S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (97 page)

You're on time out, young lady!

The voice inside her head was half-mad.

And you'll stay in your room until you learn not to spread terrible diseases!

Where the parents had gotten to was a mystery which would go unsolved.

Which one had it been? The mother, Lyssa guessed. Not the father. The father wouldn't have thought to keep her safe.

The maternal instinct was stronger than the paternal instinct. That's why Lyssa hadn't been able to kill before.

In the girl's house, standing before her bedroom door, Lyssa had stood silently for several minutes, listening, tapping on it with her fingertips. Finally, a rustle of sound came through. Then a small moan, high-pitched, almost ursine. Carefully, slowly, Lyssa opened the door.

The girl had been standing in the center of the room, facing the other direction. Lyssa could clearly see her reflection in the mirror. Pale skin, black eyes and lips. The dried blood around her mouth. For a moment she had doubts. An image of the dead girl biting Cassie flashed through her mind, the rabid teeth ripping into the flesh, tearing it away. That was not what she wanted. Not mutilation. Only salvation. The rabies threatened to take Cassie away from her forever, but here was a promise which would prevent that from happening.

If you had a syringe
, her mind considered, then quickly dismissed the idea. Drew had indicated that the virus lived in the mouth. It wasn't found in high concentrations in the blood. An infection by hypodermic needle might take too long to work. It had to be a bite.

Was there any of her daughter left inside that diseased body? Lyssa wanted to believe that there was. She
had
to believe, otherwise this was all a moot exercise.

She swung the door wide and stepped in. “Hello, sweetie.”

The girl's . . .
vitality
 . . . had come as a complete surprise. Lyssa hadn't expected such speed or strength contained within such a small body, dead already for a couple days. All sinew and bone and snapping teeth and raking fingers. So
strong
for her age and size, so vocal. From their days at the park, Lyssa remembered the child had been one of the shier ones.

She wasn't shy anymore.

She charged at Lyssa, but a quick sidestep was all it took. Lyssa grabbed a tiny arm and wrenched it behind the girl's back, spinning her to the floor. Resting a knee on the girl's spine, she grabbed the second arm and brought the two wrists together. From her back pocket, she brought out a zip-tie and secured them.

The girl bucked and hissed beneath her, biting the carpet, gnawing it. The teeth brought death, but it was the hands which needed to be neutralized first.

Lyssa pulled her up, careful to keep the girl's face away from her. She tried to be gentle, but there was nothing gentle left within that child's body. Maybe deep inside the mind there was tenderness, but if so, it was no longer in control. Only the virus was in control.

She wondered again where the parents had gone. She felt like she was kidnapping their child.

You have some splainin' to do, Lucy
, her mind said, reciting some old movie line. She couldn't remember who or what show it was attributed to. Something from the last century.

Lucy. It was a nice name. Lucy Wendle.

She and Cassie had never been friends. But that was about to change.

“I have someone for you to meet, Lucy,” Lyssa said, and she began to lead her out of the house.

 

The infected were everywhere, in the hallways, inside rooms, strapped to gurneys. Drew opened doors and peered inside, marveling at how quickly the disease had spread, how quickly it had taken over the living and rendered them into the sad creatures which now surrounded him. It was everything he'd ever feared.

He picked his way carefully through the broken glass, kicking aside tumbled furniture and stepping over corpses which had been too badly mangled to return. Some of the partial bodies continued to twitch and writhe, as if charged by random surges of electricity. As if the virus was some kind of program attempting to reboot a system that had experienced too fatal a crash.

He shook his head at himself, bemused by the thought, at the realization of the effect his own son had had on him. The boy was obsessed with computers and programming. By the age of six, he'd already built his own system. It was his mother's doing. She was the technophile, the engineer.

“Hello? Anyone here? Anyone alive?”

The infected watched him as he passed, gesturing with their clumsy hands and even taking a step or two in his direction before losing interest. He knew he was safe from them. They wanted uninfected flesh, healthy meat. Not his own diseased body. He was not a good host for the virus, and that made him invisible to their blood lust. His own sickness was his armor.

