S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus (146 page)

Tilting. The rifle slung over my shoulder catching, tilting me. The strap, drawn tight across my chest, forcing the air from my lungs. Try to grab the gun. Can't…get it…turned around. Jam the butt against the zombie's side as hard as I can. Doesn't even flinch.

Distantly, I hear the other struggle. Fading, like the world receding. Reggie cries out. Curses. Screams in fury. Hand on my neck is a metal band, bone and knotted sinew and clotted blood turned to stone. Can't…breathe. Can't…

Exhaustion.

Relax…

Warmth flooding through me.

Silence and darkness.

CRACK!

Flash white explosion roar pain head bursting white light blind roar flaring fading falling away…

Darkness and silence again. Loneliness.

The world rushes away.

Goodbye. Goodbye. Sleep now.

 

There is no sensation of crossing over
, of having left one place and entered another. No moment when life leaves you and death takes your hand and welcomes you like a friend into its country. No moment of clarity, or understanding. No wanting. There is no sense at all. Only a vanishing sense of what came
Before
. And a growing appreciation of what there is
Now
.

When I open my eyes, I'm lying on my back in the dirt. My head is twisted to the side at a strange angle. I see something next to me, something moving. I struggle to name it, but I cannot. I want to reach out to it.

No, that's not true. It's not an urge at all. It's instinct.

Something inside of me whispers a sound, a word that signifies a name, but though I recognize what the word
is
, it holds no meaning for me. All is silence outside of me, only the wind inside of my head, deafening loud yet at the same time not there.

I watch the thing bend down. I watch it thrust something shiny—

knife

—
into the earth from which I came. I watch it wipe something thick and black off of the—

knife

—
thing before inserting it into its belt.

Belt. It's a belt.

“
Reggie?”

I hear the word slip from my dead lips, a foreign-sounding word, meaningless. A moan. Except it's not meaningless anymore. I feel its meaning slip into its proper place. A place where it belongs.

The thing—Reggie—looks up and comes over to me holding the knife between us and it speaks.

But I don't understand.

It grabs me under the arms and drags me over to the—

tree

—
tree, grunting the whole time, and leans me up against it.

The tree. Something about the tree.

“
Jos ros tejoi…amo men,” he says, and he raises his hand (
his hand; I remember it's called a hand
) in front of me and asks, “Hommaneefeengurs?”

Three.

The roaring noise inside of me is diminishing. “Three,” I manage to say. The number spills from my lips like my mouth is a wound and words are blood.

He smiles. “He told me you'd come back quickly. I guess he was right.”

I blink stupidly for a moment.
Come back? Have I come back? Have I died and come back?

“
Good thing, too,” he goes on, “because we don't have much time. They others are coming back.”

“
What happened?”

Lips no longer numb, just a little tingly.

“
EM blast,” Reggie says. He points up in the tree. “Eric. He had no choice. It was either hit you both or… Well, he had no choice.”

I turn my head and see the face of the zombie that attacked me. It seems to be rising up out of the dirt. The headless body lies a few feet away.

“
How?”

“
I was on the edge of the blast. Still took a hit, but the zombie took the brunt of it. before it took the brunt of my foot in its ass.” He laughs, winces.

“
They were Omegas.”

“
No shit.”

I struggle to my feet. The roaring noise is almost completely gone from my head now, but the pain in my side now commands my attention.

“
You're going to have to go up for Eric,” he tells me. “I can barely stand as it is. And we still need to get back.”

The lowest branch is eight feet up. Now I see that there's no way Reggie would be able to get up to it without help, even if he wasn't in such pain. “How am I supposed to get up there?”

“
Stand on my shoulders.”

“
You just said you can barely stand.”

“
I know, but—”

“
I'm…coming down,” Eric says, panting. So much pain in his voice.

“
You can climb?”

“
Pretty sure I broke some ribs.” The branches rustle. Sharp intake of air. Twelve, maybe fifteen, feet above us. “Better get out of the way in case I fall.”

“
You need to hurry.”

“
Doing my best, Jessie.” He hisses again. The sound of wood splitting comes to us, followed by several rapid cracks, each progressively louder and closer.

“
Eric!”

There's a thud as his body hits a thick branch just above us and he lets out a cry. A leg emerges from the shadows, dangling down. I can hear him gasping up there, groaning. I want to help. I can't. I feel so useless.

“
I'm…going to…drop,” he says.

Reggie and I don't speak. We just step back and wait. I reach up, but what can I do? “Can you hang? We'll guide you down.”

“
No! Just get out of the way. I have to—”

And then he falls. A flash and his feet hit first and he crumples, rolling onto his side, letting out another yowl.

I hurry over and place my hands on him as he writhes in the dirt. He pushes me away, grabs my hand, pulls himself up. I try to help. “Ow! Gently…hurry.”

On his feet now, bent over. His face is horribly scratched and he's bleeding from multiple wounds. His clothes are torn.

“
You're alive.”

“
Almost rather…not be.”

“
Are you bitten?”

“
No. Jumped out when…chopper went down.”

“
What happened up there?” Reggie asks.

But he shakes his head. “Later.”

† † †

Brother Walter meets us halfway across the field and tries to take Eric's other arm, but I wave him off. “Take Reggie.”

“
I can make it the rest of the way.”

“
Yeah, that's why you're leaning so much on me. I feel like a sandwich.”

He lets go of me just as another crash comes from the woods behind us. This one is louder and closer. Brother Walter hesitates, then grabs Reggie's arm.

“
What was that?”

