!” Reggie hissed. “They're everywhere!”

The woods were alive. Eyes appeared out of the dirt and in the folds of trees. Mouths opened in lichen-crusted mounds. The ground and the canyon sides began to move as moldering torsos, beneath a decade of growth, began to extract themselves.

One Infected managed to peel itself completely away from the cliff wall, tearing the tendrils of moss which had held it to the rock. Tiny toadstools covered the top of its head and shoulders.

Doctor White grabbed a vine and began to pull herself up. “I suggest we hurry.”

 

Cutting through the skin had been the easy part— relative to everything else, of course. Eric had expected the pain, had become quite used to it, in fact. He just hadn't expected it to be so bad. And the hard part was still yet to come.

Next came the tendons, and there were so many of them and they were so tough to cut through with the makeshift knife, and there was so much god damn blood everywhere — his blood — even with the tourniquet applied and twisted as tight as he could make it using his one free hand and his teeth, that he'd very nearly passed out before finishing the job. He cried silently as he cut through the last tendon, but he couldn't hold back the sob when his hand fell to the floor.

Darkness swept over Eric then, threatening to consume him. He gulped air, panting like an overheated dog as he struggled to keep from slipping into that blissful sleep. He couldn't afford to faint, not because he feared bleeding to death, but because there were worse things than never waking up again.

He cast a quick glance at Marco's body. It hadn't moved during the entire amputation. Not even a twitch. He kept expecting it to at any moment, and that thought had kept him moving. He had no idea how much time had elapsed.

Eric opened his cramped fingers, intending to drop the shiv, but it remained in his hand, glued to him with his own blood. He had to use his thigh to dislodge it.

Afterward, he gingerly withdrew the stump from the metal shackle, which clanged against the frame of the bunk.

Once more, blackness threatened to take him. It swirled about his head, crowded his eyes. He dry-retched until the nausea passed, then forced himself off the floor and onto the bed with his mangled arm resting on his chest. He realized he was still weeping, mourning the loss of his hand.

Finish it.

The ceiling above him was blurry through his tears, tinged a strange shade of green, which he knew was an illusion. It should be red from the emergency lights. The green meant that his mind wasn't processing the sensory data properly. He'd lost too much blood, wasn't getting enough oxygen. His body was going into shock.

Finish him, Eric. Before he wakes.

With a grunt, he dropped his foot back to the floor and this time the scream that had been cycling up and down in his throat burst through. Outside the cell, something close by gurgled in response, a moan that spoke of death and longing. He wondered how many others there were, still trapped in their cells, cowering in back corners away from the pawing hands. He was surprised there were none at his cell door now, wanting in, crooning in the way that only the dead know how.

He laughed.
Crooning.
Maybe they'd start singing
One Enchanted Evening
or something.

I left my hand in San Francisco.

He was starting to lose it.

GET THE HELL UP, ERIC!

He pushed himself to a sitting position and the world tilted. When it stopped spinning, he stood, which set the world gyrating again. Every step was a herculean effort, a mile of slogging through the thickest, most intractable mud.

He couldn't breathe.

The walls crowded in.

The floor tilted, then rose up as he stumbled.

Marco lifted his head and smiled at him.

Eric landed hard over Stu's headless corpse, hard on the stump of his wrist. He screamed out and the world righted itself, flashed white and hot and cold and dark all at the same time. He knew he had to get moving, but the pain was so big, so very big.

At last he looked up.

Marco was still lying on the floor, not sitting up. Not standing. He hadn't woken yet.

But a foot twitched.

Then a finger.

Eric stared at the movements, mesmerized.

Move!

It's too hard. I can't.

Gimme a hand.

Oh, that's funny.

Kill him!

He's already dead.

Shoot him!

I don't have a gun.

Here it is, in your hands. Now do it. Be a man.

“I can't.”

Don't you give up on me, son! Kill him. Pull the trigger!

Marco moaned. Eric moaned.

Marco sat up and looked over.

Marco raised his one good arm.

Look, we're twins!

Eric lurched off Stu's corpse. He crawled on his elbows, fingers scrambling to find the shiv. He saw it under the bed under the bed under—

can't see

—the bed under the bed—

where is it?

He wrapped his fingers around it and a shudder passed through him. It was too soon. The blade was too familiar in his hand, too comfortable. It wanted to cut. What should he cut this time? A foot?

Marco moaned again, and this time his mouth snapped shut with such force that Eric heard teeth shattering.
Snap!
it shut again.
Snap! SNAP!

He tried to push his way out from beneath the bed, but pain erupted like lava up his arm and he cried out. Marco began to stand. Eric could see him beneath the bed frame. Marco stood and everything north of his knees disappeared from view. He moaned again.