As he made his way to the Emergency Room, he pondered his decision to send Ramon and Marion here, putting them at risk when he would have managed safely enough on his own. But he'd worried about Lyssa, worried about her mental state, and had been loath to leave her alone with the ill child. He'd watched her suffer such horrors in the past two months, had seen her fall apart. He worried what she might do — to herself, to the girl — and as long as there was a chance to save the little one, he hadn't felt comfortable leaving Lyssa alone with her.

But any chance at Cassie's recovery had quickly faded away.

He opened another door and looked inside, into the darkness. He could smell the infection and knew it had already gotten whatever hid in the gloom. There was a soft rustle of movement, a moan. A face rose from beyond the hospital bed and peered at him for several seconds, hissing, before bending back down. In a moment, it resumed its feeding.

He realized he was looking for survivors, those trapped here by the dead, the ones not yet infected. It didn't seem likely he'd find any.

And what if you find someone infected but not yet dead?

Yes, what then? There were needles and syringes here.

The same old fear began to well up inside of him. Could he do it?

Just get the stuff and go.

He entered the Emergency Room waiting area. Mounted beneath the ceiling in the corner was a small television monitor. The screen was blank except for the usual oval iTech icon floating from edge to edge. By and large, the infected were ignoring it. But one, a teenage boy with fractured arm, a spear of bone protruding through the skin just north of his elbow, seemed entranced by the colorful bouncing shape.

Drew went over and searched for the channel button, but was unable to find it.

“Sorry, buddy. Looks like you're out of luck.”

The zombie curled his lips at him and stepped forward. Drew matched the movement, keeping at a constant distance and cringing despite his knowledge that he was safe. The boy's dead gaze swept past his face and settled onto the aquarium along the far wall. He took another stumbling step, the broken, bloody arm brushing against Drew's, causing an involuntary shiver to pass up his spine.

Drew shook his head and turned back the way he had come. It was time to leave. The hospital was no longer a place of healing.

He found a med cart and used the tire iron to pry it open, spilling plastic bottles out of the drawers. Checking the labels, he stuffed the ones he thought he might be able to use into a clean pillowcase. He finished with a few boxes of needles and syringes, and then he left.

 

Ramon became aware of the movement, of the sensation that he was being grabbed and pulled and lifted, before it came back to him where he was. He heard the grunts before he remembered about the infected. But by then it was too late. The pain was too enormous inside of him. His body was so full of agony that his mind simply shut down. He slipped back into the blissful place where pain could not reach him.

* * *

The sun was shining, and it was bright. Too bright. Even with his eyes closed Ramon still had to look away. Blood red through his eye lids, the heat pinching and burning his skin.

He reached up to his neck and pulled the stiff constricting collar away, allowing a tiny draft of cooler air in to dry the sweat.

He looked down upon the people seated before him, all glassy-eyed and smiling expectantly. He tried to smile back, but he was worried — couldn't help but be worried — as he waited in the sunlight, standing and sweating and choking for air.

The music started. Everyone sighed and turned as one. With each note of their wedding song, he worried, fretting that Lyssa would not come. With each strum of the guitar, his heart threatened to stop.

But there she was, radiant in her dress, the bump of their child evident beneath it, the miracle of their love and devotion for each other, and he smiled. God, how he loved her. Had loved her since the day they first met. He wished he could see her face now, hidden beneath her veil. The torture of waiting was so delicious, so wonderful, that he thought he'd never stop smiling, not even if it broke his face into halves.

On her arm, her father.

Strange. Hadn't he died the year before?

Ramon shook his head. Of course not. How could he be here, at their wedding, if he'd died?

And there was Lyssa's mother, seated among the guests, not a sign of the terrible automobile accident on her face.

The closed casket funeral— he must have dreamed it. The coroner's . . . .