“
Who cares? Keep moving.”

The noise triggers a chorus of moans. The Undead hear it; they're coming.

Reggie leans his elbow on Brother Walter's shoulder and limps after us. Eric and I angle for the gate where Sister Jane stands, ready to close it and wrap the chain around the posts.

After we've gotten inside, I lower Eric to the floor. Even in his pain, his eyes go wide at the scene, the dried pools of blood everywhere and the splatters on the wall. He doesn't ask what happened. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out.

With my help, he unclasps his belt and folds it and places it carefully on the floor next to him. There's blood on the grip of his EM pistol and the holster. Next, he unbuttons his shirt. But getting it off causes him to cry out. The bruise on his side stretches from his armpit to his waist and from his spine to his sternum. In the center is a large, very angry-looking scrape. The thins lines of the old scars seem to glow on his skin. I pretend not to see them.

“
Hit a branch,” he grunts. “Damn thing probably saved my life, kept me from going to the ground. Might've passed out momentarily. Not sure how I managed to hold on. When I came to, the first IUs had already started gathering below me.”

“
I saw a couple other people fall out,” I tell him. “One was taken. At the edge of the wood.”

Eric shakes his head. “A marine.”

“
How many others?”

“
Just me and the pilot.” He stops and grimaces up at me. “Hard to breathe.”

“
The pilot's dead, too. Burned up inside the crash.”

Eric looks away. “The rest were Omegas.”

“
The two we fought.”

Eric nods. “Bandages. There, cargo pocket.”

I slip a hand into the pocket and begin pulling out supplies. He leans his head back and closes his eyes. “Thank you, Jess. You did good.”

I don't say anything at first. Then, “You scared the crap out of me,” I tell him, reaching around to wrap his chest.

“
Where are the others? Where's Kelly? Ashley?” The lines in his face deepen. “Micah?”

“
Micah's tied up,” Reggie says, grunting. “The sooner he's off our hands, the better.”

Eric sighs. “Just can't believe he'd do something like that. You were all so close.”

“
What'll happen to him?”

“
A hearing first, to introduce the charges and evidence. Then a trial.”

“
Then what?” I ask.

“
Sentencing.”

“
Meaning?”

“
Most likely conscription. Assuming it gets to that.”

“
What do you mean? He could be found innocent?”

“
He's a kid. The government—and Arc—won't want this to get out of control, cause a panic.”

“
Let what get out of control?” Reggie asks.

“
Arc's network has been breached. They're fighting off an attack on the mainland. Our entire security infrastructure…built on ArcTech's programs…firewalls…countermeasures. Arc's best hackers claimed it was foolproof, yet it was still hacked.”

“
Micah tricked Ashley into writing a program that could teach itself how to break their codex.”

Eric shakes his head. “No idea what that means. Congress is calling for hearings. Heads will roll. People have already started going missing.”

He leans forward so I can finish wrapping him, telling me to make it tight.

“
You won't be able to breathe.”

“
I'll breathe easier if it's tight, Jess.”

When I've finished and tended his cuts and scrapes, he slowly gets back into his shirt. His fingers shake and his face is pale in the artificial lighting. Beads of sweat stand out on his forehead. He finishes, leans back and asks about Kelly.

“
He's…hurt,” I tell him.

I catch Reggie's eye and something passes between us, understanding. We won't mention that he was bitten, not just yet. Nor that I was, too. Now isn't the time.

“
He's resting in another room,” Reggie offers. “Recovering. He's…exhausted. We all are.”

“
I'll bet. Don't worry. Once our evac comes, we'll all get fixed up again.”

Eric squeezes his eyes closed, rests for a minute, then asks about Ashley. Nobody answers. “I'm so sorry, guys.”

“
She wasn't the only one,” Reggie finally says. I throw him a warning glance. I don't want him to say anything about Jake biting me. I don't want Eric worrying about me right now. “Jake's dead, too.”

“
The Esposito boy? Damn.”

Reggie nods. “He's…out there now. Somewhere. He's one of them.”

 

I'm awake early
the next morning after a fitful night broken by dreams of burning buildings and monsters with sharp teeth and claws. I tried to escape, but my hands and feet were tied. Despite the rough night, I do feel better in the morning, physically stronger and mentally more resolved. We may no longer have a chopper to leave in, but with Eric here, alive, my spirits are raised.

Finding him alive has changed my mind. We can't just leave—not without knowing for sure.

I sit up from my place on the floor. My back is stiff and every muscle feels stretched to breaking. But I'm alive. I touch my cheek and it doesn't feel quite so puffy. I can actually see out of the eye again. In the meager light coming in, I see Sister Jane and Reggie, both still asleep. Beyond him is Eric, snoring away like he's always done. It reminds me of Reggie complaining about Micah snoring a few days ago.

Looking the other way, Brother Walter's spot on the floor is empty. It doesn't look like he slept in it at all. I wonder if he's with Kelly, or if he's out gathering leaves or keeping watch.

Micah's tucked into the farthest corner, gagged and bound. I nearly jump when I realize he's awake. His eyes watch me as I pad softly across the room. He doesn't make a fuss, though I keep expecting him to. I can feel his accusing eyes on my back long after I've left the room.

Kelly's in another part of the building by himself. He'd been moaning in pain last night and had asked to be taken into one of the smaller rooms. I'd wanted to stay with him, but he told me I wouldn't get any sleep. I think he just wanted to be alone. After committing ourselves to dying less than twenty-four hours ago, I'm not so sure he's decided he wants to live yet.