S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (41 page)

Rich assholes.

“Break that rule and you will be immediately disqualified. No refunds. I don't give a shit how much money you paid for a ticket on this joyride or who you had to blow.”

“Uh, that'd be Grant,” came a low female voice.

The laughter fluttered away into silence.

Jessie realized she hadn't heard a word from the big man the entire trip over.

“Nice one, Jo,” she heard him say. His voice rumbled like an engine. “Too bad Live on Live isn't allowed.”

“Yet,” someone said.

“LPs are in the wall!” came a shout from somewhere outside the bus, and once again Jessie was reminded of how the wall seemed to suck everything from the air— light and sound and energy. Sucked it in and didn't let it back out again.

Then, from above her: “You guys ready?”

“Hell yeah!”

“Then, on your feet! Time to collect your gear!”

There was a loud clatter of stomping feet and the compartment hatches hissed open, almost taking Jessie by surprise. She rolled out and hit the dirt on all fours, then flattened and rolled under the bus, disappearing underneath it just as the driver stepped out on the same side. He spun right and walked around the front. A few seconds later, he returned and climbed back into the cab.

On the other side of the bus, not two feet from her face, a half dozen identical pairs of black boots lined up for their gear. If anyone happened to crouch down, they would've seen her. Anyone standing further out might have, if not for the fact that the LPs' legs blocked the view. There was a subdued hush from the Players.

“Inner portal opened. Omegas are through and scattering. No stragglers.”

“Okay, LPs, pair up as we discussed. Emerson and Vail first. Smith and— where the hell's Jayco? Jayco!”

“Over here, taking a piss.”

“Jaysus Christ, Henry. Again?” came a second female voice, presumably Smith, Jayco's buddy. “Fucking men. You couldn't wait another ten minutes and do that inside? There's a hundred thousand empty toilets in Gameland and you have to piss on the god damn bus tire? What the hell's wrong with you?”

“Marking his territory,” someone offered.

Laughter.

“Piss won't kill no zoms!”

“Jayco's might! If it don't, his B-O will.”

“Alright, ladies. Knock it off. Line up. You too, Jayco! We don't have all night.”

“Just getting some water out of my pack.”

“Later,” Grant growled. “Let's get inside first.”

“Okay, Pearson, you and Haycock last.”

Jessie crawled left and stood up in a single fluid movement. The only person remaining on the bus was the driver.

Holding the pistol low in front of her with both hands, Jessie slipped over to the door and raised the weapon to his face. He looked over in surprise.

“Who the—”

“Shut up,” she told him, her voice low and steady. “Say anything and there won't be enough left of you to conscript. You understand?”

His eyes widened in fright. Jessie thought he was going to start shouting, but he didn't. He nodded.

“Now, hand me your EM pistol. Slowly.”

“But—”

“What did I just tell you? Shut your mouth. I know you've got one. Hand it over.”

He started to turn away.

“Uh uh! Keep your eyes right here on the business end of this gun. Left hand on your knee. Now, slowly, swing your right hand over and fetch it for me.”

She watched him reach over and dig in the consol before locating the pistol.

“Fingertips. I've got a touchy trigger on this thing.”

From the other side of the bus, she could hear someone shout: “Are we clear inside?”

“Clear!” came the response.

“Open the outer door. Line up just outside, guys. Do not enter! And no shoving!”

The driver's arm swung over to her, fingers dangling the pistol by the barrel. Jessie pressed her own gun into his side as she reached over and snatched his from him. Without dropping her gaze, she stuck the weapon into her left cargo pocket. “Get down. Slowly.”

She moved back to allow him room. As soon as his feet hit dirt, she grabbed a handful of his collar and jerked him around to face the other way. She shoved the pistol into the back of his head, pointing right at the spot where his implant should be, and told him to walk.

“Nobody move!” she shouted, once they had cleared the front of the bus. Her voice sounded dull and weak in her ears. She said it again, louder this time.