The two generations passed beneath the archway and came into full view of the seated attendees, and there was something wrong with his father-in-law's face, something horribly, terribly wrong. It was melting away, the flesh slipping off, leaving nothing but mottled bone, riddled with twisted tracks, like the crooked furrows termites chew through wood. Lyssa turned toward him and leaned over and kissed his rotting cheek through the veil. And when she turned back, Ramon saw the smudge of rotting flesh and gore which had adhered to it near her mouth.

No
, he thought, his stomach twisting.
No, this isn't right!

The congregation watched, their necks swiveling as the procession passed. And their own skin rotted away, and their hair fell to the ground in clumps. The lipless mouths grinned and their teeth clacked, and their shredded hands clapped, flinging bits of skin and muscle at each other, such was their enthusiasm on this day of joy.

And then Lyssa was with him, her hand on his elbow, and they were facing the priest.

Ramon shook his head and tried to speak, but nothing came out. Nothing but a low moan of air.

“Do you, Lyssa Anne White,” the priest asked, “take Ramon Michael Stemple to be your husband? To have and to hold, through sickness and in health, not even in death will you part?”

No! Oh god, no. Not this way. No, please.

The priest smiled. Or seemed to smile. It was impossible to tell without skin. He waited for Lyssa to answer.

Yesssssssss
 
.
 
.
 
.
she hissed.
Oh, yessssss.

“Then by the power vested in me by the State of New York—”

He watched as Lyssa reached up, mesmerized by his fear and longing. She began to raise her veil, and what it revealed exhilarated him. He felt his soul begin to swell. But then he began to fall.
Hurry!
he pleaded.
Hurry!

“
Doooo yoooou?
” she asked him.

He opened his mouth and said—

* * *

Marion stumbled and fell to his knees, rudely dropping Ramon to the grass on the front lawn. He couldn't go on. He'd used every ounce of energy he had fighting off the infected back there at the accident site, then carrying Ramon the quarter mile here. One lung most likely collapsed. More than a pint of blood drained from him. He tried, but he had no more to give.

He collapsed to the ground, an arrow of pain piercing his side, and felt his consciousness slipping away.

Yes
, he thought, welcoming it.

No! Still not safe!

He rose onto an elbow and rolled closer to Ramon and gave him a weak nudge. Ramon groaned. Another nudge, then a pinch of the skin on his neck. It was feeble but enough to rouse him. Ramon opened his eyes but didn't move. He stared up at the sky. A single tear rolled down his cheek.

“You have to get inside,” Marion whispered. “Hurry.”

“Yes,” Ramon whispered. He took in a deep breath and said, “I do.”

 

The boy had wanted to watch, but even in her grief-stricken fog, Lyssa knew how wrong it would be to let him. This was worse than pornographic. What she was about to do wasn't meant for anyone to see. No one could possibly understand how private and personal this was.

“Stay in the kitchen,” she instructed. “Watch for the others. Don't come out until I say you can.”

Then she picked the still-writhing Cassie up off the floor and carried her out into the back yard where Lucy already waited, tethered to the tree.

She set her daughter down on the grass and loosened the bindings around her legs. Cassie seemed to understand what was about to happen. She immediately calmed. But Lyssa left the tape on her mouth. She didn't want to hear her little girl cry out when it happened.

Cassie grunted once through her nose, then closed her eyes. Lyssa brushed her fingers over her cheeks, pulling away the loose hairs, wiping away the tears. She tried to hum something, but her throat was too dry, too swollen with her grief, and she couldn't think of anything anyway. Her head was filled too full of the tuneless echoes of happier times— of first words and joyful laughter. She heard the sound of the waves on the south shore and the crackle of all the campfires they had ever enjoyed together. But most of all, she heard Cassie's gentle, caring voice:
Mama, I can't wait to bring my little brother home.

The tears flowed heavily now, down Lyssa's cheeks, etching through the dirt of her recent ordeals, washing it away and exposing the pink, raw skin underneath. The tears dripped to the grass below and soaked into the dirt. “Oh, my beautiful girl,” she whispered. “My beautiful, sweet daughter. I'm so sorry about what happened. I wish I'd known.”