Under the bed! Get under the bed!

But Eric couldn't move.

Marco stepped, stopped. His feet jerked, and then his head dropped to the floor and rolled out of view. Eric frowned, confused.

What remained of Marco crashed to the floor a moment later. Next to his buddy Stu.

Two headless pals.

Two headless drug pushers.

And the darkness . . . .

The darkness pushed harder at Eric now, smothering him.

He tried to ward it away.

The cell door swung open and another set of feet came into view. They stepped over the corpses and stopped above Eric. He felt someone grabbing his ankles and drag him out from beneath the bed.

“ ‘Bout time,” he said, when he saw who it was.

* * *

For Eric, their escape from the prison was shrouded in smoke and nightmares, images of half-eaten bodies strewn about them and those less consumed walking everywhere. Eric remembered Officer Gilfoy pushing a pistol into his hand and saying, “Shoot at anything that gets within ten feet of you.” But he couldn't remember much else.

The man practically had to carry him out of the prison, out into a world that had completely changed in just the few days he'd been locked away from it.

Now, the dead openly roamed the streets. Buildings burned. The roads were all but impassable. There were no rules, no laws in this new place, no one to even try to uphold the old ones. There was only fear and death and chaos.

“Where is Arc?” he whispered, as they drove away in the car. He didn't ask where they were going. He didn't care. All he wanted to do was get away. “Why aren't they stopping this?”

“Arc's gone,” Gilfoy replied. “Abandoned us all for parts unknown. Traitors, not that anyone's left to bring them to answer for their crimes. The Stream is down. Even the black streams aren't transmitting. The network has completely collapsed, and the outbreak is everywhere. All of New Merica is under siege, and we can't stop it. Nobody can.”

“Why did you come get me?”

“I needed to know.”

“What?”

“Before he died, my father made me promise him something. It had to do with your father's death.”

Eric looked over. The jostling of the car was making him nauseous, even with the painkillers Gilfoy had given him. “My father?”

“My dad was the reporting officer on his death and lead investigator on the case, at least until he was removed and the case was closed. It was officially classified as a suicide, but he was never satisfied with that explanation.”

“What was the promise?”

“To find the truth.”

“Nobody knows the truth.”

Gilfoy looked over. “Someone does. I think it's you.”

Eric closed his eyes. He sucked in a deep breath and held it and, for just a moment, he heard the voice again, telling him to shoot:
Pull the trigger, boy.

Halliwell's face floated up out of the well of his mind. The man had been there that night, fifteen years ago. Eric was sure of that now.

All these years he had dismissed the rumors that the man had come in and eaten his father's brain. After all, how could it be possible for someone like that to make it halfway across the country in such a short amount of time without leaving a trail?

And yet he must have. He'd been in that room, his father's office, the night his father died. Halliwell had been there and they'd spoken. He'd tried to get him to shut the program down. There had been shouting.

Do it now. Kill him. Don't be a coward like your father. Kill him!

Eric had been watching from the safety of the hallway, hidden behind a large plant, the shadowy figures of his father and the man he and his grandfather had spoken so vehemently about that very same afternoon.

Something had drawn him out of his hiding place. He didn't like to hear his father angry.

He remembered standing there at the door and feeling a presence behind him. And there was his grandfather, whispering in his ear that it was all going to be all right. “Don't be afraid. We'll take care of this, won't we? You're going to be a man.”

And they'd quietly opened the door so that the two men didn't notice, and the pistol was in his hand.
Shoot, boy. Shoot him.

So he had. He'd raised his hand and aimed. But the bullet—

The bullet hadn't gone where he'd told it to go. It had hit his father as he stood at the desk, exploding his brain against the back wall. And his grandfather had shouted in—

ecstasy

—dismay.

“Again, boy! Quickly!”

But Halliwell was already gone. Like a ghost, he'd fled out through the—

locked

—open French doors.

I killed my father. I killed him.

“I did it,” he whispered. He looked over at Gilfoy.

That's why he'd always hated guns, why he'd hated it when Grandpa took Jessie to the range to teach her how to shoot. Because he knew what they could do, and he never wanted to kill anyone ever again.

He'd known, somewhere deep inside his mind where the conscious part of him dared never go, he'd known that Halliwell had always been innocent. It was he, Eric, who was guilty of murdering his own father.

“It was an accident. I didn't mean to do it.”

He looked over at Gilfoy, but the man was shaking his head, frowning. He never took his eyes off the road— or what passed as the road now.

“I did it,” he repeated.

Finally, the man who was no older than Eric looked over. But there was no blame in his eyes, only exoneration.