Everyone turned. She could see that the portal was open and they were about ready to enter. The interior of the wall was pitch black; the inner door was still shut.

“Step away from the opening! Do it now or this man dies.”

Grant stepped forward, holding his hands up. The others obeyed. “What are you doing, Jessie?”

“
I said don't move!”

He hesitated, then took another step toward her. “You won't kill him. You don't have it in you. I saw it when we talked. You couldn't kill a live person, not even with a Player in
The Game
.”

Jessie shoved the driver toward the group and leveled the pistol at Grant's head. “You want to be the exception that disproves the rule?”

Footsteps hurried toward her from her right, one of the Arc guards. Jessie swung her left hand up to steady the right, then pivoted.

She fired once, aiming the bullet into the dirt at his side. He skidded to a stop and held his hands out.

“Move toward—” she began, but she never got to finish the thought.

Out of the darkness, what felt like a tank slammed into her, throwing her to the ground. The air exploded with another muffled crack of the pistol. The round caught the guard low and he buckled and fell, staining the dirt and gravel with his blood as he went. His moans of pain were joined by a startled cry from the group.

The pistol flew out of Jessie's hand and disappeared beneath the bus. Grant jumped to his feet, pulling her up by her backpack. Without thinking, she accelerated into the movement, building momentum, and launched herself at the man. The motion threw him off balance, and he began to pinwheel his other arm to stay on his feet. Unsnapping the straps, Jessie spun out of the backpack and grabbed a hold of it herself and jerked him back. She brought a knee up as he came and smashed it into his wrist. He yelped in pain and let go.

“What are you doing?” he panted, as he circled her. He shook out the arm she'd kneed, and managed to look both surprised and disappointed. “You just killed an innocent man.”

“If he dies, it's on you,” Jessie snarled. “
Stay back!
”

“She's got my EM pistol!” the driver shouted.

But Jessie had already slipped her hand into the cargo pocket. She pulled it out and aimed it toward the group's center of mass and pulled the trigger. There was no recoil, just a
pop
and a slight buzzing in her head. The air in front of her seemed to waver for a moment. The bodies fell as a unit, hitting the ground where they stood.

All but Grant. He had dove out of the path of the EM blast and was now scrambling beneath the bus.

Without waiting to see if he'd find her grandfather's pistol, Jessie sprinted over to the portal, snatching one of the Live Players' packs off the ground as she went to replace her own, and entered the darkness within. She didn't know if she'd get through, if her side would close or the other would open automatically as they had done before. The last time she'd been through one, Micah had activated it. She still didn't know exactly how they worked.

Footsteps crunched on the gravel outside.

“Close, damn it!” she screamed at the blank walls. She backed herself into the furthest corner. But nothing happened.

Jessie raised the EM pistol and trained it at the opening. Grant stepped into it, a hulking silhouette against the bus's headlights. “Don't come any closer,” she warned him. “Unless you want a headache for a souvenir.”

Grant stopped, and Jessie wondered if he could see her inside the wall.

“You and I both know that EM pistol has one shot before it needs to recharge.”

“Or maybe I had more than one EM pistol.”

“You won't knock me out. You need me to stop the bleeding on the guard out here. Unless you want him to die.”

Jessie didn't answer.

“I didn't think so.”

“How is he?”

“He'll live. The bullet entered his leg.”

“Let me go,” she said. “Please.”

He sighed and shook his head. His arm swung forward and he tossed something in, eliciting a flinch from her. The small but heavy object hit the dirt near her feet. “You're not going to last very long with just a handful of bullets,” he said. Reaching over to the side, he plucked her pack up off the ground and added it to her grandfather's pistol. “Or a couple of bamboo sticks.”

“I've done more with less.”

“I don't know why you're doing this,” he said, and she thought he sounded sad. “Or what you think you're going to accomplish.”

“That's because you see this as just a game, Grant. It's anything but a game for me.”

He turned his head to the side, and for just a moment she could see a little bit of his face. There was no anger or hatred on it. Not even the smug confidence of the man she'd met the previous afternoon. He looked . . . thoughtful. Maybe even a little bit jealous.

“Why are you letting me go?” she asked.

He didn't answer. Instead, he told her, “I give you three days. And that's being generous.”

He stepped to the side and reached over to something on the wall. There was a click and a low rumble and the opening began to shrink and, for just a moment, Jessie felt as if the ceiling itself was lowering over her, about to crush her, and she yelped before realizing it was a rolling door.

“Three days,” he said, “then I'm coming after you myself.”

‡ ‡ ‡

Jessie still couldn't think of Kwanjangnim Rupert as a mindless zombie. She had trained under the man for years, had learned how to fight and defend herself under his careful and caring tutelage. Had even learned how to redirect her emotions away from the reckless, futile traps she'd always find herself stumbling into. He had spent countless hours teaching her how to channel her energy toward more productive ends.

This had been Rupert's hardest challenge, Jessie knew, teaching her techniques to help her unclog her thoughts during times of extreme duress. Teaching her how to focus on weaving through her obstacles rather than always trying to bash her head against them. She'd never mastered the techniques. In fact, she had given up in frustration so many times that it was a wonder why he never gave up on her.

Now she wondered, and not for the first time since the sun had risen, if maybe she was just being overly sentimental in bringing him along with her. She should've just left him where she found him, standing in the shadows beneath the collapsed sheet metal roof of a long-abandoned carport. It had been more of a hassle than she had expected. Like trying to walk a new puppy that had to stop every few feet to smell something new or to pee or dig.

Not that the Player that was once her hapkido master was doing any of those sorts of things, but it did keep stopping. She'd get him moving again and he'd walk a few hundred feet, then stop, as if he forgot what he was doing. And she'd have to stop herself and turn around and consciously make him start walking. Again. And again.

It took all of her concentration and, in this place when her attention needed to be focused on her surroundings, she couldn't afford to divide it.

The training she'd undergone the previous afternoon had been just as frustrating— for both her and Rodney, her group instructor. And although Rod (“The Bod” as a few of the other female students and one male one had called him, though Jessie didn't think he was all that good-looking) hadn't said it in so many words, she could tell he considered her some kind of gaming moron. Compared with the other Operators, she just couldn't seem to get used to the new interface.

The gear was nothing like anything she'd ever used before. It was more intuitive, rather than conscious, and she was having trouble with the whole idea that she needed to stop trying to direct the Player with her body and just let her mind think of the Player as an extension of it. Plus, the visual overlay from her optic implant was giving her a headache.

“Don't try to focus your eyes on the image,” Rod had told her. “It won't work. The image is transferred directly to the optic nerve by the implant in your left cheek. You have to teach your brain to parse the two inputs individually. Takes practice, but by the end of the week, you'll have it.”

What about by the end of the day?

She was tempted to tap the implant off. But if she was going to get used to it, she needed to give it time.

The afternoon had been focused on physical movements, on getting her mind to package her intentions for the Player's actions.

“Each time you think about walking, or lifting a finger, or putting on your shoes, you don't consciously
think
through the steps, and yet your body performs these tasks flawlessly ninety-nine point nine percent of the time. In fact, it's when you start to think about the mechanics of walking that you stumble.”

“Muscle memory,” Jessie had offered, and rather grumpily, too. She was losing patience with her clumsiness, and the time seemed to be slipping away in massive chunks. The half-baked plan in her head needled at her, seeking attention she couldn't afford to give it.

“The brain still has to send the command, beginning from the movement which initiates the series of actions, and ending with the movement which concludes them. How do you think the brain does all this as efficiently as it does?” He didn't even wait for any of the students to answer. “In pre-coded packets of information, that's how. When you're playing
Zpocalypto
, or playing at some sport—” He interrupted himself to ask Jessie, “Do you have a preferred sport?”